This is going to be a hard one.
When lockdown first started, I stopped coping quite fast. I’ve talked about the moment I stopped coping at all for a long time before now, but not long after that I had to adapt to deal with it. The main technique I adopted was the longest lasting: I stopped reading the news. I got little bits here and there, but I kept out of just about all of it, besides politics from YouTube channels like TLDRNews. It’s why I’ve managed to stay sane.
It’s why I didn’t know until yesterday Barry Cryer had died…
I only ever got to meet him once, the sane night I met the full cast as of 2008, a month before Humphrey Lyttleton died. I don’t have a lot of memories of my childhood but that night is vivid in my head, helped by the DVD version of the sane show as performed a few nights later. He was delightful in person when he like all the others made time to come greet fans out the back of the Congress Theatre after the show. That’s what I have tried to focus on the last 24 hours.
Spoiler warning but, HOR already had some very overt homages to I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue. It’s not much but it’s a small tribute. I wish I could think of something funny to say. A lot of people managed to in their tributes. This isn’t so much a tribute as me getting my own feelings out, which is what this blog is for I guess. I can only hope that I channel even a fragment of Barry’s wit into my own work. I’ll be raising a glass or a few to him.
samshuttleworth.com 