

He also has a truck licence, raced for two seasons in the one-make Renault 5 GT Turbo series and writes columns on cars for British enthusiast magazines.

The British comedian has owned a string of ultra-expensive supercars over the years, including a Ferrari, a Honda NSX and a McLaren F1 that he famously crashed. "The Mini represents the very heart of Rowan's commitment to the project."Ītkinson is a well-known car tragic. He loved doing all the stunts on that himself," Curtis says. "When he came up with the Mini he was very thrilled. "That was the first question Rowan would ever ask of any human being: 'What did they drive?' "I can remember Rowan's tremendous excitement at the thought of what would he drive."
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It took us years to get round to ever filming it for TV and I think one of the great joys of filming it for TV was that he could get out and about because in his original manifestation he walked on to an empty stage with no props." "Mr Bean was invented as a stage thing originally. He's the epitome of wilfulness and selfishness and silliness."Ĭurtis says that once Mr Bean graduated from a one-man stage show into a television series, a car was guaranteed to be central to the plot, thanks to Atkinson's obsession with all things automotive. I think that's one of the things kids have always liked about him. "One of the interesting things about Mr Bean is his aggressive selfishness and ruthlessness. Richard Curtis, the man who co-wrote Mr Bean and Blackadder with Atkinson, says the road rage incidents were the manifestation of Mr Bean's all-consuming selfishness. There were also the infamous road-rage incidents where he terrorised Reliant Robin owners and bumped parked cars out of legal parking spots into no-standing zones. While the rooftop sofa episode was probably the best-remembered of the Mini stunts, Atkinson also broke new ground by steering with his feet while changing out of pyjamas in the back seat, and using the windscreen wiper fluid to rinse after brushing his teeth. The Mini may have first won hearts on the big screen in the action thriller The Italian Job but it was as a slapstick sidekick that it truly made its mark. In the intervening years, the diminutive green hatch with the black bonnet has become an automotive legend of the big and small screen, ranked alongside The Dukes of Hazzard's General Lee, Back to the Future's De Lorean and the VW Beetle from Herbie. It's now two decades since Rowan Atkinson's Mr Bean found himself perched in an armchair on the roof of a Mini, trying to steer his way home with a length of rope, a brick and a broom.
