PROFILE
'Happiness is not automatic'
HE SMASHED ON TO THE 1980s COMEDY CIRCUIT AND BROUGHT WITH HIM A NEW BRAND OF BOUNDARY-BREAKING HUMOUR. AS ADRIAN EDMONDSON RELEASES HIS MEMOIR, HE SHARES WHAT HE’S LEARNED ABOUT LOVE, LIFE AND LAUGHTER
'Sorry, I’m just weeding the drive,’ says Adrian ‘Ade’ Edmondson when we speak during one of his days off. The actor, writer, comedian, musician and now author is talking to me from his home in Devon, where he’s lived with his wife, Jennifer Saunders, for 30 years. He’s spent the morning taking his car to the garage, reading the papers ‘digitally’, tending to his tomato plants and generally ‘tinkering about’. And this is how Edmondson likes it.
At 66 years old, he is the most content he’s ever been. ‘The thing about happiness is that it’s not automatic,’ he explains. ‘It doesn’t just happen, so don’t expect it to just come to you. You have to create an environment for it to happen. It’s like making yogurt. You make yogurt, don’t you?’ Er. ‘Well, you’ve got to nurture it, give it time.’
A yogurt-making gardener is about as far away as you can get from the characters Edmondson is most famous for: Vyvyan Basterd in The Young Ones, a punk student who likes to make bombs out of vodka bottles; and Eddie Hitler from Bottom, the perverted, unemployed scrounger who lives with his equally perverted, unemployed scrounger flatmate Richie. Both sitcoms are credited as some of the best comedy the UK has produced. The Young Ones ran for two series from 1982-1984, and Bottom for three series from 1991-1995, earning cult status and cementing Edmondson and his long-time collaborator, Rik Mayall, as pioneers of the 1980s ‘alternative’ comedy scene.
Along with Saunders, Dawn French, Alexei Sayle, Keith Allen, Robbie Coltrane and Ben Elton, they all rose to prominence during this era. Edmondson, Saunders, French, Mayall and fellow actors Nigel Planer and Peter Richardson made up The Comic Strip group, who used to host comedy nights at the Raymond Revuebar strip club in London’s Soho. They later scored their own TV show, The Comic Strip Presents, on Channel 4.
Many of them moved to Devon at the same time and remain close friends (Mayall died in 2014; Coltrane last year). I imagine the London comedy scene in the 1980s and 1990s was a lot of fun. ‘It was a blast,’ says Edmondson. ‘It was a constant party. It never felt like work. I can barely remember working. Turning up to The Comedy Store [another famous comedy hotspot in London] or The Comic Strip Club was like going out. There was booze, laughter, fun and meeting people.’
Indeed, it was in those early days that he met Saunders. The two wrote together for years before getting together. They have three daug
