The RIP Famous Person Thread

[Cujo]

Well, anyway, there has never been this much written about anybody else, so Lou Reed has certainly touched a few people here...

Yup. Everyone's heard of him (during a six-decade career that spanned the sublime to the frankly awful). Everyone has an opinion of him, positive or otherwise. Mission accomplished.

At least he was famous which is more than can be said for many of the people mentioned in this thread. Even if they do have interesting stories.

[BaitongBoy]

^Ah, to be famous, eh Dawg?...

[Smug Farang Bore]

Actor GrahAm Stark dead at 91.

[Gazza]

^
Graham 'That is not my dog' Stark.

[Mr Lick]

Any relation to Koo Stark(ers)?

He had a very mischievious way about him did our Graham. Very talented man looking at his Obit

R.I.P. and that's a damn fine innings of 91 before needing to retire to that big pavilion if i may say so. God bless you sir

[harrybarracuda]

Actor GrahAm Stark dead at 91.

Post #1621 try and keep up.

With Nigel Davenport gone, there's another actor out there quaking in his boots...

[harrybarracuda]

The bestselling thriller writer Michael Palmer died on Wednesday, according to a statement released by his publisher, St. Martin's Press. He was 71. Perhaps best known for Extreme Measures, which was made into a movie with Hugh Grant, Palmer wrote 20 novels – including his latest, Resistance, set to come out this spring. A doctor, Palmer was known for incorporating his medical training in his novels, writing in a genre some have called "the medical thriller." Though he became a bestselling author, Palmer wrote on his website that his writing career didn't get off to a promising start: "On my first English paper as a freshman I got a "G" as in A ... B ... C ... etc. My professor, as I recall, drew a line halfway through the paper and wrote, STOPPED READING HERE in the margin." Palmer's son Daniel wrote in a tribute that "the only thing my dad loved more than his family was writing books that thrilled, chilled, and made you turn the pages fast enough to get a blister."

[MANICHAEAN]

Stark had a bloody good innings at 91.
So many now just leaving the room when they reach about 70.

[Gazza]

^
That's seems just about right. Man's allotted time is supposed to be 'three score years and ten' (70 years) or so I recall reading from somewhere. Anything over that then is probably just a bonus.

[harrybarracuda]

If I'd known I was going to live this long I would have taken better care of myself.

[BaitongBoy]

^Rat-at-at-ching!...

[kmart]

[quote=harrybarracuda;2601590]

Unfortunate choice of book to be holding, tbh.

[Mr Lick]

French spy writer Gerard de Villiers dies aged 83



Gerard de Villiers churned books out at a rate of about four a year

French writer Gerard de Villiers, whose thrillers sold more than 100m copies around the world, has died aged 83.

De Villiers died after a long illness, his lawyer said. He had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in May.

He was the creator of the popular SAS series, with an Austrian hero often seen as France's literary James Bond.

Drawing on his network of intelligence sources around the world, De Villiers was famous for his uncanny knack of anticipating actual events.


'Action and sex'


Analysis

Hugh Schofield BBC News, Paris

The literary world despised de Villiers' novels, with their formulaic melange of action and sex.

But the extraordinary thing was how closely they mirrored - indeed sometimes prophesied - geopolitical reality.

One recent book - The Madmen of Benghazi - dealt with the rise of Islamist extremism in post-Gaddafi's Libya and came out a few months before the killing of the US ambassador there.

Back in 1980, he devised a plot around the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who was killed the following year.

The truth is that de Villiers had extremely good connections with French intelligence.

One French foreign minister has even said he read de Villiers' novels before going to a trouble spot in order to find out what French spies thought was happening there.


"The last weeks he was conscious but very weak," de Villiers' wife, Christine, told the AFP news agency.

"It is exactly the death that he did not want," she added.

De Villiers's SAS series became a publishing phenomenon in France, Germany, Russia, Turkey and Japan, the BBC's Hugh Schofield in Paris reports.

The series starred a fiercely anti-Communist Austrian aristocrat called Malko Linge, who worked as a freelance CIA agent.

The SAS initials came from Linge's honorific Son Altesse Serenissime (His Most Serene Highness).


Lurid covers

De Villiers was inspired by Ian Fleming's James Bond but felt that no-one would believe in a French spy hero - so instead created Malko Linge, our correspondent says.

With covers invariably featuring a semi-naked woman with a gun they have been a staple of railway station book shops, selling by the million.

Starting in 1965, de Villiers churned books out at a rate of four a year.

His last and 200th book - SAS: The Kremlin's Revenge - was released last month.

"I never had any pretensions of being a literary writer," the writer admitted in an interview with the AFP last year.

"I consider myself a storyteller who writes to amuse people."

[harrybarracuda]

De Villiers was inspired by Ian Fleming's James Bond but felt that no-one would believe in a French spy hero

He got that one right.

[harrybarracuda]

Blues rock pioneer Bobby Parker dies at 76

November 2 2013



Bobby Parker 1937~2013

Blues rock guitarist Bobby Parker, best known for his 1961 track Watch Your Step and credited as “the only musician the Beatles admitted to stealing from” has died at the age of 76, it’s been reported.

Bassist Anthony B Rucker, who often collaborated often with the pioneering artist, confirmed the news, saying: “It is with a heavy heart I thank you, Bobby, for all that you have done for me. I’m so glad I had one last chance to play with you a couple of weeks ago. See ya on the other side.”

Born in Louisiana and raised in Los Angeles, Robert Lee Parker’s first professional gig was with Otis Williams and the Charms in the 1950s, followed by stints with Bo Diddley, Sam Cooke, Chuck Berry and Little Richard.

Watch Your Step inspired the Beatles’ song I Feel Fine, with John Lennon once saying they’d used the riff “in various forms” throughout their career. Led Zeppelin made use of it in Moby Dick. The track was also covered by the Spencer Davis Group, Dr Feelgood and Carlos Santana, who once said: “Bobby inspired me to play guitar – he’s one of the few remaining guitarists who can pierce your heart and soothe your soul.”

In 2008 Parker reflected: “Watch Your Step was a culmination of blues rock guitar that nobody else had ever thought of. Mine was First. The United States was engulfed by Motown, but the whole world knew when I recorded Watch Your Step that I broke the brick wall of the sameness of Motown.

“I sent music in another direction worldwide, especially for guitarists like Jimmy Page, Santana, Eric Clapton and millions of others. Everybody who was anybody knew Bobby Parker alone penned the lick that created what’s known as the British revolution.

“I heard 600 or more blatant copycat recordings – everybody was playing my lick and trying to claim it, the Beatles included. Even now I hear copycat riffs in TV commercials.” He laughed: “I wish they’d come up with a different riff and leave mine alone…”

The track’s success led to international touring and an offer of a record deal from Jimmy Page, which didn’t work out. Parker spent the 1970s and 1980s based in Washington DC and out of international acclaim, but returned to the spotlight with his first solo album Bent Out Of Shape in 1993, followed by Shine Me Up in 1995. He remained active until his death, having played a series of blues festivals during the summer. Recently he said: “I keep doing it for the music and the people – I love the people.”

Parker has songwriting credits for a total of 55 tracks including his two other singles, Blues Get Off My Shoulder from 1958 and It’s Hard To be Fair from 1968.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=fxY9n-3iXvY

[Mr Lick]

This guy made the Telegraph obits so pretty famous in his own way. Harrowing story.


Bert Evans

Bert Evans survived the massacre of British soldiers by the SS at Wormhoudt during the withdrawal to Dunkirk


Bert Evans


Bert Evans , who has died aged 92, was one of the last survivors of the massacre at Wormhoudt, near the border between France and Belgium, during the withdrawal to Dunkirk.


Evans was serving with “D” Company 2nd Battalion the Royal Warwickshire Regiment (2 Royal Warwicks) which, on May 19 1940, came under a devastating air attack near Tournai, suffering many casualties.


A week later the Royal Warwicks were ordered to hold the village of Wormhoudt at all costs to buy time for the evacuation of thousands of soldiers of the BEF. On May 27 they were dive-bombed by Stukas, and many of the houses in the village were set ablaze.


The next day the remnants of the battalion — exhausted and out of ammunition — were surrounded by the Liebstandarte SS Adolf Hitler Regiment and forced to surrender. After being interrogated they, together with some RA gunners and men from the Cheshires, were stripped of anything that might identify them — letters, photographs of wives or sweethearts. They were then marched, at the double and under a hot sun, to Esquelbecq, about a mile away.


The stragglers were shot. The remaining prisoners, some 90 in number, were pushed and prodded by rifle butts into a barn which measured about 10ft by 20ft.

Many of them had been wounded during the fierce fighting, and called out for water.

A German soldier was seen taking a grenade out of his boot. Capt James Lynn-Allen, the senior officer, banged on the bolted door to protest that there was no room for the wounded to lie down. A German officer laughed and replied: “Where you are going, there will be plenty of room.”

Crammed against the barn door, Evans lit up a last cigarette. “This is it, Bert,” said one of his fellow soldiers. “We are finished.”



Bert Evans

Moments later, grenades were lobbed into the barn. With great gallantry, two NCOs, Sergeant Moore and Company Sergeant Major Jennings, threw themselves on top of the grenades — but then the machine-gunners opened fire.

When the firing stopped, the barn door was opened and the survivors were hauled out in batches of five from among the bodies of their dead comrades, and were shot.

Before that, however, the explosions from the grenades had forced the Germans to fall back, and in the confusion Lynn-Evans saw a chance to make a run for it.

He grabbed hold of Evans, whose arm had been shattered, and the two men managed to stagger some 200 yards and hide in a pond.

Seeing them trying to escape, an SS officer pursued them. He shot Lynn-Allen in the head at point-blank range and killed him. Evans was shot in the neck, and slid into the pond, where he was left for dead. He was subsequently found by regular German soldiers and taken to a field hospital, where a doctor amputated his right arm. Only a dozen men had survived the massacre.

Bert Evans was born at Devonport on February 21 1921 and educated locally. He enlisted in the Gloucestershire Regiment in November 1938 and transferred to the Warwicks a year later.

In 1943 Evans was repatriated under prisoner exchange arrangements organised by the Red Cross. After the war, some of the survivors, accompanied by members of the War Crimes Interrogation Unit, returned to Wormhoudt, but it was decided that it would be impossible to build a case for prosecution.

Evans worked as a bath attendant for Birmingham City Council from 1950 until he retired to live at Redditch, Worcestershire, in 1986. In 1955, at Northfield Baths, he saw a child in the water who was in serious difficulty. Despite having only one arm and not being able to swim, he jumped in to help. He received a bravery award from the Royal Humane Society.

The French authorities and British veteran associations have restored the barn at Wormhoudt. On its walls are wreaths and photographs, reminders of one of the worst atrocities of the Second World War. Evans made many pilgrimages to Esquelbecq with his regimental association to remember Capt Lynn-Allen, the man who had saved his life.

In retirement he enjoyed fishing, playing darts, bingo, dancing and foreign travel.

He had no children of his own, but his sister-in-law’s five children were an important part of his life.

Bert Evans married, in 1954, Elizabeth Yould, who predeceased him.



Bert Evans, born February 21 1921, died October 1 2013

[harrybarracuda]

Sad to think that there's a bunch of SS c*nts who got away with it.

[Latindancer]

A rather shocking story....I had not heard of it. story.

A number of alleged key witnesses were reported to have died on the Eastern Front.


Wormhoudt massacre - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Eliminator]

WAR is HELL and it should be. There is no room for apologist and PC nutters, it's crap and always will be. Somewhere in the bible it says that there will be wars and rumors of war, throughout eternity. I'm total NON religious but this does ring true.

The next WORLD WAR will have to happen for no other reason than this planet CANNOT support the amount of people living on it.

There is no WORLD power, no country that is the MOST powerful in the world, it's big biz and religion that run this world. The only reason for religion is to control the masses, nothing more nothing less.

[Smug Farang Bore]

That was a hell of a story.

[FloridaBorn]

Ironically it was regular German soldiers that saved him.

[reddog]

i see nancy wake, known as the white mouse when she was a leading
resistance fighter in france during w11
she was the most decorated woman fighter of w11.
she was an australian who was living in france when the war started,
she had more balls than most men when it came fighting the germans.
she died in london just before her 99th birthday.

[harrybarracuda]

i see nancy wake, known as the white mouse when she was a leading
resistance fighter in france during w11
she was the most decorated woman fighter of w11.
she was an australian who was living in france when the war started,
she had more balls than most men when it came fighting the germans.
she died in london just before her 99th birthday.

But she died two years ago.

Nancy Wake - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Looper]

Here she is

https://teakdoor.com/the-teakdoor-lou...ml#post1838795

[reddog]

i see nancy wake, known as the white mouse when she was a leading
resistance fighter in france during w11
she was the most decorated woman fighter of w11.
she was an australian who was living in france when the war started,
she had more balls than most men when it came fighting the germans.
she died in london just before her 99th birthday.

But she died two years ago.

Nancy Wake - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

sorry harry,what a balls up, was reading on line last night and it come up,
deleted my history earlier,but it was a uk site,
anyway i should of known but i may of been in the bush or china when she died