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3) A chess-player, in An American Werewolf in London (1981)

It's fairly blink-and-you'll-miss it, but Mayall is very much visible in John Landis's seminal 1981 shocker, as a shifty, boggle-eyed, chess-playing local in the ominously named pub, The Slaughtered Lamb.

4) In The Comic Strip Presents (1982-2012)

Mayall (and Edmondson) were core members of the Comic Strip, the early-Eighties collective that – at their own stand-up night in Soho – effectively rewrote the rulebook of British comedy. Also including Dawn French, Nigel Planer, Peter Richardson, Jennifer Saunders and Alexei Sayle – along with Robbie Coltrane and future father-of-Lily, Keith Allen – they broadcast their first TV special on November 2, 1982, the vey first night of Channel 4. Mere mention of the name of that episode – Five Go Mad in Dorset – along with the later Spinal Tap-ish Bad News Tour and Spaghetti Western parody A Fistful of Traveller's Cheques (in which Mayall was hilarious as an Eastwood-esque gunslinger) is enough to put a smile on the face of any Briton aged 35-50.

5) Rick, in the Young Ones (1982-84)

Not only did Mayall co-write this riotous Bristol-set sitcom along with fellow Manchester graduate (and then girlfriend) Lise Mayer, he was also, time and again, the funniest thing in it. His try-hard student with the worst-haircut-in-the-world constantly stole the show, whether trying to overdose on vitamin C tablets, murdering (and unintentionally "sowing") his mild-mannered housemate Neil (Planer), or, on another occasion, deliberately imprisoning the latter in a bathtub in complete darkness. "What are you planning to do?" he shrieked at the poor hippie as he slammed the bathroom door on him. "Photosynthesise?"

6) Reading Roald Dahl on Jackanory (1986)

Roald Dahl didn't, it is probably fair to say, write George's Marvellous Medicine especially for Mayall to read out loud – but, as millions of delighted young Jackanory viewers in the mid-Eighties would gladly have testified, it certainly seemed as though he did. Several older observers complained to the BBC that Mayall's presentation was "both dangerous and offensive", which presumably was exactly why the youngsters loved it.

7) Lord Flashheart (Blackadder II, 1986)

Having briefly appeared as Mad Gerald in The Black Adder in 1983 (back when Blackadder was the dunce, and Baldrick the brains), Mayall returned to play the preposterous, Queen Elizabeth-enrapturing adventurer in the second series, later resurrecting the character once again as Squadron Commander Flashheart in Blackadder Goes Forth. Seldom was his talent for outlandishly overblown characters put to better use.

8) Alan B'Stard (The New Statesman, 1987-'94)

To the eyes of many, Mayall reached a new high (and finally revealed to telly audiences that he was in fact really rather handsome) with this portrayal of the ultimate caddish, Thatcher-era politico, Alan B'Stard. The name alone was close to genius, and, in the course of The New Statesman's four series, the MP for the fictional constituency of Haltemprice would, among other exploits, fake his own assassination to bring back hanging (and pocket £1,000,000 in the process), get himself released from a Siberian gulag in the wake of his assassination attempt on Mikhail Gorbachev, and become a "real-life" Sunday Telegraph columnist. B'Stard's wife Sarah, meanwhile, was a vicious, Narcissistic nympho who wanted Alan gone so she could have his money, though who could blame her.

9) Richie (Bottom, 1991-95)

If the 1987 Young Ones spin-off Filthy Rich & Catflap divided opinion, Bottom – which yet again reunited Mayall and Edmondson as a dysfunctional odd-couple, here living in Hammersmith – positively cleaved it down the middle. Many found Bottom's lavish dollops of lavatorial humour too much to bear; others thought the duo had never been better. They rekindled the characters in the 1999 spin-off movie Guesthouse Paradiso, which didn't set box offices ablaze but was notable for revealing that Richie was in fact called Richard Twat, though pronounced – as Richie was at pains to point out – Thwaite.

10) In his semi-autobiography (2005)

The title of Mayall's "in-character", part-fictionalised literary account of his own life? "Bigger than Hitler, Better than Christ". No further epitaph needed.

READ: Rik Mayall dies aged 56