Neil is pessimistic and believes everyone and everything hates him, which is mostly true, though he does have some friends, two hippys, one also named Neil and one named Warlock. He does not like technology except for videos, and he speaks out for Vegetable Rights and Peace. He is also an insomniac, believing that "sleep gives you cancer".
Neil wants the others to feel sorry for him, or just acknowledge his presence. To get attention, he tries anything from repeatedly banging himself on the head with a frying pan to attempting suicide. He claims "the most interesting thing that ever happens to me is sneezing".
In the second series, his parents - who appear in the episode "Sick" - are revealed to be upper middle class. They are conservative Tories who look down on Neil.
Neil also says 'heavy' a lot.
Played by Rik Mayall, Rick is an anarchist who is studying sociology and/or domestic sciences (depending on the episode). Rick writes poetry and calls himself "The People's Poet".
Rick is a hypocritical, tantrum-throwing attention-seeker who loves Cliff Richard. Rick tries to impress the others with what he thinks is his wit, talent and humour, but is really none of these. He insults and often physically assaults Neil. He fights and bickers with Vyvyan, and attempts to impress Mike.
Rick is a vegetarian, and says he wishes everyone to love each other like brothers. However, he rarely does anything that can be called brotherly love.
Rick is unlikeable, and so selfish that he believes he is the "most popular member of the flat" even though his housemates really hate him. Vyvyan describes Rick's name as being spelled "with a silent P". Although the other members dislike and ignore Rick, he is heard to say that they "really are terrific friends".
Believing himself the 'People's Poet' or the "spokesperson for a generation", Rick exaggerates or lies about his political activism and working class background, and in the last episode "Summer Holiday", it is suggested he really comes from an upper class, Conservative background.
While he sees himself as an anarchist, he likes the ideas of Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky and states his interest in them in several episodes. However, he claims to dislike Margaret Thatcher, as is noted by his efforts threatening to blow up England with a bomb in the episode "Bomb" if she does not do something "to help the kids, by this afternoon." This is also noticed in "The Young Ones Book," first published by Sphere Books, where negative references are made to Thatcher and the Conservative Party.
Rick speaks loudly and cannot pronounce his "r"s sometimes.
Played by Adrian Edmondson, Vyvyan is an orange-haired, mohican punk rocker and medical student. He is extremely violent and regularly attacks Neil and Rick with pieces of wood, cricket bats and other large objects. He never hurts Mike, whom he respects. He hates Rick more than he does Neil, taking every chance to insult and attack him. For example, when Rick, Mike and Neil meet his mother at a bar in the episode "Boring", he calls both Neil and Mike his friends, but not Rick, whom he calls "a complete bastard." Although Rick and Vyvyan hate each other, this makes them all but inseparable; the two spend more time together than apart, or with the other housemates.
Vyvyan owns a yellow Ford Anglia, with red flames painted along the sides, and a Glaswegian hamster named Special Patrol Group ("SPG" for short) which he is very fond of, even though SPG is also often subjected to Vyvyan's extreme violence. His mother is a barmaid and former shoplifter, who before "Boring" had not seen Vyvyan in ten years and has no idea who his father is.
Vyvyan has inhuman strength on occasion (moving entire walls with his bare hands, lifting Neil above his head in a fight with Rick, biting through a brick and even re-attaching his own head after it was cut off), surviving a pick-axe through the head, and he eats just about anything; televisions, dead rats, cornflakes, or cornflakes with ketchup.
Although he is a homicidal maniac, Vyvyan can be friendly and creative; in one episode ("Flood"), he made his own potion to change a person into an axe-wielding homicidal maniac. He has more friends than the others but "he doesn't like any of them." He often causes damage such as wiring the doorbell to a bomb, and adding a 289 CID Ford V-8 engine to the vacuum cleaner, which proceeds to suck up the carpet, the floorboards and a friend of Neil's. Vyvyan also seems to be the only member of the group with a driving licence.
Played by Christopher Ryan, Mike was the oddest of the four. He is the assumed leader of the group, despite being rather shorter than the others, and does not involve himself in the battles between the other three. He makes puns, which are either deliberately cheap or humorous.
He often uses deep-sounding phrases that confuse the others (for example, when asked by Rick if he stole his apple, Mike replies "Well, if you're gonna sin you might as well be original."). Mike is supposedly the ladies' man of the bunch, and brags about his prowess with women, although he is eventually forced to admit his virginity to the others in "Nasty." Though he is a virgin, as are the rest of the housemates, he always tries to get a date with the opposite sex, being quite forward and unsuccessful.
A con artist, he always has some kind of plan to make quick money, such as renting out Rick's bedroom as a roller disco, and trying to auction off the unexploded atom bomb that fell into the house. Mike attends Scumbag College only in name, as he has blackmailed his tutor and the Dean of the school for grants, and apparently passing grades. In "Summer Holiday" he says "I think I'll ask for one of those Ph.D.s next year."
While Mike often does things at the expense of his housemates, he usually does not show the sort of open hostility that the others do, and seems to cause them trouble only when it benefits him. He has, however, managed to nail his own legs to a table, and accidentally knocked Neil out during a game of cricket. We only see violence done to him once or twice (at the end of the "Living Doll" video, when Vyvyan knocks him unconscious with a hammer and in "Summer Holiday", when Neil transforms into the Incredible Hulk, who picks up Mike and throws him to the ground, however it turns out it was only Neil's imagination).
Throughout the two series, Alexei Sayle regularly appeared as many different characters, putting his own material into the programme in ways that copied his stand up comedy routines. His main role was that of the flat's landlord Jerzy (Jeremy) Balowski, appearing in "Demolition", "Flood" and "Summer Holiday". The rest of the time, he played various male members of "The Balowski Family", including nephew Alexei Balowski (a protest singer), son Reggie Balowski (an international arms dealer), brother Billy Balowski (a lunatic who believed he was a taxi driver), cousin Tommy Balowski (a drunk), escaped convict Brian Damage Balowski, and a medieval jester "Jester Balowski" (with Helen Lederer as his sidekick).
In the second series, Sayle's characters also included a train driver, a Mussolini look-alike (by day the head of the local police force, by night an entrant in the Eurovision Song Contest), and "Harry the Bastard" (manager of the local Rumbelows store, disguised as a South African vampire).
Mike is the natural "leader" of the house. Always trying to make himself appear more important and exciting than he really is, he does appear to have done some of the things he claims to have done (such as getting Bambi the "Babycham" commercial in "Bambi"). He gets little hostility from the other members of the house. If there is any good or friendly relationship in the house it is between Mike and Vyvyan. Vyvyan accepts Mike's role as the house leader, whereas Mike sometimes uses Vyvyan's muscles and willingness to act forcibly, to enforce his own authority.