Richard Richard

Richard Richard is a middle-aged man from Hammersmith, London. He is the creation of, and portrayed by, British actor and comedian Rik Mayall.

Summary

Sex-obsessed, inappropriate, petulent, socially awkward and possibly insane; Richard "Richie" Richard lives to pursue only one thing - getting someone to "do it" with him. In the first chapter of Richie's depraved trip down misery lane, he is returning home from an unsuccessful trip to the Lamb & Flag with his equally depraved best pal Eddie, where his excessive use of "gonad-enhancers" failed to impress any of the female patrons. Although notably more sure of himself, Eddie's attempts to score are equally disastrous.

But the night is young, and after a brief brainstorming session in the world of lonely hearts ads, the discovery of a revolutionary new pheromone sex-spray leads Richie and his only friend to the local sex shop and back to the pub. After trying it on with two uninterested lesbians, an unprovoked assault on a condom machine and a whack in the face by the local hard-knock, so begins Richie's magnum opus of nob-gags, double-entendre, frying pan frivolity and violent testicular distortion.

Appearance

Richie is a middle-aged white male with swept back mousy hair and blue-green coloured eyes. He is slim in build but by the time of the later live shows he is considerably more plump, much to the amusement of Eddie. He always wears the same clothes: a white long-sleeved shirt tucked into his underpants, a black tie, blue jeans and brown slip-on shoes. He also favours Y-fronts as his choice of underwear, which are normally pulled up too high so as to be visible above his waistline. When he leaves the house he wears a long beige trench coat, and for special occasions will wear a pair of brown slacks, brown braces, brown tie and his treasured "original Van Heusen" shirt, which Eddie suspects is THE original Van Heusen because it hasn't been washed since 1963. Richie owns a number of gaudy dressing gowns and pyjamas, and one on occasion recycles his trench coat into a smoking jacket by turning it inside out. In Bottom Live 3: Hooligan's Island, Richie is wearing a mish-mash of his usual attire and a cruise ship crewman's outfit. In Bottom Live 2001: An Arse Oddity, he has taken to wearing a sarong on his lower half, but it is later clear he is wearing it to conceal a pair of homemade pink rubber underpants. In Guest House Paradiso, Richie is wearing a cream coloured cardigan, white shirt, red tie and brown slacks. A brief glimpse of his wardrobe reveals he has a large number of identical outfits. Later on in the film, Richie tries on a red rubber crotchless bikini for size.

Personality & Lifestyle

The character of Richie is a complex one despite appearing to be a dimwit. Whilst he is quite clearly desperate, insane, irritable, bored, petulant, pedantic, depressed and in need of a good shag, he is also depicted as charming, enthusiastic, outgoing, pleasant and humorous. His ancestry is rooted in the two world wars, with at least two uncles serving somewhat illustrious careers in the British army. It is this that gives him an immovable patriotism which he likes to use to justify his actions and opinions, such as the belief that Great Britain is the greatest nation on Earth, based on the fact that there is no "Great France" or "Great Luxembourg." His patriotism also supplants his superiority complex; the British are great, and therefore so is he.

His own life has not been endowed with a successful career, so he resorts to lying about the alleged time he has spent in the armed forces. His family history is sketchy and full of contradiction. Richie is quick to jump onto any bandwagon in an effort to blend in and look cool, such as suggesting he had served in the Falklands War, has a Native American heritage or hails from Newcastle. Other outlandish claims include an apparent ability to rain dance, and possess the survival skills required to camp rough in the woods for a week. As he only has one friend in Eddie, he resorts to writing birthday cards to himself from celebrities he pretends to be close chums with, such as General Pinochet, ABBA, Sue Carpenter and Rod Steiger.

Little is known about his family. In "Hole" he says he has a sister who is just like him, but "with smaller jugs." In the same episode he also mentions his mother, whom he tells Eddie used to make sandwiches for the Hammersmith Conservative Association. His father was a member of the Luftwaffe (the significance of this is lost on Richie) and had one leg longer than the other. Richie seems to have a large number of Great Uncles whom he often speaks very fondly of.

Throughout all three series and the live shows, Richie is unemployed and scraping by on the dole. He is the sole rent payer on the Hammersmith flat which he shares with his best mate Eddie. Considering tough financial circumstances, the flat they inhabit is quite spacious, with two floors and a large dining and lounge area. It is revealed early in Series One that the rent is paid by rather insidious means, possibly fraudulent, although this is never elaborated upon. It is not beyond Richie's conscience to steal to get through life, evident in the episode "Gas" where he elaborately abstracts his next door neighbour's gas supply to fuel the cooker and central heating. Richie is a terrible cook, and in his time has concocted meals so hazardous to health they could be considered for use as biological weapons.

Richie is somewhat feminine in demeanor, using very ginger gestures and general "poofy" turns of phrase. As the series went on, and especially in the live shows, Richie's sexuality became uncertain, although this could be considered a result of his sheer desperation to have sex. Although a middle-aged man, Richie is a virgin, possibly the crux of his entire being. In Bottom Live 2001: An Arse Oddity, Richie appears to be experiencing lewd wet dreams about Eddie. This could be a symptom of his apparent loneliness and the fact that by 2001 he is still a virgin, and no longer cares if the object of his sexual desire is female. In Bottom Live: The Weapons Grade Y Fronts Tour, Richie appears to thoroughly embellish his experience on "The Evacuator," a large vacuum-like device conceived by Eddie which effectively removes the contents of one's bowels with suction. Richie clearly enjoys having The Evacuator's suction hose inserted into his bottom, further calling into question his sexuality. In "Hole," Eddie recounts an incident earlier in the day where Richie made advances towards one of the fairground attendants, not realising that the object of his desire was in fact a muscular man with a pierced foreskin. The closest Richie gets to losing his virginity is in the episode "Digger," when he secures a date with a wealthy aristocrat. In preparing for sex, he frantically tries to digest The Joy of Sex whilst his date is wet and waiting outside the bedroom door. Richie owns a large amount of reading materials on the topic of sex, and has been seen to use almost any item of media as wanking material, such as a Freeman's catalogue, a book depicting nude frescos and the fashion section of The Observer. Richie has, on occasion, tried to indulge in more classical reading materials, such as Leo Tolstoy's War & Peace.

When provoked he will retaliate with sometimes extreme forms of physical violence. He frequently fights with Eddie and likes to use various household objects to do so, including frying pans, fire extinguishers, nutcrackers, pencils, umbrellas, chairs, jugs, pokers and the fridge door. In one extreme case, he became so annoyed with Eddie that he cut both his legs off below the knee with a chainsaw. Later on in weary resignation however, Richie assisted Eddie with sewing them back on.

Richie frequently misinterprets things in general conversation, either perceiving innocent comments as rude, or becomes extremely offended at what he thinks is being insinuated. For example, in Bottom Live, Richie receives a letter addressed "Dear Sir or Madam." Instead of recognising this as a simple matter of etiquette, he took it as a dig at his apparent sexual ambiguity.

Richie doesn't have many hobbies, but is a pathological masturbator and appears to have spent a considerable amount of his adult life "having a wank." He takes great offence to anyone accusing him of masturbating however. On at least one occasion he has been caught in the act by Eddie. Richie is known to have a very small penis, so small in fact that a single pube has been known to obscure it. His genital area has suffered severe injury over the years, such as regular kicks and punches, and more extreme abuse such as accidentally being sucked into a vacuum cleaner during a lipo-suction accident, and being set on fire with a blow torch. In Bottom Live, he accidentally superglues his penis to a blow up doll he affectionately names Monica. Eddie gleefully assists Richie's predicament by attempting to remove it with a hammer and chisel, an electric drill, and finally a hacksaw, which succeeds in severing his penis completely. What appears to have been a life-ending event for Richie however is short-lived as he later spots his intact penis hiding behind a pubic hair.

Richie is always keen to take part in any kind of money-making scheme, no matter how outrageous the methods. In the episode "Terror," a brief but violent encounter with three trick-or-treaters on Halloween inspires Richie to do the rounds in Hammersmith in hope of making money fast. Dressed as a Devil and a talking Halloween banana respectively, Richie and Eddie embark on a disastrous trip around the estate with a malfunctioning cattleprod and a limited supply of replacement Halloween tights. Things become more depraved when Richie decides he can both make money and get laid by raising the Devil with the assistance of his "acolytes" Eddie, Spudgun and Dave Hedgehog.

Most of Richie's day-to-day activities typically end in disaster or horrific injury. On Christmas Day, Richie accidentally chops his finger off whilst cooking a roast dinner. On his birthday, he falls off a dining chair whilst hanging some decorations and breaks his leg. Later on in the same evening, Richie plummets down the stairs in his wheelchair during a tedious game of hide and seek and breaks his other leg.

Richie is quite defensive of his homestead, evident when the flat is burgled one night and he and Eddie inadvertantly capture the burglar in the act, eventually holding him hostage for a short while before an accomplice subdues them both and rescues his mate. He has a sadistic streak, not limited to torturting a burglar or threatening an old lady.

Richie has a very distorted opinion of his own self-importance, looking down on others he categorises as "the ordinaries." He officially recognises himself as middle class despite his circumstances living at the bottom of the heap. Such is his ego, he proclaims without any basis that he is known locally by various hard-knock nicknames such as "The Hammersmith Crumpet Radar."

Richie cannot drive, yet with some misguided tutoring from Eddie, manages to steal "Cannonball" Taffy O'Jones's car and drive it from Hammersmith to the Marvelloso Splendido Hotel-O in Wolverhampton. In "Accident" it is revealed that Richie carries a fake driving licence in his wallet.

Richie considers himself to be religious (when it suits him) and takes to prayer several times during the episode "Accident." He follows the Church of England and throughout the series and live shows tries to dig himself out of tricky situations by pleading to God for help. When things don't turn out however, he shrugs off his beliefs and starts ridiculing the church.

Richie's relationship with his flatmate Eddie could be considered akin to an old married couple. Richie regularly cooks, irons and cleans for them both. They regularly enter into very violent confrontations and disagreements, yet appear to always make up afterwards. Richie and Eddie have, respectively, declared their implacable hatred for each other on many occasions, yet this has not prevented them from remaining flatmates for the better part of thirty years. In the final act of Bottom Live, Richie decides to commit suicide to avoid paying a debt, and in his final planned moments decides to thank Eddie for being his friend. This clearly moves Eddie, who hesitates momentarily before ploughing on with the task of assisting Richie with his suicide.

Richie is last seen in Bottom Live 5, ascending into a strange netherworld where he discovers the true meaning of life.

Nicknames

Fat Bastard
The Great Arsehole
Mr "Two Planets Colliding in a Pair of Pants"
Penis Breath
Breezy Trousers
Mr Wobbly Bottom
Mr. Twat
Twat
A gargantuan quivering land mass of overweight blubber
An overupholstered trembling pork mountain of elephantine lardy repulsiveness
Tinker Bollocks
Running Mouth
Sitting Down
Talking Bollocks
Dances With The Wind
Dr. Pussy

Quotes

Richie: I've finally reached my bottom...

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Richie: Hello big tits, looking for some action?

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Richie: May I say what a smashing blouse you have on.

Trivia

Rik Mayall portrayed the character of Rick in The Young Ones alongside Bottom co-stars Adrian Edmondson and Christopher Ryan. The character of Richie has been quoted by Mayall as being the one most like his real personality. Rik Mayall unfortunately passed away on the 9th June 2014.