Trailblazing comedian Richard Pryor is dead...

It seems a cruel fate for the funniest man who ever lived to suffer a sad and agonizing death. But that was the fate of Richard Pryor who died, mercifully, in Los Angeles yesterday.

The official cause of death was ruled a heart attack. But anyone who knows anything about Pryor’s life off-stage, knows that it was, in fact, a tragic comedy. And, indeed, that decades of self-destructive behaviour (highlighted by heavy drug use) and the crippling effects of multiple sclerosis (MS) left him in virtual purgatory since the early 1990s.

Nevertheless, there’s no doubt that Pryor, the irrepressible comic, would have summed up the ironical end to his life by exclaiming acerbically: “Now, ain’t that a bitch!”

So long..."motherfucker!"

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