

He traces the Mini obsession to Atkinson's childhood, where he learned to drive in his mother's Morris Minor on the family farm. "I'm pretty sure Rowan picked the Mini and I'm pretty sure he picked the colour of it as the colour that he'd least like a car to be," he says. All I know is that he crashed it himself a couple of weeks later."Ĭurtis says Atkinson was the driving force behind the selection of the Mini as his co-star. We actually went round to his house and he unveiled and introduced us to his new car like people would to a new child or something.


"He's the only person I know who ever had a party for a car. "If Rowan had his way, the only character in anything he does would be the cars.
#Mr bean mini series#
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."
#Mr bean mini tv#
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. Bean’s Mini Cooper in the opening shots.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. Bean driving around Buckingham Palace below as well as a snippet of that episode where you can see Mr. That’s when he comes up with the ingenious idea to strap himself to the roof of the mini atop a large arm chair and using a system of ropes and remote controls, he’s able to drive his Mini home.
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Bean has stuffed his entire car full of all the items he’s bought at the shops, he no longer has room for himself. In one memorable episode simply titled January Sales Do-It-Yourself, after Mr. TV icon Mr Bean visits Buckingham Palace: #9News /9rfkj0kLxv 4, 2015) Rowan Atkinson took the time to drive around Buckingham Palace in his green Mini Cooper, the same one he’s seen driving in his sitcom. For the 25th anniversary of the show’s first episode according to the Daily Mail on their piece that dropped earlier yesterday (Sept. Bean hit the British airwaves and stayed on for a good five years for a total run of 15 episodes. The year was 1990 and the first episode of Mr. Rowan Atkinson celebrated the 25th anniversary of his iconic show by driving around in a Mini.
