Ade Edmondson

Adrian Charles Edmondson (born 24 January 1957) is an English actor, comedian, musician, writer and television presenter.

The second of four children, Adrian Charles Edmondson was born on 24 January 1957 in Bradford, West Riding of Yorkshire, to Dorothy Eileen Sturgeon (born 1930) and Fred Edmondson (1929–2014).

As a child, Edmondson lived with his family in a variety of places including Cyprus, Bahrain, and Uganda, where his father was a teacher in the British Armed Forces.

Edmondson attended Pocklington School, East Riding of Yorkshire, from 1968 to 1975.

In an interview with the Times Educational Supplement (TES), he stated that he did not enjoy his education at Pocklington, and that his group of friends considered the school's printed booklet of "endless" behavioural rules to be "a personal challenge to break".

Edmondson calculated that during his time at Pocklington, he received a total of 66 strokes of the cane as well as frequent slipperings.

By the time he was in sixth form, with his parents working abroad, Edmondson began to enjoy himself, "which involved lots of drinking and smoking and petty acts of vandalism."

He made some good friends at the school and had a favourite teacher, Michael Aubrey.

Aubrey taught English and encouraged Edmondson to pursue drama, casting him in a number of school plays, and allowing him to take time out of other lessons to do drama.

After Pocklington, Edmondson went to the Victoria University of Manchester (now known as the University of Manchester) to study drama, where he met his future comedy partner Rik Mayall, and graduated with a 2:1 degree.

Edmondson and Mayall soon became best friends and before long found work on the burgeoning alternative comedy scene.

Under the name 20th Century Coyote, Edmondson and Mayall became one of the star attractions at The Comedy Store.

As their popularity grew, Edmondson, Mayall and other upcoming comedians, including Nigel Planer, Peter Richardson, Alexei Sayle, and French and Saunders moved from the Comedy Store to The Comic Strip club.

The Comic Strip soon gained a reputation as one of the most popular comedy clubs in London and soon came to the attention of Channel 4.

Edmondson and the others were commissioned to act in 6 self-contained half-hour films, using the group as comedy actors rather than stand-up performers.

He was part of the alternative comedy boom in the early 1980s and had roles in the television series The Young Ones (1982–1984) and Bottom (1991–1995), which he wrote together with his collaborator Rik Mayall.

Edmondson also appeared in The Comic Strip Presents... series of films throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

For two episodes of this he created the spoof heavy metal band Bad News, and for another he played his nihilistic alter-ego Eddie Monsoon, an offensive South African television star.

In the mid-1980s, his father became the deputy headmaster at the former Drummond Middle School in Manningham in Bradford.

The series, titled The Comic Strip Presents... debuted on 2 November 1982 (the opening night of Channel 4).

The first episode to be broadcast was "Five Go Mad in Dorset", a parody of Enid Blyton's Famous Five, which drew anger from some viewers for the way it mercilessly satirised a children's classic.

Edmondson starred as one of the five.

By the same time as The Comic Strip Presents... was being negotiated, the BBC signed Edmondson, Mayall, Richardson, Planer, and Sayle to star in The Young Ones, a sitcom in the same anarchic style as The Comic Strip.

(Richardson later decided not to proceed and was replaced by Christopher Ryan.) The show revolved around the shared house where four students lived during their studies at Scumbag College.

It was noted at the time of its first airing for its violent slapstick, and the series retains a cult following.

During this time, Edmondson also appeared in a bank advertisement portraying a character very similar to his "Vyvyan" guise.

In 1983, he appeared as the lead singer "Vim Fuego" in the spoof heavy metal band called "Bad News" with his Young Ones co-stars Rik Mayall, Nigel Planer, and Peter Richardson of "Comic Strip Presents...".

He played the lead role in the Comic Strip's 1985 feature film, The Supergrass.

Following the success of The Comic Strip Presents... and, to a greater extent, The Young Ones, Edmondson and Mayall returned to their "Coyote" dynamic in the double act the Dangerous Brothers with Edmondson as "Sir Adrian Dangerous" in Saturday Live (1985–1987).

In 1985 Edmondson starred with his wife Jennifer Saunders in Happy Families, a rural comedy drama written by Ben Elton, which appeared on the BBC and told the story of the dysfunctional Fuddle family.

In 1987, Edmondson reunited with Planer and Mayall to star in Filthy Rich & Catflap, a comic attack on showbiz, again written by Elton.

He played "Edward Catflap", a coarse, drunken minder of light-entertainment nonentity "Richie Rich".

In this show Edmondson displayed the same slapstick characteristics as Vyvyan in The Young Ones but was closer in personality to his later character "Eddie Hitler" in Bottom.

The show was cancelled after one series.

In the 2000s, Edmondson appeared in numerous TV programmes in drama roles including Jonathan Creek, Holby City, Miss Austen Regrets, as himself on Hell's Kitchen and created the sitcom Teenage Kicks.

Edmondson performed and wrote for the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band (2006-2007).

In 2008 he formed a folk punk band, the Bad Shepherds, singing and playing mandola and mandolin.

In 2011, he presented a series of shows for ITV: The Dales, which focused on people working in the Yorkshire Dales, and Ade in Britain in which he undertook a tour of numerous places in Britain.

In 2013, Edmondson was crowned the winner of Celebrity Masterchef, and from 2019 to 2020, he appeared in the BBC soap opera EastEnders as Daniel Cook.

In 2022, he also played Ebenezer Scrooge in the Royal Shakespeare Company's adaptation of A Christmas Carol.