Adrian Edmondson

Adrian Charles Edmondson (24 January 1957) is in English actor and comedian. He is best known for his roles as Vyvyan Basterd in TV series The Young Ones and Eddie Hitler in Bottom.

Edmonson was born in Bradford, West Riding of Yorkshire. He is married to comedienne Jennifer Saunders. They have three daughters.

Vyvyan Basterd

Played by Adrian Edmondson, Vyvyan is a psychotic punk metal medical student. He has orange-dyed & spiked hair and four metal stars seemingly embedded into his forehead. In the episode "Interesting", he drinks a pint of blue liquid which makes his hair fall out and the number 666 is visible on the side of his head. He is extremely violent and regularly attacks Neil and Rick with pieces of wood, cricket bats and other large objects. He never harms Mike, whom he respects, and often addresses as "Michael". He despises Rick more than he does Neil - when Rick, Mike and Neil meet his mother at a bar in the episode "Boring", he calls both Neil and Mike his friends, but not Rick, whom he refers to as "a complete bastard." Ironically, this antagonistic relationship between Rick and Vyvyan makes them virtually inseparable, as the two spend by far more time together than with the other housemates. Unlike Neil and Rick, Vyvyan appears to come from a working class background (something Rick incorrectly believes himself to have).

Vyvyan owns a Glaswegian hamster named Special Patrol Group ("SPG" for short) whom he is very fond of, although SPG is also frequently subjected to Vyvyan's extreme violence, although it is usually provoked, such as when SPG bit Vyvyan in "Flood" or plugging in the TV after Vyvyan swallowed it in "Bomb". His mother is a barmaid and former shoplifter, who before "Boring" had not seen Vyvyan in ten years and has no idea who his father is.

Vyvyan occasionally displays feats of superhuman strength (surviving a pickaxe through his head, moving entire walls with his bare hands, lifting Neil above his head in a fight with Rick, biting through a brick and even being decapitated and re-attaching his own head) and eats just about anything: televisions, dead rats, caviar and cornflakes with ketchup.

In "Bambi" Vyvyan displays impressive mathematical talent (working out instantly that he has worn his three pairs of knickers 269 times each since their last wash), yet also that he cannot tell the time, although he was earlier able to point out that it was midnight without any difficulty.

In the episode "Flood", he develops a potion to transform a person into an axe-wielding homicidal maniac (he claims "it's basically a cure... for not being an axe-wielding homicidal maniac... the potential market's enormous!"). He has more friends than the others but apparently "he doesn't like any of them." He frequently causes havoc or damage such as wiring the doorbell to a bomb to "pep it up a bit" and adding a small car engine to the vacuum cleaner as previously it "looked a bit on the tentative side" - which then proceeds to suck up the carpet, the floorboards and a friend of Neil's (the vacuum also prompted one of the few clashes between Vyvyan and Mike; when Mike admonished Vyv not to use it anymore, Vyv replied by calling him a "poof").

Vyvyan is the only member of the group to own a car - a yellow Ford Anglia with red flames painted along the sides, although he is not the only house member who can drive - during Summer Holiday Rick is briefly seen driving the stolen double decker bus.