The RIP Famous Person Thread

[harrybarracuda]

Stretching it a bit there mate (which funnily enough is what Norman Scott said).

Simple answer: If you don't know someone, skip past the post.

Oh no, I read it. I was just waiting for a humdinger, like she won the nobel or something.

[Mr Lick]

Maybe TD members will be saying similar about Prince Phillip when he cops it.

[harrybarracuda]

Well he's had his comedy moments but all he really does is carry the handbag, innit?

[Mr Lick]

Jimmy Ellis: Belfast-born Z-Cars actor dies aged 82



Jimmy Ellis got his big break as Bert Lynch in long-running BBC police drama Z-Cars


The Belfast-born actor Jimmy Ellis, best known for his roles in Z-Cars and alongside a young Kenneth Branagh in BBC Northern Ireland's series of "Billy" plays, has died.

Mr Ellis died from a stroke in Lincoln Hospital early on Saturday. He was 82.

He began his acting career in 1952 at Belfast's Group Theatre before moving to England in the early 1960s.

His first big break came when he was cast as Bert Lynch in police drama Z-Cars, which ran from 1962 to 1978.

Peter Johnston, director of BBC Northern Ireland, said: "We are saddened to hear about the death of Jimmy Ellis. He was a major talent from Northern Ireland, famous for his roles in Z-Cars and the Billy plays.

"He will be deeply missed by all his colleagues on screen and on stage."

Northern Ireland's Deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness, tweeted: "Very sorry to learn of the passing of Jimmy Ellis, one of our own, great actor & opponent of censorship."

James Ellis was born in Belfast on 15 March 1931.



Jimmy Ellis with fellow Northern Ireland actor James Nesbitt at the unveiling of a key stone on the site of the Lyric Theatre in Belfast in 2009

He studied at the city's Methodist College and Queen's University, and then the Bristol Old Vic.

He soon graduated to leading man after joining the Group Theatre.


Courageous move

After starring in such plays as The Playboy of the Western World, he was appointed director of productions at the theatre in 1959.

However, he resigned in 1960 to direct and stage Sam Thompson's play Over The Bridge, which the Group Theatre's board had deemed too controversial.

Northern Ireland playwright Martin Lynch paid tribute to Mr Ellis, and said his support for Over The Bridge, which dealt with issues of sectarianism, was a courageous move.



Jimmy Ellis (right) starred in Z-Cars from 1962 to 1978

He said: "He broke the back of conservatism in the establishment at that time and very, very courageously stuck to his guns. Him and Sam Thompson were a great team together to create and produce Over The Bridge when the establishment didn't want it to happen."

Aside from Z-Cars, a police drama set on Merseyside, he starred in some of the UK's best-known and much-loved programmes, including Doctor Who, In Sickness And In Health, Ballykissangel and Only Fools And Horses.


Personal tragedy

He returned home in 1982 to star as the bullying father Norman Martin in Too Late To Talk To Billy, the first of a trio of Graham Reid plays that exposed a national audience to the authentic voice of working-class Ulster Protestants for the first time.

Sir Kenneth Branagh, who was just out of drama school, played his son Billy, and the pair later reprised their partnership in A Matter Of Choice For Billy and A Coming To Terms For Billy.

He suffered personal tragedy in 1988 when his son Adam, then aged 28, was murdered in west London.

In a March 2012 interview with the Express, the actor recalled: "I went berserk. I wasn't in possession of my senses. I kicked open the doors of every pub in the street shouting 'Who knows who murdered my son?"'

Mr Ellis was awarded an honorary doctorate from Queen's University in 2008 for services to the performing arts.

Away from the acting profession, he was also a writer of poems and prose.

Although he had lived in England for decades, his family has said that, in line with his wishes, he will be buried in his home city

[harrybarracuda]

Now there will be a shitfight over all the US dollars he has squirreled away.

Kabul - Afghanistan’s first Vice President, Marshal Mohammed Fahim Qassim, has died, a spokesman of the Afghan government has confirmed.

In an online statement on Sunday, presidential spokesman Aimal Faizi said that Fahim had passed away and that the government had called for a national mourning period.

"The government of Afghanistan has called for three-day national mourning, during which the national flag will be half-hoisted for his demise,” Faizi said on his Twitter account.

Fahim, who became Karzai's first vice president in 2009, had been suffering from diabetes for years and was believed to be in ill health.

He was influential in the Northern Alliance, having replaced Ahmed Shar Massoud after his assassination.

The 57-year-old, who had served as a commander for Ahmad Shah Massood during the fight against Soviet occupation has often been criticised as a "warlord" for his role in the civil war of the 1990s.

In a statement to Al Jazeera, former Vice President Hedayat Amin Arsala, said Fahim was "a leading force in the fight against the Soviet occupation and later against the Taliban".

"He will be dearly missed by the Afghan people," Amin said in the statement.

Fahim was born in what is now Panjshir province in 1957. He had survived several assassination attempts, the most recent in 2009

.

[harrybarracuda]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...&v=fVDzuT0fXro

America VO Hal Douglas, famous for his movie trailers and radio promos has died at his Virginia home.

In the UK, Hal most recently voiced a number of promos for Real Radio’s Renegade promotion but was well known in production studios around the world for his commercials and trailers.

He was a regular voice on Disney trails and also featured in a video trailer for Comedian, a documentary that features Jerry Seinfeld, along with the “5 guys in a limo” video.

Last year he recorded a short documentary called “A Great Voice“.

[Mr Lick]

Carter Camp - obituary

Carter Camp was an American Indian activist who took up arms before smoking a peace pipe in the 1973 'Battle of Wounded Knee’



Carter Camp (right) with American Indian Movement leader Dennis Banks in 1973



Carter Camp, who has died aged 72, was a Ponca Indian from Oklahoma who gained national attention in 1973 when he and other members of the American Indian Movement occupied the village of Wounded Knee, in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota, for 71 days.


Wounded Knee was famously the scene of an 1890 confrontation between the Sioux and the 7th Cavalry — the last engagement of the American Indian wars — in which more than 200 Indians lost their lives. The assault is described as a battle by many Americans, but as a massacre by the Indians. When, on February 27 1973, more than 300 armed Indians occupied the village, cutting telephone lines and taking 11 hostages, it was widely seen as a racial conflict: Indians versus whites.


There were elements of truth in this interpretation. Two weeks previously there had been protests at the Custer County courthouse at the state’s failure to charge a white man with murder over the death of an Indian man, and there were long-standing grievances at the failure of the federal government to honour historic treaties on land rights. But the real spark for the protest appears to have been the failure of an effort by the Oglala Civil Rights Organization to impeach Richard Wilson, president of the Oglala Lakota Sioux of the Pine Ridge reservation, whom they accused of corruption in the award of jobs and suppressing political opponents with his own private militia.


Fought in the glare of television cameras, the second “Battle of Wounded Knee” veered from tragedy to farce as the Indians, who were soon joined by sundry sympathisers, civil rights activists and counter-culture figures, alternately traded shots and negotiated with US marshals. One marshal was paralysed from a gunshot wound early on in the occupation; a Cherokee and an Oglala Lakota Indian were shot dead; Ray Robinson, a black civil rights activist who joined the protesters, disappeared and is thought to have been murdered. In a report after the occupation ended, the US Marshal Service estimated that as many as 500,000 rounds had been fired by participants.





Carter Camp (in white shirt and waistcoat) and fellow protesters at Wounded Knee in 1973

In accordance with historic tradition, peace talks took place over a pipe underneath a tepee, though as Kent Frizzell, the chief federal negotiator, recalled, the setting lacked something in authenticity. On one occasion he looked at the base of the tepee and saw the stencilled words “Rapid City Tent and Awning”. On another occasion, he claimed, Camp inadvertently set fire to the blanket they were sitting on with his pipe.

But Camp’s sister has claimed that Camp was a true warrior, the only member of the leadership “not to go out and do press junkets, not to go and sit in a hotel for a while”.

The siege finally ended on May 6 when the occupants of Wounded Knee surrendered.

The village had been almost destroyed and would not be reoccupied until the 1990s.

Afterwards, two of the ringleaders, Dennis Banks and Russell Means, were indicted on charges related to the events, but their case was later dismissed by the federal court on the grounds of “prosecutorial misconduct”. Camp was the only activist to serve time. Convicted of abducting, confining and beating four postal inspectors during the siege, he served three years in prison.

Public opinion polls revealed widespread sympathy for the Native Americans at Wounded Knee, and a cavalcade of celebrities rallied to the cause, including Jane Fonda, who would star in a film about the incident, Lakota Woman: Siege at Wounded Knee (1990), on which Camp acted as an adviser. In the years that followed, the federal government, spurred by judicial decisions, would move to rectify some of the inequities publicised by the siege. But Richard Wilson stayed in office and in the next three years the murder rate in the Pine Ridge reservation soared.

Carter Augustus Camp was born in Pawnee, Oklahoma, on August 18 1941 and educated at Haskell Institute in Lawrence, Kansas. After serving with the US Army in Western Europe, he worked in a factory in Los Angeles, but later returned to Oklahoma, where he became an activist for Native American rights and a local leader of the American Indian Movement (AIM).

In 1972 he helped lead “The Trail of Broken Treaties” a protest that crossed from the West Coast to Washington to bring attention to such issues as treaty rights, living standards, and inadequate housing.

After the Wounded Knee siege, in August 1973, Camp was elected chairman of AIM but within weeks was ejected from the organisation after being accused of shooting another leader, Clyde Bellecourt, in the stomach. Charges were dropped after Bellecourt and a witness refused to testify.

He continued to campaign for Indian rights, speaking up in land disputes, publishing a tribal community newsletter, and helping to organise tribal social events. When asked whether he would rather be called Native American or Indian, he said that he did not mind: “But just don’t call me a redskin.”

Camp is survived by his wife, Linda and by five sons

[Mr Lick]

Nick Bevan - obituary

Nick Bevan was an inspirational school rowing coach who took his crews around the world and enjoyed success at Henley



Nick Bevan on the water


Nick Bevan, who has died aged 71, was among the most successful school rowing coaches of his generation.


As a master at Shrewsbury, his crews reached the final of the Special Race for Schools at Henley Royal Regatta 11 times between 1974 and 1986, winning on seven occasions. His outstanding 1982 crew won the triple crown of the Schools Head of the River, the National Schools Regatta and Henley.


Bevan was also one of the first coaches to take his schoolboy crews abroad: to Australia in 1974, and in 1978 to South Africa .


There were many theories as to why his crews were always so fast; technique, strength, fitness, sound tactics and teamwork were obvious qualities — some even claimed that his crews were always fresher than the opposition as Bevan insisted they cleaned their teeth before climbing into the boat. More to the point, Bevan was a master at instilling self-belief.


Nicholas Vaughan Bevan was born in Shrewsbury on February 21 1942, the second son of David and Hilary Bevan. His father, a master at Shrewsbury School for more than 40 years, had rowed for Isis and had won half-blues for swimming and boxing; meanwhile, between them Nick’s three uncles had won the Boat Race three times, an Olympic rowing gold medal and numerous races at Henley.


Educated at Shrewsbury, Nick was a member of the crew which won the Princess Elizabeth Cup in record time in 1960. He was also head of his house and school captain of boxing. While at Balliol, he won a blue, rowing at 2 for Oxford in the 1963 crew which famously came from behind to beat Cambridge (the light blues were fielding his cousin, Michael Bevan, also rowing at 2).



Nick Bevan with his trusty oars

After graduating in 1963, Nick Bevan joined the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry, over the next five years serving in British Honduras, Malaysia and Mauritius. After resigning from the Army he went up to Cambridge to study for a diploma in education. He was keen to go for a rowing blue there as well, but after a stern interview with his father, who said it would be disloyal to his Oxford heritage, he settled for rowing and playing rugby for his college, St John’s. He embarked on a long and distinguished career as a schoolmaster, first at Westminster and then, from 1972, at his old school, Shrewsbury . In 1978 he was appointed a house master.

In 1988 Bevan became headmaster of Shiplake College, near Henley, where he remained for 16 years, presiding over an era of considerable change and increase in the number of pupils. Wooden huts were replaced by modern buildings, new technology was embraced , and Shiplake earned membership of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference. A quiet, modest man, Bevan was highly respected and popular among both parents and pupils. He was a fine judge of character and a wise and discreet listener.

After retiring to North Aston in Oxfordshire, Bevan served as a magistrate and on the governing body of several schools; he took up painting, and was an enthusiastic, if erratic, golfer.

Rowing remained in his blood, and for several years he was a member of the management committee of the National Schools Regatta. He also continued to coach, taking on the St Edward’s School, Oxford, under-15 crew and the Balliol College Women’s VIII, which he successfully coached twice to the Head of the River — several of the girls attended his funeral in their white and cerise Gordouli blazers.

Nick Bevan’s first marriage, to Jane Tildesley, was dissolved. He is survived by his second wife, Annabel, and by two children of his first marriage and two of his second.

[Mr Lick]

Tom Bland - obituary

Tom Bland was an officer who won an Immediate MC advancing on Italy’s Monte San Michele




Tom Bland, who has died aged 92, was awarded an MC in the Italian campaign in 1944 and afterwards had a successful career in the City.


In July 1944, Bland was in Italy in command of a platoon of 1st Battalion Scots Guards (1 SG). On July 26, the Battalion was ordered to attack and capture Monte San Michele, an important feature 12 miles south of Florence.


Bland’s company was one of those selected to take part in the assault and his platoon was ordered to advance around the shoulder of the trackless, scrub-covered hill, work their way up to the top and clear it of opposition.


As they rounded the shoulder, Bland heard enemy fire coming from the reverse slope and moved forward to deal with it. Suddenly, he came under heavy fire from the German Spandau machine-guns and, simultaneously, from the crossfire of “friendly” units.


When he advanced again, the incoming fire increased and while he was in an extremely exposed position a mortar bomb landed nearby, wounding him in the chest, arms and face.


He lay there for a time and refused to allow anyone to take the risk of moving him.

Later, however, there was a lull in the fighting and his platoon succeeded in reaching him and moving him back into cover.

By this time, his platoon had taken more casualties and was pinned down but Bland, despite the severity of his wounds, remained at his post for seven hours, commanding his men as best he could and encouraging them.

Only when the objective was finally captured did he allow himself to be evacuated.

The citation for the award of an Immediate MC stated that he had shown the greatest bravery and that his powers of leadership and unfailing cheerfulness had been beyond praise.

Thomas Riviere Bland was born on February 8 1921 at Godstone, Surrey, and educated at Eton. After attending Officer Cadet Training Unit at Sandhurst, in 1941 he was commissioned into the Scots Guards.

He joined 2 SG towards the end of the campaign in North Africa. Here, on one dark Tunisian night, he was feeling his way along what he believed was a thick rug hanging from a wall only to discover that he had been stroking a camel.

In September 1943, he took part in the landings at Salerno, Italy, and saw fierce fighting for the rest of that month. The advance to the Gustav Line involved feats of mountaineering over sharp-edged boulders with the men desperately tired and having to be kept awake with Benzedrine tablets. The cold nights were spent wrapped in gas capes without a blanket to provide warmth.

He transferred to 1SG in March 1944 and, the following month took part in the bitter fighting at Monte Cassino. From their almost impregnable positions on Monastery Hill, the German parachutists commanded perfect observation over the whole area.

All movement had to take place at night and, in the most advanced areas, the darkness had to be deepened with smoke. The sound of a vehicle crossing the Rapido River would be enough to bring down a hail of fire on the long, straight road, known as “Mad Mile”, leading into the town.

After being demobilised in 1946, he joined the firm of insurance brokers Hartley Cooper, and was chairman of the company from 1972 to 1977. He was a member of Lloyds of London from 1946 to 2014.

He retired in 1977 and farmed at Debden, Essex. He had a lifelong interest in the crafts and ways of the East Anglian countryside and, as an accomplished woodworker, enjoyed creating beautiful objects with his lathe.

Tom Bland married first in 1946, Katherine Bruce (the marriage was later dissolved). He married secondly, in 1962, Mary Millar, who died in an accident. He married thirdly, in 1976, Joan Catchpole who predeceased him. He is survived by a son and two daughters of his first marriage

[harrybarracuda]

RMT Leader Bob Crow has died.



1:11 PM - 11 Mar 2014

RMT union leader Bob Crow has died aged 52, it has been announced.

‘It is with the deepest regret that RMT has to confirm that our general secretary Bob Crow sadly passed away in the early hours of this morning,’ a statement said.

‘The union’s offices will be closed for the rest of the day and the union will make further announcements in due course. The media have been asked to respect the privacy of Bob’s friends and family at this difficult and distressing time.’

[klong toey]

^Always enjoyed his arguments with Government ministers when he was on question time.
But sometimes he took it a bit to far to the left.

[harrybarracuda]

Fucking champagne socialist if you ask me. I doubt there will be too many commuters shedding a tear, plus some family genuinely in need might actually get a council house.

[reddog]

Fucking champagne socialist if you ask me. I doubt there will be too many commuters shedding a tear, plus some family genuinely in need might actually get a council house.

you are on the money there,just another fat pie eating union heavy abusing his power.

[harrybarracuda]

'Hogan's Heroes' Actress Cynthia Lynn Dies at 76



Cynthia Lynn, best known for her role in Hogan's Heroes, has died. She was 76.
Lynn appeared as Helga, the blond secretary of incompetent commandant Colonel Wilhelm Klink (Werner Klemperer), in 22 episodes of Hogan's Heroes, the CBS sitcom that ran six seasons from September 1965 to April 1971. She played Helga during the first season, and had two uncredited appearances in later seasons.

Lynn also had TV roles in Mission: Impossible, The Odd Couple, and The Six Million Dollar Man, in addition to her work in Marlon Brando's 1965 film Bedtime Story. After Brando's death in 2004, Lynn's daughter, Lisa Brando, publicly claimed Brando was her father.
Lisa Brando posted on Facebook Tuesday to remember her mother: "Just wanted to thank you all so much for all your prayers and support during this difficult time. My mother will be truly missed. All my love to you and all her loving fans. XOXO."
Hogan's Heroes starred Bob Crane starred as Col. Robert Hogan, a faux American prisoner of war who in reality was coordinating an international crew of Allied prisoners whose aim was to defeat the Germans right from under their noses during World War II. Lynn was among the last surviving of the series' regular castmembers.

[harrybarracuda]

Fair play to the bloke - teaching kids golf and fundraising at 96 years of age!

Richard Coogan, who played Captain Video on the early TV sci-fi adventure series Captain Video and His Video Rangers, died Wednesday in Los Angeles. He was 99.

Captain Video and His Video Rangers, which aired on the DuMont Television Network from 1949-55, was set in the distant future and revolved around a band of heroes fighting for truth and justice. The show was broadcast live five to six days a week, usually starting at 7 p.m., and was beloved by adults and children alike.

The show was a huge, and unexpected, hit.

“Captain Video and His Video Rangers started off from scratch, no advance notice or publicity. It caught on so rapidly that we caught up with Milton Berle’s rating, and he was Mr. Television!” Coogan exclaimed in a 2003 interview with the Archive of American Television. “He was at 37.6 [rating], and we got 37.4 or something … When word got back from the front office that Captain Video was even with Berle, it was unbelievable!”

Coogan starred as Captain Video until December 1950, when, unhappy with the show’s shoestring budget, he quit and was replaced by Al Hodge.
Folks today are perhaps aware of the nascent TV series from an episode of The Honeymooners; in a 1955 installment, Ed Norton (Art Carney) hogs a TV set shared by him and Ralph Kramden (Jackie Gleason) in order to watch Captain Video, his favorite show.

Coogan later starred for six years on the CBS daytime soap opera Love of Life and then for two seasons as Marshal Matthew Wayne (an obvious clone of Gunsmoke’s Marshal Dillon, played by James Arness) on NBC’s The Californians, a Western that aired from 1957-59.

A native of Short Hills, N.J., Coogan worked as an announcer and news anchor on radio before making his Broadway debut in 1945 in the comedy Alice in Arms. He also appeared with Kirk Douglas in Spring Again and with Geraldine Page in The Rainmaker, and while starring in Captain Video, he also appeared opposite Mae West on stage in Diamond Lil, taking a cab to get from one job to another.

Coogan’s other TV appearances came on such series as 77 Sunset Strip, Cheyenne, Maverick, Bonanza, Laramie and Perry Mason. His film résumé includes Girl on the Run (1953), Three Hours to Kill (1954), The Revolt of Mamie Stover (1956) and Vice Raid (1960).

In 2010 at age 96, Coogan was teaching kids golf and running a monthly tournament that raised funds for a children’s center.

Survivors include his son Richard Jr., daughter-in-law Debbie, granddaughter Melissa, grandson Christopher, great-grandchildren Keira and Dylan and “soul mate” Leona.

[Mr Lick]

Nigel Groom - obituary

Nigel Groom was a spy-catcher, soldier and scent expert who faced assassination in Aden and smelt a rat in the RAF




Nigel Groom, who has died aged 89, was an Arabist, historian, author, soldier, spy-catcher and perfume connoisseur. These pursuits saw him fend off a tribal assassination attempt in Aden, uncover a KGB spy embedded in the RAF and explain the association between frankincense and Christ’s divinity.


As a young Political Officer for the Colonial Service, Groom arrived in the British Protectorate of Aden in 1948. He was responsible for the north-eastern area, based in Bayhan, a remote emirate bordering the central Arabian Desert, and accessible only by small RAF aircraft. Two years later he took over the northern area, based in Al Dhali’, regarded at the time as a difficult, ungoverned tribal part of the Protectorate, riven by unrest fuelled by the Imam of Yemen in pursuance of his claims over the whole country.




A husn or stronghold in Wadi Bayhan


At Christmas in 1950 the British agent for the western area of the Protectorate, Basil Seager, and his wife arrived to spend the holiday in Al Dhali’, unaware that a plot was afoot to assassinate both Seager and Groom (and their escort of Arab soldiers) at a Christmas Day lunch in a nearby village. However, while out for a walk with armed guards on Christmas Eve, Seager and his wife by chance met the chief assassin, a religious fanatic high on khat, and his party on their way to their assignment. The assassin stabbed Seager with his dagger, causing serious injury, and in the subsequent gunfight several of the escort and several assailants were killed. Groom signalled to Aden for a doctor, who arrived after a five-hour night-time journey over rough tracks, and for a substantial force of Aden Protectorate Levies, to leave early on Christmas morning to help counter a planned tribal uprising.


Nigel Groom commenced his second career in the early Sixties, as an officer in MI5. Posted to D (later K) Branch in 1964, he was to spend his working life in counter-espionage work. In 1965 he was the case officer for an elaborate investigation which uncovered RAF Warrant Officer Douglas Britten as a KGB spy. The evidence unearthed included one-time code pads, short-wave radio schedules, RV instructions, sketch-maps for dead letter boxes and, in a detail worthy of Ian Fleming’s imagination, a document copier disguised as a cigarette case.

Groom combined the drama of his working life with a quiet, inquisitive fascination for all things Arabic, not least its various heady scents. He published three specialist studies in the field of perfume, in which he explained that “incense has had a continuous religious significance throughout the entire expanse of history”.

Nigel St John Groom was born on September 3 1924, and grew up in Devon, where his father, the Reverend RW Groom, was a country rector. Educated at Haileybury and Magdalene College, Cambridge, Nigel joined the Indian Army in 1943 and served with the 3 Gurkha Rifles and, in Burma, with 2 Karen Rifles. Joining the Colonial Service after the war, he was posted to the Western Aden Protectorate.

His first duty was to oversee an operation, using RAF Lincoln bombers flown from Britain for the mission, against a Bedouin desert tribe which had rebelled against the rule of the Sharif of Bayhan . Political influence over heavily-armed tribesmen — racked by blood-feuds — was limited to messages to their leaders sent by runners.

There were no roads or vehicles and travel was on horseback or camel or on foot. The area was unmapped and virtually unexplored, and wherever Groom went he would take bearings with a pocket compass for a sketch map of the country. In his account of this period, Sheba Revealed (2002), he described the terrain as “perhaps the roughest land to administer anywhere in the British Empire”.

In 1952 Groom married Lorna Littlewood, the daughter of a British official in the Burma government who had died on the trek to India out of Burma after the wartime Japanese invasion. After their spell in Al Dhali’ the couple moved to the Aden Secretariat handling Protectorate affairs, where Groom worked latterly as Assistant Chief Secretary. In 1958 they left for Nairobi (“like being on leave all the time after Aden”) where he worked first in the Kenya Cabinet Office and later as Defence Secretary in the East Africa High Commission. His secretariat responsibilities included the Royal East African Navy, based in Mombasa, and the running of the East African Intelligence Committee. The job came to an end with the granting of independence to the East African territories

Groom was recruited by MI5 in 1962. After the Britten case, he joined a small team examining allegations being sponsored by the counterintelligence officer and scientist Peter Wright, and later given publicity by the journalist Chapman Pincher, that Sir Roger Hollis, the service’s former Director-General, had been a Soviet mole. Groom’s investigations showed that, in every one of the leads put to him by the so-called Fluency Committee investigating Hollis, that the evidence was inconclusive.


Sir Roger Hollis (PA)

Subsequently he was ordered to plan and supervise all K Branch surveillance operations against the “legal” Soviet Bloc intelligence community in London; this included the elaborate operations surrounding the defection of the Russian agent Oleg Lyalin and the expulsion, in 1971, of 107 KGB and GRU officers masquerading as Soviet diplomats. Thereafter he returned to investigating espionage leads and was to become head successively of two of the investigating sections. With a record length of continuous service in K Branch, he ended up as one of M15’s most senior and experienced counter-espionage officers, with an unrivalled knowledge of the sophisticated espionage techniques employed by the USSR. Many of the major spy cases of the time passed through his hands.

He was appointed OBE in 1974 .

Nigel Groom never lost his keen interest in the Arab world and especially in its pre-Islamic history, on which he became a noted expert. This was kindled during his early days in Bayhan, where he supported the American archaeologist Wendell Phillips in excavation projects. In 1976 he compiled an archaeological map of south-western Arabia, which was published by the Royal Geographical Society. With A Dictionary of Arabic Topography and Placenames (1983) he provided English definitions of several thousand Arabic words of topographical significance. He contributed regularly to the Bulletin of the Society for Arabian Studies and other academic journals, one special interest being the interpretation of Ptolemy’s map of Arabia.



Cartoon from Nigel Groom's Frankinsense and Myrrh showing a hip-high Socotra myrrh tree

His time in Bayhan had also introduced him to the incense trade, a fascination for which infused his study Frankincense and Myrrh (1981).

The volume explored the nature and location of incense trees, the harvesting and bartering of crops, and how trade routes opened up to Europe. The book attracted the interest of an Omani company preparing to launch a new perfume; Groom agreed to advise them on the historical background of the natural ingredients they wanted to use. This research led to a dictionary-style reference book, The Perfume Handbook (1992) — revised as The New Perfume Handbook (1997). He was later commissioned to write The Perfume Companion (1999), designed for a wider readership.

Nigel Groom’s wife died in 2009, and he is survived by a son and a daughter.


Nigel Groom, born September 3 1924, died March 5 2014

[Mr Lick]

More Infamous than famous.


Cannock Chase child killer Raymond Morris dies in jail



Raymond Morris was taken to Cannock police station and charged with Christine Darby's murder in 1968

A man jailed 45 years ago for one of the three Cannock Chase child murders has died in prison.

Raymond Morris, 84, from Walsall, West Midlands, found guilty of murdering Christine Darby, seven, who went missing in 1967.

The Ministry of Justice said he died at HMP Preston at about 20:00 GMT on Tuesday, of suspected natural causes.

As with all deaths in custody, there will be an independent investigation by the prisons ombudsman.

Christine Darby was last seen getting into a stranger's car in 1967

Seven-year-old Christine was one of three girls living in the West Midlands whose bodies were found on Cannock Chase, Staffordshire.

In 1965 Margaret Reynolds, aged six, disappeared from Aston, Birmingham, and Diane Tift, aged five, went missing from near her grandmother's home in Bloxwich.

They were abducted, raped and murdered before being partially buried on Cannock Chase, a large area of heathland, woods and forestry.

No-one was ever charged with their murders.

Eighteen months later, seven-year-old Christine was taken from a Walsall street by a man in a grey car.

Her body was also found on Cannock Chase. She had also been raped and murdered.

The investigation that followed the murders was one of the biggest in British criminal history.

Morris was found guilty of Christine's murder in 1969.

He made a number of failed appeals against his conviction, most recently at the age of 81

[harrybarracuda]

I hope he had a miserable time. Good riddance. I hope they dump him at a landfill.

[Shrinking Violet]

Hal Douglas dies: Film trailer voiceover king of 'in a world' fame dies aged 89 | Metro News

remember hearing his voiceovers on vhs many a year ago

[Smug Farang Bore]

Tony Ben dead..

[Davis Knowlton]

^Brit politician - for those, like me, who had no clue from the above three words.

[jamiejambos]

Could Of Googled Him , Dave.
Rip Tony.

[Davis Knowlton]

^I did. That's how I knew he was a Brit politician.

[xanax]

Benn was another deluded socialist, but a decent bloke. Probably the worst Prime Minister we never had.

For those who don't know Ali G is not a real nigga. innit though

[harrybarracuda]

Bob Crow, Tony Benn.... Hopefully Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are shitting themselves.

FORMER Cabinet minister and veteran left-wing campaigner Tony Benn has died, his family announced this morning.

The 88-year-old former Labour MP had been ill for some time, and passed away at home in London in the early hours.

Neath MP and former cabinet minister Peter Hain described him as a “giant of socialism” who encouraged the young activist to join the Labour party in the 1970s.

Mr Benn first became an MP in 1950 but a decade later had to resign when his father died and he inherited his title — Viscount Stansgate. However he successfully campaigned for a change in the law and three years later renounced his peerage and won the Bristol seat once more.

He went on to serve as Minister of Technology, and sat in the Commons until 2001, where he was widely regarded as one of the most independent-minded and passionate voices of the Left in Westminster.

After leaving the Commons he became president of the Stop The War coalition.

Neath MP Peter Hain said: “Tony Benn was a giant of socialism who encouraged me to join Labour in 1977 — a wonderful inspirational speaker and person. Will be deeply missed.”

In a statement Mr Benn's children Stephen, Hilary, Melissa and Joshua said he died peacefully early this morning at his home in west London.

They said: “We would like to express our heartfelt thanks to all the NHS staff and carers who have looked after him with such kindness in hospital and at home.

“We will miss above all his love which has sustained us throughout our lives. But we are comforted by the memory of his long, full and inspiring life and so proud of his devotion to helping others as he sought to change the world for the better.”

Only lost his seat because of some Conservative gerrymandering.

Telegraph Obit here:

Tony Benn who has died aged 88, was Labour’s most controversial late 20th-century figure, leading the Leftward drive that arguably marginalised the party for a generation.
A boyish enthusiast recognisable by his pipe, tape recorder and outsized mug of tea, he aroused greater emotions than any contemporary bar Enoch Powell and Margaret Thatcher. Yet he rewrote the Constitution by securing Britain’s first referendum and refusing to become the 2nd Viscount Stansgate. Labour’s longest-serving MP (almost exactly 50 years), he won 16 of 17 elections fought, served in three Cabinets and saw his son Hilary enter the Cabinet too.
Benn came from Nonconformist Liberal stock. His grandfather, John Williams Benn MP, founded the family publishing house and led the London County Council. His great-uncle, the Rev Julius Benn, was murdered with a chamber pot by his son, who on release from Broadmoor fathered the actress Margaret Rutherford.
His father, William Wedgwood Benn, a distinguished flier in both Wars, served under Ramsay MacDonald and was Attlee’s Secretary for Air. “Wedgie”, a nickname transferred to his son, was ennobled in 1941. Benn’s mother, Margaret, campaigned for Congregationalism outside the United Reformed Church; Benn considered himself a latter-day Puritan.
Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn was born on April 3 1925, the second son of three. He sat with MacDonald at the Trooping of the Colour and made his first (non-political) speech aged six at Sir Oswald Mosley’s house. From Westminster School he went in 1942 to New College, Oxford, to read PPE, then followed his brother Michael into the RAF; he was training in Rhodesia when Michael’s death left him heir to the title. Posted to the Middle East, he transferred to the Fleet Air Arm, but Japan surrendered before he could see action.
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The young Benn joined the Labour Party in 1943 . As president of the Oxford Union in 1947, he debated in America, and after graduating returned there as a Benn Brothers salesman before joining the BBC World Service as a producer.
In 1949, in Cincinnati, Benn married Caroline de Camp, an Ohio lawyer’s daughter; they had met at Oxford, and he proposed only nine days later (on a park bench which he then bought for the garden of their house in Holland Park). Attractive, radical and with a passion for comprehensive education, Caroline Benn became a bête noir for Conservatives who saw her imposing a levelling-down on her adopted country. The Benns’ children went to Holland Park comprehensive, whose governors she chaired.
In November 1950 Benn won the Bristol South-East by-election following the death of Sir Stafford Cripps, and was “baby” of the House for the final months of Attlee’s government. He helped stage Labour’s first television broadcasts, shunned the Bevanite Left (although, like Bevan, he opposed the Suez intervention from the start), and was appointed front-bench RAF spokesman. He became Shadow Transport Minister, won then lost a seat on Labour’s national executive and, unimpressed by Hugh Gaitskell’s “fight, fight and fight again” speech, reluctantly supported Harold Wilson’s leadership challenge.
On November 17 1960 Benn’s father died. The Speaker barred the new Lord Stansgate from the Commons, Buckingham Palace would not take back the Stansgate Letters Patent, and Gaitskell was initially unsympathetic. Some Tories saw an opportunity to return Lords Home and Hailsham to the Commons . The Times insisted on calling him Viscount Stansgate, while The Daily Telegraph stuck to “Anthony Wedgwood Benn”.
The Committee of Privileges ruled against Benn, and on April 13 1961 he stood at the Bar of the House to hear himself expelled. Backed by a mass petition from Bristol , he fought an electrifying by-election. Malcolm Muggeridge and Lord Lambton spoke for him; Sir Winston Churchill gave support. On May 4, Benn defeated the Conservative Malcolm St Clair, himself heir to a title, by 13,044 votes. Again the Speaker barred him, the Electoral Court rejected his arguments and St Clair took the seat in the House.
A Select Committee then recommended allowing hereditary peers to renounce their titles for life. Benn accordingly disclaimed, St Clair sportingly resigned and on August 20 1963 Benn defeated a clutch of independents. Within weeks Harold Macmillan fell ill, and Home and Hailsham charged through the opening to stand for the Commons and seek the Tory succession.
Benn’s youth, his television experience, fascination with technology and lack of ideology endeared him to Harold Wilson, and he wrote many of his leader’s speeches. Then, in October 1964, Labour regained power with a tiny majority. Benn became Postmaster General, preparing the Post Office for independence, launching the Giro and persuading the Queen to overrule officials who deemed Robert Burns unfit to appear on a stamp.
For 17 uneasy months until Wilson won a handsome victory, Benn managed his public relations. He entered the Cabinet in July 1966 when Frank Cousins resigned as Minister of Technology, and threw himself into reinvigorating British industry; Bernard Levin noted “the enthusiasm … of a newly-enrolled Boy Scout demonstrating knot-tying to indulgent parents”.
Much effort went into salvaging the strife-torn shipbuilding industry and merging Leyland with the blighted British Motor Corporation, this fiasco stemming from talks at Benn’s home in 1966. His hi-tech portfolio comprised the RB-211 jet engine, Concorde (a major Bristol employer), a beleaguered computer industry and nuclear projects that were hampered by infighting.
In the 1970 election Benn, no longer Wilson’s confidant, played a backroom role, save for a speech equating Powell’s attacks on immigration with Hitler’s gas chambers; the so-called “Belsen speech” was widely blamed for Labour’s defeat. In opposition, he shadowed Edward Heath’s government through its refusal to back “lame ducks” and the “U-turn” when it nationalised Rolls-Royce.
Benn now metamorphosed into a Left-wing populist. Previously pro-Markete, he advocated a referendum on Europe, upsetting both sides before campaigning for a “No” vote. He now joined the Left in the Commons tea room. The Scottish trade union activist Jimmy Reid observed that Benn had enjoyed “more conversions on the road to Damascus than a Syrian long-distance truck driver”; an exasperated Wilson scorned him for “tomfool issues, barmy ideas, a sort of ageing, perennial youth who immatures with age”. But Benn had identified a rising grassroots militancy that would paralyse the party.
As party chairman in 1971-72, Benn declared war on the Establishment. He shortened his name and deleted his public school from Who’s Who), contested the deputy leadership; backed a united Ireland; marched with striking miners; and savaged the media for misrepresenting the workers.
His Leftward lurch inspired Labour’s Programme 1973, which offered more nationalisation and a “fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of wealth and power in favour of working people and their families”. That autumn’s miners’ dispute and subsequent strike precipitated the February 1974 election – and a minority Labour government with Benn as Industry Secretary.
The next 15 months were Benn’s most controversial in government. As he strove to “regenerate” British industry, the press ridiculed “Bennery” while industrialists feared expropriation . Shares plunged as, brandishing commitments to a National Enterprise Board (NEB) and planning agreements, Benn lionised shop stewards and backed new workers’ co-operatives. Cyril Smith indicted him for doing “more to damage British industry than the combined efforts of the Luftwaffe and the U-boats”.
In August 1974 the Cabinet, with Chancellor Denis Healey to the fore, vetoed compulsory planning agreements and unlimited powers for the NEB; Benn acknowledged defeat but targeted aircraft and shipbuilding for nationalisation.
In that October’s election, Benn was Labour’s Achilles’ heel. One tabloid rented a flat opposite his home, another sent 14 reporters to ask if one of his children was in hospital; the Guardian calculated that he had consumed a medically damaging 29,000 gallons of tea. Wilson scrambled to a narrow majority, then threatened to sack Benn for opposing naval exercises with South Africa.
Benn topped the poll for the NEC, as he would for several years, from January 1975 chairing its Home Policy Committee, which became his power base. Then Margaret Thatcher became Tory leader, opening the way for what Benn — who never underestimated her — described as a “real choice”.
That March the Cabinet voted 16-7 for staying in Europe on terms renegotiated by Wilson and James Callaghan, although a special party conference demanded withdrawal. Wilson accepted Benn’s referendum to avert a split ; on June 5 1975 Britain voted 2-1 to stay in, and four days later Wilson moved Benn to Energy. He protested, but the challenge of North Sea oil was too big to refuse . Benn launched the British National Oil Corporation against the oil majors’ resistance and involved the miners in policymaking .
After Wilson resigned Benn polled 37 votes for the leadership, but on April 5 1976 Jim Callaghan defeated Michael Foot to move into Downing Street. Benn’s relations with Callaghan were based on a desire to coexist punctuated by threats of the sack. The Prime Minister restored him to the Cabinet economic committee during the IMF crisis in the hope of keeping the party in step .
Benn blocked Labour action against the Militant Tendency, telling Callaghan that Trotskyists were “youngsters who can be won over”. He dismissed Foot as an “extinct volcano”, and after Caroline Benn gave him a copy of the Communist Manifesto, wrote: “Without having read any Communist text, I had come to Marx’s view.”
Threatened with dismissal for opposing the Lib-Lab Pact, Benn reopened the argument over Europe. Up to mid-1978 he still carried weight in Cabinet; then his affability gave way to a driven stridency. He exasperated Callaghan, who was struggling without a majority, by advocating accountability for the security services; Freedom of Information; the cancellation of Harrier sales to China; the rejection of the European Monetary System; and the abolition of the House of Lords. It was as if he felt that time running out, his impatience heightened by grief after his daughter-in-law, Rosalind, died of cancer, aged only 26.
Callaghan’s refusal to call an election in September 1978 angered Benn. Meanwhile, the TUC rebuffed ministers’ appeal for a pay norm, triggering the “Winter of Discontent”. When tanker drivers went on strike, Benn headed off a State of Emergency, settling at a level that triggered strikes by council, NHS and railway workers.
Then, on March 28 1979, Callaghan’s government lost a no-confidence motion by a single vote. Benn put forward one election manifesto and Callaghan another , and when Labour lost, Benn wrote (despite the sight of Mrs Thatcher in Downing Street): “This is probably the beginning of the most creative period of my life.”
He returned to the back benches to “democratise” the party by way of an electoral college, reselection of MPs, and NEC control over the manifesto, setting the stage for the most bitter and disastrous passage in Labour’s history since 1931. Left-wing activists pushed reselection through Labour’s 1979 conference, pillorying its MPs as traitors, and the 1980 conference, at which Benn addressed 17 fringe meetings, backed his calls to quit Europe, abolish the Lords and form an electoral college.
Benn now joined his wife as a nuclear disarmer. Won over by EP Thompson to a nuclear-free zone in Europe, he came out in 1980 against US bases. He got his policy document Peace, Jobs, Freedom through a special party conference; all that was lacking was a leadership that would implement it.
When Callaghan retired, Labour MPs defied the Bennites by electing his successor. Benn reluctantly backed Foot, who in November 1980 defeated Healey. Few envied him: Shirley Williams, David Owen and Bill Rodgers were close to forming the SDP, Benn’s supporters were rampant in the constituencies and only deepening recession gave hope of a return to power.
A special conference in January 1981 adopted a college giving the unions half the vote, with MPs and constituencies having 25 per cent each. Benn hailed “a historic day”; he joined the Tribune Group (having once shunned it as too Left-wing), demanded a “loyalty oath” from the social democrats and supplanted Rodgers when he quit the Shadow Cabinet; but Foot denied him a portfolio.
At 3.30am on April 2, Benn challenged Healey for the deputy leadership, and a six-month struggle ensued for the soul of the party . Benn upped the stakes by urging that the IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands be invited to the Commons, claiming that Britain’s presence in Ulster was a “test-bed” for repression at home; he also rebelled on defence.
In June, Benn was admitted to hospital suffering from Guillain-Barre syndrome; but by September 27 , when the college met in Brighton, his supporters scented victory. Healey won the first ballot by 44.54 per cent to Benn’s 33.64, with John Silkin third. Then, amid high drama, Healey shaded Benn by 50.46 to 49.54. Nine MPs who backed Healey — more than his majority — then defected. Benn reckoned the outcome “far more successful than I could possibly have dreamed”, but the Right began a fightback and he was voted off the Shadow Cabinet. He then forced Foot to back-pedal on supporting the Falklands task force, enabling Mrs Thatcher to take full credit for victory.
At Labour’s 1982 conference moderates recaptured the NEC, ousting Benn from his Home Policy chair – after he had pushed through a manifesto branded by Gerald Kaufman “the longest suicide note in history”: it advocated withdrawal from Europe, the renunciation of nuclear weapons and more nationalisation. Benn and 35 Tribune MPs formed a rival Campaign Group, and he became its president in 1987.
He now lost his seat after 33 years, as Bristol South-East disappeared in boundary changes. Declining a move to safe Livingston, he lost the Bristol South nomination in 1983 to his old adversary Michael Cocks; he was selected for Bristol East, but was defeated by 1,789 votes.
Benn was out of Parliament at the worst possible time: Labour’s rout sparked a will to unite, and he was ineligible for the leadership when Foot retired. But when Eric Varley accepted a peerage, Benn took his seat at Chesterfield and in March 1984 won his fourth by-election by 6,264 votes. During the campaign, Healey remarked: “Healey and Benn are like Torvill and Dean. I can’t get the bugger off my back.”
Scargill now brought his miners out against pit closures without a ballot, and Benn campaigned fervently for the strikers, marginalising himself further. In 1987 he enjoyed one more parliamentary triumph: persuading backbench Tories their rights were in danger when the Chair prevented MPs seeing a banned BBC documentary about the secret Zircon military satellite.
Benn challenged Kinnock in 1988, being trounced in the electoral college, and could not stop him from abandoning unilateralism. Neither could he prevent John Smith from securing one member, one vote, or Tony Blair from scrapping Clause Four. In 1993, after 31 years, he was voted off the NEC. Following the Labour landslide of 1997, other Left-wingers made the running at Westminster, and Benn retired at the 2001 election, scorning New Labour by saying he could now concentrate on politics.
Despite being diagnosed with leukaemia in 1990, Benn filled halls on a speaking tour, became a visiting professor at LSE, and met Saddam Hussein, becoming president of the Stop the War Coalition after Saddam’s overthrow by US and British forces. At Labour’s 2005 conference he collapsed, and had to be fitted with a pacemaker.
Benn wrote a dozen volumes of polemic, notably Arguments for Socialism (1979, with Chris Mullin). But his masterpiece was his Diaries, published from 1987. The entries — dictated nightly over nearly seven decades — lack Crossman’s insecurity, and unlike Barbara Castle’s were not written for posterity. Their strength lies in their candour; the tone of Days of Hope, covering the war and Benn’s arrival in Parliament, contrasts with the strident End of an Era, recounting his bid for power and eclipse, or the tongue-in-cheek Free at Last. The final volume, A Blaze of Autumn Sunshine, appeared in 2013. Throughout Benn emerges as an endearing family man, unleashing forces whose impact he ignored on behalf of a working class he came to revere but never understood.
Benn’s wife died in 2000, and he is survived by his four children. His eldest son, Stephen Michael Wedgwood Benn, born on August 21 1951, succeeds as the 3rd Viscount Stansgate. A former member of Ilea, Stephen Benn is director of Parliamentary affairs for the Society of Biology; his wife, Nita Clarke, worked for Blair in Downing Street; their son Daniel, born in 1991, becomes heir to the Viscountcy. Tony Benn’s second son, Hilary, is Shadow Communities Secretary, his daughter, Melissa, is a radical feminist author, and his youngest son, Joshua, an IT professional.
Tony Benn, born April 3, 1925, died Friday March 14, 2014