Alas Smith

Though I hadn't seem him for the best part of a decade onscreen (for I missed that edition of Celebrity Mastermind), as he increasingly took to a role behind the camera, it still is a shock that Mel Smith has been cut down still in the prime of life at three score years.  Like another recent heart-attack victim, James Gandolfini, Smith did not cut a trim figure, but all the same, cardiac arrests are that most capricious of ailments.  Although he was part of the quartet from Not the Nine O'Clock News (and arguably the one whose profile was the least in 2013), I always remember in particular one skit from Alas Smith and Jones (punning the short-lived western television series Alias Smith and Jones).  Here Griff Rhys Jones played the Ottoman sultan inspecting his harem after an unusual number of pregnancies borne by his concubines despite his absence on campaign the previous two years.  Interviewing his harem-master and chief eunuch, Smith, they go through the motions of standard answers and replies about families and job aspirations, until Jones asks that if were to hit him very hard with a mallet in the private area he would not feel a thing.  After some protestation by Smith, Jones follows through on this.  Not satisfied with his first attempt, as Smith manfully takes being unmanned, Jones has a run-up with his second go.  Again, Smith smothers his pain and the sultan Jones apologises for having doubted chief eunuch Smith and leaves the room.  His son (eunuchs 'run in the family') enquires, "I didn't know you were a eunuch, father."  To which Smith exclaims, "I am now!"