The Independent on Sunday - 4 January 2004

Answer The Questions! - Adrian Edmondson

We are the Status Quo of comedy

Comedian Adrian Edmondson, 46, is famous for his roles in The Young Ones and The Comic Strip. He has toured five times with his live show Bottom and returns to television this month in a new BBC1 series, Doctors & Nurses.

You’ve said that work has become a hobby, so what appealed to you about Doctors & Nurses?
Treating work like a hobby is an attempt to get back to the fun we used to have in the late seventies and early Eighties, when work didn’t really feel like work - it was just something we did to amuse ourselves. So it’s a question of trying to do only those things you really want to do. Things that are fun to do. And Doctors & Nurses is one of those things. It made me laugh as soon as I started reading it. I read the first three scripts in one sitting and immediately rang my agent to say “yes”

The new series is set in a hospital. Should we expect lots of barbed comments about the state of the NHS?
The satirical bite in the show is what gives it its edge. Besides being very funny the scripts had something very different about them - they were passionate. The writers really care: Phil Hammond is a doctor and has obviously had a great deal of experience working for the NHS; Nigel Smith was a long term patient on an NHS ward and has observed it very closely from the other side of the sheets. What this combined experience brings is an authenticity and a desperate black humour.

In Weapons Grade Y-Fronts, your latest live show, your character invents a time-travelling toilet called the Turdis. Why has this (quite literal) toilet humour been successful for so long and does it still make you laugh?
Everyone enjoys toilet humour. It’s just a question of whether you’ve got the balls to admit it or not – and that’s not something many people are prepared to do (especially TV critics).

You formed a comedy duo with Rik Mayall after you met at Manchester University over 25 years ago. Will you two ever get tired of beating each other up?
We have become the Status Quo of comedy: Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt are sneered at by the rock intelligentsia, yet they tour constantly to houses packed with incredibly loyal fans. And I defy anyone not to want to do that silly dance with the elbows when “Sweet Caroline” comes on the radio – we see some parallels there.

Has the dynamic between you two changed over the years?
We met in 1975, and have worked together pretty much constantly since then. Rik has often referred to our partnership as a marriage, but I think we are more like brothers; we take each other for granted, we bicker, we laugh hysterically, we know things about each other no one else does – we couldn’t get rid of each other even if we wanted to.

Will your novel The Gobbler remain a one-off?
As I was working through the final edit of The Gobbler in 1996 I was impatient to finish as I had another idea in my head that I couldn’t wait to get started on... I’m still working on it. That doesn’t mean it’s an enormously complex tome with the concomitant gestation period. It means I keep getting stuck.

Are there any comedies on TV at the moment that make you laugh?
Yes. I like Little Britain and I’m really enjoying Channel 4’s Peep Show. I don’t know how I end up watching T4’s Popworld, but when I do I find myself glued to the telly and laughing out loud. Oh, and there’s a show on BBC1 that I quite like, it’s called Absolutely Fabulous and it stars a real saucepot called Jennifer Saunders.

‘Doctors and Nurses’ starts on 13 January, 10.35pm, BBC1