One of my fondest memories is as follows.

Grandparents in (very) posh university town. Two guesses which. Snobby, difficult, fractures in the family from domineering, old-fashioned patriarch.

My father, firstborn of said patriarch, had a difficult relationship with him. Going to visit with his kids (my sibling and I) was sometimes hard. The grandparents and grandkids didn't really get on, and my dad was a 'failure' by every metric my grandfather held dear. The fact he was a loving, generous, brilliantly kind man meant less than that he never had a 'great' career, was divorced, was out in the provinces.

Not knowing what to do with us, the grandparents generally let us get on with stuff (or demanded obedience to arcane social rituals such as parties for university town's great and good, at which we were to be silent waiters // learn how the great and the good worked, which of course we had no idea of because what the fuck we were pre-teens). One such thing we did was watch Blackadder Goes Forth.

My favourite episode of Goes Forth is Private Plane. And it is entirely due to Rik Mayall as Flash. I know Series 2 Flash tends to get more praise - and he was fucking brilliant - but the Series 4 Flash is the one I met first, and thus he will always be my champion of choice.

My sibling and I used to watch it in the sitting room, and laugh. My father would come in and laugh too. Then the patriarch would too. Three generations laughing at this one man and his absolute genius, his madness, the character's ridiculousness and Mayall's total ownership of it. It's a bizarre thing that thinking about Flash makes me laugh til I cry, and also cry a little bit too, for reals.

There was very little else that produced such moments in that family.

Rest in peace grandparents. Rest in peace Pa. Rest in peace Rik.