The deaths that hit me even harder than Rik’s, by Adrian Edmondson
HOW I’M TACKLING MY ANGER AT 60
ACTOR Adrian Edmondson has spoken movingly about the anguish of losing two close friends to suicide – and reveal that it affected him even more deeply than the death of his comic ‘brother’ Rik Mayall.
The Young Ones star says his friends’ deaths were harder to accept than the loss of 56-year-old Mayall to a heart attack in 2014 – because he blamed himself for not knowing that things had got so bad for them.
Edmondson, married to Absolutely Fabulous star Jennifer Saunders, tells today’s Event magazine: ‘I had bucketloads of death happening at once. Really close chums. And nothing prepares you for that.
‘Rik and I were like brothers. We were family… You can have rows in families and it’s OK. It was always OK with Rik, because the friendship was so solid.
‘Rik’s death was easier for me to deal with than the two friends who committed suicide. There was a reason Rik died. He had a heart attack. The difficulty with suicide is you just don’t really know why. I had no idea things had got so bad for my friends. You blame yourself for not knowing, for not being there, for not helping. It’s very hard to deal with.’
Edmondson, 60, who won rave reviews as Count Rostov in the BBC’s adaptation of Tolstoy’s War And Peace, also revealed how he has found inner peace in the ancient philosophy of Stoicism, which advises accepting one’s lot in life.
‘Being stoic is about accepting things that happen to you and knowing you can control your anger. It works,’ he says. ‘It [the anger] doesn’t get you anywhere. But you have the power to change that.’
The father-of-three said he had learned to control his own real-life feelings of anger after studying Meditations, by Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, regarded as the leading figure in Stoic philosophy.
Edmondson’s new-found inner calm is a million miles from the violent onscreen antics of anarchic characters such as Vyvyan in The Young Ones or Eddie Hitler in the sitcom Bottom, which also co-starred Mayall.
A reformed Edmondson says: ‘I used to actually find my anger amusing. Furious rage. It was who I was.
‘But it’s not great for the people around you, for your family.’