Bottom

Description

Bottom was a British sitcom of the early 1990's (and later a series of stage shows and a film) written by Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson. They were also the main stars, respectively playing Richard Richard (Richie) and Edward Elizabeth Hitler (Eddie), who share a flat in Hammersmith, West London.

Richie is a perpetually optimistic dimwit, while Eddie is a cheerfully violent dipsomaniac. Their arguments often lead to exaggerated, destructive fight scenes. Some have likened this to a live action cartoon.

However, the boisterousness is somewhat more graphic: examples include heads slammed in and under refrigerators, hands stapled to tables, legs being chainsawed off, penises set on fire, fingers cut off, televisions smashed over heads, darts thrown in eyes, faces shoved in camp fires, legs broken or teeth knocked out.

Some visual effects used for these events are very realistic, whereas others are deliberately ludicrous. All are accompanied by a variety of over-the-top sound effects.

In spite of this, the BBFC has given the Bottom: The Complete Series DVD a classification of 15, with a violence rating of "None".

Richie is known to be a virgin, with a microscopic penis to boot (which he sometimes mistakes for his only pube). He usually wears a white shirt and slim red tie (with tie clip), blue jeans (with Y-fronts clearly visible) and has a light brown raincoat. His character is aspirational, pretentious, and occasionally a snob.

Eddie is an alcoholic (he claims that this is because he "drinks a lot"). He wears glasses akin to those of Eric Morecambe, a brown suit and a white shirt with a black tie. Despite having a shaven head, he sports sideburns. He also has a brown trilby hat and a tweed overcoat.

He has two real friends, called Spudgun (Steve O'Donnell) and Dave Hedgehog (Christopher Ryan). Richie does not have any friends and sometimes appropriates Spud and Dave if in need of company.

Richie and Eddie bear perhaps closer inspection than any of Mayall and Edmondson's other characters. Despite sharing a deep mutual hatred, the two are eternally entwined due to their basic flaws.

Eddie's alcoholism and violent nature means that he has not been able to hold down a steady job since his very short-lived career as a "bunny girl", back in the 1970s, and it is unlikely that any landlord would grant him tenancy, even if he could afford the rent. He is therefore forced to rely upon Richie's charity.

Richie, on the other hand, is such a self-obsessed, perverted, wittering git that without Eddie, it is unlikely that he would make another friend.

The two have an unspoken acceptance of their co-dependency and their relationship tends to fluctuate between acting like a married couple (filling in the crossword together, Richie putting an unconscious Eddie to bed every night) and frustrated (often violent) desperation: so much so that both have attempted suicide — Eddie drinking bleach (albeit drunkenly) and Richie trying to gas himself in the oven (merely an attempt at getting Eddie to buy him a drink).

This partnership has similarities to those of Steptoe and Son, and Hancock and Sid in Hancock's Half Hour.

Richie is in heavy denial and has delusions of grandeur (he once announced, "I really am more of an Elizabethan type, you know, 13th century, Shakespeare, the French Revolution".

He later tried to convince a Falklands ex-serviceman, played by Red Dwarf's Robert Llewellyn, that he had fought ten years there and had seized the fictitious "Straud Hill" and liberated the Stanley branch of Tesco).

Eddie, in comparison is grounded and seems to have quite good general knowledge, which he keeps to himself. He can play chess (and spends six hours trying, unsuccessfully, to teach Richie), he knows a fair amount about Napoleon and Wellington (who Richie claims invented the Chelsea Boot) and appears well versed in the works of Vivaldi, whom Richie believes to be a Scottish football player).

Eddie is also a great one for plans (though most involve trying to get a free pint from Dick Head, the landlord at the Lamb and Flag).

One such scheme, in the episode "Dough", involved Eddie printing fake money. Instead of making counterfeits that appear real, he plasters them with pornographic doodles of the Royal Family and other such celebrities (on the £5 the Queen "gets her jugs out", on the £50 note there is an orgy involving the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh and Bobby Charlton, and on the £27 note there is a picture of Sylvester Stallone "fisting" Mr MacHenry (from The Magic Roundabout).

Most of the time it seems that Richie tries to live like he thinks everyone else does (especially in "Holy") keeping to British traditions while Eddie just prefers watching TV. The programmes he watches are particularly amusing, from Miss World, to mistakenly renting what he believed to be a pornographic video that turned out to be a children's story (The Furry Honeypot Adventure), to a video about 19th century pottery (Big Jugs, which oddly has an 18 certificate).

It is unclear how they afford to live and pay rent, however it is believed that Richie's aunt gives him money regularly although Eddie probably spends it on booze. They reduce their gas bill by connecting their stove to their neighbour's pipe.

Richie and Eddie's relatives are often mentioned: Richie's grandad was at the Battle of the Somme, while Eddie's uncle used to work in a prison, sewing mailbags and anything they told him to do. Richie's auntie is very rich and dies in one episode with her nephew inheriting a large sum of money.

Richie's dad, Oswald Richard, was an acquaintance of Adolf Hitler (the real one, not Eddie's mother) and betrayed Britain in World War II. According to Richie, his dad moved in mysterious circles, because he had one leg shorter than the other.

Richie's sister lives near Hammersmith and apparently looks just like her brother, albeit "with smaller jugs".

Mayall and Edmonson have said Bottom was often aimed to be more than just a series of toilet gags but a cruder cousin to plays like Waiting for Godot, about the pointlessness of life.

This is most evident in the episode "Contest", the closest the series came to drama, where Eddie devises a scheme to win a bet on Miss World and jet off to the "sun-drenched Caribbean". Here Eddie offers Richie the sage advice: "You get born, you keep your head down, and then you die. If you're lucky."

There are certain situations which crop up in most episodes:

- Richie turning almost anything into an innuendo.
- Eddie looking bemusedly at the audience when Richie is talking complete rubbish.
- Some over-exotic names of local people (e.g., Old Ted Unlucky Suicide McGloomy, Cannonball Taffy O'Jones and Mad Dog Patrick-do-you-want-some-of-this O'Fist).
- Elaborate schemes to get rich.
- Eddie gets drunk.

Richie and Eddie are basically variations on characters the duo had been playing for years: the earlier Filthy, Rich and Catflap had featured a slightly watered-down version.

"The Dangerous Brothers", their sketch in Saturday Night Live in 1985, also featured violent slapstick. Edmonson's character Eddie Monsoon of The Comic Strip Presents... also had similarities with Eddie.

Mayall and Edmonson also both starred in The Young Ones and Mr. Jolly Lives Next Door, playing characters with similarities to their Bottom counterparts. The recurring character of misthanthropic landlord Mr Harrison is very similar to one featured briefly in the second Young Ones series.

Often considered to be the most violent and profane example of the Britcom genre, the programme ran for three series of six episodes each. The first two are generally considered to be superior; the third series was made two years after the second and includes a marked increase in toilet humour.