We seem to be losing an awful lot of good people this year, but today started with news of the death of one of my personal heroes,
Ken Campbell. He really was one of the greats, though as I write the BBC News site hasn't even bothered to mention his passing, preferring to lead their entertainment pages with the important news that
Billie Piper hasn't thought about whether she should return to Dr Who or not. Thank God the world knows about that. I don't expect the BBC to be too excited about Campbell's more experimental theatre work (though they should be), but he was in Fawlty Towers and Til Death Us Do Part and if they really think that Dr Who is the defining cultural achievement of all time (which it might be) then he was also the greatest Dr Who we never had, sadly losing out to Sylvester McCoy because he was apparently "too dark for TV". Which is just what Dr Who could have done with at the time.
Luckily there are people out there who appreciate what we have lost and it would be hard to top
this blog by Mark Borkowski.
Personally, I first became aware of Campbell (at least consciously) when I was cast in a children's play he had written. It was in fact that first show I ever did at the Edinburgh Fringe, Old King Cole. This was just a student production of a show that Campbell had written years before, so I wasn't working with him, but this silly and delightful script was brilliant fun to perform, loved by kids and adults alike. In fact TV's Emma Kennedy came and watched it about a dozen times, so jel was she that she wasn't in it. She would have been great in it too.
Then in the 90s when I had moved to London I got to see several of the great man's one man shows. More than any stand up comedian he showed me the potential of what one person can do in front of an audience. He was inventive and honest and human and alien, but most of all very funny. Once I laughed so loudly that Campbell passed comment on me. This was, alas the closest I ever got to conversing with him.
Although if I had been a bit sharper I might have worked with him earlier in the year. We were casting for Absolutely Scrabulous and looking for someone to play the Lord of the Rings and Scrabble obsessed bar owner, Ken - a man who had made money in bollards and now ran a wine bar, thinking he was a bit of a card, but instead was rather loveably dull. We cast Henry Goodman, who was great, though the day after we'd offered it to him it suddenly hit me that Ken Campbell would have been perfect. It's a double shame now as I would have liked to meet Ken and tell him how much he meant to me, though after the sad death of Anton Rodgers last year, I might have started to feel culpable if another actor I'd worked with had died so soon after meeting me.
Anyway, it seems a shame that Campbell dying isn't deemed as important as Billie Piper having failed to think about something, but maybe popular acclaim isn't as important as having genuinely touched and inspired people. I can't believe he was only 66, not because he seemed particularly old, just because he's been around for so long. I suppose he already seemed old to the 25 year old me, when he was just 50.
Very sad news. RIP Ken Campbell.
