This Saturday, we mourned the death of Mark Ruse. This loss comes as a surprise and a shock, cutting into a moment when the Victorian screen community is so disintegrated. While we fear a plague, he died suddenly at the age of 64, bringing an end to a humane and gentle life.
But in that natural full stop, we lost a presence threaded through the city’s broad-brush comedy for a generation. He and his partner Stephen Luby created the spaces for comedians to entertain millions of people. How a society laughs is a sacred thing, and he found the creators and kept the flame and brought us back to the rituals he loved again and again.