Geoffrey Perkins
A brief word on the sudden and shocking death of Geoffrey Perkins, a former head of BBC TV comedy, who died after being hit by a van in Marylebone High Street on Friday.
The Independent on Sunday reported yesterday that police are investigating whether he collapsed before being hit by a lorry and suggested a lorry driver had already been questioned and released.
Whatever the actual circumstances of Perkins’ death - and let’s hope he had blacked out at the last minute - this is a terrible reminder of just how frail and temporary life is. I always feel this when I hear of the death of someone I half-know, like when it was announced in assembly at school that someone I’d been on a day trip to France with had died in a car crash, or when an email went round at my old office announcing that the bloke who always parked his motorbike next to my car had died in a traffic accident. Brain just can’t quite compute that someone who used to be so palpably there, now isn’t.
I didn’t know Geoffrey well. I remember him mainly from a couple of TV industry shindigs in Montreux, Switzerland where the major broadcasters used to pay for a ’suite’ of rooms in an upmarket hotel in which journalists and execs could consort, away from the seething hordes of other European delegates at the Rose d’Or TV festival. Geoff seemed a good sort who knew and got on with anyone and everyone in the world of British TV comedy. Steve Coogan was in Montreux the year I’m thinking about and I have a particular image of him sitting on a sofa with two female beauties at either elbow, but I’ll save that for another time.
Geoff, I’m pretty sure, imbibed as much as the rest of us. It’s hard to remember because I spent most of the weekend attempting to throw grapefruit and other citrus items off the balcony of the hotel suite into Lake Geneva below. Puerile, but fun - and for the record Nick Dear of the Channel Five (now simply Five) press office was the undisputed winner of the contest.
So I can’t claim any close connection with Mr Perkins. But I’m heartily sorry he’s gone, so suddenly and horribly and in such mundane circumstances as a traffic incident in central London. The list of credits to his name still stands - Father Ted, Drop the Dead Donkey, The Fast Show, The Catherine Tate Show, the Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy, Harry Enfeld’s programmes and many, many more. You can’t help but feel that at 55 he hadn’t finished shaping British TV comedy.
September 1st, 2008 at 10:14 pm
Great to see the blog taking shape… which is more than I can say for me as I inch closer to 40 with an American Beauty like desire to fit into jeans that no longer do. Know exactly what you mean about palpably being there then not and all the surreality that goes with it. PS remember the hedgehog concept!
September 2nd, 2008 at 1:54 pm
If the jeans fit, wear ‘em I say. Death is surreal and yet the most certain thing of all, is what I was trying to say. Bristles suitably out (hedgehog) as I type.
September 9th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
[...] be nice to start up a conversation. So be brave and leave a comment, whether you want to contest my recollection of the fruit throwing contest in Montreux or comment on how that story about how the government [...]