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Post-mortem for British comic and actor Rik Mayall

A post-mortem examination is expected to be carried out to establish how British comic and actor Rik Mayall died.

The star, who died aged 56 at his London home, shot to fame playing poetry-writing anarchist Rick in The Young Ones.

A spokeswoman for West London Coroners Court says the examination may be carried out on Thursday.

Tributes have flooded in for Mayall since his death on Monday, with his daughter Bonnie describing him as her “generous, foul mouthed and hysterical father”.

“My dad was loved not only by my family, but by many many others,” she wrote on Facebook.

“We will never forget him and neither will the world.

“R.I.P to the man, the myth, the legend – my wonderful, generous, foul mouthed and hysterical father. My idol now and forever.

“We love you daddy.”

He is likely to feature in this weekend’s top 40 after Noble England, a track he recorded for the 2010 World Cup which failed to chart, was backed by fans on social media sending it to number 38 in the midweek sales chart.

His Comic Strip Presents… colleague Peter Richardson, whose son was one of the last people to see the actor alive, said he was happy and healthy in the hours before his death.

Richardson, who directed Mayall in a series of TV shows, told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme his son saw him around half an hour before he died.

“He was happily chatting away and it was very quick and we still don’t quite know what happened but it was a seizure of some sort,” he said.

Mayall, who leaves his wife Barbara and three children, Rosie, Sidney and Bonnie, survived an almost fatal quad bike accident in 1998 which left him in a coma for several days.

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