Customer Reviews

Bigger Than Hitler

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If you love Rik Mayall's humor, you'll love this book. If you are unfamiliar with Rik Mayall, you'll probably be mystified. Speaking for myself, I'm keeping this one to revisit time and again.

The Rik Mayall is great (anyone with any sense knows that) and this book is proof. Although it can at times seem as though the Rik Mayall is ranting and confused, I have come to realize it is only because I cannot, as I am not the Rik Mayall (there can only be one), fully understand the true and perfect genius that the Rik Mayall embodies and expresses in this brilliant autobiography. If you have ever enjoyed Bottom and/or The Young Ones, you will love Bigger than Hitler, Better Than Christ. Rik Mayall is sex. Oh, and there's loads of pictures, too (which is awesome).

I'm The Rik Mayall's biggest fan, to the extent of even loving Filthy, Rich and Catflap (I'm the only person I've ever met who liked this series), but BTH-BTC just doesn't work for me. Yes, there are funny parts now and again, but they're often hiding amongst an onslaught of tedious nonsense. It helps as you read it, if you hear Rik Mayall's voice in your head, but even this doesn't relieve the tedium. The overall concept behind the book is not bad (a sort-of autobiography, with 10% fact and 90% bollocks), but it doesn't stick to that formula consistently enough.

At the end of the day, this needed editing. As it stands, it reads like a first draft. This book could have been transformed into something quite unique and readable if a decent editor had inserted his input into The Rik's passages (ooer obviously).

Light entertainment's most priapic juggernaut takes a break from "having it off" with "top birds" (this could be a form of shagging, but only The Rik Mayall knows for sure.) and amusing billions to the point of self-mortification to bestow upon the reading public this memoir (all of which is totally true, obviously), which makes all others before it look like the most over-used birdcage lining by comparison. For mere mortals such as we to even begin to fathom the workings of comedic ultragenius, this is your first and last step.

The joke here is that the biography is not really a biography: it is a culmination of psychotic self-promotion and inane repetition on just how great The Rik Mayall really is. He's a "light entertainment firestorm", and here we get to see fickle, arbitrary, and surreal involvements that this alter-ego (the autobiography writer) undergoes.

The chapter headings promise inside information on show business dealings and personalities - but they deliver nothing of the sort! For example, the chapter regarding Drop Dead Fred is an alternate take on reality. Rik describes how he revolutionised the American film market, brought British comedy to the US, taught all on set how to act, and so on... This emphasis on egocentricism is sickeningly humorous and cleverly satirical.

The snivelling, obnoxious, vane, and deliciously childish components of Rik's comedy is here and intact - just don't expect to learn anything.

This book is almost completely unreadable. I haven't read a more rambling piece of egocentric rubbish since Kathleen Turner's autobiog which was at least coherent. This is a shambles. What is going on wih publishers who give free reign to people who can't write and don't seem to apply any kind of editing. The same thing happened with Dawn French's autobiog. Terrible.....Did more to damage her reputation than anyhing she ever did on screen. Perhaps Mayall is a spent force who is hankering for the limelight. Maybe the quad bike accident has left him with residual brain damage. Eiher way, he should be ashamed of himself.