I don't have many pictures of comedians on my wall but the one that has pride of place is of Rik Mayall when he was on the cover of the NME. It felt perfect at the time and still feels perfect. Rik staring out and looking like a rock star. He really was the closest thing UK comedy has had to a rock star. John Lydon stare morphing into clownish smirk. 

 

Sky's documentary is a deep dive into Mayall's life which covers most of the major bullet points while also digging into the man behind the always-on performer. It's a must-see doc for everyone remotely interested in the psychology of ego, comedy and stardom.

 

The structure of fairly chronological, taking us from his childhood to his sudden death aged 56 in 2014. He was showing signs of the future early on. Not able to sing the words to a song at a family gathering he mimed and stole the show. A performance in Waiting for Godot aged ten was the start of a lifelong obsession with the comic bleakness of Beckett. Something he shared with Ade Edmondson, who talks movingly and openly about his friend and long-time double act partner. As does Ben Elton, who first met Rik and Ade at Manchester University.

 

There is lots of footage here that was unfamiliar to me. Some of it is very early, some of it is very grainy, but Mayall's star quality shines through every time. He just couldn't resist being the centre of attention, whether scene-stealing as Flashheart in Blackadder or pulling faces at a private gathering when he spies a camera.

 

Mayall dominated comedy in the 1980s and early 1990s with a succession of successes, most notably The Young Ones. For some reason his Comic Strip film performances don't quite get the attention I think they deserve - while Nigel Planer chips in fellow core member Peter Richardson is not one of the interviewees. Filthy, Rich and Catflap on the other hand, more dismissed as not as good as The Young Ones at the time, is now praised, as is Bottom and The New Statesman, where his venal self-serving politician looks positively prescient.

 

We certainly get an insight into Mayall's character. He clearly didn't lack self-confidence, in those early days in particular. While I've interviewed countless comics who can't bear to watch themselves onscreen, his idea of fun was watching old episodes of his shows (I've only ever heard a similar story once, about a stand-up who would put his VHS tapes on when entertaining female friends, not even Rik did that).

 

His performances with Edmondson shown here are particularly explosive, sometimes literally. As Edmondson recalls, "we performed the bollocks out of it." 

 

But the tone changes halfway through. Partly because that youthful energy could not be sustained, but there were other reasons too. It is interesting to hear how hurt he was in 1995 when he was in the West End performing Cell Mates and his co-star Stephen Fry fled after a few nights. All of the papers ran stories about Fry, as if he was the star, whereas they had equal billing and at the time Mayall was arguably a bigger name. He was not used to not being the centre of attention.

 

And then there was his near death quad bike accident in 1998, his relationship with Ade and his increased drinking. Edmondson suggests one problem was once they made lots of money Rik turned to spirits. Eventually it stopped being fun for Ade and Edmondson broke up the double act.

 

There was one final hurrah as the father of Greg Davies in the Davies sitcom Man Down. Davies appears here and looks more like Mayall than his own children, who talk of their father lovingly. There should have been a second series, a second chance for Mayall to be a mad dad, but his unexpected death meant it was never to be.

 

There's a famous scene in The Young Ones in which 'Rick' asks his housemates: "Hands up who likes me?" and they all put their hands as low as possible. As for the real Rick, if you have even the slightest sense of humour it's impossible not to like him.