Adrian Edmondson

Adrian Edmondson was born in Bradford Yorkshire He went to Manchester University to study drama Whilst he was there he met Rik Mayall and the pair began performing as 20th Century Coyote The act continued after university when Adrian Rik moved to London and they became two of the leading lights in the new alternative comedy scene performing at the newly established Comedy Store and setting up their own club The Comic Strip with Peter Richardson Nigel Planer Jennifer Saunders Dawn French and Alexei Sayle This spawned two 1980s TV series The Young Ones 1982 and The Comic Strip Presents 1982 In the 1990s Ade Rik continued their partnership with a new series called Bottom 1991 which ran for three seasons and became a major success on the live circuit It was basically a live sitcom liberally sprinkled with slapstick humour and the pair did 5 long tours between 1993 and 2003 Simultaneously Adrian established himself as an actor doing two improvised TV films under the Screen One and Screen Two umbrella with director Les Blair Screen Two Honest Decent and True 1986 and Screen One News Hounds 1990 winner of the BAFTA for best single drama He was a regular in the hospital drama Holby City 1999 from 2005 2008 He took the lead in a drama documentary about the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster in the series Surviving Disaster 2006 and appeared as Henry Austen in the TV movie Miss Austen Regrets 2008 the film Blood 2012 and the drama series Prey 2014 But his most notable dramatic role to date is that of Count Rostov in the BBC series War Peace 2016