mostly david ephgrave

Death comes to us all. That’s one of the few certainties in life you can rely on. Despite this logic, I find it hard to believe that Rik Mayall has gone. How can a person with such boundless energy and enthusiasm not be about? He represented the eternal teenager. Even as he approached middle age, he'd never aged with it. As a kid, I’d tune into Bottom every week, revelling in its rudeness. If my parents entered the room, I’d initiate a loud conversation, in the hope of masking the filth spouting from my television. My best friend Chris owned a book of the scripts. Whole days were lost to acting out the episodes, with me as Richie and him as Eddie. I still remember Richie’s lullaby from the camping-on-Wimbledon-Common episode verbatim. God knows what important information it replaced in my head. Every performance was given that distinctive wide-eyed, nostril-flared Mayall stamp. There was nobody like him. Take Flashheart in Black...