The RIP Famous Person Thread

[Mr Lick]

Dr Norman Mawby - obituaries

Dr Norman Mawby was a medical officer who battled to save the sick and wounded during the Seige of Malta





Dr Norman Mawby, who has died aged 101, was a medical officer and led a desperate fight to treat Malta’s sick and wounded during the three-year siege of the island in the Second World War.

He arrived on Malta in summer 1941, having been conscripted as a lieutenant into the Royal Army Medical Corps from the doctor’s practice in which he worked at Beaumaris, on Anglesey. For the next two-and-a-half years he battled starvation and disease with no leave and under constant enemy air attack, during which his wight dropped to seven-and-a-half stone.


Incessant German and Italian air raids aimed at capturing the then British Crown colony obliged him to treat patients in two sheltered surgeries, one set in the walls of the capital, Valletta, the other tucked inside in the fortifications of Mdina.


Mawby lived on tinned corned beef and condensed milk and, like the rest of the island’s 250,000 inhabitants, endured repeated disappointments as ship after ship of the Allied convoys bringing desperately needed foodstuffs, ammunition and fuel was sunk by enemy fire, often within striking distance of Valletta’s Grand Harbour





Mawby served with two field ambulance teams, the 15th and 161st, and was promoted to captain, by 1943 exercising senior responsibilities at 90 General Hospital Mtarfa as deputy to the director of medical services, Col William Morrison.

The malnourished population was prey to scabies and diphtheria, among other diseases. When one of the hospital’s civilian workers brought in his daughter to see him, Mawby immediately recognised polio. The girl lived, but was ever after to walk with a limp.

Mawby then performed a fleeting but vital service when, with pressure on Malta somewhat relieved by the victory in November 1942 at El Alamein, George VI was able to visit the island. The King, who in April 1942 had honoured the islanders’ bravery by awarding Malta the George Cross, spent 10 hours touring it on June 20 1943.

“At about 9am on that morning I was on duty when the telephone rang,” Mawby recorded. “After taking the message Colonel Morrison turned to me saying: “The King is visiting today and is not well. You had better be prepared to attend him if he needs medical attention.” Mawby toured the island at the King’s side At about this time the war artist Leslie Cole, also visiting Malta, drew Mawby’s portrait

The siege of Malta - YouTube


Norman Earl Mawby was born on April 1 1912 and educated at Birkenhead School and Liverpool University before qualifying as a doctor in 1936. He sailed to Malta on July 13 1941 with the convoy WS9C (known as “Operation Substance”), which came under torpedo attack that damaged the destroyer Fearless, part of the Royal Navy escort.

Mawby watched as a Stuka dive-bomber attacked his merchant vessel, Port Chalmers, then observed a torpedo pass under her hull and explode in the next ship. His wife, Elizabeth, had remained at home with their small son and was expecting twins. When the news reached her that her husband’s convoy had been torpedoed she went into premature labour and lost the babies.

After the war Norman Mawby returned to medical practice, as a GP at West Kirby, Wirral. He and his wife had a daughter, but their son, David, then studying Medicine, was killed in a car crash in his twenties. His wife also predeceased him, and he is survived by his daughter.


Dr Norman Mawby, born April 1 1912, died November 28 2013

[Mr Lick]

Yusef Lateef - obituary

Yusef Lateef was a multi-instrumentalist jazz musician who converted to Islam and pioneered the performance of 'world music’





Yusef Lateef, who has died aged 93, was a jazz musician who pioneered the performance of “world music” long before the term came into general use. A convert to Islam, he declared: “My music is, like my religion, supposed to take you from this life into the next.”

A man of many talents and a born scholar, Yusef Lateef was born William Emanuel Huddleston (some sources give the surname as Evans) on October 9 1920, in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His mother played the piano in church and he remembered his father as having “a beautiful singing voice”. In 1925 his family moved to Detroit, where the boy grew up amid the sounds of the burgeoning swing era. He made up his mind to be a musician at the age of 12, and finally acquired a saxophone, with his father’s help, at 18.


In his twenties, Lateef played with several well-known bands of the period, including those of Lucky Millinder, Roy Eldridge, Hot Lips Page and Ernie Fields. In 1949 he was touring in California with Dizzy Gillespie’s orchestra when he received news that his wife was ill. Hurrying home to Detroit, he was forced to take a job in the Chrysler factory, there being no regular musical work available



This experience affected him deeply. In a search for spiritual development, he had recently embraced Islam, which stresses the obligation to care for one’s family. The life of a jobbing musician would not provide this. The answer, he concluded, lay in getting himself an education.

He enrolled at Wayne State University to study composition and flute. At the same time his professional fortunes improved, and he was soon leading his own quintet in clubs around the Detroit area. He made his recording debut as a leader in 1956, for the Savoy label.

The flute was not widely used in jazz at the time and, together with the growing Eastern influences in Lateef’s music, its novelty proved popular with record buyers. That album, Jazz for the Thinker, did so well that 1957 saw the release of seven Yusef Lateef albums (four on Savoy, one each on Verve, Prestige and New Jazz).

In 1960 Lateef moved to New York, where he worked briefly with Charles Mingus’s band, as well as leading quartets and quintets of his own. He was now playing — along with the tenor saxophone and flute — the oboe, bassoon and a range of Eastern wind instruments, including the shanai, the arghul and the algaita, plus a collection of Chinese wooden flutes, bells and gongs. A single from his 1961 album Eastern Sounds, a version of the “Love Theme” from the film Spartacus, reached the top of the jazz charts.




He continued to work occasionally under the leadership of other musicians, notably the saxophonist Cannonball Adderley. He can be seen and heard playing with Adderley’s sextet in a recording from the television show Jazz Scene USA (1962).

Lateef resumed his studies at the Manhattan School of Music, gaining his performer’s degree on flute in 1969 and a Master’s degree in Music Education in 1970. He then began teaching at the School, running classes in improvisation, which he called “autophysiopsychic music”.

In 1975 Lateef was awarded a Doctorate in Education by the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, for a dissertation on Western and Islamic education.

Between 1981 and 1985 he was a senior research fellow at the University of Ahmadubelo, Nigeria. On his return he took up a teaching post at The University of Massachusetts, to which he remained attached for the rest of his life.

Although he continued to perform professionally almost until the end (his last tour was in the summer this year), Lateef gave up playing in nightclubs in 1981, because their atmosphere had become obnoxious to him. In later years his gradual move from hearty blues-flavoured playing to a more meditative, introspective style was not always well received by audiences and critics.

During his career he recorded more than 100 albums. From 1992 these were made for his own label, YAL Records. He received a Grammy Award in 1987, for the album Yusef Lateef’s Little Symphony.

In addition to his musical and academic activities, Lateef published several books of short stories and novellas; towards the end of his life he was a keen painter, specialising in studies of trees. He twice made the Hajj to Mecca.

Yusef Lateef is survived by his second wife and a son. His first wife and two children predeceased him.


Yusef Lateef, born October 9 1920, died December 23 2013

[Mr Lick]

John Fortune, satirical comedian, dies aged 74



Credit crunch laughs from Bird and Fortune

• Bird and Fortune laugh at credit crunch Watch

John Fortune, the British comedian and satirist who found fame through his TV collaborations with John Bird and Rory Bremner, has died aged 74.

His agent Vivienne Clore said he died peacefully on Tuesday with his wife Emma and dog Grizelle at his bedside.

Born in 1939, he was educated in Bristol before going on to Cambridge where he met fellow satirist Bird.

A founding member of Peter Cook's Establishment Club, he shared a Bafta with Bird in 1997.

The award, for Best Light Entertainment Performance, came for their work on Channel 4's Rory Bremner, Who Else? programme.



Bremner, Bird and Fortune ran from 1999 to 2008


The trio went on to work together on Bremner, Bird and Fortune, which ran from 1999 to 2008.

"I'm so sorry to let you know that my friend John Fortune died this morning," Bremner tweeted, remembering him as a "lovely man, dear friend" and a "brilliant & fearless satirist".

ITV newsreader Alastair Stewart also paid tribute, saying Fortune, Bird and Bremner had created "some of the cleverist [sic], funniest stuff ever".

Only Fools and Horses star John Challis, who acted alongside Fortune in 1980s C.A.T.S. Eyes, said he was "so sad" to hear of his death.

"I played henchman to his chief villain... and we laughed a lot," the actor recalled. "Another goodun gone."

A former member of the Cambridge Footlights, Fortune was known for his prodigious height and his knack for mimicking old-school establishment types.

He also had small roles in a number of films, among them Calendar Girls, The Tailor of Panama and Woody Allen's Match Point.

Fortune is survived by his wife and three children

[Mr Lick]

Geoffrey Wheeler, Songs of Praise presenter, dies aged 83




The broadcaster Geoffrey Wheeler, best known for presenting Songs of Praise and quiz show Top of the Form, has died aged 83, his son has confirmed.

Wheeler died on 30 December in a care home in Prestbury, Cheshire, after a long illness.

He created the popular ITV game show Winner Takes All, which was hosted by Jimmy Tarbuck between 1975 and 1986.

Wheeler, who provided the voiceover during the Tarbuck era, hosted the show himself in 1987-88.

He also appeared on Call My Bluff and Jackanory

[harrybarracuda]

Film, television and stage actor Joseph Ruskin died Saturday of natural causes in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 89.

Ruskin garnered 124 television credits, including “Mission: Impossible” and “Star Trek,” and appeared in 25 films, including “The Magnificent Seven,” ”Prizzi’s Honor” and “Smokin’ Aces.”

His last performance was onstage this year in the Anteus Theatre Company’s production of “The Crucible.”

Ruskin was born in Haverhill, Mass. He studied drama at Carnegie Mellon University and began his professional acting career at Pittsburgh Playhouse and the Rochester Arena Stage before finding success in television.

He served as SAG’s first national vice president for eight years and was the first western regional vice president of Actors Equity Association.

[Mr Lick]

'Fresh Prince of Bel Air' actor James Avery dies





James Avery played Phil Banks in the Fresh Prince of Bel Air

• The Fresh Prince of Brixton!
• Will Smith makes surprise school visit Watch
• Will Smith surprise at City Hall Watch

The American actor James Avery has died aged 65, his publicist has said.

He was best known for his role as Phil Banks in US television series The Fresh Prince of Bel Air with Will Smith.

His fellow cast member in the show Alfonso Ribeiro, who played his son Carlton, tweeted: "I'm deeply saddened to say that James Avery has passed away.

"He was a second father to me. I will miss him greatly."

The actor, who is survived by his wife, Barbara, appeared in a number of films and TV shows including Gray's Anatomy, Star Trek: Enterprise, and 1996 film Happy Gilmore.

But he was best known for his portrayal of 'Uncle Phil' in 1990s sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

He appeared in 141 episodes of the programme alongside his on-screen nephew, Will Smith, and was reunited with most of the cast at a charity event two years ago.

Avery's publicist, Cynthia Snyder, told The Associated Press that Avery died on Tuesday in Glendale, California, following complications from open-heart surgery

[Mr Lick]

Delbert Tibbs - obituary

Delbert Tibbs was a drifter wrongly sentenced to death by an all-white jury who later campaigned against capital punishment





Delbert Tibbs, who has died aged 74, spent two years on America’s death row for a murder that he did not commit; his case became a cause célèbre and he became a prominent campaigner against capital punishment.

An unemployed, black drifter, Tibbs was arrested in early 1974 on suspicion of having raped a white teenage girl and murdering her white boyfriend as they hitchhiked through southern Florida. His reaction was sanguine: he had a cast-iron alibi and did not match the killer’s description. But within a year an all-white jury had convicted Tibbs and he was sentenced to death in the electric chair.


Supporters crowded into the courtroom during the hearing, the folk singer Pete Seeger wrote a song about Tibbs and the black activist Angela Davis raised funds for his defence. Tibbs’s conviction was overturned on appeal, and he was released from jail in 1977.


His ordeal on death row had a profound effect on Tibbs, who subsequently campaigned against the death penalty, but without anger or bitterness for what he had personally endured. A reflective man, who read widely, his personality was likened to “an old soul song: smooth, mellow, but with a relentless underlying rhythm”.


The youngest of 12 children of a travelling salesman, Delbert Lee Tibbs was born in Shelby, Mississippi, on June 19 1939. When he was 12 his family moved to Chicago where, after working for a printing firm, he eventually took a job as a claims adjuster

When his marriage broke up, and ambitious to improve his educational qualifications, he enrolled at the Chicago Theological Seminary in 1970. But yielding to an inner restlessness, he dropped out and began to travel, walking, hitching rides and taking odd jobs as he made his way south to Florida.

It was there that police first stopped and questioned him about the murder and rape, which had happened more than 200 miles to the south. After taking some Polaroid snapshots of him, they let him go. He had returned to Mississippi a month or so later when he was stopped again by a highway patrolman and arrested.

It seemed that the rape victim had identified him from the snapshots, although she had originally described the assailant as dark-skinned, about 5ft 6in tall and sporting bushy hair. She identified Tibbs even though he was light-skinned, 6ft 3in and kept his hair short. Moreover a prison informant who claimed Tibbs had confessed to the crime later recanted.

After Tibbs’s release in January 1977, the State Attorney who had handled the original prosecution declared that the case had been “tainted from the beginning and the investigators knew it”. Had Tibbs been retried, the prosecutor added, he would gladly have testified as a defence witness.

Tibbs’s case was featured in The Exonerated, a play about wrongly-accused people being released from death row that had a long run off-Broadway in 2002, and toured the United States with a celebrity cast. It was later made into a television film.

After his release Tibbs managed a car wash, and became a school security guard and youth counsellor. From 2011 he worked as assistant director of membership and training at Witness to Innocence, a national group of death row “survivors” and their families that campaigns against the death penalty.

Delbert Tibbs was latterly working on a book – hoping to realise his lifelong dream of becoming a writer. “I should have lost hope,” he said, “but I didn’t.”

A son and two daughters survive him.


Delbert Tibbs, born June 19 1939, died November 23 2013

[Mr Lick]

Maurice 'Mad Dog' Vachon - obituary

Maurice 'Mad Dog' Vachon was a wrestler who lost a leg and once used his prosthesis to batter a rival in the ring





Maurice 'Mad Dog' Vachon, the former Canadian Olympic wrestler, who has died aged 84, achieved respect and notoriety in equal measure as one of the greatest “heels” in the business.

As Canada’s amateur representative in Greco-Roman wrestling at the 1948 London Olympics, Vachon placed only seventh. Undeterred, he went on to win a gold medal at the British Empire Games in New Zealand two years later, beginning his professional career with bouts in Montreal and northern Ontario. Eschewing his former clean-cut image in favour of a shaven head and black goatee beard, he soon acquired a villainous reputation worthy of the appearance; when it came to combat, as the Pacific Northwest wrestler and promoter Dutch Savage explained, “you’d have to hit him with a hammer or shoot him, or he’d kill you”.

The wrestling community buzzed with stories of Vachon’s exploits, invariably bar brawls involving copious quantities of alcohol and broken glass. His ring name arose following a particularly heated bout in Portland, Oregon, in 1962: frustrated at being made to wait for an opponent, Vachon seized the unfortunate latecomer as soon as he made his entrance and threw him out of the ring.

A referee and a police officer who attempted to intervene found themselves attacked in turn. Backstage, the promoter Don Owen confronted him: “You looked just like a mad dog”. While Vachon later claimed that the incident was unscripted , it transformed him in the eyes of wrestling devotees. By 1967 he had won the AMA world championship on five occasions .

In justification of his moniker, Vachon barked at, bit, and scratched opponents. To make this last tactic still more effective, he would file his fingernails into sharpened points . In televised interviews, his gravelly voice was ideally suited to the then unusual practice of “trash-talking” his opponents, and fans responded by assembling to jeer and exhort him in their thousands. His 1973 bout against Wladek “Killer” Kowalski at Montreal’s Jarry Park drew 29,127 spectators – the largest number ever recorded for the venue

By the time of the last of his 13,000 bouts, in 1986, he was a highly popular figure, and the end of his professional career brought a flood of further opportunities to his door. He was hired for beer and chocolate bar commercials, wrote a biography and produced a rap album in French. To Vachon, who in retirement possessed an affability entirely absent from his alter ego, it was all rather mysterious. “I worked my entire career to be hated and still the fans love me,” he joked. “I must have done something wrong.”

One of 13 children, Maurice Vachon was born in Ville-Emard, a suburb of Montreal, on September 14 1929. His father, a local police officer, encouraged boxing and wrestling from a young age, and Maurice dropped out of school aged 13 to work at various odd jobs and pursue his amateur career at the Montreal YMCA. One brother, Paul, would enjoy considerable success in the ring as “the Butcher”, while his sister Diane, who died in 1991, fought under the name of Vivian Vachon.

In 1987, the year after his professional wrestling career came to an end, Vachon was struck by a car while visiting his sister-in-law in Iowa, an accident that resulted in the amputation of his right leg below the knee. He performed one final televised stunt in 1996, when Diesel (Kevin Nash) removed Vachon’s prosthesis mid-bout and used it to attack a rival.

Increasingly, however, Vachon became disillusioned with the spectacle . “It’s becoming evil,” he complained. Moving to Omaha with his family, he ran a local gym and gave talks to various amputee groups.

Maurice Vachon was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2010. He is survived by his third wife, Kathie, and by six children.


Maurice “Mad Dog” Vachon, born September 14 1929, died November 21 2013

[Mr Lick]

David Clark - obituary

David Clark was a Kent captain and leading cricket administrator who managed England tours to India and Australia





David Clark, who has died aged 94, was for three decades a leading cricket administrator with MCC and Kent, the club he had captained. He managed two England tours, on one of which — to Australia in 1970-71 — the Ashes were regained.

An upstanding, reserved man, Clark was not a person to court controversy – and yet he could not circumvent it. His years in authority were marred by strong disagreements with Ray Illingworth, his captain in Australia, and — in his capacity as president of MCC and the International Cricket Conference — by the row between the game’s governing bodies and Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket.

After the death of his wife, Beryl, in 1992, Clark became a somewhat reclusive figure, but he remained sagacious in his views on how clubs were run. He was horrified by Kent’s plans to build a hotel as well as residential development at the St Lawrence ground, Canterbury, and warned MCC during his time as treasurer in the 1980s that it must not allow the disused railway tunnels at the Nursery End at Lord’s to fall into the hands of an external purchaser. MCC’s failure to do so has resulted in years of wrangling over the redevelopment of the great ground.

David Graham Clark was born on January 27 1919 and educated at Rugby. He was unfortunate that a prospective first-class career as a right-hand batsman and occasional spin bowler was affected by the Second World War. He did not play for Kent until he was 27, having served with the 2nd Battalion Parachute Regiment (2 Para) in North Africa, Sicily and Arnhem, where he was wounded and captured and held as a PoW until 1945. He attained the rank of major.

He farmed near Maidstone after the war, making a belated debut for the county in 1946, when he played in three matches. He played no cricket in 1947 and made only three appearances in 1948, but none the less was chosen to succeed Bryan Valentine as captain in 1949. According to Wisden, his was a thankless task, for the side was far from a talented one

In his second season as captain he decided to give a debut to a distinctly promising 17-year-old batsman. Colin Cowdrey’s long career in the game had begun, and he was to work as an administrator alongside Clark long after their playing days were over.

Before retiring from playing cricket to attend to his farm, Clark captained Kent for one last season. This was not a successful one. Kent fell from ninth to 16th place in the county championship table; they had never finished so low . In his 75 matches he had scored 1,959 runs at an average of 15.79. His greater contribution to the game was to come off the field.

Clark was to become only the second person after Lord Harris to serve Kent as captain, chairman and president. In 1978 he resigned from the committee when the club decided to reinstate four eminent players — Asif Iqbal, Alan Knott, Derek Underwood and Bob Woolmer — who had initially been sacked after signing up with World Series Cricket.

In 1965, on behalf of MCC, which he represented in a number of roles, he compiled a report that looked into the structure of county cricket. Indeed, he was an early advocate of the one-day game, but the first-class counties were resistant to change.

His management of Mike Smith’s England tour to India in 1963-64 (under the banner of MCC) proved successful, even though all five Tests were drawn. Clark was then asked to manage the tour to Australia in 1970-71. The appointment was made by the club in the expectation, or perhaps hope, that Cowdrey would be chosen to lead the side. Serious injury, however, had forced him to relinquish the captaincy the previous year to Illingworth, a Yorkshireman whose outlook on life and cricket was the antithesis of both Men of Kent.

Cowdrey, disillusioned at being passed over, had an unhappy tour, and Clark repeatedly clashed with Illingworth and John Snow, the high-class fast bowler who took 31 wickets during the series. An extra Test was added to the itinerary without Illingworth’s agreement, and Clark was not best advised to state in public that he would rather Australia won the series 3-1 than spectators be forced to endure a succession of dull draws.

When Illingworth led his side off the field at Sydney in protest at cans, half-eaten pies and bottles thrown at his fielders in the outfield, Clark attempted in vain to persuade him to stay on. As a result of the abandonment of the third Test at Melbourne owing to rain, the first one-day international to be staged anywhere was held instead.

Away from cricket, Clark was a keen golfer and a good skier – he met his wife, with whom he had two children, at Wengen in 1949.


David Clark, born January 27 1919, died October 8 2013

[piwanoi]

So Sad to read of the passing of John Fortune of the Satirist act "Bird and Fortune" I have laughed my sides sore over the years at their obvious talents ,here they are socking it to Gordon Brown and the Labour party

[Mr Lick]

US musician Phil Everly dies aged 74







Phil (left) and Don's hits included Bye Bye Love, Wake Up Little Suzie and All I Have To Do Is Dream


US musician Phil Everly, one half of the Everly Brothers, has died, aged 74, in California, his family says.

Everly died in the Los Angeles suburb of Burbank of complications from lung disease, his wife, Patti, told the Los Angeles Times.

"We are absolutely heartbroken," she said, adding that the disease was the result of a lifetime of smoking.

Phil Everly and his brother Don made up the Everly Brothers, one of the biggest pop acts of the 1950s and early 1960s.

They had a string of close-harmony hits including Wake Up Little Suzie, Cathy's Clown, Bye Bye Love, and All I Have To Do Is Dream.

"It's a terrible, terrible loss - for me, for everybody," US rock pioneer Duane Eddy, a friend of Everly, told BBC Radio 5live



Everly died on Friday of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, his son Jason Everly told AP.

The Washington Post quoted a woman at Don Everly's home as saying he was too upset to talk about the death of his brother. "He expected to go first," she told the newspaper.

Rolling Stone magazine calls the Everly Brothers "the most important vocal duo in rock".

In its biography of the pair, the magazine says Phil and his older brother Don were the children of Midwestern country music singers Ike and Margaret Everly and performed on the family radio show while growing up.

In their heyday between 1957 and 1962, the Everly Brothers had 19 Top 40 hits, according to the Associated Press. They influenced acts such as the Beatles and the Beach Boys.

The pair had an onstage breakup in 1973 that led to a decade-long estrangement, but Phil later told Time magazine the brothers' relationship had survived this.

"Don and I are infamous for our split," Phil said, "but we're closer than most brothers."

The Everly Brothers were elected to the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in its first year, 1986, and they were given a lifetime achievement award at the Grammys in 1997.

Among the musicians paying tribute to the singer and guitarist, was singer-songwriter Charlie Daniels, who tweeted: "Rest in peace Phil Everly. You guys brought us a lot of pleasure back in the day."

[taxexile]

sad news.

[Mr Lick]

Eusebio: Portugal football legend dies aged 71


Portugal football legend Eusebio, who was top scorer at the 1966 World Cup, has died at the age of 71.

Born in Mozambique in 1942 when it was still a Portuguese colony, Eusebio da Silva Ferreira went on to play 64 times for Portugal, scoring 41 goals.

The Benfica striker's nine goals at the 1966 World Cup in England included four against North Korea.

Widely considered one of the best players of all-time, he scored 733 times in 745 professional matches.

Eusebio, the 1965 European Footballer of the Year, won the European Cup with Benfica in 1962 and was in the side that lost to Manchester United in the 1968 Wembley final

He won 10 league championships and five Portuguese cups in his 15 years at the club and was Portugal's top league scorer between 1964 and 1973

[harrybarracuda]

Always struck me as a true gent and a beast of a footballer.

[FloridaBorn]

That's one hell of a goals percentage.. Too bad never got to see him play..

[Necron99]

PIONEERING Hong Kong movie producer Run Run Shaw has died at the age of 107.



No cause of death* was given in a statement from Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB), which Shaw helped found in 1967.
Shaw was one of the most influential figures in Asia's entertainment industry.
His Shaw Brothers Studios churned out nearly 1000 movies as it popularised the kung fu genre that influenced Quentin Tarantino and other Hollywood directors.
Shaw's movie studio, once among the world's largest, helped launch the careers of powerhouses including director John Woo.
His television empire helped actors including Chow Yun-fat rise to fame.
He also produced a handful of US films, including the 1982 sci-fi classic Blade Runner.



* Cause of death likely being 107.

[steve down under]

^bloody hell he had a longer innings than most of the English Test team in the Ashes series here down under !

[Latindancer]

Crikey ! That's pretty good !
I wonder how old he is in the photo ? A mere 95 ?

[billy the kid]

they're not sure if he was 107 or 106 yr. old
as they count the time in the womb
so where he comes from
you're 1 yr.old when born.

[Mr Lick]

Terry Biddlecombe - obituaries

Terry Biddlecombe was a champion jockey who later married Henrietta Knight and scored a Gold Cup triple with Best Mate





Terry Biddlecombe who has died aged 72, was a hard-living, good-looking, plain-talking, three-times National Hunt champion jockey known as the Blond Bomber; in retirement he formed an unlikely partnership with the trainer Henrietta Knight to send Best Mate out a winner in three successive Cheltenham Gold Cups.

Biddlecombe’s marriage to Knight was one of the most romantic stories in racing: he the bluff West Country farmer’s son; she the well-spoken former schoolmistress. But they were linked by the fact that when they began their relationship, after a fortuitous meeting at a bloodstock sale in Malvern in 1992, they were both at a very low ebb.


Henrietta Knight’s stables had been struck by an outbreak of equine flu, with the result that some owners had taken their horses elsewhere and she was drinking heavily. Meanwhile Biddlecombe had just returned from Australia, where alcoholism had led to the end of his second marriage. The damage inflicted by the bottle, on top of the injuries accumulated during his career in the saddle (or out of it – he suffered 47 broken bones) was fast catching up with him, despite his rugby player’s physique and toughness



Terry Biddlecombe (right) and Woodland Venture clear the last fence ahead of Stan Mellor and Stalbridge Colonist at the 1967 Cheltenham Gold Cup

Yet however unlikely, their partnership proved hugely successful, both personally and professionally. At Henrietta Knight’s stables at West Lockinge, near Wantage in Oxfordshire, they combined her knowledge of horses with his tactical head for races. But undoubtedly Biddlecombe’s greatest contribution came in February 1999, at a rain-sodden point-to-point in Lismore, Co Waterford, when he spotted a novice with what he called “this presence”. Two months later the horse, Best Mate, was at West Lockinge.

The gelding won the Mersey Novice’s Hurdle the following year, and two years later the famously superstitious Henrietta Knight watched through her fingers as it won the first of three successive Gold Cups, matching the record of Arkle from 1964 to 1966. In the last of the three, Best Mate, under Jim Culloty in the claret-and-blue colours of owner and Aston Villa fan Jim Lewis, seemed boxed in on the run-in. But showing characteristic strength and determination, it pulled off the rail and at the second last jumped clear. As their great horse crossed the line, Terry Biddlecombe ran into the arms of Henrietta Knight. Both were in tears



Terry Walter Biddlecombe was born in Gloucester on February 2 1941. It was clear from an early age that his career would centre around the farm that his father, Walter, ran on the banks of the river Severn, and around horses. Terry’s elder brother, Tony, also rode and was amateur champion in 1961-62. But shortly afterwards Walter Biddlecombe demanded that one of his sons give up riding to help him on the farm. “As Terry was going better at the time I thought I would volunteer,” Tony Biddlecombe told the Racing Post.

Terry Biddlecombe’s first win had come in 1958, on Burnella, a 20-1 outsider in a novice hurdle at Wincanton. Just 17, Biddlecombe had inspired his mount, which had refused at an early hurdle, to recover and beat the favourite, ridden by champion jockey Fred Winter. Over a career lasting 17 seasons, Biddlecombe would eventually amass a total of 908 winners, most for the trainer Fred Rimell.

His strength was both a great asset and an enduring problem, as his sturdy physique required him to spend hours sweating off excess weight. When fluids were replaced, they were usually of the alcoholic variety, brandy and Babycham being a favourite. He did, however, see the upside in the endless sessions in the Turkish baths, notably because he was such a regular that he was allowed in on ladies-only day



Terry Biddlecombe at Cheltenham in 1974

Stories about Biddlecombe in his Sixties heyday, usually revolving around booze and women, are legion. He was famous for his performance at one Ludlow meeting where, having ridden the first winner of the day, and having nothing to do until the last race, he was seen disappearing off course with an admirer. After returning to the weighing room in the nick of time, he was first past the post again, but there was some banter among fellow jockeys that it was in fact his third winner of the day.

His good humour and determination to enjoy life were well-tested by falls which came despite a wonderful balance in the saddle. Early in his career, for example, he broke both wrists so badly that he was forced afterwards to ride with gauntlets. And several of his greatest victories came against the odds, with Biddlecombe in enormous pain.

His victory in the 1967 Gold Cup came after a fall the previous day which had left him with serious knee ligament damage. Only a painkilling injection enabled him to steer Woodland Venture to victory past the great Mill House. His other major wins included the Sweeps Hurdle, two Mackeson Gold Cups, the Victor Ludorum and the Welsh National, the Grand Sefton at Aintree and the Triumph Hurdle.

He did not win the Grand National, being deprived of what might have been his best chance, on eventual winner Gay Trip in 1970, by a kidney split in a fall so brutal that some feared it had killed him. He was to ride Gay Trip to second in the National in 1972. He did win the Welsh National in 1970, however, in what is regarded as the greatest ride of his career.

It was a race which he had begun seriously weakened after shedding 9lbs in two hours in his sweat room and failing to rehydrate. Feeling faint, Biddlecombe considered pulling up when his horse, French Excuse, came to a near standstill after misjudging the water jump. But when the horse proved willing to start running again, Biddlecombe nursed it through back markers, eventually pipping Astbury to win. As he passed the winning post, Biddlecombe was almost unconscious. The course doctor prescribed a pint of Guinness with a tablespoon of salt.



He retired in 1974, having ridden the last two years of his career primarily for Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. But he did not adapt well to life out of the saddle. Though he proved an able tipster for ATV, other television engagements came to nothing and increasingly he turned to drink. His first marriage, to Bridget, ended, and it was with his second wife, the former Ann Hodgson, that he emigrated to Australia.

Just before he left he filmed a piece for Central Television about Henrietta Knight. Unbeknown to him, she had harboured a fancy for him since his riding days. “I used to stand down at the last fence and look at him, the blond bomber. He was wonderful.” Setting out to impress him, she exchanged her usual yard clothes for “a little blue dress, it looked like a bloody nurse’s uniform for heaven’s sake, with high-heeled shoes”. The encounter was not a success.

But nor was his seven-year spell on a farm outside Perth. In 1992 he returned and, with the help of the Injured Jockeys Fund, dried out. A few months later he met Henrietta Knight again. This time they hit it off. They married in 1995, and she survives him.

Terry Biddlecombe had two children with his first wife, and three children with his second, including Robert, who was himself a successful jockey.


Terry Biddlecombe, born February 2 1941, died January 5 2014

[Mr Lick]

Alicia Rhett - obituary

Alicia Rhett was an actress who scorned Hollywood after appearing in Gone With the Wind




Alicia Rhett, who has died aged 98, rose to international attention in Gone With the Wind as India Wilkes, the serious young woman whose love for the dull and timid Charles Hamilton is spurned in favour of southern belle Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh); despite lasting acclaim, however, it was to be her only screen role.

The film’s casting director Kay Brown discovered Alicia during a tour of the American South in 1938, as they prepared to adapt Margaret Mitchell’s epic tale of Civil War romance for the screen. A memo from the producer, David Selznick, acknowledged the pressure on crew members: “Because publicity has gone out thru the South calling Kay’s trip a 'stunt’”, he wrote, “idea is advanced that [original assigned director George] Cukor might sign one southern girl, to appear somewhere in the picture to prove our sincerity''




In the event, Alicia’s natural poise so impressed Kay and Cukor that the latter had her read, first for the starring role of Scarlett, and then for Scarlett’s sister Melanie Hamilton. Privately, however, Cukor expressed concerns to Selznick about the 23 year-old’s relative lack of experience. As consolation she was offered the part of India, travelling to California for a year of filming

While Alicia later insisted that she “enjoyed the experience immensely”, she was unsuited to the life of a Hollywood star. An intensely private individual, she lacked the drive and ambition of contemporaries like Joan Crawford or Bette Davis, and went on to reject all subsequent roles from agents and producers as being unsuitable. Though fans continued to hound her with requests for signed photographs seven decades later, letters went unanswered and requests for interviews were seldom granted, earning her the unofficial title of “South Carolina’s Greta Garbo”.

Instead Alicia concentrated her energies on a long-standing talent for painting and soon acquired a considerable local reputation with her portraits of debutantes, society presidents and other members of Charleston’s aristocracy .

Alicia Rhett was born on February 1 1915 in Savannah, Georgia, and moved with her family to Charleston after the death of her father in the First World War. Her great-grandfather, Robert Barnwell Rhett, was a prominent secessionist politician and owner of the Charleston Mercury newspaper. As a teenager Alicia acted in local productions, but her main ambition was to be an illustrator, and it was while visiting a local newspaper with her portfolio that she first attracted the attention of Kay Brown. During filming of Gone With the Wind Alicia would sketch her fellow cast members between takes.

When the film opened in December 1939, many of its principal performers attended the world premiere at Loew’s Grand Theatre in Atlanta. However, none of the African-American cast, notably Hattie McDaniel and Butterfly McQueen, had been invited in the still-segregated state of Georgia. Hours before the launch, city officials called on MGM to reprint the official programmes, removing the photograph of Hattie McDaniel as “Mammy” from the inside cover and replacing it with a photograph of Alicia Rhett. “I was sad for Hattie,” Alicia said during a rare interview in the 1970s. “But somehow she managed to rise above it all. She was one of the most generous human beings I ever met.”

In 2009 there was a 70th anniversary showing of Gone With the Wind in the cinema which had held the original screening, and the organisers asked Olivia de Havilland and Ann Rutherford (Scarlett’s sister Carreen in the film) to invite Alicia Rhett. She never replied to their letters.

Alicia Rhett was unmarried. Surviving cast members from Gone With the Wind today include 93-year-old Mary Anderson, who played Maybelle Merriwether, and Oliva de Havilland, now 96, who played Melanie Hamilton.


Alicia Rhett, born February 1 1915, died January 3 2014

[Mr Lick]

Paul Goggins - obituary

Paul Goggins was a respected Labour MP and minister who opposed same-sex marriage




Paul Goggins, who has died aged 60, was a conscientious and respected Labour MP who served in the Blair and Brown governments as a minister in the Home Office and the Northern Ireland Office (NIO).

A career social worker and one-time Roman Catholic seminarian, Goggins campaigned assiduously on social issues, especially for teenagers in care and on the streets. He persuaded the Coalition to end the system under which foster children had to leave their families before their 18th birthday, and chaired the Cardinal Hume Centre for the young homeless in Westminster

Rt Hon Paul Goggins MP on fostered children staying with foster carers above the age of 18 - YouTube


Goggins was one of the few Labour MPs to vote against same-sex marriage when the issue was put to Parliament in February 2013. He co-founded the all-party group supporting the Catholic charity Cafod .

Manchester born and bred, he was a lifelong City supporter, and pressed for the reintroduction of standing areas at the Etihad and Old Trafford.

The Wythenshawe and Sale East constituency, which he represented from its creation in 1997, included Manchester Airport; he campaigned for an easing of Air Passenger Duty, and applauded the routing of High Speed 2 to serve the airport

Goggins once claimed in a BBC interview that his family was the inspiration for the “Mrs Goggins” character in the Postman Pat children’s television series. David Blunkett confided that whether or not this was the case, the nickname had stuck to Goggins himself while they served together at the Home Office.

Paul Gerard Goggins was born on June 16 1953 . From St Bede’s School, Manchester, he went on to Ushaw College. Instead of entering the priesthood, he left at 20 to study for a Certificate in Residential Care of Children and Young People at Birmingham Polytechnic (now Birmingham City University), graduating in 1976. He gained further qualifications in social work at Manchester Polytechnic.

While still at college, Goggins was a childcare worker with Liverpool Catholic Social Services, and after graduating he ran a children’s home in Wigan for eight years.

From 1984 to 1989 he was project director for Action for Children in Salford; then, until his election to Parliament, he was national director of Church Action on Poverty.

Goggins dated his interest in politics to attending a rally on Biafra in Manchester in 1968; the following year he joined protests against the Springbok rugby tour . In 1990 he was elected a Salford councillor

In the Labour landslide of 1997, Goggins was elected for Wythenshawe and Sale East with a 15,019 majority on the retirement of Alf Morris . He was put on the Social Security Select Committee, then in October 1998 was appointed PPS to John Denham, Minister of State for Social Security. Three months later he moved with Denham to the Department of Health.

Goggins’s association with Blunkett began in December 2000, when he became PPS to the then Education and Employment Secretary; after the 2001 election Tony Blair made Blunkett Home Secretary, and Goggins moved with him.

In May 2003 he was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the Home Office, with responsibility for prisons and probation; when Blunkett stood down in December 2004 Goggins carried on under Charles Clarke. After the 2005 election he took on serious and organised crime, the voluntary sector, faith and race equality.

In May 2006 Blair moved Goggins sideways to the NIO, with responsibility for health, security and prisons. A year later, just before Blair gave way to Gordon Brown, he was promoted to Minister of State. He kept responsibility for security, also taking on policing and being closely involved in the continuing political efforts to make the peace process stick. Brown acknowledged his contribution in 2009 by making him a Privy Counsellor

After Labour’s defeat in 2010 Goggins ran the unsuccessful leadership campaign of his friend Andy Burnham, and served on the Intelligence and Security Committee.

Paul Goggins died after suffering a stroke. He married, in 1977, Wyn Bartley, with whom he had two sons and a daughter.


Paul Goggins, born June 16 1953, died January 7 2014

[Mr Lick]

Robert Boscawen - obituary

Robert Boscawen was a tank officer who survived terrible burns to become the last MP in the House to hold an MC




Robert Boscawen, who has died aged 90, was a member of a distinguished Cornish family and served as Conservative MP for Wells, the constituency later renamed Somerton and Frome, from 1970 to 1992. Known for his robust Right-wing views, he was a Government Whip from 1979 to 1988.

He was also the last holder of the Military Cross to sit in the Commons, an award won at Arnhem with the 1st Armoured Battalion, Coldstream Guards. Having already had three tanks “shot out from under him”, he was severely injured in a bloody tank battle and left permanently disfigured by burns



Robert Thomas Boscawen was born on March 17 1923, the fourth son of the 8th Viscount Falmouth and Mary Margaret Meynell, who was a descendant of Lord Grey of the Reform Bill. Their family roots ran deep in Cornwall, and the name of an 18th-century ancestor, Admiral Sir Edward Boscawen, who was the Member for Truro, is enshrined in the Records of the House of Commons, noting the unanimous vote of thanks accorded him for destroying the French fleet at Lagos Bay in 1759

Bob grew up at Tregothnan, near Truro, sailing and quickly becoming an excellent shot. He was educated at Eton before, in 1941, within two weeks of leaving school, he joined up at his local recruiting office, in Redruth. He joined the Royal Engineers, which sent him for nine months to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read Engineering. He then applied to join the Coldstream Guards, with which members of his family had served since 1769 (his eldest brother, Evelyn, had been killed while serving with the 2nd Coldstream Guards Battalion in the withdrawal from Dunkirk).

Bob Boscawen joined the 1st Armoured Battalion of the Guards in 1942 and landed in France shortly after D-Day, when he was troop commander of four Sherman tanks. The fighting was intense, and on several occasions Boscawen, then just 21, was involved in bitter and lengthy exchanges of fire, often witnessing the tanks of comrades bursting into flames.

He was involved in the liberation of Brussels, where he bought a shotgun and (as the partridge season had opened) set out to supplement rations with game birds, all washed down with champagne recovered from the Wehrmacht.

Then on October 2, while supporting the 231st Infantry Brigade of 50th Tyne and Tees Division south of Arnhem, Boscawen’s tanks came under heavy fire. With little support, they stood their ground during a night of intense bombardment, “firing at every muzzle flash”. When dawn broke, it illuminated a scene, as he later wrote, “of scattered death and bits of debris”. He was awarded an MC.

They crossed the Rhine on March 30 1945. Two days later, on Easter Day, his tanks were attempting to capture a bridge over a canal near Enschede. As he later noted in his battle diary, which was published in 2001 as Armoured Guardsman: “I found myself looking down the barrels of four [105mm heavy flak] guns beside the bridge, the place seething with Germans... I saw the shots flying up at me. There was a whoof and the turret was engulfed from below in a whirlwind of flame. I eventually broke free from the flames and stumbled back for some 200 yards to safety. The rest were either trapped or shot down...” His troop had set out after D-Day with 19 men. With casualties duly replaced, 13 of its men were killed and nine wounded before V-E Day.

Almost three years and much surgery in the hands of the celebrated Archibald McIndoe passed before Boscawen could return to anything like normal life. His first step came in 1947, when he volunteered for the British Red Cross Civilian Relief Organisation in Germany, helping to run a rehabilitation centre for the war-wounded and assisting East European refugees.

From 1948 he spent two years with Shell Petroleum as a management trainee before joining the family-owned Cornish china clay business, Goonveen, at Rostowrack. He became a Lloyd’s Underwriter in 1952.

He had joined the Conservative Party while still in the Army and in the Fifties began to take an increasingly active role, winning a reputation as a hard-working and effective campaigner, much in demand as a speaker. He contested Falmouth and Camborne in 1964 and 1966, but was ousted as a candidate a year later after a series of acrimonious rows among his constituency activists over his support for the extreme Right-wing Monday Club. His opponents believed it damaged the Party’s prospects in a seat with a radical tradition.

He spent two years searching for a new seat to contest. He had hoped to continue the family tradition in Cornwall, but had to move to Wells in Somerset for both a safe seat and more sympathetic political ears. There he supported the restoration of capital punishment and drastic cuts in the welfare state and student grants. He was against abortion. But it was the pace of decolonisation that most concerned him, and he became a leading supporter of Ian Smith after Rhodesian UDI. He voted against the imposition of sanctions in defiance of the Party Whip.

He did, however, “reluctantly overcome” his anti-Common Market prejudices, being persuaded by the economic arguments in favour of British entry. While he cautioned pro-marketeers against regarding it as a panacea for Britain’s ills, he warned opponents against being prejudiced by memories of the war: “Parliament should not be guided by the distrust, suspicions and hatreds of past years for decisions affecting our future generations.”

In 1976 Boscawen launched a vituperative attack on plans to increase MPs’ pay, describing the debate as “a disagreeable, disgraceful and miserable occasion”; doing so at a time of economic stringency “brought ignominy” on the whole House, while the inclusion of a notional increase to count towards pension rights was “not just nonsense, but bloody nonsense, immoral and wrong”. He took a particular interest in the National Health Service and sat on its London Executive Council from 1954 to 1965. As an MP he was on the backbenchers’ Health Services Committee and vice-chairman from 1974 to 1979.

In 1979 Boscawen was appointed an assistant Whip and promoted to Lord Commissioner of the Treasury in 1981, then to the two senior Whips offices, Vice Chamberlain of Her Majesty’s Household (1983-86) and Comptroller of the Royal Household until 1988.

When he retired from the Whips office in 1988, Mrs Thatcher paid a glowing tribute to his “truly magnificent service to the country, the government and the Parliamentary party”.

The Trappist life of the Whips office had denied Boscawen the opportunity for eight years to display his skill as an orator and his mastery of invective, but did not interfere with his ceaseless work for his constituents. A much appreciated success was to persuade British Rail to stop London express trains at Castle Cary for the first time for many years. Nor did he forget the interests of his Cornish homeland, and was the driving force behind the creation of the Cornwall Industrial Development Group.

Robert Boscawen was a keen rower and expert yachtsman. He stroked the Trinity boat and rowed in the University trial eights. He was a member of the Royal Yacht Squadron and regularly sailed in international races, including the Fastnet. On one occasion in the 1950s he was joined on the race by an American journalist who recorded how, in a Force Nine gale in the Irish Sea, many of the crew were “too tired to go on” but found that they would “rather drop in our tracks than admit such feelings to Boscawen himself. Such is the stuff of leadership”.

Bob Boscawen married Mary Alice Codrington in 1949. She died last year, and he is survived by their two daughters, and by a son who followed him into the Coldstream Guards.


Robert Boscawen, born March 17 1923, died December 28 2013

[Mr Lick]

Marina Ginestà - obituary

Marina Ginestà was a mysterious beauty photographed during the Spanish Civil War who was identified exactly 70 years later



Marina Ginestà, who has died aged 94, was believed to have been the last surviving French veteran of the Spanish Civil War. As a 17-year-old member of Spain’s Unified Socialist Youth she was immortalised in a photograph taken on the roof of the Hotel Colón in Barcelona in the first flames of the conflict; it was to become one of the most famous photographs of the war.

Widely considered a masterpiece of reportage, the picture was taken on July 21 1936 by the photojournalist Juan Guzmán. In it, the striking Ginestà looks sideways directly into the lens with a wry smile, belying the dramatic events playing out in the city beneath her. A rifle is casually slung over her shoulder, the sleeves of her uniform rolled up in the summer sun, while the wind whips strands of hair over her fine cheekbones.

Marina Ginestà was born on January 29 1919 in Toulouse, France. Her family moved in the early 1930s to Barcelona, where she joined the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia. In July 1936 she arrived at the Hotel Colón to carry out duties as translator and typist for Mikhail Koltsov, a correspondent for the Soviet newspaper Pravda. As a non-combatant this was the only time Ginestà carried a gun.

On being shown the picture late in life Marina Ginestà recognised the passion and pride she felt for the Republican cause. “It reflects the feeling we had at that moment. Socialism had arrived, the customers of the hotel had left. There was euphoria,” she said wistfully. “We temporarily set ourselves up at the Colón, we ate well, as if the bourgeois life were ours and we had moved up in category very quickly.”


Republican forces were in celebratory mood that day, relaxing in the wake of the failed coup d’etat against the Left-wing Popular Front government. The Colón itself had been the scene of bitter fighting, with Colonel Antonio Escobar Huertas leading his Civil Guard into the hotel and overcoming soldiers loyal to General Franco. Guzmán, a German-born photographer who later took Spanish citizenship, was in the city with the International Brigades, the anti-fascist military unit, and caught the joy of the masses

The picture would later feature on the jacket of the book Trece Rosas Rojas (The Thirteen Roses, 2004) by Carlos Fonseca, a bestselling account of the execution of 13 young women by a Francoist firing squad during the post-war purges known as the “saca de agosto” – the August round-up.

Yet, even with the picture’s prominence, its subject remained unaware of its existence for most of her life. Nor, indeed, did the public know who the defiant girl on the roof was. It was only in 2006 that a researcher at Agencia Efe, who held Guzmán’s archive of wartime images, tracked her down in France. Guzmán had wrongly catalogued Ginestà under the name Jinesta. It was through the memoirs of Mikhail Koltsov, with whom she appears in another of the agency’s pictures, and investigations at the Spanish Civil War archives in Salamanca, that her identity finally came to light.



At the end of the war Marina Ginestà was wounded and, as Spain’s short-lived Second Republic collapsed, she was evacuated to Montpellier to recover. She later fled the city when the Germans invaded France, settling in the Dominican Republic. Further persecution, this time by the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, caused her to leave in 1946, and in 1952 she returned to Barcelona. By the time she was discovered by Efe she was living in Paris as a translator for a Spanish psychoanalyst.

“They say that in the Colón photo I have a captivating look,” she acknowledged in an interview given in her late eighties. “It’s possible, because we were immersed both in the mysticism of the proletarian revolution and the images of Hollywood, of Greta Garbo and Gary Cooper.”

Marina Ginestà married twice, latterly in 1952 to a Belgian diplomat.

Marina Ginestà, born January 29 1919, died January 6 2014
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[snakeeyes]

Great News.
Ariel Sharon , Dead.