RIP Rik Mayall

Today I heard the sad news of the passing of Rik Mayall. He is one half of a comedy duo that shaped my sarcastic, childish and violent slapstick sense of humour!

Without The Comic Strip presents...; The Dangerous Brothers (on Friday/Saturday Night Live); The Young Ones; Filthy, Rich and Catflap; The New Statesman; cameos in Blackadder and of course, Bottom, my sense of humour would not be what it is today!

The following quote from Rik Mayall in The Young Ones seemed very poignant today:

"I feel sorry for you, you zeros, you nobodies. What's going to live on after you die? Nothing, that's what!

This house will become a shrine! And punks and skins and Rastas will all gather round and all hold their hands in sorrow for their fallen leader! And all the grown-ups will say, 'But why are the kids crying?' And the kids will say, 'Haven't you heard? Rick is dead! The People's Poet is dead!'

And then one particularly sensitive and articulate teenager will say, 'Why kids, do you understand nothing? How can Rick be dead when we still have his poems?'."