It's such a curious thing, to form a connection with a face on your TV screen. To become the person that you are today because of the influence of someone you've never met, who knows nothing of you and reached you through a pane of glass.
It's an even more curious thing to grieve the death of such a person, to feel, individually and yet en masse, a right to that grief, a keen and personal sense of loss.
Whilst James Gandolfini's death is a contender - I still haven't summoned the emotional strength to re-watch the Sopranos final scene - never has the passing of a perfect stranger struck me more painfully than Rik Mayall's, a man who's comedy is inseparable from memories of my childhood, who's handwriting hangs in the hallway of my family home; 'To Rae, Love and Snogs, Rik Mayall', (for my brother) 'Happy New Year, Arseface'.
With the aforementioned brother in tow, belly-down on my nan's living room floor, we frequently neglected the outside world in favour of Bottom on VHS. We had every episode, every live show - except for that one that my cousin borrowed and never returned, the bastard - and knew every punchline to every joke off by heart, even the ones that sailed clean over our six and eight year old heads. When I was ten, we saw the last live Bottom performance, An Arse Oddity, and I remember with utter clarity how our (late) arrival prompted rows of swiveled heads and stares; we were the only kids in the theater.
My mother, as I think is clear, was very laid back about what kind of media we were exposed to, something for which I will be eternally grateful, as it allowed the entrance of Monty Python, Blackadder, The Young Ones, Father Ted etc, into our lives. These programs shaped my perception of comedy, instilled in me a love of the British sense of humour, of the bleakness and wryness and the self deprecation, all shot through with a vein of surrealism and silliness, that stays with me to this day.
It's beyond me how I would ever get through life without the company of comedy; when I can't sleep, when I need a distraction, when I need to hear another voice in the room to detract from the ones chattering incessantly in my head, my favourite programs, invariably all British sitcoms, can be relied on like nothing else to bring some relief; they are a window to look out of.
And this is true, most of all, for Bottom.
It's odd that nothing leaves me pining for my childhood more than watching middle-aged men in over-sized pants batter each other with frying pans and make fart jokes, but truly little else does. At the first note of the opening theme, I feel a familiarity, a comfort; some throw back to Sunday afternoons, staving off the dread of the upcoming school day with TV. Laughing too much from somewhere deep and sore in the pit of my stomach.
I want to give real testament to Rik Mayall's life. I want to list the comedians that he influenced, charter the part he played in spawning an alternative comedy scene that is still influencing comedy today. But somehow I can't do so with real feeling; that he was just a silly man who made me laugh as a kid feels like the biggest testament to his life that I can provide.
He was a wonder, an explosion of energy that flung itself from one end of a stage to another, a shameless reveler in base level comedy, in a silliness and rudeness and shoutiness that is the essence of being a child.
I still know every line in Bottom, and it still makes me laugh anyway.
Now that he's gone, however, the nostalgia I feel when I watch it, is different; it's heavy, weighed down with sadness. I will never loose the laughs, stored safely within my old videos; but my childhood is something that I'll never get back, and Rik Mayall's death feels painfully symbolic of that.
"I feel sorry for you, you zeros, you nobodies. What's going to live on after you die? Nothing, that's what! This house will become a shrine! And punks and skins and Rastas will all gather round and all hold their hands in sorrow for their fallen leader! And all the grown-ups will say, 'But why are the kids crying?' And the kids will say, 'Haven't you heard? Rick is dead! The People's Poet is dead!' ... And then one particularly sensitive and articulate teenager will say, 'Why kids, do you understand nothing? How can Rick be dead when we still have his poems?"
