You're a young man T, i remember the 3 Stooges :)
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You're a young man T, i remember the 3 Stooges :)
Didn't you realise Curly Moe and Larry are now running this country?
I'm more of a Goon Show man, being British.
Peaches Geldof dies aged 25
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Peaches Geldof pictured in 2013
TV presenter Peaches Geldof, second daughter of musician Bob Geldof and Paula Yates, has died aged 25.
Police say they were called to an address near Wrotham, Kent following a report of concern for the welfare of a woman on Monday afternoon.
The woman, aged 25, was later pronounced dead by South East Coast Ambulance Service.
"At this stage, the death is being treated as unexplained and sudden," said a statement from Kent Police.
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Geldof was pictured at a fashion show in London last week
Born in 1989, Peaches Honeyblossom Geldof embarked on a media career at the age of 15, when she began writing a column for Elle magazine.
She left home at sixteen and went on to contribute to the Telegraph and the Guardian, and presented TV shows including ITV2's OMG! with Peaches Geldof.
She also worked as a model and, just last week, attended a launch for Tesco's F&F clothing range in London.
She was married to musician Thomas Cohen, with whom she had two sons, Astala, one, and Phaedra, who will turn one on 24 April.
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Geldof married Thomas Cohen, lead singer of the band SCUM, in 2012
Geldof lost her own mother when she was just 11 years old. Paula Yates died of a drug overdose in September 2000.
Speaking to Elle Magazine in 2012, Peaches said she had not come to terms with Yates's death for several years.
"I remember the day my mother died, and it's still hard to talk about it. I just blocked it out. I went to school the next day because my father's mentality was 'keep calm and carry on'," she said.
"So we all went to school and tried to act as if nothing had happened. But it had happened. I didn't grieve. I didn't cry at her funeral. I couldn't express anything because I was just numb to it all. I didn't start grieving for my mother properly until I was maybe 16."
Geldof said she had experimented with drugs as a teenager, but was "never that wild".
She was previously married to rock musician Max Drummey but the pair separated in 2009 after a six-month marriage.
Her last tweet, posted on Sunday was a picture of her as a baby in her mother's arms.
She leaves her husband and sons; father Bob Geldof; sisters Fifi Trixibelle and Pixie; and younger half-sister, Tiger Lily Hutchence Geldof
That's unreal, so unexpected.
Life's a peach and then you die.
Bob's had a bit of a bad time over the years with Paula Yates and now Pixie
So had Peaches. First her mothers death, then her own divorce. Poor kid. Rest in Peace.
So sad.
No word on how she died.
I suppose "I don't like Mondays" has got an extra meaning for Bob now :(
Peaches' tragic last Instagram photo: Socialite is found dead just hours after posting this image of herself with mother Paula Yates who died of overdose 13 years ago
This is the haunting last image Peaches Geldof posted on Instagram just 24 hours before she was found dead in unexplained circumstances at her Kent home.
The 25-year-old wrote 'me and mum' alongside the image in a tragic final post just a day before she was found dead.
Her sudden death has heartbreaking similarities to the untimely passing of her mother in 2000 at her London home, leaving behind her young children to be raised by Bob Geldof.
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The last tweet: Peaches Geldof uploaded a heartbreaking image of her as a child in the arms of her mother just yesterday
Peaches Geldof's last Instagram photo of herself with mother Paula Yates | Mail Online
The Ultimate Warrior has passed away.
Also comedian John Pinette a couple of days ago, this guy was very funny and also appeared on Seinfeld several times.
http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?...&v=BLWTblCSswY
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John Pinette Dead: Comedian And 'Seinfeld' Actor Dies At 50 (VIDEO)
Adrian Mole author Sue Townsend dies
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English novelist Sue Townsend, best known as author of Adrian Mole books, has died, family friend confirms
Townsend died at home on Thursday after a short illness.
The first of her comic series, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, aged 13 3/4, was published in 1982 and the eighth instalment, Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years, was released in 2009.
Her other best-selling novels included The Queen and I.
John de Salis - obituary
John de Salis was barrister and soldier who spearheaded a vital Red Cross mission to Thailand
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John de Salis, who has died aged 66, had a distinguished career in the International Red Cross, was Ambassador for the Order of Malta to Thailand and Cambodia and served as a major with the 9th/12th Royal Lancers. He also qualified as a barrister, founded a wealth management business and successfully developed his family’s vineyard near Verona.
De Salis held the title of the 9th Count de Salis (a Holy Roman Empire title created in 1748) . He spoke perfect French and Italian, fair German and some Thai. He twice served as the head of Red Cross delegations: first in Iraq, in 1980-81, and then in Thailand, where between 1981 and 1984 he was responsible for the Red Cross camps on the Cambodian border, running a mission of 600 staff caring for several hundred thousand refugees during the Khmer Rouge period; it was the largest Red Cross operation ever mounted.
In August 1982 he was seconded as Special Envoy to Lebanon during the siege of Beirut — a position that involved not only great responsibility but also considerable danger .
De Salis took pride in his ancestry. The first Salis to be ennobled was Rudolph von Salis, created a baron of the Holy Roman Empire in 1582 for his gallantry against the Turks. An ancestor in the 19th century turned down a baronetcy, considering it an inferior honour to the title Count de Salis – a view strongly shared by his descendant John.
John Bernard Philip Humbert de Salis was born on November 16 1947. His father, the 8th Count de Salis, a lieutenant-colonel in the Irish Guards, died when he was two; his Italian mother, born Camilla Presti di Camarda, died when he was five.
The uncle who took responsibility for John also died soon afterwards, and the boy spent a period with his French godfather, the Duc de Magenta — who promptly lost his life in a riding accident. John thereafter lived between boarding school, his Italian grandmother and his trustees.
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John de Salis presenting his letters of Credence as Ambassador of the Order of Malta to the king of Thailand
Educated at Downside, he went on to law school and was called to the Bar by Gray’s Inn. He also read International Law at Corpus Christi, Cambridge. De Salis also served with the Territorial Army, in the Honourable Artillery Company, then as a reserve officer with the 9th/12th Royal Lancers, taking part in operations in Northern Ireland.
His family had originated in the Grisons, in Switzerland, from where they supplied mercenaries to Popes and emperors. As a result John was a Hereditary Knight of the Golden Spur, an honour conferred in 1571 for services at the battle of Lepanto; he eventually returned to his roots, becoming a Swiss citizen and an officer with the Swiss Panzergrenadiers.
For his work with the Red Cross, de Salis was awarded the Gold Medal with Swords by Lebanon in 1982 and appointed Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the White Elephant by the King of Thailand. He was also much decorated by the Order of Malta, including as a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Order of Malta with Swords .
After retiring from the Red Cross, de Salis co-founded the firm of Gautier, Salis et Cie Geneva — an investment management business — and became a vice-chairman of Bank Lips in Zurich. He remained committed to humanitarian work as (non-resident) Ambassador of the Order of Malta in Thailand and Cambodia, countries to which he was devoted and where he had many friends.
He bought a magnificent 18th-century house on Lake Neuchâtel , also inheriting a fine medieval town house in Verona and his grandmother’s vineyard nearby — the vineyard would become his pride and joy.
John de Salis is survived by his widow, Marie-Claude, their twin daughters and their son, John-Maximilian, who becomes the 10th Count de Salis
Squadron Leader Ted Flavell - obituary
Squadron Leader Ted Flavell was a pilot at D-Day and Arnhem who later dropped Britain’s first nuclear bomb
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Ted Flavell (on the far left) with his crew on the atom bomb test
Squadron-Leader Ted Flavell, who has died aged 91, was the first British pilot to drop a live nuclear weapon from an aircraft.
In the summer of 1956, the RAF formed a special flight of three Valiant bombers to take part in Operation Buffalo at Maralinga in South Australia where Britain’s first live nuclear device in the kiloton range was to be dropped. Flavell and his crew were selected to fly one of the two aircraft taking part in the trial.
Their training was concentrated on visual bombing over the Orford Ness bombing range on the Suffolk coast and included dropping a variety of bomb shapes to establish their aerodynamic qualities for housing the nuclear device. The crews also worked out the operational drop procedures and the escape manoeuvres after weapon release.
The two crews deployed to Australia to carry out further training and by October they were ready for the drop. Three devices were exploded from towers before Flavell was tasked to make the first drop from an aircraft. Safety was paramount and the British scientific team, lead by Sir William Penney, had to ensure that there would be no dangerous radioactivity drifting to any residential area.
After nine postponements due to adverse winds, Flavell and his crew took off on October 11 and climbed to 30,000 feet. The mission was perfect and delighted the scientific team. For their part in the success of this first live drop, Flavell and his bomb aimer, Flight Lieutenant Eric Stacey, were awarded the AFC
Operation Buffalo was, in effect, a dress rehearsal for the forthcoming megaton range thermonuclear trials (Operation Grapple) held in the South Pacific the following year.
The son of Brigadier Edwin Flavell DSO, MC and two Bars who commanded a Parachute Brigade, Edwin James George Flavell was born on April 25 1922 at Battersea and attended Fray’s College, Uxbridge. He joined the RAF as an aircraft apprentice at Halton in January 1938. After graduating as an engine fitter he served at Northolt before training as a pilot in Canada.
In early 1944 he joined No 297 Squadron flying Albermarle aircraft in the airborne assault role. He dropped supplies over France for SOE and on D-Day towed a glider on the first lift before flying resupply sorties.
In September he flew two missions taking gliders for Operation Market Garden, the ill-fated attempt to seize the bridge at Arnhem. His younger brother, an officer in the 2nd Battalion Parachute Regiment, had parachuted into the drop zones and fought around the bridge for three days before being captured.
For the rest of the war, Flavell dropped agents and supplies over France and Norway.
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After the war he served in Palestine before instructing on the Halifax transport aircraft and joining the Airborne Forces Experimental Establishment at Beaulieu. In 1951 he joined No 9 Squadron and converted to the Canberra bomber, the RAF’s first jet bomber. Three years later he was a member of the first course of crews to convert to the Valiant, the first of the RAF’s V-bombers.
After the atom bomb tests, Flavell continued to fly the Valiant with No 49 Squadron as a flight commander. He spent two years on the operational policy staff at HQ Middle East Air Force in Aden before going to the Air Ministry where he was an operations officer for five years. He retired from the RAF in June 1968.
Afterwards Flavell worked in property development and the marble import business. In later years he lived in Spain. On his return to Britain he worked as a welfare officer with the RAF Association and was a driver with a charity providing transport for patients attending hospital appointments.
Ted Flavell’s wife Sheila, whom he married in 1949, died in 2004. A son and a daughter survive him. Another son predeceased him
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TORONTO (AP) -- Jesse Winchester, a U.S.-born singer who established himself in Montreal after dodging the Vietnam War and went on to write songs covered by the likes of Elvis Costello, Jimmy Buffett and Joan Baez has died of cancer. He was 69.
His death was announced on his official Facebook page Friday.
"Friends, our sweet Jesse died peacefully in his sleep this morning," the update reads. "Bless his loving heart."
Winchester was born in Louisiana and raised around the U.S. South, but he didn't begin his music career in earnest until moving to Quebec in 1967. There, he began performing solo in coffee houses around Montreal and the Canadian East Coast.
Winchester was a protege of the Band's Robbie Robertson, who produced and played guitar on Winchester's self-titled debut album and brought Band-mate Levon Helm along to play drums and mandolin.
Winchester's second album, 1972's "Third Down, 110 to Go" featured tracks produced by Todd Rundgren. He continued to release material at a steady clip until 1981's "Talk Memphis," after which he took a seven-year break from recording. That album, however, contained Winchester's biggest U.S. hit, "Say What."
Although large-scale mainstream success eluded Winchester, his songs were covered by an array of musicians including Elvis Costello, Anne Murray, Wynona Judd, Emmylou Harris, the Everly Brothers, Jimmy Buffett and Joan Baez.
Some of his best known songs include "Yankee Lady," `'Biloxi," `'The Brand New Tennessee Waltz" and "Mississippi, You're On My Mind."
After living in Canada for decades, Winchester moved back to the U.S. early last decade. He died at his home in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Winchester was nominated for three Juno Awards, including country male vocalist of the year in 1990 and, most recently, best roots and traditional album for "Gentleman of Leisure" in 2000.
In September 2012, artists including James Taylor, Lucinda Williams, Vince Gill and Jimmy Buffett performed covers of Winchester's tunes for a tribute album called "Quiet About It."
Winchester reportedly recorded a final album called "A Reasonable Amount of Trouble," due out this summer.
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Frankston's Motown star Gil Askey dies at home
Date
April 15, 2014
Trumpeter Gil Askey, who passed away at the age of 89.
He worked with Diana Ross, Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli and Miles Davis but trumpeter, composer and producer Gil Askey was better known to the people of Frankston as the elderly gentleman who gave his time to young musicians and could ''talk the leg off a table''.
''He was our living link to the history of Motown and he embodied the loving of life and the loving of music,'' said saxophonist, band mate and close friend Paul Williamson.
Askey - considered to be one of the architects of the Motown sound - died at his home in Frankston on Wednesday at 89 from an aggressive lymphoma. He is survived by his Australian-born wife Hellen, three children (Gregory, 65, Deidra, 62, and Emile 31), six grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.
''Everyone was equal to him,'' said youngest son Emile. ''He treated the person serving you at the drive through the same as he treated Diana Ross.''
Askey's last days were filled with phone calls from music luminaries who had heard of his illness, Emile said. ''He wore himself out talking to Stevie Wonder, Motown founder Berry Gordy and American Idol musical director Rickey Minor.''
In Australia, he has been lauded by contemporaries including fellow trumpet player James Morrison who said: ''I think it was best said by founder of Motown Records Berry Gordy - Gil was 'the glue that kept everything together'. He was the guy who was able to bring together talented people so they could make music that just wouldn't happen the same way without him. He was one of those musical gems that comes along once in a generation.''
In 2001, Askey told the ABC: ''I worked with some lovely people, I worked with some very important people. I've written music for Judy Garland, for Liza Minnelli, I knew Miles [Davis], I knew Billie Holiday.''
Askey was a writer and arranger for the Four Tops, the Jackson 5 and Martha Reeves in the 1960s before becoming musical director to Diana Ross (he received an Oscar nomination for his work on Lady Sings the Blues in 1972).
Askey moved to Melbourne in 1980 after marrying his second wife, Hellen, and became a key figure in his local community, including volunteering to mentor music students at the Woodleigh School.
In 2010, Askey acted as music consultant for Motown's 50th anniversary international tour with the Four Tops, the Temptations, Mary Wilson of the Supremes and Martha Reeves.
At the time he told Fairfax, ''they called me because I know everybody and I have written music for all of them''.
Askey's final big performance was with Paul Williamson and Hetty Kate in February at White Night.
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Raymond Wagner, a producer of films including “Petulia” and, later, “Turner and Hooch” and formerly a top executive at Universal Studios and MGM, died of natural causes March 12 in Westwood, Calif. He was 85.
Wagner oversaw TV pilots for Universal during the 1960s and produced an early movie of the week, 1964′s “The Hanged Man.” He began his feature producing career with director Richard Lester’s 1968 film “Petulia,” starring Julie Christie and George C. Scott, followed by Irvin Kershner’s “Loving,” starring George Segal and Eva Marie Saint, in 1970.
As VP of production at MGM during the 1970s, Wagner oversaw the production of films including “Network,” “Fame,” “The Champ,” “The Passenger,” “The Sunshine Boys,” “Coma” and “Logan’s Run.”
As an independent producer, he later produced Tom Hanks comedy “Turner and Hooch” as well as “Code of Silence,” “Rent-a-Cop,” “Run” and “Snow Day.” And Wagner’s creative efforts were not limited to TV and film: In 1970, he produced the Pulitzer Prize-winning play “No Place to Be Somebody” with writer-director Charles Gordone and later wrote the adapted screenplay with Gordone.
Wagner came to show business by way of the advertising business. He was the head of the TV commercial department for Young and Rubicam’s New York and Hollywood offices and directed commercials in the 1950s, as well as writing advertising jingles.
During the 1960s he teamed with director Robert Altman to run a production company for a time and hired Sherry Lansing, later president of production at 20th Century Fox and CEO of Paramount, as a script reader.
Wagner was a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences (producers branch).
He is survived by his wife, Christine, and three children.
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Hal Cooper, a director and executive producer for television who helmed shows including “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” “I Dream of Jeannie,” “Maude” and “Gimme a Break” and was a pioneer during the golden age of the medium, died of heart failure at his home in Beverly Hills on April 11. He was 91.
As TV was in its early days, Cooper wrote, produced and acted in a show for the Dumont Television Network called “Your Television Babysitter,” co-written and hosted by his wife, Pat Meikle. The show aired on the network’s first day of all-day television programming on Nov. 1, 1947. The show, aimed at preschoolers, taught the alphabet with the help of animal cartoon drawings. The show’s success was parlayed into the daytime series “The Magic Cottage,” aimed at teaching slightly older children, and aired from 1949-52.
Cooper also directed and produced many daytime shows from 1950 to 1957, including “Search for Tomorrow,” the first successful soap opera, and “Kitty Foyle.”
Cooper moved to Los Angeles when the television industry shifted over to the West Coast and started to work as a director in nighttime television, considered more prestigious, starting with “The Dick Van Dyke Show” (1962) and “Death Valley Days” (1965-67). He became one of the regular directors for “I Dream of Jeannie” (1965-69) and spent the rest of his career as a director and producer of television comedy.
Cooper was a director and executive producer of “Maude” (1972-78), “Love Sydney (1982-83) and “Gimme a Break” (1983-87). He was involved in the development of numerous pilots in the 1970s and 1980s, and he directed episodes of many other successful shows including “Gilligan’s Island,” “That Girl,” “The Brady Bunch” and “All in the Family.”
His last screen credit was for directing “Something So Right” (1996).
Starting as an actor in radio at age 9, Cooper was performing in the show “Rainbow House” in 1936. When he wasn’t on microphone, he was always in the control room watching and learning about directing from Bob Emery, the producer and director. One day, two hours before the show was to air live, coast to coast, Emery became ill and unable to direct. But, before being taken to the hospital, Emery said, “Let Hal direct it.” So at 13 years old, Hal directed his first live broadcast.
Cooper attended the U. of Michigan in 1940 while also pursuing his career in radio, working at WXYZ in Detroit doing episodes of “The Lone Ranger.” Military service in WWII — he was a lieutenant (junior grade) in the U.S. Naval Reserve, Pacific Theatre of Operations — interrupted his education from 1943-46. He returned to the U. of Michigan and graduated with a B.A. in 1946.
While at Michigan he met his first wife, Pat Meikle. They were married in 1944, and after graduating, they worked together at the Dock St. Theatre Company in Charleston, S.C., where he was the assistant director.
He is survived by two daughters, a son and a grandson.
Professor Iain Campbell - obituary
Professor Iain Campbell was a physicist whose work with magnetic resonance technology paved the way for new anti-cancer therapies
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Professor Iain Campbell, who has died aged 72, developed the technique of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy (NMR) and applied it to the study of the structure of proteins; this, among other things, has led to the development of new anti-cancer therapies.
NMR had been developed in America in the late 1940s and early 1950s as a technique to determine the physical and chemical properties of atoms and molecules. Campbell, a physicist by training, became involved in developing the technique in 1967, when he obtained a job with the chemist Sir Rex Richards at Oxford University.
While most chemical laboratories of the time had their own NMR machines, these had limitations, and in the 1970s Campbell and others began to push the technology into new areas, with Campbell taking some of the first proton spectra of living cells — a huge advance. In proton NMR, the spectography equipment focuses in on hydrogen protons, present in molecules in all living cells, which give sharp signals, helping to shed light on the structure of unknown organic compounds
the early 1980s Kurt Wüthrich, who would win a Nobel Prize for his work on NMR, had demonstrated that the technique could be applied to determine the structure of proteins. Campbell subsequently built on his work to determine, in 1987, the structure of epidermal growth factor (the discovery of which won Stanley Cohen and Rita Levi-Montalcini the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1986), a significant scientific breakthrough.
Epidermal growth factor (EGF) is a protein that stimulates cell growth and cell division by binding to a protein receptor on the surface of the cell. Some cancers are caused by mutated receptors that give a signal to divide even without growth factor, causing the cells to divide uncontrollably. Understanding the structure of EGF and its receptor has enabled scientists to design drugs such as Gefitinib and Erlotinib (for lung cancer), and Cetuximab (for colon cancer) that inhibit the EGF receptor. his achievement with EGF led him to switch his focus from physics to biology. He went on to become an authority on cell migration — a process essential for embryonic development, wound healing and immune responses. He also became expert in the related field of cell adhesion, a process by which cells establish and maintain multicellular structures which involves the action of proteins called cell adhesion molecules, or adhesins. Both are processes that go wrong in cancer
EGFR Mode of Action - YouTube
Campbell’s work on NMR technology earned him a Department of Trade and Industry Education in Partnership with Industry Award in 1982 and his approach is now used in biomedical research programmes all over the world.
Iain Donald Campbell was born at Blackford, near Perth, Scotland, on April 24 1941 and was educated at Perth Academy and at St Andrews University where he read Physics. After graduation in 1963 he took a PhD under PhD in Physics under Dirk Bijl. As a student Iain and others built some of the earliest electron spin resonance machines using old radar equipment.
In 1966, when Bijl moved to Bradford, Campbell moved with him, but the following year he joined Sir Rex Richards’s lab at Oxford, where he became a tutorial fellow of St John’s College and Professor of Structural Biology in 1992, staying on as emeritus professor after his official retirement in 2009.
Campbell’s research output was prolific and he mentored and trained generations of biochemistry and biology students who have gone on to leading roles in universities, research laboratories and pharmaceutical companies around the world. However he never forgot his training as a physicist. One former student has recalled that during biochemistry lectures he would sometimes launch into a lengthy and complex disquisition on the subject of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance theory which left his audience’s hands aching with note-taking, before observing: “But you don’t need to know that.”
Iain Campbell was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1995 and in 2006 gave its Croonian Lecture, a prize lecture which is considered the premier lecture in the biological sciences.
In 1967 he married Karin Wehle, a German-born trainee teacher whom he met at St Andrews. She survives him with their son and two daughters
Tony Gray - obituary
Tony Gray was a co-founder of a musical comedy act whose brand of anarchic slapstick inspired Monty Python
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Tony Gray, who has died aged 86, was, during the satire boom of the late 1950s and early 1960s, a member of the most famous trio of musical clowns in London; their specialities included bubble-blowing automata and exploding camels.
The group, which consisted of Tony Gray and his younger brother Douglas (known as the Alberts), and Bruce Lacey, had their own show, An Evening of British Rubbish, in the West End for nearly a year in 1963. They later played at the Royal Court in their own version of The Three Musketeers and in 1964 appeared with Ivor Cutler in a full-length comedy performance on the opening night of BBC Two.
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Gray (seated), Douglas Gray (standing, in kilt) and Bruce Lacey
John Wells, a long-time admirer, described a typical Alberts performance: “Moth-eaten men in beards and baggy Edwardian clothes strode on and off the stage; there were a great many random bangs and explosions, trumpets were blown, jokes were muttered and shouted, usually into the wings; the stuffed camel had its tail turned like a starting handle to the accompaniment of further bangs and more dirty men in ancient military uniforms strode on and off shouting at each other; someone appeared dressed as a bee; a mechanical dummy was wheeled on to deliver a monosyllabic political speech; a musician in grubby white tie and tails attempted to play the cello, and subversive figures winking at the audience and slyly tapping their noses were seen to lay a charge of dynamite under his chair, reel out the cable to a plunger and finally blow themselves up with another thunderous bang.”
The Alberts disobeyed all the rules of comic timing: punch lines were muffed; nobody ever came in on cue, comic impetus got lost in crazy ad libs and the almost constant shouting and blowing of instruments created an atmosphere on stage which one critic likened to “a children’s playgroup or group therapy at a progressive lunatic asylum at which the presence of an audience is at best optional and at worst an embarrassment”. Tony, a skinny, rather nervous man with pale blue eyes and a straggly beard, was described by one admirer as “looking like an eccentric yachting enthusiast from before the First World War”. More loquacious than his brother Douglas, he tended to do more of the physical clowning; Douglas (proficient to varying degrees on an eclectic range of instruments from the balalaika and serpent to the bagpipes) provided the musical accompaniment
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Audiences were left variously enthralled, bemused, or furious and wanting their money back. “I am not sure why I laughed,” confessed one critic. “There was a certain resistance at first.” Tony Gray believed there was a nightmare element to their humour: “Its basis is that if something can go wrong, it will. It also suggests that everything in life is funny and that can be dangerous.”
Though their career at the top was brief, the Alberts’ almost perverse anti-professionalism had a considerable influence on the Sixties comedy and satire scene. They came from a generation earlier than the Beyond the Fringe coterie, but the anarchic slapstick they introduced continued to flourish with — among others — The Goodies and Monty Python, and influenced the deliberate amateurishness of satirical publications like Private Eye.
Perhaps the secret behind the Alberts’ originality was the fact that they were always completely themselves. Neither Douglas nor Tony Gray had any professional training as actors and in real life they were as unselfconsciously eccentric as they were on stage
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Tony Gray (with cigar) at home with brother Douglas
Anthony Gray was born in St Mary Abbots, west London, on December 22 1927, the second of three sons of a printer and amateur musician. Educated at the Oratory School, Kensington, during the war he and his brother Douglas were evacuated to Penzance, where they took to ganging up together and playing practical jokes on people who were nasty to them.
The Grays left school after the war and both spent their National Service in Egypt, Tony salvaging burnt-out tanks in the Western Desert and Douglas working as a driver of an Army bus in Alexandria.
In 1951 Tony stowed away in a lifeboat on a ship going to Spitzbergen. “I had the whole hippy thing, you know, hair down to the shoulders everything,” he explained. “And that was in 1951.”
After returning to Britain he joined his brother Douglas in the printing trade and began playing at jazz clubs with him in the evenings. They were regulars at the Fleet Street Jazz Club, a Friday lunchtime venue in Fetter Lane run by Ray Whittam, and played with, among others, Acker Bilk, George Melly, Gerard Hoffnung and Kenny Ball. In the mid-1950s, at Humphrey Lyttleton’s jazz club in Oxford Street, they played an ear-splitting duet for miniature trombone and miniature trumpet. Also in the 1950s they started the Historical Commercial Vehicle Club with Lord Montagu of Beaulieu. The club had its first rally at Beaulieu in 1957.
The Alberts’ antic humour attracted the attention of Peter Cook who in 1962 engaged them to appear at the Establishment Club in Greek Street. Their stint at the Establishment (where they performed a “DaDa-ist quiz show”) caused some grumbles among resident performers who found they had to pick their way through the Alberts’ rubbish to get to the stage. On one occasion John Fortune pushed their stuffed camel out of the way to get down the stairs and inadvertently set off a maroon which left him unable to hear his cues for the whole evening
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Tony Gray (holding reins), Douglas gray (seated, with monocle), with Spike Millgan, Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe and other cast members of A Show Called Fred
Lenny Bruce saw their act at the Establishment, and engaged them to tour America. By the time they arrived in New York (where they played at the Blue Angel) Bruce was under arrest on charges of obscenity. Their show was a success in New York, but bombed in San Francisco.
An Evening of British Rubbish (in which Ivor Cutler did several turns singing songs such as Pickle my Knees in Cheese and I am a Japanese Cowherd) ran for nearly a year at the Comedy Theatre in 1963 and later toured in Belgium and France, where it was billed as Crazy Show de British Rubbish.
During the 1960s, John Wells worked with the Alberts on a short film about a heavier-than-air flying machine in which they ran down a hillside in Hampstead Heath wearing a skeletal fuselage and flapping madly before falling into a pond. On stage they appeared in Sean Kenny’s production of Gulliver’s Travels at the Mermaid Theatre and in The Jackdaw at the Royal Court. In 1966 Tony Gray took the role of Athos in the Alberts’ version of The Three Musketeers at the Arts Theatre; the show later transferred to the Royal Court
The Flying Alberts - YouTube
Ken Russell used the Alberts in a television film about the Pre-Raphaelites, in which Tony appeared as Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s brother and Douglas as William Holman Hunt. They appeared in several other Ken Russell films, including The Music Lovers, and a television film, Dante’s Inferno. They also took small walk-on roles in The Bliss of Mrs Blossom (a comedy about the wife of a bra manufacturer who keeps her lover in the attic), The Day the World Caught Fire and in Billy Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. In the 1960s they appeared on television in A Show Called Fred (a successor to The Goon Show) with Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers, and in a Royal Command Performance at the London Palladium.
In 1979 they were contracted by the Covent Garden Opera Company to take character roles in productions of Peter Grimes and Benvenuto Cellini, with which they later toured Italy and the Far East. To begin with they were worried that they might not be good enough for the demands of the professional theatre: “Look at your contract,” advised the actor Roy Kinnear; “does it say you have to be good?”
The Alberts "Morse Code Melody" - YouTube
Throughout their career on the stage, the Grays continued to support themselves in the printing trade and by driving newspaper delivery vans, taking The Sunday Telegraph from the printing works to far-flung parts of East Anglia where they both bought themselves old rectories, which they filled with dusty collections of books, toys and old vehicles. “I suppose we are cosseted a bit, like Spitfire pilots,” Tony reflected.
Tony Gray married, first, Ann May; the marriage was dissolved, and he married, secondly, Jenny Rose. That marriage was also dissolved, and he is survived by three sons from his first marriage and a son and daughter from his second. Another son from his first marriage predeceased him.
Tony Gray, born December 22 1927, died April 14 2014
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Apr 17, 4:38 AM EDT
SERVIER, LAB FOUNDER IN DRUG SCANDAL, DIES AT 92
PARIS (AP) -- Jacques Servier, the founder of France's second-largest pharmaceutical group who became ensnared in a scandal over a diabetes drug widely used for weight loss, has died.
Servier Research Group announced the death of 92-year-old Servier late Wednesday.
Servier and his lab were at the center of one of France's biggest health scandals, in which the drug Mediator was alleged to be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people. The European Medicines Agency pulled Mediator from shelves when it found that its active ingredient, benfluorex, could lead to a dangerous thickening of heart valves. The ingredient is a derivative of fenfluramine, whose use in a diet drug in the U.S. was linked to similar problems.
In a statement, the lab said Servier's "life revolved around the research of innovative medicines."