Once more unto the pitch, dear friends, once more. For those who know, it was a sad weekend due to the loss of comedic genius, Mr. Drop Dead Fred himself, the incomparable Rik Mayall dropped dead. The former The Young Ones star, and also a lifelong hero of mine at least for his portrayal of Lord Flashheart in Blackadder: “Mind if I use your phone? If word gets out I’m missing, five hundred girls will kill themselves. And I wouldn’t want them on my conscience, not when they ought to be on my *face*!”
So RIP Rik but back in the UK, who are better at this stuff than we are, that’s not enough. In 2010, Rik released “Noble England” –Shakespeare’s famous speech from Henry V refitted for the World Cup which England haven’t won since… 1966. By the way I was in Majorca for my summer hols that year, a precocious nine year (meaning I’d learnt the fine art of self-satisfaction by then) and clearly remember being hysterically overjoyed. That was the summer of Revolver and it played at the hotel all day every day… and we were all the better for it.
So anyway, as they tend to do in the UK, they had started a Facebook page to get everybody to buy “Noble England” and get it into the charts thereby supporting the World Cup (which England doesn’t stand a chance in hell of winning) and Rik, which, after word got out of his death, has caused 500 girls to kill themselves.
Watch it here:
