Before you know it the years move by and you get one of those moments when you think "wait a minute was that really 20 years ago?"
It happened just recently when BBC2 ran a series of shows on the anniversary of it's BBC2 channel. Of course that was a lot longer than 20s years ago, but the series looked at many of the success' the channel had in Music, Arts and Comedy over the decades. And there were many moments over it's 50 years, some surviving well, some slipping into bygone.
Then a face comes up that instantly brings a recollection so vivid it seems only like yesterday you saw it. But you realise it's 20 years since that face and those words were last heard.
It's 20 years this year the American comedian Bill Hicks passed away.
To hear his acerbic and sharp observations of a world 2 decades ago in such clarity they could have been made yesterday was both a joy and a shock. Because it seemed like nothing had changed. It was still a world just like Bill had called it.
Hicks had been successful in the UK for many years, more so than his home land at the time, and his audiences reveled in his stand up shows. Seen often on the small screen here he was the closest comedian we ever saw in the UK who could be compared to the likes of Lenny Bruce.
In Bill Hicks we heard rock and roll as comedy probably for the first time.
And that's why he's being written about here. Bill Hicks you are fucking missed.
