Whilst promoting his book The Gobbler, Adrian was interviewed by the Sunday Mirror

Our Young Ones Aren’t Allowed to see us on TV

He raves on screen and shocks in print ... but the real Ade is a family man.

Interview by Sally Morris

JULIAN MANN is 38, a drunken, womanising, fading television star consumed by hatred and anger at his rapidly disintegrating life.

He's the hero of a new novel by Adrian Edmondson, a 38-year-old TV star who likes getting drunk and spends much of his time feeling angry and full of hate.

Ade, as he is known to his friends, hates being interviewed. He hates journalists, hates most things on TV, hates, he claims, being famous. But he's putting himself through the publicity mill because this book* is important to him and because, unlike the feckless Julian, he's trying to put his feelings to professional good use through writing.

"I like Julian," says Ade, resolutely avoiding eye contact. "I think he's evil in some of the things he does, but I understand what his problem is and I actually think he's charming.

And the drunkenness that precedes each of his character's disasters?

"Yes, I drink," he says, relieved to be on familiar ground. "In fact I was drunk yesterday, in a hotel room in Edinburgh. But it's a different sort of drunkenness from my earlier days.

"I think I'm fairly happy drunk. I could be violent, but people used to pick fights with me as much as I picked fights with them.

THAT doesn't happen anymore. I don't go to those sorts of pubs now and it's all about where you go, isn't it? Anyway, now I like fine wines. There's nothing worse than cheap white wine. Especially the next day."

Best known for his roles as the violent punk Vyvyan in The Young Ones - the first episode was repeated on BBC2 recently - and the insane Eddie Hitler with co-star Rik Mayall in Bottom, off-stage Edmondson is a disarmingly low-key figure. Dressed in a plain brown suit, thinning hair scraped back, he warms slowly to his subject - and it is only when talking about his wife, comedienne Jennifer Saunders, and their three daughters, Ella, nine, Beattie, eight, and Freya, four, that he drops his guard.

"Jennifer is exceptional. She's such a clear thinker and I don't think it's that she's particularly confident," says Ade.

"It just seems to come naturally. We are very different in our approach to work. We share a two- roomed office just down the road from our house in Richmond and mine is deliberately empty of distractions - it just has text books and my Oxford English Dictionary on CD Rom.

"Jennifer's is much more arranged, with posters of Marc Bolan and piles of magazines.

"We go to the pub next door for lunch. But otherwise we lead as normal a life as possible except that we're lucky enough to be able to avoid working in the school holidays to be with the kids."

The girls are Ade's passion.

"I was so delighted when we had a third daughter," he says. " I do just think there are very few nice little boys whereas most little girls are nice."

“I'm turning into a real father of daughters and I'll get a shotgun licence to stand at the door to keep the boys away.

"We bought a place in Devon at the beginning of the year and we've spent all summer down there because the girls and Jennifer go riding.

"It all has an ulterior motive in trying to fend off boys for a few more years, which I think happens if girls like ponies.

"It's OK at the moment because the eldest is so far from being rebellious it's frightening.

"She's incredibly obedient of authority and worries if we park where we shouldn't or haven't got a seatbelt on. She'll tell Jennifer off for smoking and keeps us all in line.

"We don't let them watch what we do on television because I think they are too young for most of it."

In Ade's book Julian is almost saved from himself when he, his wife and two sons go to live on a farm in the middle of nowhere, but Jennifer has ruled out the possibility of her family moving to Devon full-time. "I suggested it, but Jennifer told me not to be stupid. I'd get bored and she's probably right.

"I do like my own company, though, and when I was writing this book I thought for a while, 'This is it. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.'

"But I was contracted to do another series of Bottom with Rik and because I thought I had another career ahead of me I enjoyed doing it more than before. In fact, we're going back on tour with it."

MOST of Ade's friends are "in the business" and despite his apparent desire for the solitary life the Edmondsons often entertain.

"Jennifer hates cooking so I do it," says Ade. "We lead such a normal life in Richmond. We've got a big garden and I look after the lawns and hedges while Jennifer does everything else."

For a man who so clearly revels in the support of his family, Ade is more reticent about his parents and background.
His father was a teacher in the Army and Ade spent an unhappy time at boarding school.

Of his parents he says with a practised care: "They are proud of me and what I do, but it isn't necessarily to their taste."

His own children will not be reliving his childhood. "My parents weren't exactly authoritarian, but there was certainly more discipline.

"I would never hit my kids and I think it's appalling when you see people who do. I'm sometimes tempted to step in, but you never know if it will make it worse."

Ade is currently working on a second novel, about a second-rate Seventies pop group. Music is another of his passions and he will often sneak his own songs into his TV and radio shows as background music. But he won't be taking his own band on the road.

"After the Comic Strip did a spoof of a band called Bad News, we got a record deal and went on tour," he says.

"It was the single worst experience of my life. Rik, Nigel Planer, Peter Richardson and I have been buddies before and since. But during that time we said the worst things to each other you can imagine.

"I even had a fight with Peter in a hotel in Birmingham about a line in a song. It must be the noise levels that drive people insane."