Gentle beings, I have been roused from a gin-soaked stupor by the clattering of keyboards and the wailing of fans across the internet. For it is with a heavy and somewhat gin-stained heart that I report the passing of one Anthony Head, the man who made tweed look dangerous and repression seem terribly noble. Dead at 72. The cause? Not disclosed, as if privacy were some sort of human right. Tributes are flooding in faster than a Watcher's Council emergency meeting, for Head was not merely an actor; he was a living monument to the art of the raised eyebrow and the perfectly timed sigh.
From his tenure as Rupert Giles, the librarian with a spine of steel and a past shrouded in murky violence, Head became the surrogate father to a generation raised on apocalypse metaphors. He taught us that knowledge was a weapon, that a good cup of tea could solve most problems, and that a man could look perfectly composed while battling a demon. It was a masterclass in dignity, a quality now so rare it should be classified as an endangered species. He later graced the genteel meadows of Ted Lasso, playing a Rupert Mannion, a role that required him to channel the soul of a Victorian villain. This he did with such relish that one could almost smell the sulphur and the expensive aftershave.
The tweets, the Facebook posts, the hastily written obituaries: they all gush with a collective grief, a sense that a pillar of our collective childhood has crumbled. But let us not forget the sheer absurdity of his career. This was a man who, before Buffy, was known for singing about constipation in a golden age of British advertising. Yes, for a gram of fibre, he once crooned about bowel movements in a commercial so surreal it could only have been a product of this benighted island. It is this capacity for embracing the ludicrous while maintaining a straight face that made him a true national treasure.
So raise a glass of something fortified, preferably gin, and toast the man who taught us that the end of the world is just another Tuesday. A Tuesday on which you might need to research a spell, sharpen a stake, and insist on a proper cup of tea. Godspeed, Anthony Head. The library is quiet tonight, and the Sunnydale night is a little darker. But somewhere, a very special kitten is purring, and Xander is offering a terrible joke. The circle remains unbroken, even as one of its brightest bits breaks off.
