Ade Edmondson

28/04/2009

Fresh out of Hell's Kitchen, the comedian tells us about his teenager years

I went to a minor public boys’ school in Yorkshire and I was terribly bored by it. I felt that life was going on outside its walls. We were inundated by images of glam rock, Slade, Sweet, T - Rex but inside school life was really dull. I wore shiny shoes, wide lapels and NHS specs. I think I was hoping for a John Lennon look but I never got there.
 
I tried to run away from school. My parents lived in Uganda so I was a pretty independent boy, I didn’t feel a great obligation to my parents. So I ran away to Hull with an idea of jumping onto a ship and going round the world. But this was during the 3 day week and the docks were closed because everyone was on strike. So I gave myself up and was taken back to school.
 
I was Hamlet in the school play, I was always acting. But I absolutely wanted to be a rock star. I was the singer in our rock band and I loved the showing off that came with it. We were into our rock, Free, Led Zeppelin. I really thought we were going to make it. I never had any intention of getting a proper job.
 
I’d tell myself to try a bit harder to talk to girls. And I’d say, you don’t have to shag them all, try to have a conversation. We didn’t know any girls to socialise with at school. I found the whole thing very difficult because I wanted to have a girlfriend so desperately. I just felt like it was never ever going to happen. I didn’t really learn to talk to girls properly until I was about 20. I didn’t understand the language or the differences. Now I have three daughters and a wife and I’m much happier being in female company than in male company.
 
I wasn’t very happy at 16. It took me about 15 years to work out how to be happy. I’m not sure how I did it – I married the right person I suppose.
 
I studied drama at Manchester Uni and met Rik Mayall there, and we became friends pretty quickly. Our department was full of wankers basically, who took themselves far too seriously, and we just started taking the piss out of them and that’s how we started. We had exactly the same backgrounds, we’d both been the same kind of kid at school. I remember our mums sent us exactly the same dressing gown at uni. When I went to his house I just thought his parents were the same as mine, same middle class aspirational types.
 
It took us Rik and me about 4 years to get on telly. We left uni and decided that was it, we were a comedy duo, The Dangerous Brothers. We got a total of about 4 gigs the first year. We tried to write together but I just found writing so boring – it took until Bottom in the early ‘90s before we got the hang of writing together.

I would tell my younger self he will make himself proud eventually. I think what Rik and I did was quite novel. We did invent a kind of comedy I think and you can’t do much more than that. The only advice I’d give my young self is to give myself total free rein. I’d say be more wild, be more naive, be more everything and don’t limit anything you do. It’s good to put yourself in positions where you’re nervous because otherwise you don’t really live, as a performer.
 
When I catch an old repeat of something I was in years ago like The Young Ones, it’s like watching someone else. I think, who’s he? What’s he thinking about? I was sent an anniversary box set of The Young Ones  a few years ago so my kids decided to watch an episode and they started drifting out after about 15 minutes. It was so slow and boring compared to modern comedy, full of stupid pointless sketches about hamsters or men on rafts that went on and on.
 
I would tell my miserable 16 year old self to hang on until the Bottom tour in 1997. It was the best comedy we’ve ever written and performed. It was a huge 100 odd date tour and it was just the best fun ever. We could never top that. We had people in hysterics of laughter and we knew we had more stuff coming – if you laughed at that, you’re going to really love what’s next. We were so supremely confident. It was fantastic. And we were earning proper money!
 
I’d tell myself to avoid people who work in offices. They’re so dull. Whenever you go into an office building and see rows of people sitting at computers – it just looks like death. My daughter said if she was ever tempted to work in an office could I please shoot her?

Interview: Jane Graham