Is it, did you know,
did you have a fear,
I mean feel that you would be like this cool
to so many generations?
Like, you're huge!
Um. I'm huge.
No not really. I suppose you don't, you just,
particularly when you're young and you're starting off
and your finding your comic feet
that you just want to have fun, you know.
That I suppose is what drives you,
and you think,
I suppose with Mr. Bean in particular
because he's a largely silent character
that there's no doubt that he was slightly contrived.
(Rachel laughs hysterically)
To have, there he is.
Um, he was slightly contrived
to have international appeal, I suppose.
Right because there's no language barrier.
Because it was based actually on a visit, on holiday,
in Venice that I had in 1985.
Quite a long time ago
and I just remember noticing all the musical artists
who were popular at the time, you know,
the Duran Duran and David Bowie,
and classical musicians, like Danny O'Bownbourn,
and I thought how odd that musicians generally assume
they have an international audience.
(Rachel giggles lightly)
Whereas, if you do comedy,
you assume you've just got your country.
(Rachel giggles) And your kind of people
who are going to enjoy what you do.
And I thought, well wouldn't it be fun,
cuz I had already started exploring
just doing purely visual comedy,
whether I could, you know, do that,
I'd explored it on stage,
and I was interested in trying to put visual comedy
through the character of Mr. Bean on TV.
And, so that's where it started.
The first ones we did were in 1988, 89
and then it sort of grew from there,
and now we've got this uh--
Weird. It's like it's got (crowd applauds)
its own life.
(applause drowns out remaining comments)