The Young Ones’ Nigel Planer has revealed how he helped co-stars Adrian Edmondson and Rik Mayall patch things up at his own wedding.
Edmondson and Mayall formed a close partnership after meeting at university and became one of British comedy’s greatest double acts, but they became distant in later years.
Planer – who, together with Mayall, Edmondson and Christopher Ryan, made up The Young Ones’ titular student housemates – has now shared how he helped the pair get back on speaking terms during one of their “falling-out periods”.
Speaking to Radio Times, Planer explained how he and his wife, Roberta, purposefully sat the feuding pair together at their 2013 nuptials.
“Double acts do fall out – the only ones who never did were Dawn [French] and Jennifer [Saunders] – and at this point Rik and Ade weren’t speaking to each other,” he said. “But Roberta and I deliberately sat them together at the wedding, and we saw them laughing their heads off together.”
After working on The Young Ones, Edmondson and Mayall masterminded Bottom in the early 1990s but the pair parted ways professionally in 2003.
Mayall died suddenly from a heart attack just over a decade later, at the age of 56. Addressing the state of the pair’s friendship at the time, Planer continued: “Unfortunately Rik died while they were in one of their falling-out periods, which left Ade with a lot of regret, but we’ve got photographic evidence of them making each other laugh even in that phase.”
Edmondson has previously opened up about Mayall’s death and candidly discussed their friendship in a one-off special celebrating Bottom in 2024.
“I mean, our relationship was strained towards the end,” he said, adding: “And when I do things like this, and I remember the absolute joy of sitting in that little office in Richmond opposite the Hole in the Wall pub, it was absolute, you know, the distilled joy – the most joy I’ve ever had in my life, I think.”
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Edmonson also previously revealed he and Mayall had put their differences to one side to work on a new TV show before his comedy partner’s death. The project was commissioned, but they were unable to complete it.
Speaking on Desert Island Discs in 2013, Edmondson fought back tears as he said he contacted Mayall’s mother after he died.
“His mum… his mum wrote me a lovely letter,” he said. “I wrote to her after he died, and she wrote back, saying all she could remember was us – she could see us out in the garden, [on] a couple of deckchairs, just laughing and laughing and laughing – and she could never tell what was quite so funny.”
When host Lauren Laverne asked for his memories of Mayall, Edmondson said: “I think of the writing room all the time. We spent more time in the writing room than anywhere else. And I remember just laughing like drains.”
