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Well 2016 is turning out to be a bitch. I have already lost a friend to cancer, and now Alan Rickman joins David Bowie in the 69 Club, which is not half as much fun as it sounds - though to be honest I always found 69s to be quite disappointing. I can’t enjoy myself if I am being forced to concentrate on something else at the same time, especially if placed in an unnecessarily uncomfortable position. Take it in turns folks. A 6, then a 9 or vice-versa. You’ll all have a lot more fun. As long as the person getting the 6 doesn’t fall asleep before they can give the 9.
I was in a dark 18th Century cellar when I got the news about Alan Rickman, as a notification pinged up on my phone (we were house hunting again, but what a strange juxtaposition. Though to be fair not as strange a juxtaposition as if we buy this house and I end up playing snooker against myself there). And like with David Bowie it was unexpected and shocking news, but for me personally more upsetting. It was all I could do to make my “Die Hard” fans joke on Twitter. We’d watched that film again at Christmas and as usual I had marvelled at the majestic performance that Rickman gave and wondered if it was his presence that made this action picture transcend the other films in the genre and become something more special. He certainly holds a lot of the responsibility for making Galaxy Quest one of the best comedy films of the last 20 years (weirdly last night I had dreamt that I had met William Shatner who had revealed that he had directed Galaxy Quest, which came as a big surprise to me and I’d been thinking how game he had been to send himself up in that way). Rickman was also the king of the death scene (and even played a ghost), although sadly he didn’t die at the start of Love Actually so he didn’t have to be in it. I don’t think he even got to shag his secretary in that either, just thought about it (may be wrong) and still ended up punished and locked in his loveless marriage. Rickman always had to die in films, didn’t you realise that? But I had assumed that due to his many spectacular deaths in pretend, he’d never have to do a real one.
I had been in the same room as Rickman a couple of times, though I am not sure I ever worked up the courage to do more than nod an awed hello. Back in the 90s he was involved in a charity gig that we did as Lee and Herring and I did my usual on stage schtick of being impressed with the celebs we had met backstage (which didn’t take much acting) and offered to do my impression of Alan Rickman, which turned out to be me aping the slow motion fall from the building in Die Hard (spoiler alert), whilst walking backwards and doing a back stroke with my arms. Which wasn’t a bad gag, but also everyone immediately got the reference.
I paid tribute to the recently fallen in the only way that I know. I took advantage of my wife having a night out and my baby being asleep and played myself at snooker. It was hard to work out who to dedicate the arena to this week, but I was then a bit freaked out when it turned out this was frame 69 . That would usually be a time for ribald fun (even on a serious sporting podcast there is room for some laughter), but today it led to the players having all kinds of well meaning but inappropriate pronouncements about cancer and felt like we all might fall victim to the curse (and if we all died simultaneously then what more proof would you need?). It was a scintillating frame of snooker though, which is the tribute that I assume David Bowie and Alan Rickman would both have agreed that they would want the most.
