At some point in the early hours of this morning I shared this song online referring to it as beautiful. It is a wonderful tribute to Rik Mayall, a comedy great. An hour later I was still at my computer when the news came through that Robin Williams had been found dead. What a shit summer for comedy this is turning out to be.

The death of someone you don’t know personally is a strange thing because it is difficult to explain why we get so affected by it. Like Mayall, Robin Williams is someone we couldn’t have imagined life without.

In later years I had drifted away from the career of Mr. Williams, which is something I feel I should rectify. Having said that, as good as his films were, his finest moments were on stage. I spent a lot of last night/this morning watching An Evening with Robin Williams Live at the Met on YouTube. The show is a masterpiece of standup comedy that I haven’t seen for quite a few years and it is still the show that aspiring comedians should watch while taking notes. I found a more recent live appearance too, I suppose you could call it a comeback, and he had lost none of the magic. His improvisation ability was evident in Aladdin, where Disney took the unusual step of animating around his adlibbed liberties with the script. Another parallel with Rik Mayall was the capability to set aside the funny and carry off dramatic roles while at the same time remaining a comedian at heart, or our hearts.

Robin Williams had been suffering from/living with depression and it eventually became too much for him and he took the step of ending not only his life but also his pain. People often say that suicide is a cowardly act, but the truth is that making the decision to end your own life is the bravest decision of all. Living with the condition myself I know too well that the sweet release of death is the only thing that will stop my moods and put me at peace. I have even gone on record (in this article) as saying that suicide is how I will die.

Williams isn’t the first comedian to have been hurting underneath the laughs, and I doubt he’ll be the last. If it does something, even if it educates one person that depression is a serious illness, then the death of a much loved entertainer won’t have been for nothing.

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