Balls. Mel Smith died.
This was a shock both because he was way too young, but also because I was surprised how much it hit me. I didn't realise how much I liked him, but to a young boy who was not interested in music he was one of the rock star heroes of my childhood. Not The Nine O Clock News was the first significant TV comedy for my generation. We'd missed out on Monty Python (although I caught up with it on LP) and in those days there was a long drought between subversive comedy shows. It was massive. And though Rowan Atkinson was the runaway star, Smith was quietly brilliant. The personification of insouciance, he looked like he didn't give a toss, but was effortlessly funny and showed that a chunky, messy, long-haired man could be sexy too. But those guys were the first comedy heroes that I could claim as mine and though perhaps none of them would go on to achieve the comedic heights of Python (Mr Bean rather cancels out Blackadder for me), they were more important that I realised. Or that I only just realised as the loss of Mel Smith tugged at my gut this afternoon.
I slightly rejected Smith and Jones when they went on to become a double act in the way that snooty youngsters who think they know all about comedy will do (plenty of them did the same to me, so it's fair) and Stew and me used the "Mel Smith punk" as an example of bad comedy. I am not sure he ever donned a fake Mohican as we imagined. In the play Punk's Not Dead I had one of the characters describe that (as something like) "what a middle-aged man who knows nothing about anything imagines a punk would look like." Griff Rhys Jones came to see that play and afterwards chortled, "I will tell Mel what you said."
But the other day, when I was watching an episode of NTNOCN (as all the cool kids called it) on Gold (or somewhere) I was rather impressed by how cool Smith looked as various pop stars. In "All Out Superpower Confrontation" the special effects are a bit dated, but Smith is commanding. I almost wrote a blog about it then and how I still knew all the words to the song, not knowing that the man would be dead within hours. He also looks pretty authentic in "Baronet Oswald Ernald Mosley", which I had never noticed before someone tweeted me uses the same tune (and footage) as the other song. He also makes a pretty convincing New Romantic in "Nice Video (Shame About The Song)"
Did the Mel Smith punk ever exist? Was it something from Alas Smith and Jones or just a quickie skit from NTNOCN when maybe there wasn't enough time or budget to do something convincing? Or did me and Stew just make it up.
Look at how cool and sexy and understated Smith is in this Stoutist sketch. And I love the way he suggests Frank Sinatra without impersonating him in this parody (which I saw for the first time today - I realise I barely even watched Smith and Jones). And thanks to him and the team I discovered a new word (though it took me a while to understand it) - Kinda Lingers
Maybe his career didn't go in the way that my uncompromising and harsh teenage and twenty-something comedy snob expected of him with Morons From Outer Space, High Heels and Low Lives (the actor Kevin Eldon's most famous role), setting up a multi-million pound production company and by all accounts enjoying a somewhat hedonistic lifestyle.
But I was wrong to be so judgemental and dismissive, because I had built him up in my head and nobody could really have lived up to my expectations. He had never pretended to be anything that he wasn't and I see now remained rather modest about his own talents, underplaying them much more than "Mel Smith Punking" them. And my wife said that he turned down a part in Spiceworld the Movie and was astonished that everyone else he knew had done it. He had assumed they would turn it down and amazed that they hadn't saying something like, "Oh, we're doing that now are we?"
For a child too young for punk, Not The Nine O Clock News was my punk (at least the first wave, with the Young Ones continuing the invigorating rebellion against conformity and education in comedy). Ironically Mel Smith was my punk.
Kinda Lingers, Mel.
