On Monday night I attended a very special show indeed at the Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool. ‘An Evening with Adrian Edmondson‘ proved to be everything a fan of British comedy wanted and towards the end of the show we were treated to a story from a galaxy far, far away.
During the course of the night, we had weaved through everything from the past six decades of comedy culture to The Young Ones, Bottom and of course his close friendship and professional relationship with the late Rik Mayall.
Then it was question time. ‘How did you, Vivien from The Young Ones, come to be in a blockbuster like Star Wars?’ asked Tom from St. Helens.
Now, I had always wondered this myself. In my head I had sort of assumed that it was because Mark Hamill is a massive fan of British comedy and maybe asked for one of his heroes to play a part. He did, after all, take a role in ‘Man Down’ to honour Mayall. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
The story goes like this;
Edmondson is at home. He gets a call off his agent. “They want you for the next Star Wars.” Very odd, thought Edmondson. He’d never expressed any public interest in appearing in the franchise and even admitted to us that he isn’t really a big fan of the films. He doesn’t enjoy sci-fi but did concede that the first one back in the 70s is actually very good.
He pondered. He wasn’t sure. Then he remembered something. His grandsons at the time were obsessed with Top Trumps cards. They had them all and played them all the time. Edmondson noticed they had Star Wars ones too. He says he stands in his kitchen tittering to himself. “Wouldn’t it be cool if when the kids are playing Top Trumps that my face comes on one of the cards and they get to play me.”
And that was litterely it. He wanted to be a Top Trumps card. Edmondson admitted he was delighted when he found out he was actually a card and his dream came true.
So that’s how he accepted, but how did he come to be asked?
He didn’t ask Rian Johnson for a long time but eventually found five minutes between takes to find out.
“Why on earth did you want me?”
Johnson went onto explain. He was at film school in LA. In the library on campus he stumbled upon a book of scripts. They were the scripts for the first series of Bottom, written by Mayall and Edmondson. (fun fact; I had this book too) Johnson read them. He had never seen Bottom or heard of Bottom but he kept reading the scripts and then for a class assignment one semester, Johnson made his own episode of Bottom. From there, Johnson eventually saught out Mayall and Edmondson’s work and became a fan. The rest, as they say, is history.
It never saw the light of the day. Johnson has promised to show Edmondson the episode but he has yet too. Edmondson believes it’s because Johnson is afraid it might leak if sent over email or, he suspects, he doesn’t want to show it him because it isn’t very good.
And there we have it folks. For us Brits it certainly was a strange moment in the cinema to realise Eddie Hitler was on board a Star Destroyer.
Adrian Edmonson continues his tour until 30th October and his biography Berserker is out now.
- Hardcover Book
- Fujikawa, Jenn (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 208 Pages - 10/10/2023 (Publication Date) - Insight Editions (Publisher)
