Bigger Than Hitler, Better Than Christ - Rik Mayall > Reviews (2)

"Bigger than Hitler better than Christ" - couldn't have put it better myself!!

First off I would like to say:

"If you are not a serious Rik Mayall fan but have seen or enjoyed some of his work this may not be the book you were looking for or expecting!"

Anyway read on and see if you might enjoy this book...

Rik Mayall is very well known in comedy entertainment for The Young Ones, Filthy, Rich and Catflap, The New Statesman and Bottom.

Rik mayall has a fantastically funny sense of humour and personality which to some extents have annoyed a few people over the years, but personally, I love him (figure of speech). Throughout the book Rik's personality is thrown in your face, even from the start with rude remarks about you "the reader", work colleagues from over the years and of course the most noticeable remark is of himself - "The Rik Mayall". He adamantly believes that he is the best, and that he is solely to blame for the start of great British television.

I was expecting a detailed full life story of his life from childhood through to his present day achievements; but, this is not quite the case there is not much about his childhood or school life. The book is basically a 325 page document on how great he is!

It contains some rather strong and crude language that you may expect from Richie from Bottom, but you'll get used to it!

There is a short chapter that briefly explains his success at university where he meets his mischievous friend Adrian Edmondson. From here, if you read carefully enough, he describes some of his major events in his life, packed out with mindless banter that seems to be rather off topic, which you only realise when he says hang on back to the f*****g story or something to that description. You can really imagine Rik writing the chapters due to his relaxed approach to his comments and discussions that perfectly depict his personality. It is especially easy to imagine him writing at his desk when he gets a bit bored or lost at the end of a chapter and writes something like: "I'm not going to write about it now. We'll come back to this later." And well doesn't!

Around half way into the book, the pace of the book slows right down and seems to get a bit boring, but, it soon picks up again don't worry. One of the chapters describes a dream he had when he was young which seems rather peculiar but wont tell you why it is significant until later in the book. It reveals Rik's sensitive and insecure side to his personally which is rarely seen.

One of the chapters I was most looking forward to was the one about his quad bike accident. Rik makes it very clear that he should be dead - he says he is better than Christ because he rose from being dead three times, whereas Jesus rose only once.

The book is full of letters that Rik has 'apparently' sent, but are obviously to bad to be true - in a funny way. There are letters to old school teaches, managers and even to Tony Blair that are just way to amusing and rude to have actually been sent! A nice addition to the book is the insertion of pages that have various photographs and snapshots from his carer and life which are pleasantly interesting to look at as they break up the book nicely.

Another amusing feature of the book is his use of mid-sentence notation marks that refer to extra bits of his story at the bottom of the page, here's an example:

We got out of the car. Sorry done that bit*.

* You have to watch out with me, don't you. Funny jokes can pop up with me any-old-where. I'm crazy. But that's enough. Back to the book. Now.

The book has the appearance of being unedited with "[comment]" tags saying "check this", and it is full of spelling mistakes. However, Rik says in the book that that is what he wanted - he's writing the book and that's what you going to get. I was also very unsure weather to take any of what he said seriously after reading the book because it was so... well... mad!

Never the less I loved reading to book to find out a little more about him, his life and what it might be like to meet him - wouldn't that be great! And so I would recommend any devote fan to buy this book and if you are a bit unsure well £4 for the paperback isn't a bad deal.

The price of the hardback copy is approximately £18.99 and the paperback is approximately £3.99. The ISBN number is 0-00-720727-1 for the hardback and 0-00-720728-X for the paperback.

I hope this review has helped you to decide on whether you would like to read this book or not, thanks for reading, James Kelly.