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Summary[]

Bottom Live 3: Hooligan's Island is the third live stage show based on the sitcom Bottom. The show released for VHS was filmed at the Bristol Hippodrome in 1997 and was a departure from previous live shows in that the Hammersmith flat set was discarded in favour of an unspecified desert island. Rik and Ade also changed their wardrobe for the tour to better suit the new environment.

The Plot[]

Act 1[]

Richie and Eddie are stranded on a desert island. The show begins with Richie in a predicament - he is stuck on the toilet. After managing to break out of the toilet hut, he decides to violently wake Eddie up from his hammock with a hammer. When Eddie suddenly swings by on a vine a la Tarzan, Richie questions who on Earth is asleep in his hammock. Eddie reveals it to be "some bird I just picked up last night." Richie becomes overly excited at the prospect and quickly gets to work on how he is first going to give her the "shag of life" followed by "the full on grope of life" and finally "the bloody good seeing to of life." His excitement is suddenly crushed however when he realises by "bird" he meant albatross, and not female. Following a bout of projectile vomiting, Keith Floyd boiling in a pot, Japanese bunkers and an attack by hungry cannibals, the boys perform Born To Be Wild with Ade playing Hammond organ, which eventually explodes, closing the first act.

Act 2[]

Act Two opens with Richie and Eddie sat facing the audience in deck chairs. Quite noticeable to the audience is the presence of a large red atomic bomb directly behind them, which both are oblivious to until Richie gets up and walks into it. Attempts to defuse it are futile, and they eventually notice a French warship out to sea. They soon realise that the island they inhabit is a French nuclear test site and their days are numbered. Eddie sends up a couple of rockets to get their attention, but only succeeds in blowing up the ship. The act ends with the bomb exploding, killing them both.

Bloopers[]

In Act One, one of the show's biggest bloopers was caught on camera during the night of the filming. Eddie enters a secret bunker on the stage which Richie isn't supposed to see until the second act. Eddie however doesn't slam the door properly and it swings back open. When he asks where Eddie got the supplies from, Richie turns around and ends up seeing the entrance to the bunker, causing him to break character and sending him into a fit of uncontrollable laughter lasting several minutes. Ade manages to ad-lib through it, incorporating Rik's laughter into a symptom of the poison dart he has been shot with. Ade's ability to stumble through it garners massive cheering and applause from the audience. In Act Two Rik would poke fun at this when he discovers the secret bunker and sarcastically says, "Oh Eddie! I've never seen it before.......IN MY ENTIRE FUCKING LIFE".

In Act Two, Rik forgets his lines, although it is not immediately apparent to the audience until Ade points it out and starts mocking him. Rik, still unable to remember the next line, looks desperately to his right, presumably to the unseen crew behind the curtain, and suddenly rejoices when he remembers the next part. Shortly afterwards Rik stumbles through his lines, and decides to retrace his steps across the stage and repeat them.

Rik and Ade break character on two occasions to mock the cheap seagull and shark fin props that are supposed to convince the audience there is wildlife on the island.

In Act Two whilst Richie and Eddie are deciding how best to disarm the bomb, Rik ad-libs a few of Ardal O'Hanlon's lines from the Irish sitcom Father Ted, which surprises Ade who responds in kind by imitating Dermot Morgan.

Trivia[]

  1. The second act involving the large red bomb that nobody notices until it's too late is very similar to a plot device used over a decade earlier in the Young Ones, when the lads find they can't get into the fridge because a bomb is in the way. Similar to how events unfold in The Young Ones, the characters are oblivious to the bomb for a considerable amount of time despite it's size, colour, and very obviously being a bomb.
  2. The plot explains that Richie and Eddie ended up getting marooned after accidentally causing a cruise ship to sink. They were employed as entertainers on the ship, and one of their performances went wrong which led to the ship foundering. As entertainers, they used the pseudonym 'The Great Arsehole and Norman'.
  3. In Act One, Eddie exclaims "eranu, uvavu" when reading from a piece of paper. These are non-existent words created by the comedy duo Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer on their show Shooting Stars.
  4. The show's subtitle 'Hooligan's Island' is a nod to the American TV show Gilligan's Island (1964-1967) which was about a group of shipwrecked castaways trying to survive on an island.
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