How sexy was Rik Mayall? Sexy as in cool and sexy as in, well, sexy? The man himself had one answer: “the most intelligent, sexy human being in the history of time,” the comedian once said of himself.

Quite frankly, for a time at the start of the 1980s, that might have been underestimating it.

On Archive on 4 on Saturday Ben Elton recalled meeting Mayall for the first time and being knocked out by “this immensely handsome beautiful man … I remember the first words I heard him say. He said, ‘Hi. I’m Rik Mayall,’ as if he was saying ‘I am Elvis.’”

Back then the teenager I was would have probably said that was a fair comparison. I didn’t see Mayall and the rest of the alternative comedy crew down the Comic Strip at Paul Raymond’s Revue Bar in Soho, but on late-night shows on BBC Two in provincial Northern Ireland.

Even so, I remember being riveted when Mayall would appear under the name 20th Century Coyote reading his “poems” about Vanessa Redgrave or deconstructing jokes and doing pratfalls with Ade Edmondson as The Dangerous Brothers. (“A joke is just something to say while you’re being funny,” Mayall pointed out.) For the first time it seemed like clever British comedy didn’t have to come with a “Made in Oxbridge” label attached. This was redbrick, postpunk humour, all the way from Manchester University.

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One of the joys of Archive on 4: Rik Mayall, Panglobal Phenomenon was its celebration of the early days of Mayall’s comedy career. Those Comic Strip years and his appearances on the Scottish sketch show A Kick Up the Eighties (as remembered here by Sanjeev Kohli) in which Mayall turned up as the Brummie “investigative journalist” Kevin Turvey.

In short, the stuff he did before The Young Ones established and maybe slightly calcified Mayall’s comic persona.

Et apres Turvey - as Louis XV didn’t quite say - le deluge. Lord Flashheart, Alan B’stard, Richie Rich (though, to be fair, no one talks much about him much), and Richie Richard in Bottom.

It is now 10 years since Mayall died of a heart attack and this retrospective on his life and work was a reminder of what we lost. Presented by writer Max Kinnings, who worked with Mayall on his fictionalised biography Bigger than Hitler, Better than Christ, its USP was the recordings Kinnings and Mayall made whilst working on the book.

It was lovely to hear his voice again but I’m not sure these tapes were that riveting other than providing a behind-the-scenes sense of the man when he wasn’t in full performance mode.

That was also the appeal of the contributions from the likes of Elton, Helen Lederer, Peter Richardson and Mayall’s children; a chance to catch a glimpse of Rik not "The Rik" as he called his comic alter ego.

What I took away from the show, though, was a sense that, although Mayall felt like a real rupture with British comic traditions when I first saw him, taken in the round he fitted right in with a line of familiar homegrown humour.

Rik’s “sexiness” was only visible to himself for much of his career. He more often than not presented as sexually frustrated, which is a trope you can trace back to Tony Hancock, Benny Hill, Steptoe fils, Bob and Terry in The Likely Lads, Les Dawson or almost any other British comedy creation you can mention.

“I think it’s a condemnation of masculinity, Rik,” Mayall said on the tapes of his Young Ones persona. “As was Richie,” he added, referring to his character in Bottom. “Yeah, because he can’t get laid,” Kinnings suggested. “That’s it,” Mayall agreed. Not so sexy after all then.

The Herald: Sanjeev Kohli Sanjeev Kohli (Image: free)

Sanjeev Kohli also turned up on Radio 4 with a new series of the sitcom Fags, Mags and Bags, co-written and performed by Kohli and Donald McLeary. Series 11 now, which makes it one of the longest-running radio sitcoms and certainly the longest to come out in Radio Scotland. For all the mentions of Elon Musk, OnlyFans and Only Murders in the Building, the fact that Karl Malden’s nose, 1980s snooker star Tony Meo and Derek Jarman’s movies all got a mention suggested its writers (and its audience for that matter) are of a certain age.

Finally, driving home from the supermarket on Sunday morning I caught the end of Desert Island Discs with guest Rebel Wilson. Her story of proposing to her girlfriend at Disneyland while a violinist played the egregious Elton John song Can You Feel the Love Tonight frankly gave me the ick.

But then, discussing the birth of her surrogate daughter, she talked about the song playing while she had her embryo transferred.

“My doctor likes to play a song that’s giving positivity to the embryo and so the song she played is The Beatles classic called Here Comes the Sun.”

As the first notes played I found myself tearing up. Not sexy or cool, really. But I’m not ashamed.

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