Damn damn damn damn damn

[rozk]

It's quite hard to explain why Ken Campbell was so much loved by everyone who ever saw him perform, or met him, two things which were pretty much the same. But first, for those who never did, a momentary pause for an introduction to the sly suburban lunacy of the man:

So, OK, I only saw one of the great Ken productions - his version of Hitchhiker - and I never got round to his version of Illuminatus! or his 22-hour The Warp, but I got told about them in hushed tones by various critics and actors who saw them or were in them or both. I found myself sharing panels at sf cons with the man a couple of times, which was weird and scary because you knew that anything you might say would be taken down and used in evidence for the surreal nature of the universe. At one con, I had to sing the Star War's Theme and I caught Ken looking at me, in a considered fashion.

Seeing him on stage - or hearing him on the radio doing his talk about pidgin - was only part of it, is the point. Once, after al fresco sex with my then lover in Finsbury Park - the park itself, not just the district - I had kissed her and put her on the bus, and then went for a post-coital bacon sandwich in a local greasy spoon. And found myself having breakfast with Ken, who talked about more things in half an hour than I do in a long weekend. He was intelligent and funny and incredibly talented.

And is dead at 66 having done more than most of us.

He once walked up to me, and said 'Your comic timing's not bad at all' and then paused, and then walked away. One of the five nicest things ever said to me.

Comments

[earth-prime.livejournal.com]

Not only did I not know - till I looked it up - that he was turned down for the Seventh Doctor for being "too dark"...

I also didn't know that Trevor Nunn called the police on him for distributing a fake RSC press release "stating that after the success of their production of Nicholas Nickleby they would be changing their name to the Royal Dickens Company".

Absolutely gutted.

[earwigmc.livejournal.com]

o! ken campbell is dead? i don't know if i actually saw any of his actual performances.. i think i might've done, but i did definitely see/meet him (at brentwood theatre), and he made an impression.

[michaeltgo.livejournal.com]

oh dear another one gone..

local Camden luminary Barry Sullivan (http://www.camdennewjournal.co.uk/archive/f040903_5.htm) died on Friday and now Ken Campbell..

With increasing age the loss of those I appreciate speaks to my own mortality. I only wish to have made more of a mark than hitherto when it's my turn.

Only spoke with Ken Campbell a few times but he had that immediate engagement with you that you felt befriended.. had forgotten his daughter was called Daisy too, he used to bring her round Camden Lock in the 70s (my Daisy probably tried to sell him some bit of old tat lol)

lots of obituries already but this one in The Stage (http://blogs.thestage.co.uk/shenton/2008/09/ken-campbell-rip) connected with me the best.

[shutters-i.livejournal.com]

I first met Ken as a student, when a friend took me to a Brian Aldiss reading on a tour on which Ken was being the stooge. We all went off to the pub afterwards, and it was immediately apparent that the little I knew of the man (Illuminatus, Fawlty Towers, H2G2, shoving a rotting prawn down Jim Davidson's throat in Peter Greenaway's A Zed And Two Noughts) was both accurate and the tiniest fraction of the delights of this contagious enthusiast.

When I became a theatre journalist a few years later I always enjoyed reviewing his work, and an interview with Ken was the first feature I ever did for the Financial Times (with which I'm now senior theatre critic). I became one of his accredited hacks, as it were, and he phoned me up when the 1997 revival of The Warp was imminent. I saw it, and fifteen or so other performances during this phase of its existence, occasionally also performing in it. In its last performance in 2000, I started doing one character in Ken's voice and was greeted by that unmistakable "HEH!" in the darkness... then within about 30 seconds I collapsed in coughs, because trying to project that kind of rasp takes a lot of practice.

I was onstage with him barely ten days before his death, when he came up to Edinburgh to act as "guest director" for Showstopper! - The Improvised Musical, by a company he had trained; the idea for these performances was that, instead of asking the audience for cues, they'd have a critic in each night, who would read out a review of an imaginary musical, which the company would then perform. I offered "Schism!", a bisexual love triangle between Anglican bishops against the backdrop of the 2008 Lambeth Conference, with a climactic scene in the style of Sarah Kane. The company were phenomenal, egged on by Ken as he kept nipping behind the flats to offer advice, all the while wearing a teacosy topped off with a knitted duck.

Two briefer memories: although I'd been commissioning book reviews from you for a year or so, Roz, we'd never met until a book launch where Ken also happened to be. "Oh, you must meet her: big woman, used to be a bloke." His phrasing was always impeccable in its effect.

The other one: a couple of nights ago I bumped into Sylvester McCoy in King's Cross tube station, and we shared a moment's reflection. Said he, "It's all wrong - Ken wasn't mortal."

I hope he enjoys the final line of my FT obit for him.

[zoep.livejournal.com]

Smeg...
I'd completely missed his death until finding it here...

I remember him from various bits of randomness on telly mostly but it's always the most entertaining ones you miss when they die.