All this month we are celebrating acts that you need to look out for in 2026. Today we speak to Paul and Ange of the Talking Bottom Podcast who are our lead feature for this years Ones To Watch. It is a great time to start listening to enter the world of the comedy sitcom, the podcast has a fantastic number of episodes, they just recorded their first live show in 2025 at Edinburgh Fringe AND they have released a book! Today we find out all about how the fandom begun!
Hello it is so nice to meet you all. How did you come together to create the Talking Bottom podcast?
PAUL: Ange met Mat in 2012 when she hosted a Bottom pub quiz to celebrate its 21st anniversary with Lee Cornes (Dick Head) as the quizmaster…
ANGE: It was for charity, by the way. I wasn’t making profit from it. I had moved to London the year before and was really fed up soooo I decided to join fans together to mark the 21st anniversary – it felt wrong to let the occasion pass without anything to celebrate it. It was great Lee Cornes lended his time to do it. Mat came along in costume as Richie and I thought he was a weirdo. (I was right.) I did a few more comedy quizzes for charity about Peep Show, The Office, Alan Partridge and then, in 2014, when Rik died I had to do a Rik pub quiz to celebrate his life and mourn his passing. Mat showed up along with another weirdo – Paul.
PAUL: Mat and I had worked together and were both fans of Rik and Ade’s work.
ANGE: Yeah and your team won the quiz that night so you were weirdos who knew your stuff… Then a few months later in March 2015, The Rik Mayall Convention organisers approached me to do the quiz as they wanted to have Lee Cornes be quizmaster too. I didn’t change many of the questions other than the picture round because it was all based on Rik so I did crap my pants a bit when Mat and Paul walked in again – I thought they’d rumble my game. But they’d obviously had too many Esther Ranzen cocktails because this time they didn’t win the quiz!
PAUL: We kept in touch and a few years later I knew a Bottom podcast was needed by the world, so I suggested to Mat we approach Ange for a team-up. That way it would be three people who all loved Bottom and had it as their favourite show, all knew about comedy, and all had different voices.
ANGE: In other words they wanted a bird so they weren’t just two sad lonely gits talking about a show about two sad lonely gits…
PAUL: We recorded our first episode in 2018 and now all these years later we’ve been selected as Podcast of the Week by several national newspapers, written a book all about Bottom and taken live podcasts (with special guest stars Ed Bye and Lee Cornes) to The Rik Mayall Comedy Festival and the Edinburgh Fringe!
ANGE: Not bad for three sad lonely gits!
“Bottom’s completely unique because Rik and Ade’s personalities are there in Richie and Eddie, and the fact they were also doing the performances is another special aspect to the sitcom.“
Ange
How did you all come across Bottom, what is your earliest memory of the show?
PAUL: Even as a kid when my age was in single digits, I was a huge comedy fan – I’d seen Rik and Ade through The Young Ones, The New Statesman and The Comic Strip Presents… So I was aware of the show that was about to land on BBC Two in September 1991. It’s not the first episode, it’s the second, I distinctly remember crying laughing in response to “I thought I’d try to burn it off.” “What? Your face?” in the episode Gas. Bottom and Red Dwarf were the shows that I saved up my pocket money for so I could buy VHS tapes to record the episodes off the telly.
ANGE: My older brother Andy and I were obsessed with Bottom and Red Dwarf. Andy would wake me up after I’d been put to bed so we could watch them and we’d also record them to rewatch over and over. I’d also seen Grim Tales and Drop Dead Fred and absolutely loved Rik Mayall so there was no stopping me watching Bottom. My mum was happy to see my brother and I bonding over humour, I think. She also probably enjoyed the peace when we were happy watching the telly together.
My earliest visceral memory connected with watching Bottom was that my then best friend in my (very Catholic) primary school also loved Rik but she wasn’t allowed to watch Bottom. I’d been singing the ‘Do Your Balls Hang Low?’ song Richie sings when he’s hoisting a paralytically drunk Eddie up the stairs to put him to bed in the series 2 episode Burglary, so it must’ve been 1992. I wanted my mate to know all the words too so I went home, spent ages pausing and rewinding the tape so I could write them out word perfect for her as a gift the next day. I handed them to her, she was chuffed, but her mum found them in her bag and banned her from speaking to me ever again! Censored aged 9!! Thanks Rik! He ruled, her mum sucked.
“It’s one of my biggest regrets – never got to see a Bottom Live, never met Rik, never worked with Rik…“
Paul
What is your favourite thing about it?
PAUL: There’s so much that’s brilliant about it that choosing one thing is nigh on impossible. The writing and performances are near-perfect. The fetid universe Rik and Ade created is a character in itself. The nihilistic humour that pervades the show is seductive. But if I had to choose a favourite thing I think I’d go for the physical comedy and unique cartoon-esque violence that has become Rik and Ade’s hallmark, particularly in Bottom. The show is 35 years old and no one since has still come near to the level of physical comedy and funny violence.
ANGE: Like Paul says it is really impossible to choose one favourite thing about Bottom but I think it has to be Rik and Ade’s unique pairing/relationship at the heart of it. Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson had been honing their double act for years and it was a perfect culmination of that hard work that came to fruition in Bottom. Richie and Eddie are the ultimate love-hate pseudo-couple through which so much comedic tension and release can be explored. They’re inherently horribly flawed characters, they’re extreme versions of themselves, and yet there’s this bond of love between them. There’s a quality to them both that makes us sympathise with, or some may say pity them. They rely on each other totally and it’s so much fun watching them hate each other but be stuck together. There’s a big influence from Steptoe and Son, and that dynamic exists between them as father and son, too. But I strongly feel Richie and Eddie actually couldn’t exist without the other. It’s so rare you find that in comedies, two halves that make a perfect whole.
Bottom’s completely unique because Rik and Ade’s personalities are there in Richie and Eddie, and the fact they were also doing the performances is another special aspect to the sitcom. Bottom is the perfect vehicle for Rik and Ade because they created it together, they wrote gloriously funny scenarios for Richie and Eddie, and the script is both painfully honest in terms of how Brits cope with the human condition along with being extremely violent and, above all, packed with very naughty jokes!
There’s a warmth running through it, too, that’s hard to explain unless you’ve seen it. ‘Violence’ might sound off-putting but it’s in a deliciously filthy cartoon universe in which no-one actually gets seriously hurt. You can’t help but fall in love with the pair because Richie and Eddie are hilariously pathetic in all their endeavours. It’s commonly accepted that Brits love sitcoms about losers / the underdogs. There’s no better example of that than in Bottom because Richie and Eddie have nothing going for them. Literally nothing! They’re at the bottom of life’s pile, surviving any way they can – no jobs, no women, they have only each other and they can’t stand one another. It’s brilliant.
What makes it so unique compared to other comedies?
PAUL: The level of stunts, fight choreography and physical violence that you would usually only see in a cartoon, but performed live in a BBC comedy studio by the actual actors themselves rather than stuntmen 99% of the time.
ANGE: Bottom is utterly unique because of Rik and Ade’s relationship and personalities. I will say that the other British sitcoms that come close to Bottom in terms of the warring love-hate male ‘odd couple’ at the heart of them are Steptoe and Son’s Albert and Harold, Red Dwarf’s Lister and Rimmer, and Peep Show’s Mark and Jeremy. If I had a gun to my head, choosing between all these shows would be very tough but Bottom will always win ultimately because Rik Mayall is the best. No argument.
You have all visited the Rik Mayall Memorial Bench in Hammersmith. I found it quite spiritual going there when I did due to all the history around it and the show… how did you feel being there?
PAUL: It’s amazing being on that little traffic island with the bench and looking up at the building that’s all shops and offices and part of Hammersmith Broadway Underground station and seeing they are still the exact same design as the one that Rik and Ade posed in during the opening credits for Bottom. The bench itself is a lovely tribute to Rik, though of course it’s not the same wooden one they sat on during the opening credits. Some Hammersmith and Fulham council worker probably disposed of that one years ago, never knowing what they had in their hands! It was great to launch the book at the bench in July with The Young Ones director and producer Paul Jackson (he also produced the pilot episode of Bottom), and Bottom actors Lee Cornes (Dick Head) and Roger Sloman (Mr Harrison).
ANGE: I cannot go to Hammersmith without making a visit to Rik’s bench. Back in November 2014 I took the day off work when the bench was unveiled for Rik because I had to be there to pay homage to my comedy hero. It was incredibly moving being with other fans and also Rik’s three children attended – Bonnie, Sid and Rosie. It was so bittersweet to meet other fans that day, and overwhelmingly sad. Rik deserves many more lasting accolades to his memory and the comedy that he gifted the world but I’m delighted the bench was installed quickly as a lasting legacy. That noisy traffic island may seem an unlikely spot for genius to be remembered but there’s no better place to park your bottom in London and remember the opening titles to the show. As Paul said, it was an honour to be there the day we launched our book with people involved in the show. A real ‘pinch me’ moment. We just want to do what we can to keep the memory of the show alive – Bottom is just one of many wonderful comedy gifts Rik left us and I’m so grateful to him, and Ade, for making it. The laughter endures.
Bottom has only three series, do you wish there would have been more? If so what would you have liked to have seen happen to Richie and Eddie in other plots?
PAUL: Yes and no. Part of me would love there to be more Bottom episodes and see what Richie and Eddie got up to next, but also there’s the danger that there might have been a decline in quality if they had returned. Series three wasn’t my personal favourite and the final two Bottom Live shows were less well-written gags and more hamming up for the live audience, so I think it may be better that they stopped when the going was good rather than run the show into the ground.
ANGE: The possible scenarios they could have put Richie and Eddie in are almost endless. I think it would have been fun to have had a Bonfire Night plot Richie and Eddie style with Richie ending up set ablaze or Eddie inadvertently actually blowing up the Houses of Parliament but, ultimately, I agree with Paul. There’s of course a part of me that really really REALLY wants to read the script that was written for the fourth series but I wouldn’t actually wish for more because what exists is all we need. And the final two live shows were a fantastic way to see Rik and Ade perform together in the flesh that I wouldn’t wish away at all but, sadly, the quality in the writing was inevitably declining so it was for the best it ended when it did. All good things must come to an end.
“Bottom and Red Dwarf were the shows that I saved up my pocket money for so I could buy VHS tapes to record the episodes off the telly...
Paul
Did any of you get to see the live stage shows in the theatre? If so, what was it like?
PAUL: I didn’t, but the other two b******** did. It’s one of my biggest regrets – never got to see a Bottom Live, never met Rik, never worked with Rik… If I ever get my hands on a time machine then I’m going back in time to see the live shows, their take on Waiting For Godot in 1991 and of course to steal the bench from that traffic island in Hammersmith Broadway before it got replaced.
ANGE: I did! I spent my money wisely in my late teens/early 20s and got tickets to Bottom Live 4 and Bottom Live 5 in Liverpool. The warmth in the theatre is what stays with me most – the crowd adored Rik and Ade so much, it was amazing to be there watching them perform as your favourite characters right before your eyes. I met Rik at the stage door afterwards (Ade didn’t come out) and my biggest regret is not taking a proper camera – the pics have been lost to a single disposable film. I remember giving him a big hug round his belly as we had a photo taken and he faux told me off saying ‘don’t you touch my paunch’, haha! He was so cuddly. It was actually very innocent memories from my side but my mate asked to get her tit signed by Rik and she’s never forgiven me that the pic got lost!
I’ll never forget Rik’s pose with a big pervy grin when he was signing her boob and I got the camera in on the action. You really did have to have been there – describing Rik as ‘pervy’ could be misconstrued, it was all part of this fantastically funny over-the-top comedic conceit that Rik was a sex god that we were all very happy to be ‘in on’. I also met him at a couple of his book signings, he was always so much fun and didn’t disappoint. But yes, when I get the time machine I’ll go back and watch Waiting for Godot, ooh actually, I’d go back even further and watch Rik and Ade’s first play ‘Death on the Toilet’ at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1979 and all his early stand up tours. Should probably use the power of time travel to go back and warn him about the quad bike accident, first… nah, I’d prioritise seeing him perform!
The first Rik Mayall Comedy Festival happened last year and you did your first ever live podcast there – what was the festival like for avid Rik fans like yourselves?
PAUL: What an experience it was! To have sold out within an hour of our tickets going on sale was an honour but then to be in his hometown Droitwich with so many Rik fans was fantastic. The show was undoubtedly one of the best experiences of my life – in a room with 200 avid Bottom fans all watching clips and then hearing Bottom director Ed Bye talk about them and share his memories – we loved it. And while we were there we wandered around town and met so many fellow Rik fans who shared stories – Rik really brings people together.
ANGE: I can only reiterate what Paul’s said – hosting a live podcast with Ed Bye as our guest was literally like getting a front row ticket to an event I’d have paid to go and watch. It was sheer magic being in the room with a load of Rik fans – the love for him and sharing laughs watching clips together with Ed Bye also laughing his head off was so heartwarming. I want to do a Bottom Convention later in 2026 so we can conjure some of that magic up again for fans of the show – and, hopefully, many of the cast and crew will join us for a big dose of nostalgia / a collective wank about the best show that ever aired on television. (“Kilroy, obviously.”)
Finally for this week, as we are going to talk more about your podcast and book later this month, what can you tell us about what you have in-store for this year?
PAUL: The book – Talking Bottom: A Guide to the Cult Sitcom – was re-released on November 6th 2025 through the good folks at Wilton Square publishers. We hope that they survive longer than our first publisher Unbound/Boundless and that by time of publication of this article it is still available on Amazon and in all good bookshops, plus on Kindle / e-book versions. We just aired a new podcast series all about Rik Mayall’s characters and performances called The Many Faces of Rik Mayall, and people have been asking for us to do more of those, so there might be more of that in the new year.
ANGE: And hopefully we’ll be back at the 2026 Rik Mayall Comedy Festival in May!
We’re discussing doing another podcast series looking at another sitcom – probably The Young Ones given it’s the other biggest show Rik and Ade did. As I said, we’ll be sounding out the possibility of organising a Bottom Convention in September next year with cast and crew to celebrate the show’s 35th anniversary. We need to know there’s enough of an appetite amongst fans to justify the expense though, so, if you’re reading this and you would be keen please do send us a message on Socials to let us know you’re up for it! AND attending the Convention.
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