h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Graham Stark
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-24741605

Oh, that does upset me. He was one of my favourite comedy actors. He's being remembered mostly for his work with Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther films, in which he delivered one of the best lines in any of them:

Clouseau walks into an Austrian hotel, there's a dog sitting on the check-in desk and Graham Stark is the hotel owner.
Clouseau: Does your dog bite?
Stark: No
Clouseau tries to stroke the dog, the dog goes for him
Clousseau: I thought you said that your dog doesn't bite!
Stark: *Delivered deadpan* That is not my dog



And it's true that Stark also appeared in a lot of Goon-related films productions such as Down Among the Z Men, Idiot Weekly Price 2d, The Running Jumping and Standing Film, A Show Called Fred, Son of Fred and Spike Milligan: A Series of Unrelated Incidents, and other Peter Sellers films such as The Millionairess, Wrong Arm of the Law and Only Two Can Play, but he was in so much more, and he worked with the cream of British comic talent.

He wasn't exactly ubiquitous during the 1960s, but he was sure to turn up in certain kinds of production, often something offbeat such as those 'silent' films Eric Sykes used make like The Plank and Rhubarb. He was in one of my favourite films, The Wrong Box, a very odd film indeed (again with Peter Sellers in a cameo role). He was in Alfie. He was in The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins. He was in The Strange World of Gurney Slade, which has to go down as one of oddest and least known British TV shows. And as well as appearing in several sitcoms and The Benny Hill Show, plus Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, he even showed up in an episode of Minder! http://i.imgur.com/VWWrRuh.jpg

And another one from today - Nigel Davenport
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-24738939

To be honest I remember very little about his acting career other than his role as the Duke of Norfolk in A Man For All Seasons, and a fine role it was too, but both the face and the voice were unmistakable.

John Cole
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/john-cole-obituary-8929769.html

One of the most distinctive voices in news broadcasting, and one of the most easily and frequently imitated. And what a great Spitting Image puppet too But above all a master at his craft.

Completely unique voice, definitely. Even when you're surrounded by Belfast accents day and daily, you never hear one that sounds like his. His book of "political memoirs" is one I've been meaning to get around to for about ten or fifteen years, now, but never did.

I remember someone (but not who) doing an impersonation of him that always signed off with a variation on "This is John Cole, for the BBC, outside Number 10, standing in the rain and the perishing cold."

I remember one correspondent (it wasn't John Cole) who after filing his copy, said

"This is so and so , standing in the freezing rain, with four children and a mortgage and bills to pay..."

That sounds very familiar, I'm sure I've seen that

I don't think it was John Cole thought. It used to be a staple clip on the It'll Be Alright On The Night shows.

Grace Jones
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-24940663

No, not that Grace Jones. The Grace Jones who (it says here) was the last British person to be born in the 19th century. I think that's something worth noting. A hundred years from now they might be saying the same thing about the 20th century. I won't be around to see that, obviously.

That's a little bit sad. She must have seen so many things in her life.

Yep. I still have to remind myself sometimes that for the first six or seven years of my dad's life there was no such thing as the BBC. No wireless

Wow. All *this* has happened in the blink of an eye. It's not a very long time, really, since people used to bike for miles to assemble at the next village over because that's where movies were played. When you step back and look at it objectively, the speed of change in the past century is dizzying.

Junior Murvin
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/dec/03/junior-murvin

Around the turn of the 80s there was a handful of reggae singles you really should have had in your collection if you were white and not desperately knowledgeable about the genre, 12" dub versions wherever possible, including (but not limited to): Dennis Brown - Money in Pocket, Janet Kay - Silly Games, Gregory Isaacs - Night Nurse, and Junior Murvin - Police and Thieves.

oh I loved Police and Thieves.

Nelson Mandela.

No link or description necessary.

I must say, I'm a bit surprised to learn he was on the US Terrorist watch list until 2008. Maggie & Ronnie weren't fans of his.

Nor was Cameron, and half the current cabinet if today's tweets are to be believed http://twitter.com/paulmooreesq/status/408717482069741568/photo/1/large

Peter O'Toole
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/dec/15/peter-o-toole-dies-81

Is there a chance we'll ever see the likes of O'Toole, Reed, Harris again, or has society become too boring and puritanical about that sort of thing?

I've never actually seen Lawrence of Arabia all the way through, at one sitting. I was fortunate enough, though, to see this, about a month before I left Blighty for Deepinnaheartatexas http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbFjLo8gRBk Living in London can be difficult at times but it comes with wonderful benefits, if you take the trouble to avail yourself of them.

Over 45 years ago O'Toole included me in a round of drinks during the theatre festival in Dublin. I've always loved him (especially in The Lion in Winter)

What a lovely story to be able to tell

Ronnie Biggs
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/dec/18/ronnie-biggs-great-train-robber-dies-84

The saying goes 'If you owe the bank £1,000 you're in trouble. If you owe the bank £1,000,000 the bank's in trouble'. Obviously those numbers are a little outdated and need to be adjusted for inflation, but you know what it means.

I think that's one of the reasons why crimes like the Great Train Robbery and the people who commit them get looked on more favourably than steal a bit here and a bit there. It's the wow factor I guess. This one got far more attention than most others. There have been other, and bigger, thefts since then, but the the Great Train Robbery, and the names of the men who pulled it off, has become a part of British cultural history in a way that others haven't. I couldn't name one member of the Brinks-Mat gang, for instance, and I think they got away with six million - twice as much.

Buster Edwards will be remembered because Phil Collins played him in that film, and Ronnie Biggs in particular will be remembered because he led Plod a merry chase across the globe and got to a place where the authorities couldn't touch him - Brazil. We even recall the name of the flatfoot chasing him - Slipper of the Yard.