Comedian Rik Mayall dies

British comedian and actor Rik Mayall has died at the age of 56.

His management team announced the death but the cause has not yet been confirmed, Radio New Zealand reports.

Mayall came to fame playing an obnoxious would-be poet in the 1980s comedy series The Young Ones alongside comedy partner Adrian Edmondson.

He co-wrote the series with Lise Mayer and Ben Elton. It ran for 12 episodes between 1982 and 1985 and shared cult status and schoolboy humour with later sitcom Bottom.

Mayall and Edmondson's slapstick comedy often involved fires, explosions, and hefty blows to the head with a frying pan.

He appeared in the Blackadder series, in which he played the lecherous Lord Flashheart, and as a slimy politician in The New Statesman.

He was left seriously ill after a quad bike accident in 1998 that put him in a coma for several days, the BBC reports.

The actor, who was married with three children, died at home in London on Monday.

The Metropolitan Police said they were called to reports of a sudden death of a man in his 50s in Barnes in southwest London. They said the death was not believed to be suspicious.