In the news: Rik Mayall - Joker's progress makes doctors happy

ADRIAN (Ade) Edmondson was one of the first people to visit when the comedy actor Rik Mayall was rushed to hospital unconscious after an accident last week, writes Louise Jury.

The two have been best friends since they met as drama students at Manchester University in 1975.

Mayall asked Edmondson, already a drama department star, to work with him. "Well, I'll have to have a contract, luv," Edmondson said.

The response went something like this: "I promise it will be horrible and nothing will ever go right. La de da, Rik Mayall."

Until Thursday, when Mayall was found by his wife, Barbara, unconscious beneath his quad bike at their Devon farm, nothing could have been further from the truth.

Both in partnership with Edmondson and in a solo career, life for Mayall, 40 this year, has been rather sweet.

He may have scraped into Manchester on worse than expected A-level grades, because he spent too much time in the sixth form snogging. But since graduating, he has proved a man of many parts, most of them funny, many of them vile.

It was Rick, the spotty twit of a student, who catapulted him to fame in 1982 in The Young Ones, the cult series he co-wrote with Edmondson and Lisa Meyer, his then girlfriend. To some, he has never escaped the Rick mantle. "Reviewers always seem surprised that I can act," he said once.

Yet the evidence is manifest. He has starred in the Comic Strip, Blackadder, as the oily politician Alan B'Stard in The New Statesman and Richie, a sort of older cousin of Rick's, in Bottom, another show with Edmondson.

He has won awards including, recently, an Emmy for voicing Mr Toad in two animated films of The Wind In The Willows and a Best Actor award for Bring Me The Head of Mavis Davis from the San Remo Film Festival.

But his work has not only been lightweight. Until Stephen Fry's sudden breakdown and departure, Mayall had received good reviews for his role in Simon Gray's spy drama Cell Mates. And he recently finished Remember Me? a film by Michael Frayn with a cast including Robert Lindsay.

For the last 12 years, he has been married to Barbara, a former make- up artist he met while he was still living with Lisa Meyer.

In one of the messier parts of his life, both women were pregnant when Mayall eloped to Barbados with Barbara and married her. Yet Ms Meyer, who lost her baby, remains his friend.

In recent interviews, Mayall had indicated a mellowing from the days when all he and Edmondson wanted were beer and women.

Last year, he had bought the home in the South Hams area of Devon as a retreat for his wife and three daughters, Rosie, 11, Sidney, nine, and two-year-old Bonnie. It was in one of the fields there that Mrs Mayall found him trapped beneath his four-wheel bike.

Yesterday, she was "more optimistic" than earlier about his condition in a specialist neurological ward at Derriford Hospital, Plymouth.

"We think he is OK," she said. A hospital spokeswoman said they were almost through the critical initial 72-hour period of waiting for the brain to stop swelling. Doctors were "happy with his progress".

MORE FUN BLOND

Rik Mayall had his hair dyed blond for his recent film, Bring Me The Head of Mavis Davis and announced the intention of keeping his new look. "Being blond did wonders for my libido," he said. "Made me feel extremely sexy. I kept rushing home and attacking my wife Barbara."

COMIC REUNION

Mayall's family gave permission for a Channel 4 comedy special, Four Men In A Car, to go out as planned last night.

It reunited him with other members of the Comic Strip series that was made in the 1980s - Ade Edmondson and his wife Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French, Nigel Planer and Peter Richardson.

IT MAKES YOU SICK

"There's an excellent, excellent sick routine. I had this vomit machine and it was just fantastic. It came up the side of my arm via a tube so I could make out the puke was coming down my nose." - Mayall describing the video of his last Live Bottom tour with Adrian Edmondson.