Rik blasts TV comedy

Rik Mayall has launched an attack on the state of TV comedy, claiming it has been killed by political correctness.

The comic, who impersonated as Hitler for an anti-Euro advert last year - said: "The standard of telly has gone right down."

And he laid the blame at the door of the BBC.

In an interview with the Daily Express, he claimed: "They don't let you make certain jokes now because it might offend Mr Blair. What we need now is an enormous cull of management."

Mayall's last TV comedy was Believe Nothing, which reunited him with New Statesmen writers Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran. Yet the show was largely ignored, attracting just 2.3 million viewers in its prime-time Sunday-night slot on ITV1.

He now has no more TV work planned, and will this month embark on a tour with the Noel Coward comedy Present Laugher.

Mayall also revealed that Comic Strip supremo Peter Richardson is currently making a film about the state of English telly.

Published: 8 Jan 2003