page_title: Rik Mayall
section_title: Recognition, critical opinion and legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Rik Mayall / Recognition, critical opinion and legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: Mural
context_page_description: Richard Michael Mayall was an English actor, comedian and writer. Mayall formed a close partnership with Ade Edmondson while they were students at Manchester University, and was a pioneer of alternative comedy in the 1980s.
  Mayall starred in numerous cult classic sitcoms throughout his career, including The Young Ones, The Comic Strip Presents..., Blackadder, Filthy Rich & Catflap, The New Statesman, Bottom and Believe Nothing. Mayall also starred in the comedy films Drop Dead Fred and Guest House Paradiso, and won a Primetime Emmy Award for his voice-over work in The Willows in Winter. His comedic style was described as energetic "post-punk".
  Mayall died suddenly on 9 June 2014 at the age of 56. BBC Television director Danny Cohen praised him as a "truly brilliant" comedian with a unique stage presence, whose "fireball creativity" and approach to sitcom had inspired a generation of comedy stars.
context_section_description: 2005, Channel 4 poll, Comedians' Comedian, Mayall was voted among the top 50 comedy performers of all time.
  2008, Mayall was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters (DLitt) from the University of Exeter. True to form, his acceptance speech contains a swear word, and reference to his extremely indifferent performance as a student.
  2010, Mayall was present in Blackpool in August 2010 for the ceremonial laying of the first slab in the Comedy Carpet, commemorating one of his lines from The Young Ones.
  2010, poll, "Top 100 Stand-Up Comedians", Mayall was placed 91st.
  2014, on his death, The Guardian described Mayall as an actor whose "onscreen performances were so full of life. His characters weren't neatly drawn sketches: they were vast mad scribbles, jammed to the margins with noise and energy". Commenting on his role in the sitcom Blackadder, it noted, "Upstaging an entire fleet of world-class comedians should have been impossible. Mayall made it look effortless", and that he had replicated this success in his other best-known shows, by becoming the "face of the show" in The Young Ones and creating an "iconic" figure in The New Statesman character, Alan B'Stard.
  2014, as a tribute to Mayall, an unofficial blue plaque appeared in Hammersmith, London, which referenced the opening title sequence of BBC sitcom series Bottom. At the same time, an online petition was launched in an effort to persuade Hammersmith & Fulham Council to install a memorial bench on Hammersmith Broadway. On 14 November 2014, a memorial bench for Mayall was unveiled on the same spot where the bench from Bottom used to be before its removal.
  2014, a 20-foot-high (6.1 m) mural of Mayall was created by street artist Gnasher, on the Playhouse at Mayall's birthplace in Harlow, Essex.
caption: Mural on The Playhouse at Harlow, Essex
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