Bid to erect memorial bench

Campaigners want to honour Rik Mayall with a memorial bench on the spot where the opening credits of Bottom were filmed.

Almost 1,500 people have so far signed a petition to erect the bench in Hammersmith Broadway, West London. The original bench featured in the credits has since been removed.

Petition organiser Jaime Bird said Mayall ‘changed the face of comedy’ and was ‘a creative genius and firecracker of always on-tap energy that shaped a nation’.

‘We, the fans and friends, feel that we need a place where we can remember him and placing a memorial bench at this location is something we feel he would have loved,’ he said on the petition.

In a 2010 interview with the BBC, Mayall said: ‘Hammersmith is my stomping ground I suppose. And one of the great opening credit sequences was for the telly show Bottom, where you had Richie and Eddie - me and Ade - sitting on a bench.

‘If you were to come to the end of King Street where it meets the big roundabout to get to the Hammersmith Apollo, you'd find that same bench on a traffic island - until one day they took it away and put a pelican crossing in its place. That for me is the worst journey I ever made, discovering what had happened to that bench.’

Last week a spoof blue plaque was erected on the site, saying: ‘Rik Mayall, 1958-2014. Punched his friend in the balls on a bench near this spot’ – and contained a QR code linking to the Bottom opening credits (below).

Hammersmith and Fulham Council have not yet commented on the petition, but it is just one of many online petitions set up by fans.

One wants an official English Heritage blue plaque, even though those are not erected until at least 20 years after the subject’s death

One to award him a posthumous OBE has 387 supporters; one wants to have his cut scenes from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone released; and one wants June 9, the anniversary of his death to be a public holiday called National Flash Day, when ‘in return for the day off, the public will be expected to behave in an extremely silly way, with as many references to Lord Flash during the day as possible, Including repeated Woofs.’

Another, with 1,700 signatures, even wants Mayall to be given a State funeral. The last person to receive this honour was Winston Churchill in 1965. Even the Queen Mother and Baroness Thatcher didn’t receive that honour, having received ceremonial funerals.

Published: 16 Jun 2014