I've just read on the BBC News website of the death of Mel Smith, who was on Not The Nine O'Clock News and Alas Smith and Jones. The cause was a heart attack, although it appears he had been ill (probably quite seriously) for some time. He was 'just' sixty years old. Not somebody the U.S. audience probably knows well, if at all, but certainly somebody who was a staple of British comedy in the 1980s alongside Griff Rhys Jones, Pamela Stephenson and Rowan Atkinson. He was, I believe, quite involved in the writing of the shows he was in, as well as directing a few films too. RIP Mel.
