Rik Mayall - Bigger than Hitler – Better than Christ

There. You see, Lord, what it is is that often in the middle of the night I find myself thinking about the angels and the heavenly host—and hostess—and I was wondering, Lord, if thou could clear something up for I. You know how like in the pictures of angels that you see in books, all the lady angels always wear sort of short white shirt kind of things, well if I were to be surrounded by angels, both man and lady angels, and they are all flying around above me up in the air over my head, and if I looked up in the air and saw these angels flying above me and thought to myself “Oh look, there are some selestial bodies. I’m so glad that God has chosen me to be his special one.” Well, what would happen if at that very moment I looked up and there was a lady angel just above me and I accidentally saw her girl’s pants? Would I go to hell? And if I did, would I have to fall all the way down from the sky to the middle of the earth and hurt myself? And will there be hospitals in hell for me? I’ve been worrying about this a lot, dear Thou. If you could clear this up for me as soon as possible, I would be eternally greatful.

I hope thou ist keeping well.

Best wishes,

Richard Mayall.

Mr Clutterbuck Masters Common Room King’s School Worcester

August 20 1969

Dear Sir,

I know you said I should not write to you again because you might have to tell the Headmaster but I felt I should tell you that I now know who let off the fire alarm during break last Thursday. It was not me, it was Lancaster, which proves that he is not handicapped because he would have had to stand up out of his wheelchair to do it. I also saw him doing the hundred yards sprinting practice last week as well so he is a bloody liar. Sorry to swear Sir, but it makes me so cross when other pupils break school rules. If you like, I can help you lift him out of his wheelchair so that you can beat him. One day he will thank us all for this.

You are very good at beating, Mr Clutterbuck. You have a very good slipper action and it certainly hurts a lot. You are much better than Mr Cunley, who said he was going to beat me the week before last for cribbing and then he put his hand down the back of my trousers. I am sure this is against the law but I do not like to tell tails. He smells of LSD and he doesn’t cut his hair very much so I think he must be a hippy. I will say no more.

I hope you have a very nice holiday in Benidorm with Mrs Clutterbuck.

Best wishes,

Richard Mayall.

“Fucking hell, look at the size of his cock!” said the mid-wife who delivered me. “It looks like he’s got three legs. Perhaps he should be called The Tripod.” This is true. She really said this. But I was called Richard instead and the rest is history.

I went to school at the local primary school, right? That’s where I went to school. I didn’t have to pay anyone, I just got in. No questions, no bodies. I was in. The infants. I don’t want to talk too much about it because it was like sucking shit through a shoot. But I tell you what. And I’ll tell it you now. It was a Tuesday night, 17 thDecember 1968. Choir concert. Got that? Me too. All the infants were there. All the parents were there. This is true, this. My fucking class teacher, Mrs “please kick me in the face violently” Andrews lined up all the tables against the wall and told us all to stand on them facing the audience.

“Call that a stage?” I thought, “I’d rather slam my bollocks in the fridge door.” But I got on the stage and I was right, it was a shit stage. And that bitch Andrews stuck me right up at the left hand side of it, right at the edge and at the back. I was practically off stage (which means not on stage). And I’m never off stage. I’m always on. I’m on now, look. And guess what. No but really, guess what. No don’t actually, I’ll tell you. I’m doing it right now or I will after I’ve done this sentence. And I’m getting there now. Right here we are, I’m there. Told you I would be. So shit off if you don’t believe me. Right what was I going to say? Bollocks. Oh I know, shut up and listen. New paragraph—this is good.

Mrs Andrews said to me—and get this because this is true—“Now Richard, pay attention and stop doing that to Penelope. I have something important to say to you. The success of the whole of this evening’s concert depends on it. So pay attention, it’s very very important. Now Richard, I don’t want you to sing this evening. Not at all. Not one note. I want all of the other children to sing but not you. Because you’ve got a horrible voice. So what I want you to do is just move your mouth as if you’re singing but not actually sing. If you sing, you’ll spoil the whole evening’s entertainment. Have you got that?” she said rather too emphatically an inch from my face. What do you think of that? Me too. I wasn’t going to take that. Me neither. Or me. She was dealing with Rik Mayall (i.e. *me). That’s what she didn’t know. She used to call me Richard. Bitch. I wasn’t going to take that lying down. “Right, Richard,” I said to myself. “What are we going to do? I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. We’re going to steal the show. Let’s do it. (Like a firestorm, obviously.)” So, what I did was just that. Fantastically too. I pulled faces at the audience while I was mouthing the wrong words to Away in a Manger, made extremely vulgar gesticulations and upstaged the entire cast (there were about thirty opponents up there, don’t forget. This was thirty to one.) I transformed the whole evening into a breakthruough comedy entertainment format. You should have heard them laugh when Annette Jennings’ knickers and tights suddenly came shooting down her legs, tangling up her shoes and she fell into the front row. It was all going on. Hilarity prevailed. Quite a few people had a good time until suddenly, the Headmaster grabbed me by the ear, pulled me off the stage onto the floor of the auditorium (form 3B) and marched me to the corner of the room and made me stand face to the wall in FULL FUCKING VIEW OF MY AUDIENCE thinking it would humiliate me. Like fuck. That’s when it all kicked off big style. So the Headmaster ordered me out of the hall. And that’s when I threw my first really good tantrum. I bit Mrs Andrews in the face, ran a mock with my matches in the cloakroom causing over eight thousands pounds worth of damage, flooded the girls’ toilets, and shat in the gym master’s holdall *. As a seven year old, you can only take so much.

The thing is, I was very misunderstood at school. Quite often, when the other children were playing kiss chase in the playground, I was tied up in the toilets with my pants stuffed into my mouth. Even the teachers used to spit on me as they passed me in the play ground.

I’m putting all this in the book, viewer, because I want to show you what a hard life I’ve had and how I rose above it. It’s really very Jesusy when you think about it. I remember as though it was yesterday when the Headmaster was beating me in his study one day and I looked up at him and said, “Judge not lest ye be judged you fat motherfucker.” He just went on beating me. His house burnt down shortly afterwards. I had nothing to do with this.

Picture the scene: Spring 1967. Got it? Everyone else was on the Isle of White watching Jimmy Hendrix burning his guitar but I was at school. They had decided to change the state school system so that no one would be equal anymore. The rich would go to one sort of school and the poor would be put in holding pens before they were taken off to factories. It was different in those days. We had factories and people went there and made things. They were called jobs. You don’t have them now. There was still a Labour Party in those days. Nowadays there are just slaves on the other side of the world that make stuff for us. Unless we bring them over here to do it. Then we call them immigrants and pay them fuck all and make them live in the old holding pens that the white working class used to have. Until they’re fucked up and knackered and useless and then we send them home again. Or to somewhere in Croatia where they’re made into dog food.