Bottom: Behind the Scenes

greatreporter.com, October 3rd, 2007

Beckett and ‘Bottom’

Unlikely as it may sound, the core inspiration of ‘Bottom’ was not the ‘The Young Ones’ (in which Rik and Ade starred) or any similarly crude comedy. In fact, they were most inspired by ‘Waiting for Godot’, Samuel Beckett 's classic play about two men who play absurdist games to stave off the boredom of existence. In Mayall 's words, it was the ‘simplicity, vulgarity and violence’ of Beckett that was mimicked in ‘Bottom’.

Rik and Ade originally named the show ‘Your Bottom’ when writing the first series. This was for one simple, unabashedly puerile reason: they wanted to force viewers to come out with sentences like ‘I saw Your Bottom on telly last night’. However, they eventually decided to go for ‘Bottom’ because it summed up Richie and Eddie's position in life.

While many sitcoms, from ‘The Young Ones’ to ‘Keeping Up Appearances’, go on location, Rik and Ade were determined to keep ‘Bottom’ studio-bound. Even the scenes set outdoors were shot in a studio. This wasn't for budgetary reasons. It was because, as Rik said, ‘we wanted to wholly inhabit our own world’. Only by doing that did they feel comfortable about unleashing the crazed cartoon violence on each other.

The final episode of the second series, in which the pair sleep rough on Wimbledon Common, was pulled from the TV listings at the last minute in 1992. This was because a murder had taken place on the Common a week before, and the episode was also missed out of a later repeat run because it coincided with the murder trial. It was eventually shown in 1995, and is regarded as one of the best ever episodes.

‘Guest House Paradiso’ was seen as being the ‘Bottom’ movie, but Rik and Ade did not consider it a spin-off – even though the characters in it were called Richie and Eddie. ‘We've used those names in lots of projects,’ Mayall pointed out. ‘Like Richie and Eddie in "Filthy Rich and Catflap", for example.’ To highlight the break from ‘Bottom’, the surnames were changed for the movie: Richie Richard becoming Richie Tw*t and Eddie Hitler became Eddie Elizabeth Ndingombaba.