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Obituaries 2021

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I confess I did not start the Obituaries 2020 thread with a view to accruing hampers. This is also the case with this new thread. But no-one has started one, and people are still expiring left, right and centre, so here we are.

Gerry Marsden, check.

Geoff Stephens, award-winning songwriter, no longer walks among us. Beginning with “Tell Me When” for the Applejacks, he wrote or co-wrote hits throughout the sixties and seventies: “The Crying Game”, “Winchester Cathedral”, “Knock Knock Who’s There”, “Sorry Suzanne” and many more, pop pickers.

Not musical, but UK actress Barbara Shelley has screamed her last at 88.

Warren McLean, played drums with Oz bands Divinyls, Machinations and I’m Talking.

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Comments

  1. I interviewed Geoff – a lovely fellow – for an RPM 2CD set a few years back, ‘The Eve Folk Recordings’ – he and Peter Eden (Donovan’s managers) managed to get funds from EMI in 1965 to record three more acts under the ‘folk’ umbrella, to see if Don’s success could be replicated. It couldn’t, but a terrific Bob Davenport LP was among the trio recorded.

    Have I mentioned before that John McLaughlin plays on ‘Winchester Cathedral’?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geaWf4qLON8

    • Was amused by this over on the Freaky Trigger “Popular” site, about the New Seekers hit “You Won’t Find Another Fool Like Me”…

      There’s a nice story about Geoff Stephens, the co-writer: he was comforting his secretary after she’d been dumped by a boyfriend, and she told him how as he walked out she’d defiantly shouted after him, “Go on, but you won’t find another fool like me”. Stephens said, “Looking back, I hope I had the good grace to comfort her before dashing off to turn that line into a song.”

    • I know Geoff’s songs but I didn’t know about this CD. I’m interested in the Bob Davenport tracks. And seeing as how it’s on Amazon for £7, I’ve just bought one.

    • Plenty of people deserve individual threads though, and who does or doesn’t deserve one will depend on the reader. If an individual thread doesn’t strike most people as worthy of comment it will slip down the page and out of the recently updated panel soon enough.

      On the other hand, should Paul McCartney (long may he thrive) pop his clogs I’m sure we would all agree that he deserves more recognition than a discussion, probably with many, many sub-threads in the middle of a general death notices article.

  5. Barbara Shelley … no, me neither, until I saw her face and thought “oh, her, she was in everything!”
    Everything for me means The Avengers, Man From U.N.C.L.E.,” “Man in a Suitcase” etc. but apparently she was best known for Hammer Horror films.
    Fair enough, they must have been the ones that were always on BBC2 at about midnight, 40 or so years ago.

    You know she must have been old, because she was so good looking.

  7. As an alternative to all this grimness, I occasionally think it might be nice to have an “anti-obit” thread for positive sightings of the presumed demised (for example, last week there was an article in The Guardian by Desmond Tutu, who, I assumed, had left us before the arrival of the iPhone), but then I think probably not..

    • I must admit, when I was flicking through the catch up bit on Sky last week I noticed a short programme about Tommy Docherty and thought it was a bit random. But as a bloke who sat and watched a 40 minute interview with Stan Bowles on YouTube the day before, just cos it popped up as a recommended video, I saved the programme on the Doc to watch later. I realised why this programme had popped up when I saw on the news that he had died, but I honestly thought that he’d been dead for about 20 years.

      • Docherty was a perennial in my brief window of football enthusiasms, 1967 – 1973, and was a proper good old fashioned manager, middle aged, flat cap, tweed coat, red face and seemingly fond of the booze and other people’s wives, none of this track suited wiry intensity you get nowadays. Plus english was his first language. Well, a form of English, distilled through the rain and amber dew of Glasgow. He was probably barely 40 in those days.

        • Yes, one reason you might be surprised The Doc was still around was you might be surprised how young he was in his pomp. I was similarly startled to hear Jim McLean had only recently left us. Both men made it to a decent age, which is the main thing.
          TD married that other man’s wife and they stayed together for decades, btw.
          I remember being excited when he took over at QPR, but he couldn’t reproduce the magic at Loftus Road.
          From the QPR forum:
          Always remember a story he told from his time with us about when we were top of the league or near to it and he was called in by Jim Gregory and Jim offered him a drink and said “well Tommy its time for a parting of the ways” ,Tommy slightly shocked said “thats too bad Jim i didnt realise you were thinking of retiring”

    • Good Idea @Sewer-Robot – I was somehow sure that Jimmy Greaves had passed away but he appeared on the tv the other day, the apparent recipient of a New Years honours gong.
      Pretty remarkable given his drink problems back in the day.

      • I’m afraid that Jimmy Greaves’ MBE is one of those that brings out the hypocrite in me. I abhor the honours system. It’s where all the political party donors get their knighthoods, or retired politicians get them so that they can add a few zeroes to their consultancy and speaker fees. Some of the recipients of knighthoods make me want to vomit. Especially when they insist on being called ‘sir’. Not by me, they bloody won’t!

        And then there’s the connection to a shameful period in our history. Our empire. I think that when the Queen is no longer with us we seriously need to think of renaming them.

        But, with all that said, I get nearly as annoyed by who don’t get them, as who do. Jimmy Greaves, probably the greatest striker England has ever produced, has to wait till he’s 81 and a very unwell man to get an MBE, when you think of all the other sportspeople that have had honours in the meantime. What’s more, having watched Geoff Hurst take his place for the World Cup Final and get the glory, he has watched him become Sir Geoff (a knighthood that, let’s face it, owes as much to a Russian linesman’s eyesight not being up to scratch as it does to our monarch).

        • Talking of calling knights, Sir, I suspect I probably could accept the concept more than a local fella, who bought a local Lord of the Manor title. (Clue: their ‘title’ is Lord Of Wherever, rather than Lord Wherever.) He gets very sniffy about not being addressed as Lord, and sends letters of complaint when addressed as or written to as Mr. Mind you, he was left speechless when a receptionist phoned him up, at my request, and just said Hello Darryl (not his real name, he being sufficiently litigious to google himself daily) Not normally one for undue familiarity with strangers, I had to admire her panache.

    • I was a bit too young to appreciate him at his peak, but I remember the Boxing Day game at Maine Road against Newcastle, 1977. After missing the entire 76-77 season with a knee injury (sustained against United in a November ’75 League Cup game at Maine Road), this was Colin’s first game back. He came on as a sub in the second half to one of the most emotional welcomes I’ve ever felt at a football match; the good will and love just poured out of the stands. Colin didn’t look quite right with his limp, but he played ok and City went on to win the game 4-0. He was never the same player after the injury, but he was already an absolute legend at the club. A truly great player and a humble man, RIP Colin Bell.

        • I saw this in the comments of the Hattenstone tribute. It’s an extract from Kevin Keegan’s 1979 book ‘Against the World’:

          “On the field I found inspiration in Colin Bell, who had suffered the same difficulty [as me] in adapting to international football. If you judged him on his first ten matches, you would forget him as an England player. I came into the team in the era of Bell. He was the man, the number one England footballer, and great to play with. Roy McFarland and Colin Todd were good, but Bell ran the show.

          His work-rate was incredible; I remember a goal against Czechoslovakia in October 1974 when he started in our penalty area and ran the length of Wembley to slot in the ball. Only Bell could have scored that…. I would not have liked to compete with him with in anything at that time; he was so fit…. As a man, he was very quiet and sincere, and I believe the loss of Colin Bell through a knee injury was the reason for England first going downhill after the great start under Don Revie….”

    • As a Man City supporter at a young age, I was often asked why I preferred to follow them rather than the ubiquitous Bobbie Charlton and George Best crew.

      I used to reply, simply, ‘Bell, Lee and Summerbee’.

  10. Eugene Wright, double-bass player of the classic Dave Brubeck Quartet for more than 30 albums, died on 30 December at the grand old age of 97.
    When Dave Brubeck hired Wright in 1957, the presence of an African American in an otherwise white jazz band wasn’t exactly uncontroversial. A lot of people didn’t like it. A few years ago, Hendrick Smith wrote this about Brubeck and Wright’s early years playing together:

    “The worst trouble for the integrated band was in the segregated South. Even at university gigs, they required a police escort. A bomb had been thrown at a Louis Armstrong concert in Knoxville in 1957. In 1958, Dave’s manager began to receive letters from Southern universities insisting that the Quartet drop Eugene Wright in order to perform. “We have no integration down here,” the president of LSU told the San Francisco Chronicle.
    “It wasn’t easy,” Dave recalled in 2007, in relation to the sense of danger, of being sought out for music but rejected as people. “And we went through many things.”
    Dave refused to compromise. He cancelled gigs. He took a similar stand on the Bell Telephone Hour, a musical TV program, when the producers made a similar ultimatum. “I told them that we weren’t going to change,” Dave recalled. “And, they said, ‘Well, then we can’t have you.’ And I said, ‘All right, I’m not going to do your television show.’ “Jazz stands for freedom,” Dave said. For him, it also stood for loyalty and principle.”

  17. Stefan Cush, larger than life guitarist and co lead vocalist of The Men They Couldn’t Hang, died yesterday, 4th February, from a sudden heart attack. Still crowd surfing last time I saw them play, he’ll leave a big hole in the band.

    • I was shocked and saddened to see that last night. He was a great character. I know TMTCH are more or less a part time concern these days, but they can’t carry on without him, can they? I mean, I know they could in a practical sense but it really wouldn’t be the same.

      • I was wondering the same thing today. Tom Spencer plays with them sometimes so a guitarist wouldn’t be a problem but their songs are vocally very much either Cush or Swill and it’s hard to imagine someone else taking over his distinctive vocals on those numbers.

    • Met her once very briefly at a party when she and the then latest incarnation of the Supremes were on a package tour of the Middle East in the mid-1980s.

      Given all the shit that got thrown her way by “Miss Ross”, you couldn’t hope to meet a nicer, more down-to-earth person.

      Remember she famously bought John Lennon’s psychedelic Rolls Royce.

  22. Rynagh O’Grady has left us. Known to many as the shopkeeper in Father Ted – a brilliant running joke in the show where she and her husband vehemently and viciously detested each other – but instantly projected a happy, healthy relationship whenever Father Ted was around.

  28. The great U-Roy (Ewart Beckford) has died.
    He was in the absolute vanguard of the first wave of Jamaican deejays in the early 70s. His debut, “Version Galore” is a classic collection of rocksteady rhythms with Roy’s inimitable toasting over the top. He went to make other celebrated albums such as Natty Rebel and Rasta Ambassador.
    He was 78 or 79, depending on which of the 2 birth dates given for him is correct!
    Farewell, then, our “Ace from outer space”…

    http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/entertainment/20210218/godfather-and-trailblazer-daddy-u-roy-has-died

    • Rasta Ambassador is a great album. I have been looking for it this afternoon. I had 2 copies and gave 1 to a mate. At least I think I had 2 copies.

    • No, Mike Baldwin died years ago, on the cobbles in the rain. Or so I read. I gave up watching Corrie ages ago when it started running more than twice a week, which was too big a time commitment. It seemed to lose a lot of the humour too.

      My favourite lines that I remember involved Mike Baldin though, when Hilda Ogden was cleaning his office.

      Hilda [both hand held in front of her and eyes closed in concentration]: I write with me right so what’s left is me left.
      Mike: Do you have trouble with your right and your left Hilda?
      Hilda: Well no, because I’ve got this way of remembering, you see?

      • I can see his pained expression in my minds eye.

        I loved the running jokes between Jack and Vera. A typical scene would be Vera dolled up garishly for a night at the Rovers.

        Jack, in a string vest, is sitting at the kitchen table reading Sporting Life. He looks up, shudders. and mutters under his breath “you look a right state…”

        Vera – (happily) “what’s that, love?”
        Jack – “Er…(winning smile) I said you look great!”
        Vera’s heart melts and she skips out the door.

  33. Ian St. John.
    When a player plays for a big club they’re going to rack up medals. Goes with the territory. Arsenal players win more medals than Crystal Palace players. Wigan Athletic players win more medals than Tottenham Hotspur players (heh, heh).

    The great thing about St. John is that he started at Motherwell, playing over 100 games, before getting the big move to SECOND Division Liverpool. He got them up in the same season as… any takers?… Leyton Orient got promoted – the Os’ one and only season in the top flight.

    Liverpool, of course, have never been anywhere else since, but, crucially, at the beginning, St. John wasn’t guaranteed that success.
    He’s arguably Liverpool’s most important ever player.

    It’s those ones I really like, they don’t take it for granted and they tend to have the best, and certainly most interesting, careers.

  34. Oh dear, it’s been a bad week or two for the greats of Jamaican music: Bunny Wailer has died.
    I don’t know … at the risk of coming out with a standard obituary cliché, somehow it feels like the end of an era.
    Thanks for all the wonderful, righteous music, Jah Bunny. One Love!

    • A huge fan of all Motor Racing first and foremost. He kept his job in Advertising going whilst doing the commentary.
      He developed his own strand of Colemanballs with oft uttered Walkerisms
      (“And if I’m very much mistaken … and I am very much mistaken!”).
      His perfect foil was James Hunt – Murray’s excitement, and Hunt’s vaguely annoyed vaguely dis-interested asides mad a rain-soaked Monaco a must watch.

    • A perfect voice for motorsport in same mould as Richie Benaud, Peter O’Sullevan, Dan Maskill and Ted Lowe in their areas of expertise. Murray Walker commentating on snooker must have been a comedy sketch at some point.

  41. Ray Campi, the King of Rockabilly, musician, collector and historian, left this earth on Thursday. A very nice fella, always had a story or anecdote to tell, and he always had that “music maniac” signal in his eyes. Keep rockin’.

  42. Doug Parkinson was big gentle bloke with a booming raspy voice. He did covers of Hair, did the Oz tour of Tommy and led some top bands in his time. Later in life Parkinson had Parkinson’s.
    I got into a row with @GaryJohn ,occasionally of this parish, when I posted a tribute on Facebook stating that for some, his version of Dear Prudence was better than the Beatles. He proclaimed it awful. Admittedly, it will have most appeal to Aussies of a certain age but I’ve subsequently read that Macca also held it in high esteem.

    • His progressive rock album with Fanny Adams (their only one, I think) in 1971 is sensational. I didn’t think it was on CD, but seemingly it is in Germany. It includes the half-forgotten guy from the Bee Gees whose name seemed to change with every release – Vince Maloney, Malourny, Melouney, Meleeeuuney (that one only in Newcastle on Tyne, obviously)…

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgN7BYOMn50

  45. And now Big Frank Worthington has given the bucket a good hard kick

    https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/mar/23/frank-worthington-former-england-leicester-forward-dies-aged-72

    One of those wonderful larger than life characters that typified 70s footie. Hope they don’t bury him in one of his jackets as they’ll never find a coffin wide enough to accommodate its lapels

    Below is the absolutely stunning goal he scored for Bolton against Ipswich

    • One of that never to be repeated group of 70’s mavericks with the likes of Stan Bowles, Tony Currie etc who were loved by fans but exasperated managers – despite their talent, none of them had any sort of extended international career. By all accounts, Frank was a good bloke as well – Gary Lineker has said how great Frank was with him when Gary was an apprentice at leicester.

  46. @Black-Celebration
    @Dai

    Couple of lovely anecdotes about Murray Walker in this morning’s Times…

    Sue Weaver writes: I was part of the motor sport family for some years. Having been working in Macau for two of the same years as Murray Walker (obituary, March 15), I asked him if he was going to be in Macau “this year” (1985).

    His reply sums up Murray in two short paragraphs: “To my enormous regret I won’t be at Macau this year as the Beeb wants me for the RAC Rally. I can hardly say ‘I’ll take the butter and the jam, but I don’t want the bread’ — because then there might not be any bread!”

    He continued: “My consolation is that I will be going to Australia and that the Australian Motor Industry are taking me out a week early to throw a dinner for me at the Sydney Motor Show. I’m very flattered and looking forward to it like a schoolboy’s first foreign trip.”

    Lucian Camp writes: During his advertising agency days, Murray was in charge of the Co-operative Wholesale Society (CWS) account, and I was creative director. On a very wintry day several of us went up to Manchester on the train to make a presentation to them, but it started to snow and the train was running slower and slower.

    Eventually we pulled into Manchester, very late for our meeting, but Murray immediately disappeared. A few minutes later he returned, and we asked crossly what he’d been up to.

    “Went to have a word with the driver,” he said. “Said well done for getting us here, and gave him a tenner to get himself a drink.”

  47. The death has been announced of Noel Bridgeman – Irish drummer. Played with lots of big names – The Waterboys, Van Morrison, Steve Earle, Mary Black, Christy Moore and lots more. His career began in Skid Row with Phil Lynott, Gary Moore and Brush Shiels.

    • Skid Row were the first band I ever saw – fuck – 50 years ago now.

      My cousin who works in Dublin knew NB quite well as he used to play in a band
      that had a regular Thursday night gig in his local pub. Was planning on getting up to Dublin to see them but then COVID came along

      • I was just a couple of years too young for the Skid Row era, but they were always acknowledged as the wellspring of Irish rock. I know his name from album credits and innumerable TV appearances in the late 70’s and through the 80’s. Seemed to be always in demand.
        I also have a cousin in Dublin that would have probably known him!

  49. RIP Larry McMurtry –

    Peerless chronicler of the Old West (Lonesome Dove), small town America (The Last Picture Show, Texasville) and father of the criminally under-rated singer-songwriter, James (Just Us Kids, Can’t Make it Here No More). Only 84. Thought he was much, much older.

  50. Yaphet Kotto – Terrific foil for Richard Pryor and Harvey Keitel in Paul Schrader’s Blue Collar. Son of a Cameroonian prince according to the obit i rad this morning

  51. I read that the drummer Don Heffington died just over a week ago, aged 70 and being treated in hospital for leukemia. He recorded and toured with many big names in the Americana genre. I know his came from Emmylou Harris and Lucinda Williams CDs and I saw him play in Lucinda’s band at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester in 2006

  52. Malcolm Cecil, UK born musician who moved from double bassist in Ronnie Scott’s house band to being half of electronics pioneers, Tonto’s Expanding Headband, and eventually completely transforming Stevie Wonder’s artistic horizons (Talking Book, Inner Visions, Fulfilingness’ First Finale). Apparently fell out big-time with SW over royalties he felt he was owed but didn’t get paid

  56. Paul Ritter’s passing is unnerving as,aside from the famous roles, he had a reassuring habit of showing up in many things that I have liked (e.g Pistol in Henry V, the dodgy boyfriend in Pulling, the vicar in Mapp and Lucinda, even as Harold Pinter in a Radio 4 play last year). I will miss seeing him.

  57. RIP Leon Gast – director of the Grateful Dead Movie and more notably the Oscar-winning Once We Were Kings – one of the best boxing movies ever made.

    Originally supposed to be a doc about the music festival that preceded “The Rumble in the Jungle”, OWWK eventually ate up 100 Kms of film and took Gast over 20 years of lawsuits to get onto screen. If you’ve not seen it, it’s a stunning evocation of one of the greatest fights in heavyweight history.

    • But he did in 1956 (according to the Guardian) bring to an end the tradition of presenting debutantes at the Palace. A good thing.

      Not famed for his tactfulness and as a result, the constant whipping boy of the press.

      Up there with Melina Mercouri, Vangelis and Demis Roussos as a Famous Greek of our Time.

      I didn’t know he was born on the beautiful island of Corfu where I spent 3 summers back in the day. I never heard him mentioned once.

        • That’s the one.
          I’m pretty much avoiding all the coverage as, despite being in the middle of about five projects covering 1921-2021, I can’t imagine mentioning the royal family in any of them!
          They surely only really exist to 1. tabloid readers, 2. royal biographers (of which there appear to be thousands), and 3. Tory boys like Johnson and Rees-Mogg.

          I did catch one brief resume of his life on a news bulletin. We saw the royal family on the birth of Edward in 1964 looking for all the world as if it was 1864.
          The one bit that looked potentially interesting was the fabled documentary from 1969 which apparently is completely off-limits until the Queen dies, and probably off-limits for many years after if Charles has anything to do with it.
          I’d probably watch that.

            • I’m basically a republican but I’m also a democrat, and monarchy is the settled will of the British people – and that is not going anywhere in my lifetime, no matter how many humourless articles appear in the Guardian about how, like, todally unfair it is.

              As for other systems – recent events in the US should make smug twats like Jonathan Freedland wind their snooty necks in, but of course…. they always know best.

              • George Monbiot still can’t understand why the proles don’t want the right things – he’s been giving them their instructions for simply ages. It’s really quite tiring.

            • @ernietothecentreoftheearth – completely agree. See also the patriotism thing: there’s a particular kind of comfy anti-royalist, anti-patriotic sentiment which is the comfort zone of middle-class Labour. Not that there’s anything wrong with feeling that way, but failure to examine how offputting it is to a huge swathe of the country is a huge part of what made Corbyn unelectable and why Remain lost, to my eyes.

              The fact that JC’s first public statement yesterday was some tired old burble about Bolivia, before reluctantly finally saying something about Prince Philip to the tune of “well, commiserations and all that, but actually lots of people have lost loved ones recently yeah?” was kind of emblematic of how completely divorced he is from Britain as it is, rather than Britain as he thinks it ought to be. Amazes me that anyone is surprised the electorate didn’t like him.

              • @ernietothecentreoftheearth
                @hedgepig

                Agree totally with what you guys are saying about Labour’s having lost touch with the people who were once its bedrock.

                The shocking fact that Labour looks set to get trounced in the upcoming by-election (and this in a formerly hardline “red wall” seat), it’s clear that Starmer still has a huge task ahead of him in trying to win back all those lost voters.

                Thing that I find even more amazing is that the media still seems to think that anyone gives a flying fuck about anything Corbyn might have to say.

                I thought that by this late stage, the only time we might see him was on one of those “one foot in the grave” funeral expenses ads they show on Talking Pictures every ad break.

                • It’s Twitter’s fault. The very online left is still obsessed and noisy, and since political journalists now think Twitter = their job, they signal boost the voices a few thousand incredibly unrepresentative voices.

                  • “well, commiserations and all that, but actually lots of people have lost loved ones recently yeah?” would be exactly my honest reaction to the news if asked. I mean no disrepect by that, but nor do I think it needs justifying. I’d have imagined a sizeable proportion of the country felt the same.

                    (Goes without saying I disagree with what you guys say about Jezza.)

                    • He was 99 and so it is hardly a tragedy.
                      “Commiserations to the Queen on her loss” is perfectly reasonable, surely.

                      I heard about 30 minutes of the coverage yesterday and nothing I came across made me warm to him any more.
                      Shooting animals is very problematic, for me, for someone so concerned with wildlife, and the “didn’t take fools gladly” line which was repeated on numerous occasions suggests arrogance (how did he know if the person he was talking to didn’t consider him to be a fool?) and, anyway, how many times in his life did he makes completely avoidable and foolish gaffs?

                      Now, it’s Saturday and sport, and so the radio schedules are back to normal. Come on the Pirates.

  60. RIP Shirley Williams, whose name former Fellow Gang of Four labour Party defector and consummate anagrammatist, Roy Jenkins, once memorably re-arranged as “I whirl aimlessly”

    • Her radio session with Matthew Parris about Vera Brittain was, I thought, one of the best pieces of radio I’ve heard in a long while.

      That rare thing, a decent person in politics.

    • She was friends with my mum from the mid-70s to late 80s. My father was a big cheese in a railway union and a small one in the Labour Party. As Si says, she was “a decent person in politics.”

      A pragmatist, highly intelligent, and she scared the living daylights out of most of the spineless twerps in the LP. I saw them socially when their guard was down and they were no better than Thatcher, believe me.

      I have happy teenage memories of Sunday mornings picking blackberries in the woods, making wine, me sitting on the kitchen floor holding a bottle and a tube, while my mum and Shirley decanted from the demijohn, all of us giggling.

      We moved away when I was 17, always a thrill to hear her on the wireless in later years.

    • Never really understood the SDP, why leave one party to form another and then merge with a different party within a couple of years?

      Guess it was about personal ambition for the likes of Owens.

      Williams seemed a good egg though, vilified by the Tory press more for her dress sense than her political views, which is pretty usual.

  61. Sad news about Shirley Williams. I can think of very few politicians in this country who showed her decency, intelligence, and thoughtfulness. It may not have made her a success in achieving and exercising power, but it did mean she seemed to be a politician not simply in it for herself, and who you could trust. I would happily take her over the entire current cabinet (not that that’s saying much, I admit).

  62. Shay Healy, broadcaster, presenter, interviewer, songwriter, jack of all trades in the entertainment industry. Probably best known for writing ‘What’s Another Year?’ that won the Eurovision SC. for Johnny Logan. When you seperate it from the contest it’s not a bad song at all. A deeply personal song about his father trying to come to terms with the loss of his wife.

    • Seemed like a fun geezer and the Nighhawks programme (briefly) dragged RTE kicking and screaming into the contemporary world.
      Also fixed a certain hard-to-like athlete’s record time in my mind forever with his line
      “In 3 minutes 47.33 seconds there would be an end to my blue
      Because if I was Sebastian Coe I think I’d run a mile from you”

      • Nighthawks was a strange concept. A friend and myself went to it one night – just walked into RTE and onto the set. A couple of beers and a quick chat with Shay – not on air, thankfully. I wish we’d had more interest in politics and current affairs at that time because there was plenty of discussion going on around us. Totally live and (appearing to be) off-the-cuff, it was fairly radical for it’s time.

  63. And now Bernie Madoff has popped his clogs.

    With 138 years of 150 year sentence left to serve, he died as he had lived – short changing everyone to the very last

  64. It’s not been a good year for the great deejays of the golden era of Jamaican music.
    Following the passing of U-Roy in February, we lost Trinity (Wade Brammer) a few days ago.
    He was 67.
    Let’s have something from my favourite Trinity album, “Shanty Town Determination”

    • 80, wow.
      Weird thing – even in an era of mild nodding and shaking hands after a score, that celebration was positively non-existent!
      In no way down playing it, it’s a thing of absolute beauty, but it is definitely a TV moment.
      Imagine if the try had been in the other corner, it wouldn’t nearly have as much impact.

      A similar twist happens with the 4th goal in the 1970 World Cup Final. Pele receives the ball, lazily passes it to no one (no one on the screen, that is), only for fellow Brazilian to come out of nowhere to power the ball home. Best goal ever.
      In the official FIFA film, shot from an entirely different angle, it’s… erm… OK… but no one would recognise it as the same goal.

    • Worth remembering that the man who captained the 71 Lions to the only series win in New Zealand only got 22 caps for Wales. Gareth Edwards 53.

      The value of international caps has been greatly devalued over time.

      • Gareth Edwards didn’t miss a single official Welsh international game in 11 years. They played a lot fewer games in those days and then retired early to write autobiographies and make some money. They were then deemed to be “professional” and banned from the sport.

      • True. My recollection is that back then, they only played the 5 nations and one game against whichever of NZ or Aus was touring. I don’t recall home nations doing much, if any, touring – the only tours were the Lions once every 4 years.

        • Actually Lions tours were every 3 years then, 71 NZ, 74 SA, 77 NZ again. Think there was an occasional tour by individual countries. England beat New Zealand down there in the 70s despite doing absolutely nothing in the 5 nations all decade. When NZ came over they were here for months and played 20 or so games inc all home nations. There were also development games, e.g. Wales playing Japan, these were normally non cap games though and the likes of Edwards wouldn’t bother playing these games

  68. Canvey Island’s finest harmonica player, Lew Lewis, has died.
    He was a Hot Rod, played on the London Calling LP, and had his own band.
    He’d had serious mental health and drug issues, as well as serving a prison sentence for armed robbery.

  69. 2 very talented guys, stalwarts ofthe 70s west coast scene. Ralph Shuckett who played on Carole King’s Tapestry (Smackwater Jack) and later was a member of Todd Rundgren’s Utopia has died in the last few days, aged 72. And Rusty Young, pedal steel player and founder member of Poco has died, aged 75, following a heart attack. He wrote the lovely title cut of their 1976 album “Rose of Cimarron”

  70. Jim Steinman has died. He was the go to guy for outrageous, unashamed, over the top operatic rock and Bat Out of Hell is probably the album which has most consistently given me pleasure over more decades than any any other.

    • I have a picture disc of the Bad For Good album somewhere as well as a single that came with the regular copy. You could tell a Steinman production a mile off, a bit like Jeff Lynne, but I used to like his stuff although I haven’t played Bat for years.

    • Bat Out Of Hell – much derided, overblown (almost Wagnerian), but a bloody good album from soup to nuts
      (as a concept/storyline though, the tracks are in the wrong order).
      Could happily do without II and III though …

      • Steinman was having one of his regular fallings out with the Meat Loaf Camp and wasn’t directly involved in III, though several of his songs (including the couple of good ones on the album) were used. In the stage show, which is as close as we will ever get to the original idea, the songs are in a different order and Bat itself is the big climax before the interval.

    • I thought Bat Out of Hell was quite exciting in the seventies as a teenager, but it really is pretty terrible. As others said, more musical theatre than rock music, some of it is still quite exciting though and the fact that E Streeters are on there is a good thing.

      However, this is probably the best thing he ever did:

      RIP

      • Terrible? Camp, melodramatic, ambitious, ballsy, full-on and overblown I can accept. But terrible? There’s more energy in that one album than most bands manage in a lifetime. It’s a great 70s record that stands apart.

      • I still feel as warmly towards it as I did nearly 44 years ago when I first heard “You Took The Words…” on Radio Luxembourg and knew I had to have it (got the LP for my next birthday) – fantastic pop songs with a genuine sense of humour and totally gorgeous ballads, brilliantly played, produced and, of course, sung. Don’t care what genre it fits into, if any – it has really stood the test of time. I remember the Record Mirror review where it got 2 stars and stated it wasn’t really what was happening in Britain at the time…

        Steinman’s original of “Rock’n’Roll Dreams Come Through” (a freebie 7” with the Bad For Good” album) is up there for me too.

        • I far prefer Steinman’s version & was used to the single version, where the sax solo is shorter & no “beat goes on forever” coda.
          I hadn’t realised for years that Rory Dodd is the singer rather than Steinman. (Dodd was the duet “turn around” voice on Total Eclipse of the Heart”)

    • I’m not sure if he saved, indulged or corrupted Andrew Eldritch when they made ‘This Corrosion’ ‘Dominion/Mother Russia’ and ‘More’, but the Sisters of Mercy were never the same again.

    • Was the original producer of Def Leppard’s Hysteria before Rick Allen’s accident. One can only imagine how overblown that might’ve been before Mutt Lange returned and pressed his special “clean edges and smooth” button

  73. Film director Richard zRush has also died.

    If you’ve not seen it, do yourself a favour and hunt down The Stunt Man – up there with My Favourite Year, Lawrence and The Ruling Class in the list of great performances from Peter O’Toole

  75. Monte Hellman.

    Frankly, if you’d asked me about the man this morning I’d have had little idea.
    He actually directed and edited (the editing part a considerable undertaking apparently) Two-Lane Blacktop, a road movie with James Taylor and Dennis Wilson.

    It was the kind of film British TV would screen at 1 a.m. during a school week, and the kind of film I would religiously sneak downstairs and watch. It was my education, and the beginning of Channel Four upped the stakes.
    The Radio Times/TV Times would be snooty (as they were with Head, Performance, Catch Us If You Can) and enjoyed pretty much a 100% strike rate in being wrong.
    Rule of thumb: if they said it was “dated,“ it was a corker; if they said it was “still relevant” it was a dud.

    I saw Two-Lane Blacktop about ten years ago, and I still loved it.

  78. Nick Kamen, who despite his pop career will probably be best remembered for the iconic Levi’s 501 ‘laundrette’ ad which relaunched a jeans style popular to this day, has died at the far too young age of 59.

  79. David “Blue Jeans” Dundas’ career had a similar trajectory though I think he was an actual musician.

    Anyway, RIP, Mr K, 59 is no age at all to go

  80. It’s my sad duty to inform you of the death of John Richards of the
    Apostrophe Protection Society.

    Richards’s obituary appears in this morning’s Times for
    anyone who’s interested in its contents.

  85. Freddy Marks, of Rod, Jane and Freddy has left us. He married Jane in 2016, 30 years into their relationship, which started 6 years after he joined the trio, so he could never be accused of rushing into things. It was Rod, Matt and Jane when I used to watch Rainbow, before Matt went off to take over from his dad on the Sooty Show, but Rod, Jane and Freddy was the better known version of the trio.

    • Only just seen this. I loved the chaotic but beautiful noise he made, especially this one for which I really hope the chorus actually is “ohhhhh Laurie Anderson”

  89. Former British Heavyweight Champion, Brian London – fmously “gave Muhammad Ali “the fright of his life” during their 1966 World Title fight. “He thought he’d killed me.”

    • One of those people who had considerable fame and then vanished.
      His career reads like a different world – Empire Pool, Liverpool Arena (didn’t the Beatles play there?), Harringay, White City.

      Probably not into youth culture himself, his pro career (1955-1970) entirely encompasses the Golden Age… almost to the day… his final fight being four days after the release of Let It Be. Quite apt!

  90. You lot won’t know him, but Swedish legend Peps Persson just left us. A pioneer of blues and reggae in Swedish (well, skånska, the southern dialect sounding half-Danish, to be exact) he slowly but surely got to be a rather beloved character here. Here’s an exemple (and one of my favourites):

    And here’s a later Highlife-inspired song:

    His lyrics were political and/or uplifting, and he always did things his own way. RIP.

  91. Richard Donner, director of Superman, The Goonies, Scrooged, the Lethal Weapon series and, best of all as far as I am concerned, The Omen, has died, aged 91. I have watched The Omen countless times, but the film, or should I say, the scene of one of his films I have watched the most is Superman and “the bit with the bus”, as every day for weeks and weeks my son asked me to put it on for him, and that was the scene he always wanted me to start it from.

    • Remember the 1978 Cup Final when Ipswich played Arsenal and there was a sign in the crowd that read “Featherlite Mariner slips neatly around Big Willie”

      RIP, Mr. M – just two years older than me

    • Studied at the Walthamstow College of Art, the same place where Peter Blake taught Ian Dury, who, I believe, used to drink in The Bell… an appalling pub about 15 years ago, now more popular than Baked Beans, but considerably more expensive.
      My last pint there was so dear (“How much?”), I took the glass, but don’t tell anyone.

      Born 1948, (obviously) beautiful and talented, and uncannily similar to Anne Briggs!

  96. RIP Ellen McIlwaine – hugely talented blues singer and slide guitarist.

    Saw her give a scintillating performance in a tiny Toronto club in the late summer of 75.

    While I can’t recall her ever getting much notice in the UK (until this week’s obits), she
    apparently remained a huge draw in Canada

      • Amazingly Hancock’s wife Freddie is still alive

        Her time with TH got it’s own film with Alfred Molina as the lad himself (He was much better than Ken S im(ns)ho

        • Great, I’ll watch that this afternoon, ta.
          I was confused at first as to what the ns in “im(ns)ho” stood for. But then I worked out it’s probably Nobby Stiles. I’m no dimwit.

        • The best Hancock turn I’ve heard is Richard Briers, who did a fantastically grim solo R3 play called Hancock’s Last Half Hour. (Spoiler in title alert). I suppose it would have been ’93, 25 years on.

          Because it was R3, Tom Good got to say “fuck”. Stone me.

          • Kevin McNally does an excellent Hancock on ‘The Missing Hancocks’, an occasional series of remakes of original episodes of HHH missing from the BBC’s archive, produced by Neil Pearson. They appear occasionally on Radio 4Extra.

            The most recent ones included a couple from the time when TH disappeared and did not turn up for recordings. The BBC drafted in Harry Secombe at short notice to replace TH, who only agreed to return when the BBC threatened to make Secombe a permanent replacement. In the remakes, HS was played by his son Andrew.

    • Oh shit no.

      Very likeable guy, he was crap and brilliant at the same time, a kind of hip-hop Lurkers. I don’t think that his stuff would make any sense to anyone who wasn’t young(ish) and heavily into hip-hop in the late 80s.

  99. Coventry City legend George Curtis.

    And having played 523 games – most of them as captain – in taking the club from the old fourth to first divisions and then co-managing them to victory in what’s regularly cited as being one of the most exciting Cup Finals ever*, ”legend” is a term he truly deserved.

    Wearing my City FA Cup Final strip all day today in his honour.

    * 1987 – George C and John Sillett’s Sky Blue came back to beat Spurs 3-2 (AET) after going a goal down just two minutes into the match. Highlights below

    How my poor benighted Club could do with someone of his stature now!

    • He was the compère at a “Life on Mars” (the show) themed event about 15 years ago. Someone thought it would be clever whereas the 20 something vending machine company employees didn’t know who he was and didn’t find the 70s routine funny. He was ok at rehearsals. For added irony, the venue was Lakeside Country Club at Camberley, the template for Peter Kay’s Phoenix Nights. The Green Room was plastered with publicity photos of failed New Faces contestants along with the odd recognisable act such as Roger de Courcy or Little and Large. One of the worst organised events I’ve worked on, I only worked on the rig then went home. I dodged a bullet from what I was told by the crew that stayed.

    • He was a lovely man. In 1995 my best man was living round the corner from Lakeside and we snuck into the darts by going for a lunchtime pie & pint. The Viking was, needless to say, already in the bar.

      • RIP, a memorable character. My age, that hurts.

        Love the nicknames in darts and snooker, Mark Selby is the “jester from Leicester”, looks like a man who has never made a joke in his life! Or maybe he wears a special hat in bed?

      • Spent about half an hour this morning watching behind-the-kit videos of Joey burning the place to the ground, again and again. There’s something incredibly great about the juxtaposition of his jaw-dropping speed, skill and aggression against the impassive stillness of his mask. An immense, immense drummer.

        46. Terribly young.

        • I had never considered the point about the mask, but that’s absolutely spot on.

          He was a properly stellar drummer and they’re a really interesting band. Often treated as a novelty act outside their own genre (for obvious reasons), but mainly revered inside it.

          Never saw them live, but badly wish I had.

          • It was unfortunate for Slipknot that timing, and the probably unnecessary inclusion of a DJ, pegged them forever to nu-metal, which is almost all bad (honourable exception, obviously: the Bizkit, GOAT, visionaries, don’t @ me).

            If they’d been around a couple of years earlier or later, minus the scratching, they’d just be a classic, ferocious, interesting and innovative metal band.

            • Oof. That’s an excellent point on the scratching. I think there was a moral panic around them when they first toured the UK as well; something to do with teenagers cutting themselves. That probably didn’t help. Plus, the masks. From a certain vantage point, it probably made them seem a bit fly by night.

              Iowa is an immense record though, and they been consistently good to very good ever since.

              My favourite Slipknot observation remains that if Coldplay looked like Slipknot and Slipknot looked like Coldplay, both bands would arguably be improved. Coldplay definitely would, anyway.

  108. Novelist Mo Hayder has died from MotorNeurone Disease at the age of 59. His first novel, the extremely macabre The Birdman, was a best seller and a bit of a cause celebre at the time. Her books are well worth seeking out if you like crime fiction in the dark and unforgiving Val McDermid style.

  109. RIP The X-Factor

    Finally gave up the ghost and passed away almost unnoticed and unmourned after years of declining viewing figures – sorry – health.

    No flowers – Cash donations only to S Cowell, “DunExxing”, Talent-free Avenue, Itsanofrommeshire

      • The Buttoneer, a gadget for fixing loose buttons on clothes with a sort of little plastic stud. Ideal for the inept/lazy/those with a “I’m a bloke so I’m not bloody faffing about with a needle and thread” attitude to sewing.

        Its ingenuity astounded me when I was twelve, and on the TV adverts it looked liked there was nothing it couldn’t do. But we never owned one, and eventually I was shown how to sew buttons back on all by my myself. I became a man that day.

        I have just discovered that Mr Popeil, in addition to offering the world a load of plastic tat it didn’t know it needed, is also in the Guinness Book of Records as having the world’s largest collection of olive oil bottles. 2440 of them. I wonder if he stored them alphabetically?

  111. Huddersfield eccentric – Jake Mangel Wurzel!
    He used to visit his girlfriend (who at one point I also went out with) on a scooter wearing a turban. Written on the petrol tank was Desperately Sikhing Susan (her name)

  113. RIP Corrie mainstay, Norris Cole.

    His interactions with Rita and Mary in the Cabin were one of the few reasons I carried on watching Corrie until about 5 years ago despite its having become pants many, many years before

          • Thank goodness you are here to put me right on anything I might inadvertently like.

            It was magnificent, such brilliant, often hilarious writing and a rare place where elderly characters such as Norris Cole could shine.

            • Given that the show’s been running for more than 60 years and is widely regarded as one of the most influential UK TV shows ever made, I’d love to know the basis for CJM’s claim that “it’s always been pants”.

              In its twice-weekly (Monday and Wednesday) night heyday when it used to focus on believable characters and plots, Corrie was amongst the warmest and funniest things on UK TV.

              Things only began their downhill slide when ITV started to add more and more episodes and any relation to reality went out the window as a result of the chase for ratings. I gave up watching after one too many serial killers moved into number 17 about five years back. While there are loads of old Corrie episodes from the 60s and 70s up on YT, I’ve never quite got round to watching any of them.

              A direct descendant of Arthur Lowe’s Leonard (think DA’s Captain Mainwaring without the swagger stick) from Corrie’s earliest days, Norris was one of the Street’s last great comic creations and last reasons for watching.

              • Correct. I was watching – and often enjoying – Corrie regularly until about 2005. Until the mid-90s it was fairly consistently entertaining. Competing with Eastenders for miserablism was and is a bad mistake.

                In recent years it’s become Hollyoaks with cobbles.

                The real story here is: what was Norris’s favourite band?

                  • @Dave-Amitri

                    It’s been so long since I’ve watched it, that I’d forgotten all about Roy and Mary.

                    The last time I tuned in regularly in the days of Pat Phelan – the one serial killer too many I wrote about above – they’d even started making Mary unpleasant if certain storylines demanded it. Absolutely ridiculous.

              • It would appear that a contrary opinion is not welcome here. CS is the kind of by-numbers, lowest common denominator television that has polluted the airwaves for far too long.

                If you lot like it, fill your boots. I’ll watch something worthwhile instead.

    • Una Stubbs seems to have been universally liked by everyone she worked with. She always struck me as a classy lady, even if she was only appearing in an ITV quiz show with Lionel Blair or dressing up as a scarecrow for kids. Her role in Till Death Do Us Part was inevitably obscured by Warren Mitchell’s character but she is key part of it.

      When she was a regular on TV through the 60s and 70s, she was an early crush of mine; as a young lad I always thought she was terribly hot, and in her younger days she was definitely blessed with the wide-eyed “elfin beauty” that Peter Cook once referred to.

      And as for the glass coffee table story (the version I have heard involved Una and Roger Moore), it may very well be only an urban myth, but I’m sure she wouldn’t be short of volunteers.

      • I met Una Stubbs several years ago and got to know her a bit – I can confirm that she was every bit as lovely as everyone says. She also had a wicked sense of humour – I have no idea about the glass coffee table thing, but I remember her telling me about the not dissimilar Sue Lawley urban myth with relish and an absolutely filthy laugh. Fabulous woman.

    • Fame now is strange isn’t it?
      Someone dies, who – to the over 60s certainly – is a household name, and bear in mind they’re the ONLY demographic likely to be watching a conventional news bulletin, isn’t mentioned in said bulletin!

      I saw her from a distance a few years ago and I wished I’d gone up to her… she knew my mum… if I’d mentioned my mum’s maiden name she would have gone into hysterics… why didn’t I? Oh well… they were dancers together and worked with the same people… famous people (25 million viewers – the real deal), not the minor kind of fame which might get a mention in a 2021 news bulletin.

      Anyway, my being so far behind (thankfully) in life, she, and her contemporaries, are always in my orbit and I last saw her in the brilliant The Strange World of Gurney Slade… about two weeks ago.
      She was wonderful.

  116. Colin Bowden, a 50s trad jazz great – an influence on Ginger Baker, still playing (brilliantly) until Covid – died aged 90 on August 1. I had the pleasure of interviewing him in 2018. I was interested in his time with Big Pete Deuchar in the Dougie Richard band, mid ’62. I asked him if it felt like the ‘Trad boom’ – a period of a couple of years in Britain in which a music based on 1920s New Orleans jazz and English Music Hall was dominant on TV, radio and stages around the country – was coming to an end by then. His answer was a terrific encapsulation of that period:

    ‘Oh, Christ, yeah! When I left Ken [Colyer] the trad boom was just about at its peak. When I left Ken in ’61 we were doing the Cavern and the Beatles had started off by doing the interval. I think we used to get up to the Cavern maybe once a month, I’m not sure… There used to be three sets, so they did two intervals. And then the next time you went up they did the middle set. And then the next time we did the middle set and the Beatles did the outside two – and then we never went. It was that fast.’

    Here he is in 2017 – ironically, with a Beatle haircut:

  117. The great Gerd Muller, Bayern Munich and Germany striker at 75. In 15 years at Bayern, Muller scored a record 365 goals in 427 Bundesliga games and 66 goals in 74 European matches, as well as 68 goals in 62 games for West Germany, including the winning goal in the 1974 World Cup final. He had been suffering with Alzheimers since 2015.

    • Those scoring numbers are insane – scored more then games played. What a striker.
      For comparison:
      Only Miroslav Klose has scored more goals for the German national team (71) than Muller (68). However, Klose also played more than twice as many international matches (137) as Muller (62)

      He’d surely be the first pick in a Fantasy Team with goal ratios like that

    • Saw him, Franz Beckenbauer and Sepp Maier play for Bayern Munich the night the Sky Blues beat them 2-1 in the second leg of an Inter Cities Fairs Cup tie at Highfield Road in late 1970.

      • @jaygee

        No way!

        P.S. I grew up in what was then W Germany. My brother delights in telling me the first game he saw was Borrusia Monchengladbach (Netzer, Heynkes, Vogts) beating Bayern (Beckenbauer, Müller Maier.) 4-2 or something similar.

        The first game I saw was Ipswich 0 -1 Middlesbrough…about 4 games from the end of the season when we could have won the league.

    • That is sad. Unlike Jaygee I usually enjoyed him on panel shows, particularly 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown. I think what I liked most was that he looked so completely un-showbiz. Most people on these shows, however carefully cultivated their bloke/lass down the pub routine is, look like they know they’re on screen. Lock genuinely looked like a bloke down the pub.

  122. Tom T. Hall has checked out aged 85. He was a prolific Country songwriter Biggest hit Harper Valley PTA. My favourite of his is That’s How I Got To Memphis often performed by Buddy Miller

    • @vince-black

      Just listening to his wonderful Strawberry Farms from the Choctaw Ridge compilation I reviewed here last week.

      He also wrote this terrific song which Leo Kottke went on to make all his own with that inimitable “geese farts on a muggy day” voice of his

      Interesting that Leo changed TTH’s “What she did FOR me” to “What she did TO me” which totally changes the whole song from one of gratitude to one of regret

  128. Bob Fish, one of the four vocalists in Darts dies at the age of 71. I have got tickets to see Darts next February on one of their rare outings. Wonder who is left standing?

  130. Ron Bushy, drummer with Iron Butterfly, has died at 79. I remember attending their gig in Greens Playhouse, Glasgow in January 1971 when the support bands were Dada (Elkie Brookes & Robert Palmer among many others) and Yes. I only really remember that Iron Butterfly were incredibly loud and that my mates and I reckoned Yes blew them away. I think there was a jam at the end when members of the support bands joined IB on stage. Of course, In a Gadda Da Vida was the big number which nobody in the place understood. The number of the night was Yours is no Disgrace

  132. Sarah Harding of Girls Aloud. Cancer, only 39. Heartbreaking. Perhaps not mentioned much here, but they did plenty of good pop music and she seemed to have a certain strength and dignity.

  133. Michail “Mikis” Theodorakis Μιχαήλ “Μίκης” Θεοδωράκης
    Composer and political activist. He scored for the films Zorba the Greek , and Serpico amongst other film scores and classical pieces.

  134. It’s with great sadness that I must report the death of the wonderful Mr. Michael Chapman.
    A sad loss indeed. I always enjoyed the occasions I was able to see Mr. Chapman play and I seem to have been listening to his records all my life.
    R.I.P.

    • Yes, I just read the sad news on another site. Damn … what an incredible guitarist and songwriter he was, over a 50-year period. It’s one of my great music-related regrets that I never saw him live….

    • It was thanks to you @pencilsqueezer that I was introduced to Michael Chapman and very glad that I did discover him even if relatively late. Having been able to see him live a few times and talk to him after the gigs, I found him to be modest and self deprecating. His voice was rough, but the guitar playing was sublime.

      It’s weird, I was reading today about how The Greystones (where I saw him perform a few times) has been revamped and was wondering when/if the cancelled gig I was meant to go to in 2020 would ever be rescheduled. Now it never will.

      It’s very sad. The quality of his later work has been fantastic to the extent I like it more than some of his earlier stuff, great though that is.

      RIP Michael.

      • I saw him for the first and only time about three years ago at the old Count House (or, at least, in a tent in the bit outside the old Count House) in deepest Cornwall.
        Waited about an hour-and-a-half afterwards to get the last bus back and the local pub let us hang around downstairs after closing time. Waited at the bus stop with a badger. It was and is truly the back of beyond.

        I thought in the interval I might as well get him to sign a few things – I have two – the 67 live recording in Cornwall and his debut LP on CD. Produced the latter and he said “What’s this?” I said, “erm… it’s your first album on CD.”
        Turned out he didn’t know of its existence on CD, and I suspect hadn’t yet had any sort of renumeration for his troubles. He shrugged it off it the sort of way that someone does to whom it has happened many times before!

    • I’m truly sorry to hear that. His recordings over the last decade or so have been wise and wonderful and, stupid as it sounds, I thought he’d always be around – I suppose because he’d always been around.

      God bless Michael Chapman – the world is poorer without him.

      • Amen to that. I got tempted in by his inclusion within the small coterie of artists chosen to decorate Harvest label inner sleeves back in the Pre-Cambrian. My curiosity was rewarded with a lifetime’s worth of almost always excellent recordings.

  135. Susan Anway, lead vocalist on the first two The Magnetic Fields albums, has died from Parkinson’s disease. 100,000 fireflies is probably the best-known song from that era. The band’s twitter feed says “She was a lovely person and will be missed by all of us.”

  136. María Mendiola of Spanish pop duo Baccara has passed away. With their punctuation-friendly hits Yes Sir, I Can Boogie and Sorry, I’m A Lady, Baccara (not to be confused with Burt Bacharach) were in some ways a precusor to modern day pop phenomenon Jedward, except Spanish and female and not related.

  137. The splendidly named Donald Zec at the ripe old age of 102/

    Mirror writer from the pre-Murdoch and Maxwell days when the paper was the best in the UK by some conferrable distance and a man I thought had died long, long ago.

    Excellent par on how to write tabloidese from DZ’s Times obit from a few days ago

    “Still not a bona-fide reporter, he decided to take his chance at the Daily Mirror. His first assignment was covering a nightclub fire in Soho, clacking out 200 words that began with the turgid introduction: “Firemen were called to extinguish a blaze”. His news editor declared, “This is shit”, before handing it to an old hand who showed him the ropes: “Clad only in her scanties, a blonde, 22-year-old nightclub hostess climbed along a 30ft parapet in a Soho fire last night to rescue her pet cat Timothy.” As Zec observed in the British Journalism Review: “Here, in a single sentence of slick hyperbole, were all the elements of popular journalism — sex, heroism, drama and pet-worship.””

    • Another ZX81 veteran here and it was probably my gateway to an education and career in electronics, so I guess I have Sir Clive to thank for that.

      Happy memories of wobbly 16K RAM packs, saving programs to a tape player, cutting a hole in the side to solder in a joystick………

    • He was indeed a good sort. I know people in Cambridge who used to work for him, and now run their own companies.

      In the late 80s, he lived in Kensington, London, in a posh flat round the back of Harrods. He wanted the sunniest room to feel like a shed, so he had the whole room clad in pine. Not just any old pine, though, but the finest British Columbian pine. My (carpenter) stepbruv and I did it. He made a lovely cuppa.

    • The C5 may be his noted folly – a good idea at the wrong time.
      But he was already on the way to follydom with the launch in 1984 of the QL.
      Frustrated that the Spectrum was seen as a games machine, the QL was his attempt to get into the Business market, and compete with Apple, Olivetti, IBM etc – rushed development led to reliability problems, and choosing micro tape drives over floppy disks was perhaps not the smartest choice

    • Greavesy was very unwell for a while but this is still sad news. Best to remember him not for the ‘comical’ TV punditry of the 80s, but for his jaw-droppingly impressive goal scoring ability. He had that very rare skill for strikers of knowing exactly where to be at exactly the right moment, and had close control and supreme composure under pressure. One of my favourite players as a kid, I caught him at the tail end of his career when he played briefly for West Ham and in non-league at Barnet.
      His successful recovery from serious alcoholism made him a bit of a poster boy for AA too.

    • Apparently JC was up for the role of the coach driver in Magical Mystery Tour and reckons he didn’t get it n because he told John, Paul and Ringo he preferred the Rolling Stones during his interview/audition.

      Anyone know whatever became of Alf Manders who did get the role (his only credit on IMDB)?

  144. Pee Wee Ellis, legendary sax player with James Brown and Van Morrison has died at the age of 80. His live performances with Van in the 80s were very memorable especially the mesmerizing call and response part of “Summertime in England”

    • Multiple sclerosis, apparently. His barking voice on those rock-n-roll songs in the seventies were as much part of Quo’s recipe as Parfitt’s chugging and Rossi’s more melodic vocals.

    • Sorry to hear it. I liked his songs best, hence the “Quo” album is probably my favourite. Importance to the band slightly underplayed by the mighty SQ machine – but notable that recent interviews with Rossi have been a bit more generous; lot of history there, going back to childhood and forming first band together at school.

      The band lost more than they realised when he left.

  147. Just read this from Bill Kirchen
    “George Frayne, aka Commander Cody has left the planet. Bigger than life, a force of nature, a pal for 55 years, throwing my lot in with George, and our fellow Airmen, forever changed my life. He had a heart just as big as his bluster, and took me under his wing when I was a fresh faced 19 yr old. Luckily he left us a lifetime of top notch music, art and videos to enjoy. All that, plus tales of his legendary shenanigans shall live on! My heart goes out to George’s tireless champion his wife Sue, and daughter Sophia. Rest in peace, Commander. Or, if you’d rather, go on, raise a ruckus.”

    Saw them on their first visit here at the Reading Festival, great band.

    • Very sad; loved The Lost Planet Airmen from Hot Licks, Cold Steel and Truckers Favorites onward, still one of my cheer myself up albums. Saw them at Hammy Odeon early 1976, a night to remember, actually easily done, as much of the We’ve Got a Live One, Here was recorded there. Here’s a memory:

    • @Sniffity

      Excellent anecdote about BR’s (very successful) subsequent career as a photographer in today’s Times obit. It seems the EHM was commissioned to shoot (if only!) Mrs T. While he was setting up, Mrs. T noticed that one of the curtains was uneven. Grabbing a needle and thread from her voluminous handbag, the Leaderene got down on her knees and set about repairing it. “Don’t even think about it, Mr. Ryan”, said the milk snatcher as she heard our Bazza opening his camera bag behind her.

    • He did a cracking gig at the Joiners Arms when I was at Southampton – part of the Northampton scene – pals with several of my favourite bands – Bauhaus, Spacemen 3. He came across as an affable gent. I still have this single somewhere:

    • That’s really sad. The Chieftains were huge in popularising Irish traditional music from the 70s onwards, in the UK, the US and many other places. At their peak they seemed to be everywhere – performing scores for ballets (Playboy of the Western World); film scores (Barry Lyndon); collaborating with just about everyone. They were never as cool as someone like Planxty but in their reach and their beautiful musicianship they were profoundly important. Maloney was their driving force and will be much missed.

      • He fairly put a shift in, didn’t he? He founded the Chieftains in 1962! I saw them twice, in 1972 in Belfast and 2005 at Merlefest in North Carolina. I saw the news of his demise on WeBanjo3’s Facebook page and they suggested he was still playing festivals only a few years ago. He died aged 83

  159. Although I know nothing of their work I read this on a ghost/folklore page.
    Andrea Meyer Haugen, guest musician on Cradle of Filth’s ‘The Principle of Evil Made Flesh
    died in the Islamic terrorist attack in Kongsberg, Norway, on 13 October 2021.”

  161. Looks very like the late great Philip Stone- so chilling as the barman in Kubrick’s The Shining and Alex’s milksop dad in the same director’s Clockwork Orange

  165. Jay Black – of Jay and the Americans – who had a couple of major hits in the mid sixties (Cara Mia and Come A Little Bit Closer), has shuffled off at 82…and Robin McNamara, a real one-hit wonder (in these parts anyway) responsible for Lay A Little Lovin’ On Me gone at the too-early age of 74.

    • One of the old school who I’d argue was more famous in Britain than most (probably all) of the pop stars/footballers of the day. I mean, Lionel, c. Give Us A Clue, couldn’t have landed on an uninhabited island off the Isles of Scilly and not been recognised.

      Also, and this is one for the neverendingsainteddave thread, appeared in the worst film of all time slap-bang in the middle of the dire 1980s. Not his fault, but someone on set could have read the novel first… Sainted Dave, maybe?

      • RIP, Lionel, a genuine character, an endangered species in an increasingly
        vapid entertainment biz.

        Never forget seeing him stride through the doors of Hull University
        Students Union in the mid-70s, camper than a camper van showroom
        forecourt

      • I assume you are referring to Absolute Beginners?

        Lionel line in AB – “He’s like a nun’s tits or the Pope’s balls – useless!”

        This is a nice story off Twitter. When he had dinner in a restaurant with a group of industry people, he would pay the waiter to come to the table after 10 minutes or so – to say that someone was on the phone for him. Lionel would excuse himself and return a few minutes later. Asked why he did that, he replied “Showbiz!”.

    • Who knew he was Canadian (born in Montreal)?

      “In the original, the ever energetic Lionel Blair would mime the titles of TV shows against a strict time limit, and who can fail to remember the occasion he scored double points by using both hands in different actions to finish off One Man & His Dog in under thirty seconds!”

        • He’s not best remembered for that (something that I have never heard)… ridiculous… he’s best known by the 20+ million people who regularly tuned onto their TV screen in the 60s and beyond.

          A fame that far outreaches a radio show on Radio 4 or the vast majority of pop music.

          I’m with him on the trad. jazz guy.
          I like Lionel more now you’ve told me that… it’s a brilliant line and I shall definitely be using it in the future… Blair et al (curious breed, admittedly) did seem to be part of the future, trad. jazz was ALWAYS the past.

  173. Sorry to read that Barry Coope, best know for Coope Boyes & Simpson and for his duo work with John Tams, passed away on Saturday after a short illness. I saw him many times, always a fine performer

  175. Maureen Cleave – writer whose interview with John Lennon produced the infamous “Bigger than Jesus” quote and subject of the least successful thread in AW history

    • Was it a Jewish thing?
      Woolf was a contemporary of Pinter (same school in Hackney – in the short period of time in this country’s history when actors playing working class characters didn’t go to Eton) and if either was on the screen, that was it, they were the ONLY one on the screen, unless they were on it together!

      He’d pitch up on the Sweeney and the like and always steal the show.
      It would be “oh, that was the episode with Henry Woolf in it.”

      Harry H. Corbett the same.
      Check out the Jewish scenes (it was all Jewish!) in the Small World Of Sammy Lee.

      Do these people exist any more?

      INCREDIBLE actor, I absolutely adore the guy.

  182. I was sorry to hear that John Goodsall, guitarist with Brand X, had died on the 11th this month. I believe he was the last remaining musician from the original line up.
    A remarkable guitarist, but resolutely under the radar…

  184. Stephen Sondheim. I could list things of his, but I’d be a while…
    Personally, I prefer hearing most of his work one song at a time, rather than a whole musical in one go, but there’s no denying his genius.

    • “I got through all of last year – and I’m here
      Lord knows, at least I was there – and I’m here…”

      One for the Follies fans…quite appropriate to the times, I think.

      My sister has been listening to Sondheim for years and got me interested on the odd occasion.

  185. John “Schnozz” Sillett. Together with Big George Curtis (further up the page) joint-architect of the mighty Sky Blues coming twice from behind to beat Spurs in what is widely regarded as being one of the most entertaining FA Cups ever in 1987.

    Big mates with the late Jimmy Greaves (also further up the page) and, as one might imagine, a much loved figure in Coventry

    https://www.coventrytelegraph.net/sport/football/football-news/coventry-city-john-sillett-phillips-22317830

  188. Another figure from Zep history who’s trudging up (or down) the stairway to heaven is former roadie and Stairway to Heaven co-author, Richard Cole. Somehow doubt JP will be attending that particular funeral

  192. Rudolph ‘Garth’ Dennis of Black Uhuru has died at age 72

    Also, Ralph Tavares of Tavares has died. Their big song was Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel. At 79, he was the oldest of the 5 Tavares brothers. The other 4 are still with us.

  193. Comedian Jethro has left us at the age of 73. I never saw much of his act, though of course my condolences go out to those who loved him, but I hurried here because news of his death also brought me the fantastic piece of trivia that Jethro’s real name was Geoff Rowe.

    • Well done for posting this, Lando.
      For those of us who enjoy the sound of the flute in jazz, Lloyd McNeill was an essential artist.
      I’m a big fan of the following Lloyd McNeill albums:
      Asha
      Tanner Suite
      Washington Suite
      Treasures

      A big thumbs-up to SoulJazz for making these fine records available again in recent years.

      • Thanks – I’ve just listed this year’s addition, Tori, in the re-issues poll. I think my favourite is probably Tanner Suite but, as you say, an essential artist. And clearly someone who lived a full life and (from his obituary) was well-loved.

  197. Not music-related, but I just discovered David Nightingale died last month. The name will mean nothing to most, but if back in the 80s and 90s you read SIG, Century 21, Action 21 or Timescreen, he was the man responsible. He also put out several editions of Gerry Anderson-themed postcards, posters and suchlike, and kept the Anderson flame burning more or less single-handed before the big Thunderbirds revival in the early 90s.

  199. Robin le Mesurier, collaborator with Rod Stewart and Johnny Hallyday and one-time Womble, has died from cancer at the age of 68. He had a long history of struggles with alcohol and other difficulties, which may or may not be connected to the fact that despite his music career he was probably best known to the public as the son of Hattie Jacques and John le Mesurier.

  202. April Ashley

    Trans people today have it easy by comparison.

    If you don’t know her story, suggest you read the
    obits in tomorrow’s Times/Guardian/Telegraph.

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