May 8th 1984 saw not only the first broadcast of Episode 1 of the much anticipated second series, but although we didn’t know it at the time – it was the day that ‘The Young Ones’ properly ‘crossed over’ from cult-classic into comedy legend and hit a high-water mark of production value, script and satire.

The story of ‘Bambi’ is that of the link between the two generations of comedians that came together in its production. Legend has it that while the ‘Not The Nine O’Clock News’ team were editing their final series – in a studio close by, the final touches were being put to the first series of ‘The Young Ones’. NTNOCN producer John Lloyd speaks of how the experience illustrated the end of an era – and how a new way of doing things was about to break.

When Mel Smith and Gryff Rhys-Jones famously parodied The Two Ronnies with their tedious and juvenile word-play and execrable, witless and sexist song and dance numbers¹, Ronnie Barker was apparently incensed, hurt and angry. Barker was furious that the BBC were sanctioning those that dared to mock a (in his own estimation) a national treasure beyond any kind of criticism².

The same sense of the purifying fire of punk sweeping away the old guard was now apparent as the two editing suites were preparing the swan-song in one, and the grand entrance in another. Surely now, the new-old guard would suffer the same indignities and scorn poured on the new angry young men?

You might be forgiven for making this assumption, but it was not to be.

The actors that made ‘The Young Ones’ flesh, with the exception of Christopher Ryan (Mike) were all stand-up comedians on the alternative comedy circuit. Mike’s part in fact was originally to be played by Comic Strip leader Peter Richardson and it was only after a falling-out with director Paul Jackson that Ryan was hired.

As the team was put together, the star was very much Alexei Sayle. While working as the first MC of The Comedy Store, Sayle had risen to a level of fame and notoriety that initially eclipsed his co-stars. According to the second volume of his memoirs³, Sayle had insisted that he did not want to play a single character for fear of typecasting and his currency at the time persuaded the original writers, Rik Mayall and Lise Mayer to create a range of roles.

Sayle’s importance to the rise of alternative comedy can’t be understated, however during ‘Bambi’ he was to find that those that he had perhaps seen as his proteges were about to eclipse him in terms of fame, success and celebrity.

Bambi begins with Rik, Vyv and Mike in the kitchen discussing Mary (AKA ‘Yellow Pages’) as the payphone by the front door rings. The shot cuts to Neil as be runs back home. Exterior shots are relatively rare and as he approaches the front door, we see the road sign for Codrington Road, giving the keen eyed viewer a clear clue as to the Bristol location for the house. ⁴

While the kitchen conversation continues, Neil hurtles homework, stopping only when he collides with a rubbish bin and then retrieves a suitably hippie-esque bag form the scattered trash – into which he puts a dead pigeon – unless he is planning to give it a formal burial, it’s an odd detail for an avowed vegetarian.

Neil finally gets home and announces he has amazing news. However, before he can announce it he is sent back to the hallway by Rik who orders ‘Answer the telephone, Neil’. It’s the first big gag of the episode and, if any reminder was needed , tells us of what an absolute wanker Rik is.

The lads soon determine that they need to visit the Launderette – and those another location is featured.⁴ The machines rebel at the prospect of washing the steaming clothing – and spit the loads our. After Vyv tricks the washing machines into opening-up again with a reference to ‘Felicity Kendel’s underwear’ – a line that would definitely annoyed Ronnie Barker – the scene returns to the house.

And it is here that the magic really begins, In order to secure a bigger production budget, ‘The Young Ones’ was listed as a variety show – and as such had to include a performance number as part of the programme.⁵
Neil suddenly remembers what he had to tell the guys all the time he was running home…’We’ve been picked – to go University Challenge!’ Cue: ‘To the station – cue Motörhead…

The next 3 minutes are certainly one of, if not the finest ‘Young Ones’ musical moment and arguably one of the best sequences of either series. While Motörhead perform ‘Ace of Spades’ we are treated to another location as the lads cause mayhem at Bristol Temple Meads. This was the last time that drummer Phil Taylor performed with the band and had already left the group – although Lemmy recalls in his autobiography⁶ that Taylor agreed to honour the booking without rancour. The band perform as a four piece (actually for the first time) with both Phil Campbell and Würzel  and if anything is wrong with the segment it is that the director orders close-ups on the wrong guitar while solos are being played. Other than that, Lemmy gives good value with mirror shadesand Iron Crosses – warts and all.

There’s a series of sight gags as the song plays out – but there is no better moment that when Vyv takes a donut from the cake store colunter, stuffs the entire thing into his mouth and gives the ‘V’s to the (clearly very amused) assistant. Beautiful…

1:58-2:05. The Doughnut Moment

The musical interlude marks the natural end of Act One and segues neatly into Act Two as the scene shifts to the interior of a TV studio-bound train.

‘The Young Ones’ wasn’t a full-on visual offering; it relied on a solid foundation of high-quality script writing, and here is a good example.
Rik bullies Neil into quizzing him on his O Level History notes, instantly making ‘crop rotation in the 14th Century’ an instant cult-classic line for fans.

Vyv returns from the buffet car. His copy of ‘The Daily Mirror Book of Facts’ is apparently the source of the forthcoming questions. Toxteth O’Grady’s prowess at sticking marshmallows up his nose is again an immortal phrase – and another nod to some kind of topicality; Toxteth being the area of Liverpool recently the scene of serious rioting.

Bored, Vyv goes looking for amusement and curious to learn why the notice on the the train door says ‘Do not lean out of the window’, he does and he is decapitated. Special effects on the series were fairly basic. You want an explosion? Use explosives. Lots of explosives – and then take the actors to hospital. The headless Vyv pulls the communication cord, finds his head and then kicks it down the tracks…and 36 years later, I still can’t quite work out how it was done…

Alexei Sayle’s appearances usually interacted with the narrative of each episode. However, on this occasion, his train driver held up by Mexican bandits had been filmed previously in Bristol. This meant that he was on set with nothing to do but observe – and as the scene shifts to Act Three, a lot of what he saw caused him great unease.

Arrival at the ‘University Challenge’ studio and Act Four begins. The immediate appearance of Mel Smith as a security guard soon followed by Gryff Rhys-Jones as ‘Bambi’ is truly the ‘nexus moment’, the instant where the rising and the falling entities meet in a DNA helix manner.

Under the direction of the new order, the old guard are in minor roles and the latter are surely there for the pure value of observing their demise. But then come the teams…

Here’s the thing.Emma Thompson….posh.

Funny? Maybe. Decent human? Almost certainly. Married (at some point) to Kenneth Branagh? Definitely – but should that be held against her? But why here?

Hugh Laurie….Cambridge? Probably. Posh? Sounds like it. National Treasure after Blackadder Goes Forth? No – Not yet – not by a long chalk; And Ben Elton? -Yes, you get to be in it because you wrote it and Stephen Fry lampooning the uber-posh of Cambridge as Lord Snot. This can’t be happening – and yet it is, right here. If the prospect of three comic generations colliding blew the audience’s mind – Alexei Sayles’ was positively scrambled.

Having arrived at the studio in purely observational capacity, Sayle was staggered at those who he found performing together. When told that Hugh Grant had ‘made some cake’ and that Mel Smth was going to take them for a ride in his Rolls-Royce- Sayle felt a searing sense of betrayal. ‘These people are the enemy’ he reportedly told his colleagues to receive the reply ‘No, that’s just what you thought…’

The popularity of ‘The Young Ones’ had come to a point that legends of times past – and those of a time to come were able to perform on the same stage without it actually, at the time, seeming incongruous. ‘The Young Ones’ was a work of sufficient quality to allow all concerned to take part without any party feeling that they were there to anything else than play their character – and, crucially, not there to be lampooned for their presence as people.

The characters in question – those played by the posh kids were sufficiently self-aware to make Fry, Laurie & Thompson complicit in their own satirisation. While Alexei Sayle would have had nothing to do with them as people, their recognition of their privilege, their education and wealth through a satirical lens meant their presence was acceptable to the radicals through this portrayal of themselves – and as equally acceptable to those more to the middle of the road because of the performance and their a perception that these people were sufficiently comfortable in their own skim to subject themselves to such ribaldry.

‘Bambi’ is, therefore a fascinating confluence of comic as well as societal values. While Rhys-Jones’ portrayal of Bamber Gascoigne highlights the beigeness of the man as well as his somewhat simpering deference to the contestants on his show (something that Paxman’s tenure immediately consigned to history) the whole episode (in fact, the whole series) sought to expose students and their lifestyle as narcissistic and feckless.

Of course, the irony is that without universities (specifically Manchester (Elton, Edmondson, Mayall and Lise Mayer) ‘The Young Ones’ would simply not have existed. Without self-indulgence and living off either a grant, or parents – the work-shy, pseudo-intellectual and down-right gross stereotypes created for the show would have no kernel of truth on which to build their grotesques.

In which case, does ‘The Young Ones’ seek to spectacularly bite that hand that fed it? No. ‘The Young Ones’ audience had not been to university yet. Of course, some viewers had and some were no-doubt watching this in their student halls or houses – but the audience was the 13-17 year olds who had no knowledge or experience to dismiss Rik, Vyv, Mike and Neil (and their living conditions) as outrageous exaggerations, and were willing to accept the surreal parts of the show without any question to the wider narrative.

For these privileged few, ‘The Young Ones’ was their generation’s ‘Monty Python’. There was no explaining it’s appeal to parents or teachers – it was funny because it just was. There was no discussion or analysis to this because none was necessary. If other people didn’t get the joke, then not a problem – just don’t ask for it to be explained – because it couldn’t be done.

History now shows that ‘The Young Ones’ was just as much part of the tradition of TV comedy as any other – i.e the creators meet at university and thanks to the barriers cleared away by the previous generation, they access the BBC. Yes, there is more to it – for every work of comic genius submitted for production there are dozens of absolute non-starters; but making university your starting point doesn’t do you any harm.

Of course, there are exceptions to the rule – but even Alexei Sayle did a Fine Art degree at Chelsea. There are those that have made a success in the comedy field from a genuinely working class background – but even those mostly seem to have letters after their names.

So – to the end of ‘Bambi’. A giant chocolate eclair falls on to the set, squatting the Scumbag College team. Of course it does. At the time, the previous mentioned audience accept it and move on. A touch of the ‘deus ex-machinea’ isn’t unusual for the series (this one does at least have a thread back to Robbie Coltrane appearing in the Elephant Man bit earlier on) but simply ending an episode with little more than ‘the end’ is the one criticism that could be levelled at the scripts as a whole.

‘Bambi’ is the ‘Young One’s’ pinnacle because it was the first time it dared to to widen the circle of performers significantly beyond the central five. It ditches puppets for people, sets for locations and yet still finds away to find important moments for both Alexei Sayle and SPG the hamster. ‘Bambi’ is a writing team firing on all cylinders and full of confidence. Its inclusion of the ensemble cast is evidence of great self-belief in the quality of the series as a creative endeavour and a knowledge that it stands-up against anything created by those included.

It’s the best episode because it allows all the main characters to demonstrate their key elements (and briefly break the fourth wall with this during the laundrette inspired costume change). It is the best because it has distinct acts which flow together and build to a memorable finale (sticky bun excepted…)

It’s also the best because it is funny and damn-fine entertainment.

The credits run with an elephant. A real elephant. Somehow, the presence of an actual elephant seems to reflect the new ambition that the show had found: Emma Thompson, Stephen Fry and an elephant, not a puppet, a real, live elephant… The Young Ones really had come of age.

Notes

1: ‘The Two Ninnies’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oVG4_k7Hbc
2: ‘Not Again’ The Story of Not The Nine O’Clock News’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXxVSMD2pwA (Watch from 1:13:43)
3: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thatcher-Stole-Trousers-Alexei-Sayle/dp/1408864541/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3QBGWVJCCMPZV&dchild=1&keywords=thatcher+stole+my+trousers&qid=1606930854&sprefix=thatcher+%2Caps%2C171&sr=8-1
4: http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/bristol/low/people_and_places/newsid_7683000/7683587.stm
5: Each episode featured a musical act – as well as an lion tamer who featured in ‘Nasty’ https://the-bottom.fandom.com/wiki/The_Young_Ones_Guest_Musicians
6: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Simon-Schuster-White-Line-Fever/dp/1849834318/ref=sr_1_2?crid=N9IC109O1HE5&dchild=1&keywords=white+line+fever&qid=1607373291&sprefix=white+line+%2Caps%2C171&sr=8-2