You've not got Mayall

The death of Rik Mayall on Monday has led to a concerted outpouring of grief not seen since the death of Nelson Mandela last year, at least from British sources.  I caught up with The Young Ones on a VHS boxset of both series, saw bits of The New Statesman but never in a continuous run for some reason and laughed so hysterically while watching Bottom on BBC2 that my mum came to my room (where I had a telly of my own) to enquire why I was so loud and if I could keep it down.  Drop Dead Fred, Bring Me the Head of Mavis Davis and Guesthouse Paradiso received such critical drubbings that I stayed away, though Bottom was also panned but brought me much joy.
Perhaps some of the appeal lay in what Caitlin Moran on Newsnight described as being a teenager in an adult's body.  Thus Mayall could tap into the same humour as that which delighted teenagers.  This could lead to trouble though as when he joined a group of comedians campaigning against the euro currency when it looked likely that a referendum on joining might be given.  In line with teenage predilection for conflating modern Germany with its Nazi antecedents, he played Hitler as an avid supporter of the euro (highly ironic given that it was France that forced Germany to give up the Deutschmark in favour of the euro as the price of reunification).  The Board of Deputies of British Jews slammed this section of the ad for making light of the suffering Hitler caused, an episode that found its way into the title of Mayall's autobiography.  The offensiveness of the comparison (Harry Enfield was much the same in his own show with his prejudice expressed in Jurgen the German) offers further proof that it's not so much the Germans to whom one should not mention the war, but certain British people who clearly cannot get over it in their minds, despite having not lived through it.