The day I saw Robin Williams in his element

There are times when talents gather in a certain place, drawn as filings to a magnet. That's how it was in the San Francisco Bay Area of four decades ago, a time of circus clowns and cyclotrons, activists and accelerators, particles and poets. I write of this now because someone very special, even by the standards of that era, has just died.

The first time I saw Robin Williams was in one of the comedy clubs that were proliferating in vacated corner stores and the back rooms of old spaghetti houses. On the day in question, I was going though hard times and needed some comic relief with my coffee.

The first act was a guitar-wielding comic whose childhood was so deeply scarred by The Wizard of Oz that he devoted himself to mimicking the voice of every character.

The next performer was a man who'd been subjected to education at the hands of Catholic nuns, a rich vein of material in better hands than his. Then came a fellow who relied on profanity to generate embarrassed laughter.

Now, in the world of improvisational humour there are stock situations. One involves asking audience members to call out a location, a topic and a playwright. The chance of hearing "Shakespeare!" approaches certainty. What follows is a comedic effort sprinkled with "thee" and "thou", and verbs ending in "-est" or "-eth". Actual knowledge of Shakespeare is not required.

So, no one could have dreamed what was about to happen.

Just as the foul-mouthed comic was being led away, a young man came screaming through the front door, leapt onto the stage without introduction and - wielding an imaginary sword - launched into a manic, campy, machine-gun assault on the world of Shakespeare, a rapid-fire non-stop soliloquy that had the audience screaming with laughter. For more than half an hour he pranced, danced, jumped, minced, fought, cried, held arguments and dialogues with himself and dozens of characters, switching back and forth at nanosecond speeds, romping and sweating through witches, ghosts, kings, princes, good and bad daughters, emperors and assassins - as we sat aghast.