It’s become clear in the 24 hours following the shocking death of comedian and “Full House” star Bob Saget that he had a tremendous and positive impact on so many lives.
It’s a testament not to his work or career, but rather his character the outpouring of love that has emerged after his passing. Jimmy Kimmel struggled, and ultimately failed, to keep his emotions in check while paying tribute to his friend.
Perhaps knowing how difficult it would be for him to talk about Saget so soon after his sudden death at 65 in his hotel room while on tour, Kimmel opted to record his heartfelt message without a studio audience.
Even then, just living with those feelings and memories, the “Jimmy Kimmel Live” host revealed, after nearly breaking down completely, that he’d already attempted to tape his tribute “fourteen times.”
It was obvious how much he was hurting, with even this final take ending in tears. But it was a testament to how much he loved his friend, and how much Saget had come to mean to him in the years they’d known each other.
Love is something fans have been reading a lot about, with so many revealing how openly and confidently Saget would tell his family and friends that he loved them, in person, in text and on the phone. “He was very kind to everyone and he had no problem telling you that he loved you and what you meant to him,” he said.
“He always had a compliment. He would write sometimes just to tell me he loved me,” Kimmel shared. “I know he did that for many people.”
He also said that Saget “was so funny,” but not because of the shows he’d been on, or even his career as a stand-up comedian. “I mean funny for real,” Kimmel explained, saying that if you saw Saget and his wife at a party, you wanted to be near him for as long as possible.
“He had something funny to say about everything and not a bad thing to say about anyone. Never,” Kimmel said. “If there were people he didn’t like, he kept it to himself. Unlike me, he was a good person.”
He talked about the heartfelt emails and messages he would get from Saget, where they’d talk about “life and the well-being of our children and how hard it is to appreciate one of those without the other being just right.” He then shared one of those messages where Saget said they should get together to “talk about how lucky we are that we have them.”
He summed up the story of Bob Saget as presented through so many of the tributes that have poured with the word that has perhaps been more associated with Saget’s passing than any other.
“A word that came up a lot was ‘the sweetest.’ Bob was the sweetest. He was the sweetest man,” Kimmel said through palpable emotion. “And the reason people wrote that is because it’s true. It’s the best word. If you had to pick one word to describe him, that was it: sweetest.”
Saget was found by hotel security around 4 p.m. ET at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Orlando, Florida on Sunday, per TMZ, following a standup performance in Jacksonville. He was 65.
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