I thought I’d let the dust settle and the exaggeration dilute before adding my tribute to Robin Williams.

How many people can walk onto a chat show, take the stage in San Francisco or on Broadway, appear in Hollywood movies, and always make you ache with laughter? How many standups and actors require you to watch the video at least three times to catch all the gags you missed from laughing so much? With how many personalities can you watch the same performance a hundred times and still piss yourself laughing? How many Americans have you met who can comment on British current affairs and not be embarrassing?

There’ve been very few of these in my life. Bob Hope, Phil Silvers, and Robin Williams. That’s it. And the first two employed writers throughout their careers.

Dead Poet’s Society is in my all-time Top Five films. Williams’s 2002 Parkinson interview is the funniest chat-show clip in existence. His Live on Broadway performance of the same year is hilariously exhausting to watch.

For much of his time, Robin Williams was the most engaging personality on the planet. Only George Carlin came close – but he was a master of a different genre….and every bit as powerfully irreplaceable.

I get the feeling that such tall trees of insight aren’t sustainable in the current climate.

Earlier at The Slog: Murdoch the money God trains Farage the money Dog