Famous People Who Died

Odd lady, that Sue Lyon. I remember learning from a co-worker how she had married "an ugly black convict" (my informant's words). The marriage proved a short-lived one. My pal who seemed so indignant about her interracial liaison was himself African-American, curiously enough. The convict was guilty of murder. My informant had worked in the prison system. He made a sharp distinction between "murderers" and "killers." The former, he said, were usually nice, tractable guys, but the killers were scary as hell.
 
Pimpernel Smith said:
Sir Roger Scruton, a gentleman of great integrity and bastion against our shallow times.
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Just read that, sad. Whilst disagreeing with some of his politics, he was a very erudite man. I enjoyed his books/writings on aesthetics.

It makes the Left hounding of him last year even more tragic given that he was probably very poorly at the time.
 
formby001 said:
Just read that, sad. Whilst disagreeing with some of his politics, he was a very erudite man. I enjoyed his books/writings on aesthetics.

It makes the Left hounding of him last year even more tragic given that he was probably very poorly at the time.
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The Left have had it in for him since the 80s when he was setting-up the underground universities and networks in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. The Brit Establishment and many Conservatives are no better, many were out on the Twitter zone joining the feeding frenzy against Scruton.
 
Pimpernel Smith said:
The Left have had it in for him since the 80s when he was setting-up the underground universities and networks in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. The Brit Establishment and many Conservatives are no better, many were out on the Twitter zone joining the feeding frenzy against Scruton.
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Twitter has been extremely toxic to our politics...
 
Reports that his 13yr old daughter Gianna was also on the helicopter and passed.
 
I just heard on WFAN(Ny sports radio station) that it was Kobe, his daughter, her friend(teammate) and another parent going to a basketball event. Everyone + the pilot passed.

Obviously, not 100% confirmed yet.
 
"Passed?" Can't we just say they died?

I once had an encounter of sorts with him at the South Coast Bloomingdales. He and his wife were immediately ahead of me on an escalator. As is my constant policy of with celebrities going about their private business, I left them alone. I was wearing my tan Harrison's Frontier suit from W.W. Chan. Kobe was in T-shirt and jeans. I commented on this on SF, remarking what unreliable significators of wealth and position clothes are these days. Someone (Fok, I think) replied that showed how little I knew: Kobe's T-shirt and jeans probably cost more than my dressed-up finery. Unfortunately, he was probably right.

When my wife called me upstairs to view the news of the tragedy, she was so worked up I thought at first maybe Greta Thunberg had pulled Charlotte Corday on the Donald at Davos!
 
Nicholas Parsons age 96.

Quizmaster, professional ‘posh’ person, cravat wearer.

‘The open-necked shirt is really rather ugly. I have seen people with beautifully-tailored jackets on with an open shirt with an awful Adam's apple there.' (August 2014)

For the Brits:-

Here he is with Arthur Haynes. ‘Nickel Arse’. The coal man buying a suit is a nice antidote to igentry.

www.youtube.com

Nicholas Parsons reminisces about comedian Arthur Haynes

Nicholas Parsons in conversation with Fern Britton recalls comedian Arthur Haynes. In the late 50s and early 60s, From the mid-1950s to the mid-60s Arthur Ha...
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Kingstonian said:
Nicholas Parsons age 96.

Quizmaster, professional ‘posh’ person, cravat wearer.

‘The open-necked shirt is really rather ugly. I have seen people with beautifully-tailored jackets on with an open shirt with an awful Adam's apple there.' (August 2014)
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Those guys were like ringmasters, or conductors of a musical extravaganza, and boy did they have presence on a television. They could turn a game show into an event. The last one to have that charisma was Michael Barrymore and that went pear shaped very quickly once he quit his marriage of convenience to his manager. Not seen anyone of the ilk for 30 years or more.
 
Nicholas was better on radio. ‘just a minute’ was entertaining. Kenneth Williams and Clement Freud were reliably amusing.
www.youtube.com

Just A Minute - Peter Cook 2 (1/3)

Kenneth Williams, Peter Cook, Clement Freud and Barry Took play Just A Minute. Just A Minute is a radio game where players have to speak for a minute on a gi...
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Humphrey Lyttleton was another radio quiz success ‘I’m sorry I haven’t a clue’
www.youtube.com

I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue—The Complete Mrs Trellis (1990-2007)

Mrs Trellis of North Wales made her first 'appearance' on ISIHAC during Series 17 in 1990. There was a long gap before she 'appeared' again, in Series 22 (19...
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com

I used to work with an otherwise intelligent chap who believed ‘Mornington Crescent’ was a genuine game. It was impossible to convince him otherwise.
 
^Holy mackerel - I thought that Mad Mike had died years ago! When I was in school, one of my friends subscribed to "Soldier of Fortune" magazine and I think that he was a bit of a hero to the editors of SoF.

I'm actually rather surprised that he didn't get taken out ages ago, by someone with a grudge against him.
 
Kingstonian said:
Nicholas was better on radio. ‘just a minute’ was entertaining. Kenneth Williams and Clement Freud were reliably amusing.
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I'm very slowly in intermittent spurts working through Kenneth Williams diaries. Still in the period before he was a staple of radio and Carry On films. He was a tremendous radio talent, those comedy shows on the Beeb, even in his later years he was just tremendously funny with his voice and ability to entertain.

They say his diaries are salacious, but I don't see any of that yet. Full of subtext and gay slang of the time. I don't think he was celibate at all.


Journeyman said:
^Holy mackerel - I thought that Mad Mike had died years ago! When I was in school, one of my friends subscribed to "Soldier of Fortune" magazine and I think that he was a bit of a hero to the editors of SoF.

I'm actually rather surprised that he didn't get taken out ages ago, by someone with a grudge against him.
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I worked with someone who had been a squaddie in the Scots Guards under Simon Mann. Said he was a very good officer and had your back even as a private. Esprit de corps. If you watch the Absolute Mad Lads interview with him and Count Dunkula on Youtube, you get an impression of these sorts. The Wild Geese film appears pretty apt.
 
Pimpernel Smith said:
I'm very slowly in intermittent spurts working through Kenneth Williams diaries. Still in the period before he was a staple of radio and Carry On films. He was a tremendous radio talent, those comedy shows on the Beeb, even in his later years he was just tremendously funny with his voice and ability to entertain.

They say his diaries are salacious, but I don't see any of that yet. Full of subtext and gay slang of the time. I don't think he was celibate at all.




I worked with someone who had been a squaddie in the Scots Guards under Simon Mann. Said he was a very good officer and had your back even as a private. Esprit de corps. If you watch the Absolute Mad Lads interview with him and Count Dunkula on Youtube, you get an impression of these sorts. The Wild Geese film appears pretty apt.
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He didn’t get great money for his ‘Carry ‘On films. Sadly he was another who did not realise the quality of the work he was doing. He aspired to greater more thespian things.

I do remember ‘Round the Horne’ on the wireless on Sunday lunchtime. It was absolutely filthy but the BBC did not seem to realise. This at a time when they still disapproved of pop music too.
 
When I read Williams diaries ages ago now, I came away with the impression that he was a sad, lonely and unlikeable individual. Talented though.

His personal slang was funny. J Arthur being a favourite.
 
A step-cousin of mine served under "Mad Mike" in the Congo. As to Soldier of Fortune magazine, a number of the contributors there became contributors to the magazines I edited and friends of mine. SOF was surely one of the greatest "Walter Mitty" magazines of all time. I should think only a tiny percentage of the readership had ever been mercs.

I was told by Jack Lott, who had fought in the Congo, that the bar in Johannesburg where most of the mercenaries hung out and were recruited was festooned with photos of little naked boys, which sounds decidedly creepy. A former Marine officer who had contacts with the French Foreign Legion told me there was a very "Rough Trade" sensibility in that outfit.
 
He looked pretty good in his 90s. I thought he had a blog or video stream or something.
 
Michael Medwin 96. British actor. Nobody will remember him.

He was in ‘The Army Game’ on TV in the 1950s with Alfie Bass, Bill Fraser, Norman Rossington etc.
 
Arnathor said:
Freeman Dyson, Dies at 96
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These are good quotes of his and he was also a skeptic of the bad science behind the global climate change hysteria which I will post elsewhere:

As we look out into the Universe and identify the many accidents of physics and astronomy that have worked together to our benefit, it almost seems as if the Universe must in some sense have known that we were coming.

The biggest breakthrough in the next 50 years will be the discovery of extraterrestrial life. We have been searching for it for 50 years and found nothing. That proves life is rarer than we hoped, but does not prove that the universe is lifeless. We are only now developing the tools to make our searches efficient and far-reaching, as optical and radio detection and data processing move forward
 
^I am sure there is plenty of extraterrestrial life out there, given the almost infinite number of stars and solar systems. How much of it would be "intelligent" (according to our concepts) would be another matter. And if they are intelligent, do we want them buzzing over here in their spaceships? Given the fates of many so-called "primitive" peoples who came in contact with representatives of advanced civilizations, I should think not!
 
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