With flying eclairs, falling beds and exploding buses, the anarchic antics of Rick, Vyvyan, Neil and Mike shoved alternative comedy into the mainstream. Forty years on, we ask the show’s creators how they pulled it off
ON 9 November 1982, an unsuspecting UK was about to get an era-defining shock. A new comedy arrived on BBC Two, bringing a new generation with it. Rick (the late Rik Mayall), a sanctimonious sociology student, Vyvyan (Ade Edmondson), a violent punk, Neil (Nigel Planer), a morose hippy, and Mike (Christopher Ryan), a mysterious mature student, were undergraduates at Scumbag College. They lived in an indescribably filthy hovel owned by Alexei Sayle’s terrifying landlord Jerzei Balowski and traded in a brand of hyper-stimulated slapstick hilarity that seemed to update Punch & Judy for the post-punk era.
A sitcom it was; Terry and June it definitely was not. The Young Ones broke the fourth wall, endangered the physical wellbeing of its stars and put cool bands on the telly. They terrorised “Footlights College Oxbridge” on University Challenge, released a single with Cliff Richard and had their own Sinclair ZX Spectrum video game. The show became a touchstone and an inflection point of 80s comedy, making superstars of its cast in the process. But how did it come about?
