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

Brucie
http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-40978576

I was never a fan of him personally but The Generation Game was on every Saturday in our house, and it was bloody good fun. His wallpaper sketch with Norman Wisdom from Sunday Night at the London Palladium is wonderful.

Peter Hall
http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-41237988

You'd think the RSC had been around forever. It's hard to believe it was founded during my lifetime.

David Cassidy
http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-42076323

When I was in the fourth and fifth year at secondary school, there were three main factions among the girls: Marc Bolan, Donny Osmond and David Cassidy. I'll be honest, I was a fan of Marc meself. He seemed to have much more going, musically, than the other two. He was a fine guitarist.

Marc Bolan was my cup of too. David Cassidy was "too good to be true"

I know what you mean, but they don't come much more too good to be true than Donny Osmond, what with the teeth and the brothers and the Mormoning and all that.

Rodney Bewes
http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-42067506

My mum was all over The Likely Lads like a rash, but I never got it. I couldn't get to that point where you have an affinity for the characters, and you've got to have that or there's no interest in it.

Also, going back to Marc Bolan, once he got to be well known, after Ride a White Swan, I started investigating his earlier stuff with Steve Took as Tyrannosaurus Rex, and I really liked it. I've still got all those LPs from back then, you know - the ones with the incredibly long names

Being a fan of an actor or musician is a strange thing. How many of us lose touch with the fact that the actor isn't really anything like the character he's playing? You see someone on a forty-foot movie screen, and then meet him in person, and it's apt to be a bit of a let-down.

I think that some actors go crazy because of fans who won't let them be real people when they're not working.

Christine Keeler
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-42245839

I was vaguely aware of the Profumo affair as a news story at the time it was happening, but the names of Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies were both known to me in the aftermath, I suppose because they remained in the news for a few years afterwards, and something at the back of my mind is telling me that Christine is mentioned in a song I'm familiar with, but can't recall.

Either way, she (and Mandy) are people who will forever be associated with a specific time in British history - the early 1960s, just as the real 1960s were getting underway with the release of The Beatles' first singles.

Was the song by Glaxo Babies?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fE42Njo5jA

No, that wasn't it. I can't find it in any searches so I think I must be imagining it,

try http
://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L15e7KDxbBk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L15e7KDxbBk

Mark E Smith
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/jan/24/mark-e-smith-obituary
http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-42811968

A true original. I think I probably got into The Fall through John Peel while I was living in Manchester in the late 70s, although it may well have been through Tony Wilson who presented the Granada TV early evening local news slot that all ITV regions showed at 6pm (the London equivalent being the one with Bill Grundy and that Sex Pistols interview). Either way, for some reason I only ever got to see them play once all that time I was in Manchester, at the same gig where I missed seeing Joy Division by an hour

I forgot to add that Tony Wilson also hosted a Thursday night listings show on Granada called What's On (Thames TV also had its equivalent - 01 For London), which might be the first time I heard The Fall, and was definitely the first time I saw Joy Division on television. Because it was their first time on television, I think.

John Perry Barlow
Grateful dead lyricist and founder of the EFF.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42945865

I've never heard of him. I keep this thread for people who have meant something important to me.

[Soup Nazi voice]: No Internet for you!

Trevor Bayliss
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/05/trevor-baylis-obituary

A true gent.