The odd couple!

RICHIE and Eddie, the world's two biggest losers, are back to show us their Bottom.

After a four-year absence from the live arena, Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson, who play the hapless duo, are promising two months of "slapstick comedy on acid."

Their new show, Bottom 4: An A**e Oddity, is touring the country during the autumn and comes to Blackburn's King George's Hall on Friday. It marks the 25th anniversary of one of the most successful double acts in British comedy.

In their latest offering, Richie and Eddie continue to behave like two pimples on life's behind as they display their own unique sense of the ridiculous.

Yet despite their foibles, Richie and Eddie remain tremendously popular. Edmondson reckons that they've endured because they enjoy performing so much. Their enthusiasm is infectious.

"The secret is that we're out for a good time." he said. On stage, he just wants to generate hysteria. "We don't care about looking cool or posing. We don't have any agenda, apart from 'Please laugh.'

"There are no rules. We just go from moment to moment trying to crank up the excitement."

And that makes for an exhilarating evening's entertainment. In the new show, Richie and Eddie start off trapped on Hooligan's Island before they become embroiled in all sorts of surreal happenings.

Bottom has been exposed to us in various guises since its ebullient creators first met at Manchester University 25 years ago. Through 20th Century Coyote, the Dangerous Brothers, The Young Ones, Filthy, Rich and Catflap, and now Bottom, Mayall and Edmondson have been hitting each other and falling over for a quarter of a century now. But the joke never seems to pall.

"You have to surrender to Bottom in order to enjoy it," said Mayall.

"Bottom is just a stupid, stupid cartoon full of stupid jokes told with tremendous panache.

"People have trouble with it because comedy's been intellectualised an awful lot during the last 15 years, but when you get down to it, all you're watching is a couple of guys being stupid and hitting each other.

"The French love us, of course. Its attraction is complete escapism. It's like "forget about the day's work and just laugh."

There is certainly something quite thrilling about witnessing the absolute pleasure the duo take in knocking seven bells out of each other.

"We adore the slapstick -- and so do our audiences," said Mayall.

"It's everything everyone has ever wanted to do to other people. Richie and Eddie are acting out the way we'd all like to behave if only we were allowed to. It offers a fantastic escape from reality."

"We all laugh when we witness other people's pain," Edmondson chipped in. Like all good double acts, they tend to complement one another's thoughts.

"Tw***ing someone with a spade without any consequences is something we'd all like to do. How many times have you sat fuming in a car, thinking "I wish I had a machine-gun now?"

The other reason audiences warm to Richie and Eddie is --paradoxically -- because they are such failures.

"People like them because they reflect aspects of their own lives," Edmondson said.

"In all our lives, there's not a lot to do, no one will achieve very much and we end up with someone we just about manage to get on with.

"No one else would have Richie or Eddie. That's representative of a lot of people's existences. Bottom is not as far-fetched as people might think."

The reason why Mayall and Edmondson continue to be so funny is that they have an almost telepathic understanding of each other.

"I'm not Eddie and Rik isn't Richie, but we certainly have those leanings. When we met at university we found that we'd been the same person at different schools: we'd had the same rebellious attitude, done the same plays, cocked a snook at sport in the same way.

"Our mums had even sent us to university with the same dressing gown, a Marks and Spencer tartan number if I remember rightly."

"These similarities meant that when it came to performing, we had a shorthand; we understood the same jokes without even having to say the punchline. When you get two people who know each other so well and amuse each other so naturally, then you've got the basis for a long-lasting double act."

"Double acts are just so much more exciting to watch. It may just be me, but I find stand-ups boring after 15 minutes.

"There's never any dynamic, and after a while you know that there's not going to be anything else happening on stage.

"Maybe I'm very modern and have a very short attention span but I can never work up the interest to go and see the second half of a stand-up show. But with a double act you always know that there will be something going on. They just spark off each other so brilliantly."

Despite reaching their mid-40s, Mayall and Edmondson show no sign of losing their taste for Bottom.

According to Edmondson: "We'll carry on doing Richie and Eddie as long as people keep coming to see them. Audiences still seem keen to watch the show. We're always surprised by how many young people flock to see the show. I suppose the idea is, "get em young, brainwash 'em and then they never leave."

Mayall displays similar enthusiasm for continuing the double act: "We've always been rockers -- that's our generation -- and rockers never give up."