Curb Your Enthusiasm and Robin Hood: Men In Tights star Richard Lewis dies
Richard Lewis, who played a version of himself in Curb Your Enthusiasm and Prince John in Robin Hood: Men In Tights, has died.
The comedian, who was known for exploring his neuroses in frantic, stream-of-consciousness diatribes while dressed in all-black – prompting his nickname The Prince Of Pain – was 76.
He died at his home in Los Angeles on Tuesday night after suffering a heart attack, his publicist Jeff Abraham said.
He had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2023.
Richard Lewis and Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm. Pic: HBO/Sky Comedy/Kobal/Shutterstock
New York-born Lewis began his stand-up career after graduating from The Ohio State University in 1969.
He was named one of the top 50 stand-up comedians of all time by Comedy Central and was celebrated in GQ magazine’s list of the “20th Century’s Most Influential Humourists”.
Lewis told GQ his signature look came from watching the TV Western show Have Gun – Will Travel, with a cowboy in all-black, when he was a child.
He also popularised the term “from hell” – as in “the job from hell” or “the date from hell”.
“That just came out of my brain one day and I kept repeating it a lot for some reason,” he said. “Same thing with the black clothes. I just felt really comfortable from the early ’80s on and I never wore anything else. I never looked back.”
Lewis also lent his humour to charity causes, including Comic Relief and Comedy Gives Back.
Richard Lewis was known for exploring his neuroses while dressed in black. Pic: mpi04/MediaPunch/IPX/AP
After he got sober from drugs and alcohol in 1994, Lewis published his 2008 memoir The Other Great Depression, which featured a collection of fearless, essay-style riffs on his life.
His role in Curb Your Enthusiasm came from his friendship with fellow comedian, producer and series star Larry David.
Both native Brooklynites – who were born in the same Brooklyn hospital – they met and became friends as rivals while attending the same summer camp aged 13.
Lewis was cast from the beginning and bickered with David about unpaid bills and common courtesies.
He also starred as the romantic co-lead opposite Jamie Lee Curtis in the series Anything But Love and the neurotic Prince John in Robin Hood: Men In Tights.
Paying tribute in a style appropriate to the comedy they starred in together, Larry David said in a statement released to Sky News’s US partner NBC News: “Richard and I were born three days apart in the same hospital and for most of my life he’s been like a brother to me. He had that rare combination of being the funniest person and also the sweetest. But today he made me sob and for that I’ll never forgive him.”
GB News has been fined £100,000 for breaking impartiality rules over a programme featuring Rishi Sunak, Ofcom has said.
It comes after the media watchdog announced in May that the show called People’s Forum: The Prime Minister had breached broadcasting guidelines.
The programme featured then prime minister Mr Sunak answering questions from a studio audience and a presenter.
GB News chief executive Angelos Frangopoulos said the fine was a “direct attack on free speech and journalism in the United Kingdom”.
“We believe these sanctions are unnecessary, unfair and unlawful,” he added.
The hour-long show, which aired on 12 February, prompted 547 complaints to Ofcom.
The regulator found earlier this year that while featuring Mr Sunak was fine in principle, “due weight” should have been given to an “appropriately wide range of significant views” other than the Conservatives.
Pic: PA
Ofcom said Mr Sunak “had a mostly uncontested platform to promote the policies and performance of his government in a period preceding a UK general election,” which it recorded as a breach of impartiality rules.
The watchdog said “given the seriousness and repeated nature of this breach,” it had imposed a £100,000 financial penalty.
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GB News was also directed to “broadcast a statement of our findings against it, on a date and in a form determined by us”.
The TV channel is challenging the breach decision by judicial review and Ofcom will not enforce the sanction decision until those proceedings are concluded.
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
Mr Frangopoulos insisted the show featuring Mr Sunak “was an important piece of public interest programming”, and that “appropriate steps” were taken to ensure due impartiality.
He added: “It was designed to allow members of the public to put their own questions directly to leading politicians.
“GB News chooses to be regulated and we understand our obligations under the Code.
“But, equally, Ofcom is obliged by law to uphold freedom of expression and apply its rules fairly and lawfully.”
Ofcom previously found GB News violated due impartiality rules in March over five programmes that featured Tory MPs as presenters.
Comedian Marcus Brigstocke has revealed he became addicted to pornography and received help to overcome the issue.
The TV star discussed the issue on The Hidden 20% podcast, saying he became addicted after he had an affair which led to the end of his first marriage.
Brigstocke, who has regularly been a panellist on Have I Got News For You and featured in the film Love Actually, said the “shame” from his affair “led to a lot of very dysfunctional behaviour”.
He told the podcast: “I’d stayed sober from drugs, alcohol, and my compulsive eating disorder, but I had become addicted to porn.
“I really had no idea that I was addicted to it. I sort of thought I looked at a normal amount of porn. Well, the normal amount of porn today is not like a normal amount of porn… before the internet.”
Brigstocke, 51, told host Ben Branson that most porn addicts “were addicted from about the age of 11”, saying it “profoundly alters your brain chemistry”.
“There are so many people with different depths of addiction to porn and to online social media,” he added. “But porn is the most toxic.”
The comedian said he would watch porn “all night, for the entire night”, before he received help to end his addiction.
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Brigstocke is now married to comedian Rachel Parris and the couple host a podcast called How Was It For You?
Rufus Sewell may seem to perfectly personify calm and confident characters in the acting world, but he admits he still struggles with public speaking.
“There’s nothing more terrifying,” he tells Sky News. “I remember having to do a reading at a church when I was very young and I was so nervous. I was at drama school, so people knew I wanted to be an actor, and as I was walking up towards the lectern I heard someone say, ‘this will be good’, and I completely froze.”
After portraying Prince Andrew in Scoop, which told the story of the royal’s infamous Newsnight interview in 2019, the British actor can now be seen on screen playing political superstar Hal Wyler in the second series of The Diplomat.
Sewell also recently played Prince Andrew in Scoop. Pic: Netflix/PA
Despite his ability to inhabit his characters, both real and fictional, the “idea of speaking as myself” he says has always been “a horror”.
Even playing confident characters is nerve-wracking, he says, as it creates an internal battle between himself and the role. “I naturally, if left to my own devices, become very, very self-conscious, so I have to find ways to trick myself out of it.”
In The Diplomat, Sewell’s character is the estranged ex-husband of Kate Wyler, the US ambassador to the UK, played by Keri Russell.
Pic: Netflix
She spends the first season navigating political minefields trying to prevent a war before it happens, after a British aircraft carrier is blown up off the coast of Iran.
The series ended on a cliffhanger that saw Hal and other political figures involved in a car explosion in London, and season two picks up following the threads of evidence left in the aftermath.
Russell credits the show’s creator, Deborah Cahn, with making the series such a thriller.
“That is the gold of our show, 100%,” she says. “She has this uncanny ability to portray political intrigue and the world of diplomacy, but also has this innate understanding of what makes people human and all the idiosyncratic weird things that make people normal.
“Even though they’re in this really seemingly powerful position, they still have bad days and are cranky, or get mad when their food is the wrong thing, or when they have to wear something they don’t like, and they still deal with all the embarrassments of daily life.”
Season two of The Diplomat out now on Netflix
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