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It was his fault that when I was 12 I liked being sick.

Because I stayed at home feeling sick and tired while the rest of the family flew out to work or to face the seriousness of life with classroom teaching.

As soon as they were out, I felt better as if by magic and, full of passive zest for action, I clicked through the TV program.

"Sunshine Reggae on Ibiza" was shown on RTL, with Karl Dall.

Complete nonsense film - what was called clothes back then - about an East Frisian farmer cycling who, for whatever reason, set out for his dream destination Ibiza.

The boy was played by Karl Dall, who shouted to his father as he left the farm:

"I'm going to Ibiza!"

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"Yeah, but be back for dinner."

"To Ibiza!"

"There's no pizza, there's kale!"

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The strip played out on the same level.

Fantastic.

Karl Dall, who probably only pretended he could neither play nor sing, dabbled his way through the film - and came across women who were lightly to barely dressed unusually.

Fantastic.

Don't play properly, don't sing properly - but always with you

And so typical for him, the comedian from the time when professionals in this genre were still called dumb bards.

Not playing properly, not singing properly, but of course being an integral part of the federal republican cultural scene - Karl Dall was like West Germany in the 80s.

No, he WAS West Germany in the 80s.

That time when the cultural microcosm on German television was somewhere between Modern Talking, Kurt Felix and the German television ballet.

Now he died at 79 years of complications from a stroke.

The media counter of the Federal Republic

He was a sidekick with Felix and Paola.

Before that, in the 70s, on the road with the comedy band Insterburg and Co.

At a time when the word comedy didn't even exist in Germany.

Later then own formats on RTL and Sat.1.

Largely spontaneous, say, yes, fellow campaigners like Rudi Carell back then complain.

Meticulously prepared?

Well timed?

If those are the rules of humor, then he ignored them.

Karl Dalls profession was spontaneous provocation.

It was the media counter around which the 80s thirsty for beer gathered.

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He was like a Helmut Kohl of humor: stubborn, unique, bulky.

But at the same time the rock that you wanted to lean on even when you couldn't do much with it.

He was always there.

And he was true to himself.

If he didn't like the pop singer Roland Kaiser, then he acted like that.

Said to have said to him on the show: Sing on, then we'll be over with.

Whereupon the emperor angrily left the studio.

He was authentic.

A guy.

60 years of show business are no coincidence

Where cabaret artists try with the foil to meet their opponents in the hardly visited nightly back rooms of public regional programs, he just drank stale beer on the guys he thought stupid.

But in the spotlight.

Someone who was not ashamed because it was clear to him how the business was going, which had provided him with a good and well-earned income for decades.

We're talking about entertainment.

Virtually everything that entertains is allowed.

Almost 60 years of show business (he even made TV appearances this year), something like this is never a coincidence.

That only works if you want to, can and persevere.

He knows his way around perseverance - married since 1972.

Active as an actor since the early 60s and never stopped.

He couldn't have done it without his authenticity.

And anyway not without distance to your own work and self-irony.

In this respect, the question of whether someone like that goes to heaven despite his cheekiness can be answered quickly: God will turn a blind eye.