Adrian Edmondson on the lasting damage he suffered from filming his anarchic sitcoms, and the riotous fun he had with best pal Rik Mayall

When anarchic sitcom Bottom exploded onto our TV screens just over 30 years ago in 1991, it was to a mixed reaction. 

Critics branded its chaotic characters, unemployed flatmates Richard Richard and Edward Elizabeth Hitler (Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson), 'childish' and 'puerile' but viewers loved it, with six million per episode tuning in.

That criticism was one of the reasons Adrian was initially reluctant to take part in the retrospective TV tribute Bottom: Exposed, which celebrates the show's three series from 1991 to 1995, plus five sell-out stage shows and a spin-off film. But he's found that it has influenced a host of today's comedians.

'I was sort of cajoled into filming it,' smiles Adrian, 67, from a hotel room in Bangkok where he's making a new drama. 

'I'm always afraid people are going to say horrible things. We used to love the satirical magazine Private Eye as students, and when their critic Alan Coren called Bottom 'witless tosh' we were broken.

'But I've been doing a podcast [Out To Lunch] where I've met a few young comedians, like Bridget Christie and Daisy Haggard, who profess to like Bottom. As well as Maisie Adam, who's a talking head in the documentary.'

Rik and Adrian met in their first year studying drama at Manchester University. They hit it off instantly and formed a double act, performing their own material to the rest of the drama department every week.

They moved to London after graduating and became part of a new wave of comedy alongside the likes of Jennifer Saunders (Ade's wife of nearly 40 years), Dawn French, Alexei Sayle and Nigel Planer, who all met at the Comedy Store.

'When we came to London we did four gigs in that first year,' says Adrian. 'So the next year we decided we'd book our own venues to do our show. We did a 12-gig tour around village halls playing to about six people a night.

'Then we set up The Comic Strip Club with a group of others going to different pubs. There was no circuit in those days so not only did we invent our own comedy, we invented our own places to play.'

Just three years out of university, The Comic Strip Presents... series of TV movies was commissioned by the newly launched Channel 4 and Rik and Adrian never looked back. 

'The BBC were worried about losing a lot of talent to a new broadcaster,' he explains, 'so they commissioned The Young Ones.'

And from that came Bottom, which was written by the pair.

Richie and Eddie were unemployed, crude and violent, borrowing their haphazard slapstick humour from Laurel And Hardy. Considering some episodes featured 300 stunts there were relatively few accidents.

'I have a permanently damaged shoulder from pretending to hit people so much, and there were a few stitches, but we didn't really mind,' Adrian recalls. 

'When we did The Comic Strip Club I used to headbutt the concrete wall and it got a laugh so I'd keep headbutting it. Audiences like pain and people falling over.'

The documentary uncovers behind-the-scenes footage from the filming of Bottom that has never been broadcast, and includes exclusive tales from the set as well as comments from celebrity fans.

The documentary also addresses the tragic accident Rik had on his quad bike in 1998 which left him in a coma for five days, resulting in epilepsy, as well as the difficulty Adrian had when he decided Bottom had run its course despite Rik being keen to continue.

'I perceived a drop in quality, plus I wanted to do other things. Rik changed after the accident and became very emotional, which was odd because we were uptight middle-class men and we'd never done the emotional stuff with each other. Although now I blub all the time. I'm making up for lost blubbing!'

Adrian was devastated when Rik had a heart attack and died aged 56 in 2014, and became emotional recalling his relationship with him on Desert Island Discs last year.

Despite such a long career together, it was their time at university before they became famous that he remembers most fondly.

'We were closer as students, hanging out, going to gigs,' he says. 'We made each other laugh very hard.

'His mum's abiding memory was of seeing us out of the kitchen window sitting in deckchairs, hearing us laughing for hours. She could never understand what was so funny. I was always trying to make Rik laugh and vice versa. I still miss him.'

These days Adrian is fulfilling his long-held dream of starring in more serious dramas. 'I couldn't get into drama school because it was too frightening to audition,' he admits. 

''So I thought I'd go to uni because it was free and they offered me a place, and then go to the RSC. It just took about 45 years to get there!'

That ambition fulfilled, does he plan to work with Jennifer again? 'We wouldn't say no – or yes!' he laughs. 'We worked together a lot before we got together and then child-rearing got in the way.

'Now it would look a bit icky. When John Alderton and Pauline Collins played a married couple in a sitcom called No, Honestly, I cringed at the thought they were man and wife in real life. 

'If we did anything together now, people would be watching a husband and wife rather than the characters.'

• Bottom: Exposed will air on Thursday at 9pm on Gold.