Once in every lifetime...
MARION McMULLEN looks at how student living shook up comedy 40 years ago with The Young Ones
THEY lived in a slum, had music groups turning up to perform in their living room and broke nearly all the rules of sitcom.
The Young Ones launched on BBC2 on November 9, 1982, and offered a showcase of alternative comedy as it followed the lives of four students – the geeky Rick (Rik Mayall), the violent Vyvyan (Adrian Edmondson), lentil-loving hippy Neil (Nigel Planer) and aspiring business mogul Mike (Christopher Ryan).
It was written by Rik Mayall, Lisa Mayer and Ben Elton and it was their first major television series. Ben, who went on to co-write Blackadder and pen sitcoms including The Thin Blue Line and Upstart Crow, later said of Rik, “I owe him so much. He changed my life utterly when he asked me to co-write The Young Ones.”
Ska band Madness made two guest appearances and there was also music from the likes of Dexys Midnight Runners, The Damned and Nine Below Zero. Jools Holland also turned up in two episodes as a punk.
Alexei Sayle was the slum landlord Mr Balowski and many rising British stars also joined in the fun including future Oscar-winner Dame Emma Thompson as Miss Money-Sterling, the late Robbie Coltrane as a bouncer and Dawn French as the Easter Bunny.
Monty Python’s Terry Jones also popped up in one episode as a drunken vicar. Adrian Edmondson said: “Terry Jones was the only Python who agreed to appear in The Young Ones. It was like affirmation from God himself.”
Only 12 episodes of the surreal comedy were ever made. The Young Ones ended with the guys being evicted and deciding to go on a summer holiday in a bus. Rick’s final line, as the bus smashed into a Cliff Richard billboard and went flying off a cliff was, “Look out! CLIFF”.