Last Edited: 01 February 2024
I woke up last night at 3am to get a drink of water. As I lay back down to sleep, I began thinking about what would later become the subject of this line of inquiry and, as a result, I could not fall back asleep for three hours. I later supposed that if it was of such significance to warrant this quantity of lost sleep, that it was worth writing an essay about. If you, dear reader, are the type who prefers short and/or explicitly funny posts, I would advise you to bail now. However, if you are even a little interested in a deep dive into an intersection of philosophy, psychology, and how they relate to my relatively recent awareness of the phenomenon known as Rik Mayall, I bid you welcome to the center of this rather niche Venn diagram that I currently find especially fascinating.
Rik was, as all humans are, born with genetic contributions to personality, which are readily apparent to all as soon as a baby is out of the womb. The rest of the ego forms later, which is dependent on early childhood shaping by the quality of parental care, the presence of any trauma, and the ability to form long-term memories (around the age of five years old) (Barlow et al., 2018). From that time on, the ego develops and experiences very slow and gradual changes, but it is not a cohesive thing. Rather, it is a mercurial, shifting bundle of “I”s. This notion, which I discovered in the written work of the philosopher Peter Ouspensky over the last month (and which has been examined by psychology and neuroscience, per my recent college studies), relates that the apparent singular personality is an erroneous perception, and that the “I” who decides it fancies a sandwich at one moment is not the same “I” who, seconds later, decides to turn on a certain television program (Ouspensky, 1974). The urges and thoughts a person has as well as the decisions a person ultimately makes are the end result of a constant, never-ending battle of the “I”s, in which the strongest single “I” of the moment wins (Ouspensky, 1974). Biologically speaking, these are now scientifically known as the patterns of neurotransmitter activity that influence personality, which originate from our genetics and are continually shaped over the course of our lives by both physically developmental and emotionally experiential factors (Barlow et al., 2018). If you, dear reader, initially reject this idea, know that this is a perfectly natural response, since the illusion of the cohesive self is quite necessary for our day-to-day operations, and cognitive dissonance is expected in order for the illusion of the “singular” ego to not be irreparably shaken. That being said, you will likely not have much interest in or understanding of the rest of this writing if you cannot momentarily entertain this concept.
If you are still with me after that, I shall move to focus more on the human in question, the British actor and comedian, Rik Mayall. I was personally entirely unaware of his existence, work, and legacy until about four months ago, when my quite-a-bit-older-than-me British husband introduced me to “The Young Ones”, a revolutionary “anarchic” comedy television show from the early 1980s. I quickly became fascinated with this historical occurrence known as British Alternative Comedy, the origin of which pre-dates my own birth, and began to explore the work of all of the major players. For whatever reason, however, the firecracker of Rik Mayall particularly fascinated me, and I initially mainly concentrated on his filmography.
Human beings are hard-wired to notice patterns. This adaptation has been essential to the survival of our ancestors, which is why we are so successful as a species, as well as in our individual lives. Noticing a pattern, such as those that occur in nature, allows us to make reliable predictions, anticipate occurrences, and to begin to have the awareness to learn to manipulate them and make changes to encourage results we desire rather than those which would have followed naturally. Also, of equal significance, is our ability to notice when something (or someone) deviates from an established pattern. Our personality itself is a pattern, formed by the reliable “winning” of the strongest “I”s, and these patterns are usually far more apparent to others than to ourselves without personally undertaking a dedicated practice of introspection, as our own brains use many cognitive tricks to justify or otherwise obfuscate our own deviations.
As I proceeded through Rik’s work (so much so that my husband eventually protested to the “Rik overdose” of mutual viewing and I had to continue on my own), I perceived a deviation in the manifestations of his acting in his later career that I couldn’t quite define. It was made further apparent in interviews of this period as well, in which his being contrasted subtly but noticeably with that in previous ones. I initially assigned this to perhaps the naturally-jarring changes of mid-life, but, while looking up information on the production of “The Comic Strip Presents: Four Men in a Car”, I came across a factor I hadn’t considered: Rik’s quad bike accident in 1998, in which he suffered two brain hemorrhages and a fractured skull, endured a five-day coma, and doubts about whether he would be brain-damaged or even live (Barber, 2000). I had recalled seeing it mentioned elsewhere before briefly, probably on Wikipedia, but I hadn’t fully understood the severity of it, nor its implications. As previously mentioned, the ego changes over time, but these changes are usually very slow and very gradual. We can all look back and see, through the lens of maturity and experience, that we are different now than we were ten or twenty or more years ago. However, in the case of traumatic injury involving the brain, even if the brain recovers to near 100% function, the event itself is also usually also a near-death experience (either perceived directly or, more usually, known in retrospect), meaning that some psychological and philosophical changes are both immediate and inevitable.
Most of us have doubtlessly had the wonder of “if I had amnesia, would I still be the same person”? Memories shape our “I”s to some extent, so there would certainly be changes. The patterns of brain circuits formed from both genetic and formative experiential factors, however, also play a massive part in the forms and strengths of the various “I”s as well, which would keep much of our personality very familiar and recognizable. This point then begs the question: “If my memories were intact, but other connections and pathways in my brain were damaged directly or otherwise significantly traumatized by a life-changing event, would I still be the same person?” The memories of the lifetime would continue to contribute to the “I”s, yes, but the areas/extent of damage and subsequent “re-wiring” of the recovery process could (and does) allow for some of the “I”s to become stronger or weaker than they were before. A biological explanation for this phenomenon is that “changes in neurotransmitter activity may make people more or less likely to exhibit certain kinds of behavior in certain situations without causing the behavior directly” (Barlow et al., 2018). Both instantaneously and over time, this can cause a notable shift in personality. Based on my own perceptions and also the accounts that I’ve read and listened to secondhand from his close friend and creative partner, Adrian Edmonson, I believe that this may have been what happened to Rik Mayall. It has, if this writing is any evidence, given me a lot to think about.
Following this deductive process, there is a perceptible “Rik1.0”, who was a gradual evolution of being from 1958 to 1998, and then a “Rik2.0” who existed from 1998 to 2014 with some of his own evolution. My main interest is in the changes that manifested in Rik2.0 which slowly but surely eventually culminated in Adrian Edmonson regretfully discontinuing their partnership in 2012. In the never-ending battle for concision in my writing, I shall focus on that which I believe to have been most affecting – Rik’s desire for achieving ever-higher professional excellence and his sense of pride in his own abilities. Much of Rik1.0 was characterized by a noticeable nervous energy as fuel for his intensity, sharpness and deftness of movement and mental reaction, and lots of very obvious joking about his own grandeur (which was usually paired with several self-effacing comments to clarify the jest). In both the acting and interviews I have seen with Rik2.0, his energy is often more subdued and less refined, while the jokes about his inflated perception of himself begin to come across as less sincere, as though he may actually believe some of what he is saying but then only commenting that he is kidding as a politely-appropriate afterthought. If we correlate these with observation, we find a Rik2.0 who now breaks character much more often during the videos of the 2003 “Bottom: Live” tour than he did in the 1995 one, seeming to seek even more attention for himself personally rather than play the very-much-not-like-himself character of “Ritchie” straight through. Later on, in 2012, the partnership was effectively destroyed during an explicit attempt to revive it, after Adrian observed Rik2.0, for two days in a row, counting off the jokes in the new “Bottom” scripts on his fingers before confronting his partner about Rik’s character of “Ritchie” having less jokes than Adrian’s character of “Eddie” and demanding rewrites to remedy the perceived imbalance.
It is admittedly speculation on my part, but, based on these accounts, it would seem that the mix of “I”s in Rik1.0 were responsible for keeping a form of detrimental pride within his ego in check during his career, at least initially and into the early 1990s. There was, however, the beginning of a gradual breakdown in it prior to Rik’s accident. Adrian Edmonson did note some changes in that direction within Rik1.0 during the “Bottom: Live” tour in 1995, notably the start of breaking character to absorb audience accolades and desiring rewrites of his own material to make it “funnier” than he perceived it to be. This behavior followed Rik1.0 having some success with serious film roles, presumably increasing his pride a bit (maybe he was Rik1.5 by this point?) but also coincided with his mid-to-late-30s, in which the phenomenon of naturally and perceptibly beginning to lose some of our energy, health, and overall youth begins to scratch away at our self-perceptions and cause self-doubts that contribute to the formation of some compensatory personality traits. The main problem with an increase in any form of maladaptive pride is an increase in the need to maintain the feeling of it, with all of the problems that entails. In an ironic twist, there are at least two interviews with Rik1.0 in which he describes that he enjoys playing characters who embody the worst parts of himself, in which he names both vanity and pride as a form of “personal exorcism”. He was introspective enough to be aware of these flaws on his own, so it is all the more odd to me how they began to slowly gain more power over his personality without him seeming to notice. Then again, as mentioned before, we are often the last to notice the tricks that our brain plays on us in the rationalization/justification game of our own expressed behaviors.
Unfortunately, if one is too confident in one’s own performative abilities, the necessary nervous energy of acting (generally referred to as “stage fright”) is not present, and the commitment to both the character and the piece will suffer, as was observed. In a creative partnership, the focus becomes less on the product and more on one’s own part in it, as was also noted. A slow slide in that direction had already started, but the changes post-accident seem to have exacerbated it. Would Rik1.0, given enough time, have fully progressed to the partnership-breaking level of Rik2.0’s flaws on his own? We can never know. Whether as a result of mechanical damage to the brain and/or a psychological shift resulting from the knowledge of having survived something that should have claimed his life, Rik1.0, as at least Adrian Edmonson knew him, certainly ceased to be in 1998 and Rik2.0 was born. I say “born”, because his memories of “being” Rik1.0 would have kept him apparently similar for a time. The cognitive dissonance of perceiving uncharacteristic personality traits in a friend and creative partner since 1979, on Adrian’s part, would have also taken time to break down, as we all naturally resist change to such long-term definitions. However, the span of 1998 to 2014 culminated in Adrian’s recent retrospective observation and tearful admission that “[Rik] just wasn’t there anymore” (italics mine), which brought me to tears when I originally heard it, and started me along this occasional questioning of the riddle of Rik Mayall’s professional journey and creative descent (Edmonson, 2023). Who? Who wasn’t there anymore? Now, I think I may better understand.
Disclaimer: I welcome any discourse or comments from those who have found this interesting, and I would like to make it clear that my discussing professional criticism of a person does not mean that I dislike them or intend harm to their reputation in any way. By all accounts, I consider the sum of Rik Mayall to have been a wonderfully-unique human being who left behind a fascinating and affecting legacy we would be much poorer without. That does not, however, preclude us from speculation about what causes people, including and especially our loved ones and people we admire, to change in unfathomable ways and why unfortunate events including them proceeded as they did. In fact, I believe such inquiry is both healthy and necessary, as seeking understanding is part of what allows us to move away from binary thinking and towards appreciation of other people as the dynamic and complex beings they truly are.
References:
- Barber, L. (2000, December 17). Rik Mayall: Forever young. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2000/dec/17/features.magazine
- Barlow, D., Durand, V., & Hofmann, S. (2018). Abnormal psychology: An integrative approach (8th ed.). Cengage Learning.
- Bennett, S. (2023, September 18). The moment I knew I could never work with Rik Mayall again. Chortle. https://www.chortle.co.uk/features/2023/09/18/54167/the_moment_i_knew_i_could_never_work_with_rik_mayall_again
- Edmonson, A. (2023, September 22). Desert Island Discs, Adrian Edmondson, actor, writer. BBC Radio 4. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001qlz2
- Ouspensky, P. D. (1974). The psychology of man’s possible evolution. Vintage Books.
- Watson, P. (2014, June 11). When Rik Mayall covered GQ. British GQ. https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/rik-mayall-gq-cover-interview
