How The Young Ones changed comedy for ever

With flying eclairs, falling beds and exploding buses, the anarchic antics of Rick, Vyvyan, Neil and Mike shoved alternative comedy into the mainstream. Forty years on, we ask the show's creators how they pulled it off.

How The Young Ones Changed Comedy, Gold, review

A stroppy punk-rock sitcom has aged well.

The Young Ones never gets old

The show starring four students sharing a grotty house only lasted 12 episodes yet it "turned sitcoms on their head".

My favourite photograph by Alexei Sayle

Stand-up star and writer Alexei, 63, recalls carefree days and calamities with The Young Ones' Adrian Edmondson and Rik Mayall.

Theatre reviews: Jeeves and Wooster

I was left breathless by Christopher Ryan's (Seppings) versatility, seamless changes of persona and costume.

In many ways the antithesis of BBC2's traditional "highbrow" output, The Young Ones' anarchic approach to comedy was an instant cult hit with younger audiences. It set the tone for the age of "alternative" comedy that still dominates today. The premise - four students who live in a bedsit - was traditional, but its structure, which included fragmented and often surreal storylines, random asides, the trashing of the set and sudden cuts to hamsters singing in a fridge, was energetic, punky and pioneering. Written (mostly) by Ben Elton and starring Adrian Edmondson (Vyvyan), Rik Mayall (Rick), Nigel Planer (Neil) and Christopher Ryan (Mick) - it also featured Alexei Sayle as landlord Mr Balowski.

Since light entertainment programmes were allocated bigger budgets than sitcoms, it was decided every episode would also feature a band. These bands - which included Dexy's Midnight Runners, and Madness - would perform songs which had no relevance to the plot.

Memorable scenes include Footlights versus Scumbag College in University Challenge; Vyvyan's head being cut off and then rolling along a train track still speaking; as well as the last shot of them all toppling over a cliff in a stolen double-decker bus.

This could be a first for sketch shows: episode four is the strongest yet. Kevin Eldon's ideas would make no sense anywhere else, but accumulated here they are overwhelmingly funny. Tonight, George Martin/Adolf Hitler recalls the band's late period ("Where did it all go wrong? I'm sure you've heard a lot of people say it was when the Japanese became involved"), Christopher Ryan is an Italian arguing with a tank of bolognese and, in a 1980s BBC drama, the unnecessarily good performance of the week is Julia Davis's drained Scouser.