Reg Grundy, died on a Mundy
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Reg Grundy, died on a Mundy
Where did that damn sharereef go?
Veteran West Indies cricket commentator Tony Cozier dies, aged 75
Veteran West Indies cricket commentator Tony Cozier dies, aged 75
Veteran cricket commentator and journalist Tony Cozier has died aged 75 following a short illness.
Born in Bridgetown in 1940, he was the voice of West Indies cricket for more than 50 years and appeared on TV and radio around the world in addition to writing in several international newspapers and magazines and was regarded as one the most respected figures in the game.
He began his career on Australia's 1965 tour of the Caribbean and was awarded life membership of the MCC for services to the sport in 2011.
Cozier died at his home in Barbados having been admitted to hospital earlier this month for tests related to infections in his neck and legs.
"Tony was the master of going between TV and radio ball-by-ball commentary. He was the master of both," wrote BBC cricket correspondent Jonathan Agnew in a tribute on the British website.
"He's easily the best I've come across in 25 years at being able to do both disciplines."
"Throughout his career Cozier had to tread the tense tightrope of Caribbean politics, where even the slightest negative observation of a player's performance can provoke a furious nationalistic backlash.
"He withstood this stoically and determinedly, remaining a strong critic of the West Indies Cricket Board's lack of organisation and outlook.
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^RIP Sporting Heroes thread is probably better for that.
This thread is solely for annoying Cujo.
:)
Madeleine Lebeau dead: Last surviving Casablanca cast member dies aged 92
Lebeau is best known for her emotionally charged final scene where she shouts 'Viva la France!'
Maya Oppenheim @mayaoppenheim 38 minutes ago
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Madeleine Lebeau, the last surviving cast member of 1942 film Casablanca, has died at the age of 92.
Her stepson, filmmaker Carlo Alberto Pinelli, told The Hollywood Reporter she died on May 1 in Spain after breaking her thigh bone.
Lebeu is best known for her role as Yvonne, the jilted mistress of Humphrey Bogart’s Rick Blaine, in the 40s Oscar-winning Warner Bro’s classic Casablanca.
Born in 1923, she fled Nazi-occupied France for Hollywood with her then husband and esteemed actor Marcel Dalio, in 1940. Once in Hollywood, the pair both appeared in Casablanca, with Dalio playing the croupier Emil.
Lebeau is best known for the teary-eared scene where she passionately shouts “Viva la France!” in her final line of the film. Many of the film's cast were refugees from Nazi terror and drew on real emotion and life experience.
She played in two further US films before returning to France after the war. There she appeared in 20 more films, going on to play a temperamental French actress in filmmaker Federico Fellini’s Oscar-winning 8 1/2 (1963), which her second husband co-wrote.
Her film career ended by the late 1960s and she remained in Rome after making 8 1/2. In 1988, she married Oscar-nominated Italian screenwriter Tullio Pinelli whom died in 2009.
Lebeau lived in Estepona in Spain at the time of her death.
Madeleine Lebeau dead: Last surviving Casablanca cast member dies aged 92 | People | News | The Independent
David Attenborough is 90 and still going strong, as indicated by his exclusive interview on BBC Earth with President Obama.
Don't jinx the old fellow...
I was sizing up the thread for inappropriate comments.
'60 Minutes' Morley Safer dead at 84, a week after retiring
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Morley Safer, the globe-trotting CBS correspondent who had filed more than 900 reports for the network's TV news magazine 60 Minutes, died Thursday at his home in Manhattan, CBS Corp. confirmed. He was 84.
The network didn't immediately release a cause of death, but said "Safer was in declining health."
The Toronto native was the longest-serving correspondent of the venerable news program, having joined in 1970 and becoming part a formidable team -- with Mike Wallace, Harry Reasoner, Ed Bradley, Dan Rather and Andy Rooney -- that uncovered corruption, confronted public and corporate officials, and set the standard for broadcast magazine journalism.
"He was one of the linchpins for so many years on 60 Minutes," says CBS Chairman-CEO Leslie Moonves. "He was sort of the gentle giant of the group. There was something insightful and humane about him. He was a great journalist; he had all the street cred in the world, but he liked the human interest story."
Safer filed his last 60 Minutes report, a profile of Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, in March. With his health deteriorating quickly, CBS announced his retirement May 11 and ran an hour-long program celebrating Safer's career — “Morley Safer: A Reporter’s Life” — after Sunday’s regular edition of 60 Minutes.
Like many broadcasters of his generation, Safer began his career as a print journalist, working for newspapers and wire services in Canada and England before joining Canadian Broadcasting Corp. At Canada's largest broadcasting entity, he toured Europe, North Africa and the Middle East on assignments, including the war for Algerian independence. He was the only Western correspondent in East Berlin the night the Communists began building the Berlin Wall in August 1961, according to his bio on CBS' website.
After joining CBS News in 1964, his experience in reporting from war zones served him and the network well. He opened a Saigon bureau in 1965 for CBS as the Vietnam War raged on. In 1967, he returned to London as CBS News’ bureau chief there, but continued to visit Vietnam to cover the war. He often went beyond press briefings to join the soldiers in war zones to file on-the-scene reports.
His piece showing U.S. Marines burning villagers' huts in Cam Ne in 1965 earned Safer a George Polk award, and the work was cited by New York University as one of the 20th century’s best pieces of American journalism. It "angered President Lyndon Johnson so much, he reportedly called CBS President Frank Stanton and said, 'Your boys shat on the American flag yesterday,'” CBS said. Safer wrote about his experience in Vietnam in a book released in 1990, Flashbacks: On Returning to Vietnam.
He received numerous other awards for his work, including 12 Emmys, three Overseas Press Club Awards, three Peabody Awards, two Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards, another George Polk Memorial Award and the Paul White Award from the Radio/Television News Directors Association.
"If you look at his body of work, there isn’t anything like it in the history of journalism. He covered everything imaginable," Fager said.
more '60 Minutes' Morley Safer dead at 84, a week after retiring
^ Morley was cool...Goodbye and RIP...
Indeed. RIP. Bummer to go within days of retiring.
RIP, Morley.
Beastie boy John Barry dead at 52.
1960s ‘Mister Ed’ sitcom star Alan Young dies at 96
AP
MAY 21, 2016
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LOS ANGELES – Actor and comedian Alan Young, who played the amiable straight man to a talking horse in the 1960s sitcom “Mister Ed,” has died at age 96, a spokeswoman for the Motion Picture and Television Home said Friday.
The English-born, Canadian-educated Young died Thursday, according to Jaime Larkin, spokeswoman for the retirement community where Young had lived for four years. His children were with him when he died peacefully of natural causes, she said.
Young was already a well-known radio and TV comedian, having starred in his own Emmy-winning variety show, when “Mister Ed” was being readied at comedian George Burns’ production company. Burns is said to have told his staff: “Get Alan Young. He looks like the kind of guy a horse would talk to.”
Mr. Ed was a golden Palomino who spoke only to his owner, Wilbur Post, who was played by Young. Fans enjoyed the horse’s deep, droll voice (“WIL-bur-r-r-r-r”) and the goofy theme song lyrics (“A horse is a horse, of course, of course”). Cowboy star Allan “Rocky” Lane supplied Mr. Ed’s voice.
An eclectic group of celebrities, including Clint Eastwood, Mae West and baseball great Sandy Koufax, made guest appearances on the show.
“Mister Ed” was one of a number of situation comedies during the early to mid-1960s that added elements of fantasy. Others were “My Mother the Car,” in which a man’s dead mother spoke to him through an old car; “My Favorite Martian,” in which a Martian took up residence on Earth disguised as the uncle of an earthling; and “Bewitched,” in which a witch married a mortal.
A loose variation on the “Francis the Talking Mule” movies of the 1950s, “Mister Ed” was one of the few network series to begin in syndication. After six months, it moved to ABC in October 1961 and lasted four seasons.
When the cameras weren’t rolling, the human and four-legged co-stars were friends, according to Young. If Ed was reprimanded by his trainer, Young said, “He would come over to me, like, ‘Look what he said to me.'”
Like many series of its vintage, “Mister Ed” won new fans in later decades through near-constant cable TV syndication and video releases.
Young also appeared in a number of films, including “Gentlemen Marry Brunettes,” “Tom Thumb,” “The Cat from Outer Space” and “The Time Machine” — a 1960 classic in which, speaking in a Scottish brogue, he played time traveler Rod Taylor’s friend. Young had a small role in the 2002 “Time Machine” remake.
In later years, Young found a new career writing for and voicing cartoons. He portrayed Scrooge McDuck in 65 episodes for Disney’s TV series “Duck Tales” and did voice-overs for “The Great Mouse Detective.”
Young’s sly, low-key style first attracted a wide U.S. audience in 1944 with “The Alan Young Show” on ABC radio. He also drew attention from Hollywood, but early films such as “Margie” and “Mr. Belvedere Goes to College” did poorly. In 1950 he turned to the growing new medium of TV and moved “The Alan Young Show” to the small screen, where it offered a contrast to the slapstick and old vaudeville of other variety shows.
His gentle comedy caused TV Guide to hail him as “the Charlie Chaplin of television,” and the fledgling Academy of Television Arts and Sciences awarded Emmys to Young as best actor and to the show as best variety series.
Howard Hughes, who had seen Young on TV, hired him for the lead in a film version of “Androcles and the Lion,” a comedy based on the George Bernard Shaw play. When it opened in theaters, however, nobody laughed, so Hughes withdrew the movie and shot two weeks of new sequences.
“He put in girls with gauze and a real lion, and it became a blood-and-guts film,” Young recalled in 1987.
Angus Young was born on Nov. 19, 1919, of Scottish parents in the north England town of North Shields.
The family moved to Canada when he was a child, and he began entertaining in Vancouver when he was 13. He had his own radio program, “Stag Party,” on the CBC network by the time he graduated from high school. After two years in the Canadian Navy, he moved to New York City.
Young was a Christian Scientist from his teen years. In the early 1970s, he left his career to work for the church in Boston. He spent three years establishing a film and broadcasting center, then toured the country for two years as a Christian Science lecturer. Disillusioned by the church bureaucracy, he returned to Hollywood in 1976.
In 1940, Young married Mary Anne Grime. They had a daughter, Alana, and a son, Alan Jr. The marriage ended in 1947.
In 1948 he married singer Virginia McCurdy. They had a son, Cameron Angus, and a daughter, Wendy.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/201...young-dies-96/
96 is a pretty good innings. RIP, Wilburrrr
Do mer Megadeath drummer, Menza dies onstage with his band, Ohm at the Baked Potato in studio city
Er ^ if your going to report peoples deaths its best to get the facts right
Megadeath was his former group he played with , on this occasion he was performing with his current band OHM and he collapsed on stage but died on route to hospital in the ambulance 25 mins later
Burt Kwouk Dies: Actor Played Cato In Seven ‘Pink Panther’ Movies
by Ali Jaafar
May 24, 2016 8:42am
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Burt Kwouk, the veteran actor most closely associated with the role of the long-suffering Cato in The Pink Panther series opposite Peter Sellers, has died at age 85. A statement released by the actor’s family confirmed Kwouk passed away peacefully May 24. Kwouk was born in Warrington in the UK but lived in Shanghai until he was 17. His long career took in seven Pink Panther films, three James Bonds as well as appearances in Doctor Who and The Avengers.
Kwouk’s big break came in 1964 when he was cast as Inspector Clouseau’s manservant Cato in A Shot In The Dark, the second in the Pink Panther series that followed the mishaps of Sellers’ bumbling French police officer. The relationship between Clouseau and Cato — something of a hate-hate dynamic with a healthy sprinkling of kung fu designed to keep the police officer vigilant — soon became a staple of the franchise and popular with audiences. Kwouk continued in the role following Sellers’ death in 1980.
Kwouk played a number of different characters in a trio of Bond films: Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice and the 1968 spoof Casino Royale, appearing — somewhat uniquely — opposite Sean Connery, Roger Moore and David Niven as the iconic Brit superspy.
In later life, Kwouk became a regular on British TV, appearing on The Saint, The Kenny Everett Television Show and Last Of The Summer Wine. He also became the face of UK broadcaster Channel 4’s hyperactive gaming show Banzai!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2l5Y...ature=youtu.be
Burt Kwouk Dies: Actor Played Cato In Seven ?Pink Panther? Movies | Deadline
^ Funny as fook...Goodbye Cato...
Fuk....my life is flashing before my eyes.
Goodbye Cato, and thanks heaps for all the laughs.
Here's almost 10 minutes of mayhem. Unfortunately it's in Italian, but really....the action is what it's all about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jw1f94dx4xo
That means I lost two friends today.
Thanks for the laughs Cato.
Not now Kato??
RIP. Thanks for the laughs, Burt.
Never liked Peter Sellers,never saw a Pink Panther movie.
^The original Pink Panther was good. Sequels not so much.
And don't even think of watching the remake with Steve Martin.
'Mississippi Burning' judge dies
Jerry Mitchell, The Clarion-Ledger 5:13 p.m. CDT May 26, 2016
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Retired Circuit Judge Marcus D. Gordon, who oversaw the 2005 murder trial of Edgar Ray Killen in the FBI’s “Mississippi Burning” case, died Thursday.
He retired in March from the Eighth District Circuit Court of Leake, Neshoba, Newton and Scott counties because of his health. He said then that neuropathy had impaired his ability to walk.
“I thank the people who let me have this office and stay in this office as long as I have,” Gordon said. “They gave me their trust, and I am confident that in no fashion did I ever let that trust be violated.”
A month after retiring, Gordon fell and broke his hip while at his second home in northern Arkansas. He died at 5:30 a.m. Thursday at St. Dominic Hospital in Jackson.
At the time of his resignation, Gordon, 84, of Union was the longest-serving trial judge in Mississippi. He served as circuit judge for more than 36 years.
Gordon submitted his resignation on the anniversary of his appointment to the bench.
On March 4, 1977, Gov. Cliff Finch appointed Gordon as circuit judge of the Eighth Circuit District after Judge O.H. Barnett resigned.
Gordon left the bench and returned to private law practice for about three years in the late 1980s, practicing law with his nephew.
He previously served as district attorney for 6½ years in the Eighth Circuit District. He was county prosecutor for Newton County for four years.
Gordon was admitted to the bar in 1959. As a lawyer in private practice, he represented the Newton County Board of Supervisors as well as municipalities, school boards and hospitals.
He attended East Central Junior College in Decatur, now East Central Community College. He earned a bachelor's degree in business administration from the University of Mississippi and a law degree from the University of Mississippi School of Law.
He served four years in the Air Force as an airplane mechanic assigned to the Strategic Air Command.
In 2005, Gordon presided over the trial of Killen, accused of orchestrating the killings of three civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, on June 21, 1964, in Neshoba County.
The judge had crossed Killen's path in the past. Killen spoke at the funerals of Gordon's parents, and Gordon, as a district attorney in 1976, had prosecuted Killen for a threatening phone call.
In 2005, Gordon drew praise for his handling of the Killen trial, which aired live on Court TV and has since played on C-SPAN.
In a compromise verdict, a jury convicted Killen on three counts of manslaughter, and Gordon sentenced him to the maximum 60 years in prison. Killen is now serving that time in the State Penitentiary at Parchman.
Gordon drew criticism in October when, in an interview with Fault Lines, he said, “People charged with crimes, they are criminals.”
William L. Waller Jr., chief justice for the state Supreme Court, praised Gordon.
“He will be missed by all,” Waller said. “He courageously presided over many very difficult cases, including the prosecution of Edgar Ray Killen.”
Neshoba County Circuit Clerk Patti Duncan Lee called Gordon “one of a kind,” running a firm but fair courtroom.
“By his presence, he commanded respect. He treated everybody the same,” she said. “If he thought you needed to do something different, he sure didn’t mind telling you so.
Quite remarkable this. The Bismarck had already sunk Britain's flagship, HMS Hood, and if it had been allowed to get to France, repaired and sent out again with the appropriate protection, it could have completely cut Britain off and forced its surrender. Without Britain, the US would have had no bridgehead for the D-Day invasion.
A significant moment in world history.
Jane Fawcett, British codebreaker during World War II, dies at 95 - Europe - StripesQuote:
Jane Fawcett, British codebreaker during World War II, dies at 95
By Matt Schudel
The Washington Post
Published: May 29, 2016
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Jane Fawcett, a British codebreaker during World War II who deciphered a key German message that led to the sinking of the battleship Bismarck - one of Britain's greatest naval victories during the war - died May 21 at her home in Oxford, England. She was 95.
Her death was first reported by the Telegraph newspaper in Britain. The cause was not disclosed.
Fawcett was still in her teens when she received a letter from a friend in February 1940, in the early months of the war.
"I'm at Bletchley and it's perfectly frightful," her friend wrote. "We're so overworked, so desperately busy. You must come and join us."
Fluent in German and driven by curiosity, Fawcett - then known by her maiden name, Jane Hughes - found work at Britain's top-secret code-breaking facility at Bletchley Park, about 50 miles northwest of London. Of the 12,000 people who worked there, about 8,000 were women.
Bletchley Park later became renowned as the place where mathematician Alan Turing and others solved the puzzle of the German military's "Enigma machine," depicted in the 2014 film "The Imitation Game."
Turing worked in Hut 8 at Bletchley Park, while Fawcett was assigned to Hut 6. She was part of an all-female team whose job was to monitor messages from the German army and air force. Conditions in the single-story wooden buildings were hardly ideal.
"It was just horrid; there were very leaky windows," Mrs. Fawcett recalled in a 2015 interview with the Telegraph, "so it was very cold with just a frightful old stove in the middle of the room that let out lots of fumes but not much heat, and just one electric bulb hanging on a string, which was quite inadequate. We were always working against time, there was always a crisis, a lot of stress and a lot of excitement."
In May 1941, the British navy was searching for Germany's most formidable battleship, the Bismarck, which had last been seen near Norway. Fawcett was transcribing an intercepted message from the headquarters of the Luftwaffe, or German air force, when she noticed a reference to the French city of Brest.
In a reply to a Luftwaffe general whose son was aboard the Bismarck, a German officer noted that the battleship was headed to Brest for repairs.
Fawcett relayed her discovery to her supervisors, and within a day the Bismarck was spotted by the U.S. Navy in the Atlantic Ocean, about 700 miles off the coast of Brittany. British warplanes and naval vessels descended on the Bismarck, which was sunk on May 27, 1941. More than 2,000 German crew members were killed.
The sinking of the Bismarck marked the first time that British codebreakers had decrypted a message that led directly to a victory in battle. Cheers erupted among the staff at Bletchley Park, but their celebration remained private.
Fawcett's work was not made public for decades. Along with everyone else at Bletchley Park, she agreed to comply with Britain's Official Secrets Act, which imposed a lifetime prohibition on revealing any code-breaking activities. It wasn't until the late 1990s that her role in the sinking of the Bismarck began to come to light.
"My husband had been in the navy and done all these heroic things in every quarter, so of course we all talked about him and those brilliant young adventurers who saved Britain - well, saved the world," Fawcett said last year.
"So when everything we had done, which we knew had been very hard work and incredibly demanding, suddenly showed its head and we were being asked to talk about it, it felt quite overwhelming. I'd never told a soul, not even my husband. My grandchildren were very surprised."
Janet Caroline Hughes was born March 4, 1921, and grew up in London. Her father was a lawyer.
Fawcett, who dropped the final letter in her first name, studied at a school called Miss Ironside's and was a promising ballet dancer until she grew too tall. She then studied German in Switzerland before returning to England.
After working at Bletchley Park for five years,. Fawcett attended the Royal Academy of Music and had a 15-year career as an opera singer and recital soloist. In the 1960s, she began working at the Victorian Society, an organization devoted to preserving architecture from that era.
She was a passionate champion of the sturdy and ornate 19th-century buildings, with a particular interest in train stations slated for demolition by the British rail service. Railway officials dubbed her "the furious Mrs. Fawcett."
Her most significant victory came in 1967, when she successfully led an effort to save London's St. Pancras station and a nearby hotel.
Her husband of 66 years, Edward Fawcett, died in 2013. Survivors include two children and five grandchildren.
In 2014, Fawcett returned to Bletchley Park for the opening of a museum honoring the lives and work of the codebreakers. She took the hand of Kate Middleton, the duchess of Cambridge, while describing her work during the war.
"I still feel that what we did at Bletchley," she said in 2015, "was the most significant thing we ever did in our lives."
That is one fucking scary thought, that is. A Nazi UK. I believe the U.S. would have signed some kind of surrender document. It prolly would have been pretty sweet-looking at that point.Quote:
Originally Posted by harrybarracuda
RIP, Jane.
^ Jesus, when I think of it, would the Nazis have left the Japanese out of any surrender by the U.S.?
Er.... what?Quote:
Originally Posted by wjblaney
^ Sorry. Thinking ahead of my typing.
The Japanese and the Germans were allies. It's hard to imagine the U.S. capitulating to the Japanese in any way, shape or form. Also, of course, the U.S. was at war with the Nazis. I was imagining, given your speculation of no beach head in France, that the U.S. would have tried to sign a separate peace treaty with Germany, leaving Japan out of it. In that scenario, if Hitler insisted that the U.S. include Japan as a signatory to the treaty, then fook all, eh?
Carla Lane - the TV writer who dared to make women funny - dies aged 87
PUBLISHED
01/06/2016 | 06:26
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Television writer Carla Lane - who created several popular sitcoms including The Liver Birds - has died aged 87.
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Her family paid tribute to their "darling Carla" who "brought Liverpool to life".
They said: "With heavy hearts we said goodbye to our darling Carla today. But with smiles on our faces we also take this opportunity to reflect on her incredible achievements, all of which make us so unbelievably proud to be part of her family.
"We were very lucky that her quick wit, determination and passion brought Liverpool to life on screen for others to share."
Lane, who was born Romana Barrack, died at Stapely Care Home in her home town Liverpool on Tuesday.
Her sitcoms, which also included Butterflies, Bread and The Mistress, established Lane as one of the country's best-loved writers. Much of her work focused on women's lives - with characters ranging from frustrated housewives to working class matriarchs.
The Liver Birds series - based on flat-sharing Liverpudlian women - made famous the line: "'You dancing?', 'You asking?', 'I'm asking!', 'I'm dancing!'"
She continued writing into the 1990s and produced as well as wrote the BBC series Luv in 1993.
Lane was also a keen animal rights activist and had an animal rescue centre named after her three years ago near Liverpool.
Fran Ellis, founder and trustee at the Carla Lane Animals in Need Sanctuary in Melling, Merseyside, paid tribute to a "champion of animal welfare".
She said: " Carla was our friend but above all she was a passionate friend and ally to abused and abandoned animals.
"The world of animal welfare will be all the poorer for the loss of such a talented individual.
"We changed the name of our charity to recognise the work done by this special lady, her name will live on in all we do."
Lane transformed her home in West Sussex into a sanctuary for a variety of animals - looking after rescued farm animals, homeless cats and dogs and injured wildlife.
Ms Ellis said the writer and activist had moved back to her home town because she was unable to continue her work in West Sussex due to ill health.
She said: "Carla's sons Nigel and Carl gave her the greatest support and were determined that she would be able to carry on doing the work she loved so much. Saving the lives of vulnerable animals."
Lane received an OBE for services to writing in 1989 but returned it to Tony Blair in 2002 in disgust at animal cruelty.
In 1995, Lane was given a Royal Television Society award for her Outstanding Contribution to British Television.
She was also a close friend of Sir Paul McCartney's late wife Linda.
She once described their friendship as like that of "identical twins". Lane told the Observer in 2008: "We were friendship-struck from moment one. We used to sit on the lawn with our two puppies, kicking leaves, and looking at them.
"We were like two scientists trying to find out why people don't like animals, and what we'd do to them, if we only could."
Mark Linsey, director of BBC Studios, said: "Carla Lane was a supremely gifted writer of bitter-sweet family comedies, loved by generations.
"Her legacy is extraordinary. Our thoughts are with her family and friends at this time."
Press Association
^She was very prolific in the 70's-80's. "Bread" was also a pretty good sitcom for the time. RIP.
There are cups of tea being spilt all over Middle England.
Alan Devereux Dead: ‘The Archers’ Actor, Who Played Sid Perks, Dies Aged 75
He starred on the BBC Radio 4 soap for nearly five decades.
01/06/2016 08:29
‘The Archers‘ actor Alan Devereux has died at the age of 75.
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The veteran star of the BBC Radio 4 soap, who played Sid Perks for nearly 50 years, died from natural causes following a short illness on Sunday (29 May), the BBC reported.
Alan landed the role of teenage tearaway Sid in September 1963, and the character later went on to become the landlord of The Bull pub.
He remained on the show until the Sid’s death in 2010.
The show’s editor, Sean O’Connor, paid tribute to Alan, saying his voice was “instantly recognisable and full of rich character”.
“As an actor Alan was adept at both intense drama as well as dead-pan comedy. He was a wonderful member of The Archers’ family,” he said.
Former editor Vanessa Whitburn added: “Alan was a consummate and brilliant radio actor.
“Always a delight to work with, his versatility as publican Sid Perks meant that he created superb partnerships with the actresses who played all three of his wives.
“A modest man, I don’t think he knew just how talented he was.”
Alan’s character was involved in one of the show’s most controversial moments, when Sid had sex in the shower with Jolene in 2000, with the pair later going on to marry.
Alan’s real-life daughter, Tracy Jane White, also appeared on ‘The Archers’, playing Sid’s offspring Lucy for over 10 years.
Alan Devereux Dead: 'The Archers' Actor, Who Played Sid Perks, Dies Aged 75
Surfer Blood Guitarist Thomas Fekete Has Died
Surfer Blood guitarist Thomas Fekete has died. The news was shared by his wife, who said he passed away last night. The cause was complications from a rare form of cancer, which Fekete was diagnosed with last year. "I am full of comfort knowing that he is now free, and long for the day I get to be with him again," she wrote on the GoFundMe page established to assist with the costs of treatment. Update (11:31 a.m.): The band paid tribute to Fekete on Twitter. Find that below.
Fekete was a founding member of Surfer Blood, who formed in 2009. Surfer Blood released three studio albums and one EP, all of which Fekete played on. Last year, he left the band after being diagnosed with cancer. In November, the band enlisted Real Estate, Yo La Tengo, Guided by Voices, Yoko Ono, Interpol, and other artists in auctioning off unreleased songs to raise funds. In December, Fekete released Burner, a cassette of solo music.
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Surfer Blood Guitarist Thomas Fekete Has Died | Pitchfork
Muhammad Ali, 'The Greatest of All Time', Dead at 74
by JON SCHUPPE
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Muhammad Ali, the silver-tongued boxer and civil rights champion who famously proclaimed himself "The Greatest" and then spent a lifetime living up to the billing, is dead.
Ali died Friday at a Phoenix-area hospital, where he had spent the past few days being treated for respiratory complications, a family spokesman confirmed to NBC News. He was 74.
"After a 32-year battle with Parkinson's disease, Muhammad Ali has passed away at the age of 74. The three-time World Heavyweight Champion boxer died this evening," Bob Gunnell, a family spokesman, told NBC News.
Ali had suffered for three decades from Parkinson's Disease, a progressive neurological condition that slowly robbed him of both his legendary verbal grace and his physical dexterity. A funeral service is planned in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky.
Even as his health declined, Ali did not shy from politics or controversy, releasing a statement in December criticizing Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States. "We as Muslims have to stand up to those who use Islam to advance their own personal agenda," he said.
The remark bookended the life of a man who burst into the national consciousness in the early 1960s, when as a young heavyweight champion he converted to Islam and refused to serve in the Vietnam War, and became an emblem of strength, eloquence, conscience and courage. Ali was an anti-establishment showman who transcended borders and barriers, race and religion. His fights against other men became spectacles, but he embodied much greater battles.
Born Cassius Clay on Jan. 17, 1942 in Louisville, Kentucky, to middle-class parents, Ali started boxing when he was 12, winning Golden Gloves titles before heading to the 1960 Olympics in Rome, where he won a gold medal as a light heavyweight.
He turned professional shortly afterward, supported at first by Louisville business owners who guaranteed him an unprecedented 50-50 split in earnings. His knack for talking up his own talents — often in verse — earned him the dismissive nickname "the Louisville Lip," but he backed up his talk with action, relocating to Miami to train with the legendary trainer Angelo Dundee and build a case for getting a shot at the heavyweight title.
As his profile rose, Ali acted out against American racism. After he was refused services at a soda fountain counter, he said, he threw his Olympic gold medal into a river.
Recoiling from the sport's tightly knit community of agents and promoters, Ali found guidance instead from the Nation of Islam, an American Muslim sect that advocated racial separation and rejected the pacifism of most civil rights activism. Inspired by Malcolm X, one of the group's leaders, he converted in 1963. But he kept his new faith a secret until the crown was safely in hand.
That came the following year, when heavyweight champion Sonny Liston agreed to fight Ali. The challenger geared up for the bout with a litany of insults and rhymes, including the line, "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee." He beat the fearsome Liston in a sixth-round technical knockout before a stunned Miami Beach crowd. In the ring, Ali proclaimed, "I am the greatest! I am the greatest! I'm the king of the world."
The new champion soon renounced Cassius Clay as his "slave name" and said he would be known from then on as Muhammad Ali — bestowed by Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad. He was 22 years old.
The move split sports fans and the broader American public: an American sports champion rejecting his birth name and adopting one that sounded subversive.
Ali successfully defended his title six times, including a rematch with Liston. Then, in 1967, at the height of the Vietnam War, Ali was drafted to serve in the U.S. Army.
He'd said previously that the war did not comport with his faith, and that he had "no quarrel" with America's enemy, the Vietcong. He refused to serve.
"My conscience won't let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, some poor, hungry people in the mud, for big powerful America, and shoot them for what?" Ali said in an interview. "They never called me nigger. They never lynched me. They didn't put no dogs on me."
His stand culminated with an April appearance at an Army recruiting station, where he refused to step forward when his name was called. The reaction was swift and harsh. He was stripped of his boxing title, convicted of draft evasion and sentenced to five years in prison.
Released on appeal but unable to fight or leave the country, Ali turned to the lecture circuit, speaking on college campuses, where he engaged in heated debates, pointing out the hypocrisy of denying rights to blacks even as they were ordered to fight the country's battles abroad.
"My enemy is the white people, not Vietcongs or Chinese or Japanese," Ali told one white student who challenged his draft avoidance. "You my opposer when I want freedom. You my opposer when I want justice. You my opposer when I want equality. You won't even stand up for me in America for my religious beliefs and you want me to go somewhere and fight but you won't even stand up for me here at home."
Ali's fiery commentary was praised by antiwar activists and black nationalists and vilified by conservatives, including many other athletes and sportswriters.
His appeal took four years to reach the U.S. Supreme Court, which in June 1971 reversed the conviction in a unanimous decision that found the Department of Justice had improperly told the draft board that Ali's stance wasn't motivated by religious belief.
Toward the end of his legal saga, Georgia agreed to issue Ali a boxing license, which allowed him to fight Jerry Quarry, whom he beat. Six months later, at a sold-out Madison Square Garden, he lost to Joe Frazier in a 15-round duel touted as "the fight of the century." It was Ali's first defeat as a pro.
That fight began one of boxing's and sport's greatest rivalries. Ali and Frazier fought again in 1974, after Frazier had lost his crown. This time, Ali won in a unanimous decision, making him the lead challenger for the heavyweight title.
He took it from George Foreman later that year in a fight in Zaire dubbed "The Rumble in the Jungle," a spectacularly hyped bout for which Ali moved to Africa for the summer, followed by crowds of chanting locals wherever he went. A three-day music festival featuring James Brown and B.B. King preceded the fight. Finally, Ali delivered a historic performance in the ring, employing a new strategy dubbed the "rope-a-dope," goading the favored Foreman into attacking him, then leaning back into the ropes in a defensive stance and waiting for Foreman to tire. Ali then went on the attack, knocking out Foreman in the eighth round. The maneuver has been copied by many other champions since.
The third fight in the Ali-Frazier trilogy followed in 1975, the "Thrilla in Manila" that is now regarded as one of the best boxing matches of all time. Ali won in a technical knockout in the 15th round.
Ali successfully defended his title until 1978, when he was beaten by a young Leon Spinks, and then quickly took it back. He retired in 1979, when he was 37, but, seeking to replenish his dwindling personal fortune, returned in 1980 for a title match against Larry Holmes, which he lost. Ali lost again, to Trevor Berbick, the following year. Finally, Ali retired for good.
The following year, Ali was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease.
"I'm in no pain," he told The New York Times. "A slight slurring of my speech, a little tremor. Nothing critical. If I was in perfect health — if I had won my last two fights — if I had no problem, people would be afraid of me. Now they feel sorry for me. They thought I was Superman. Now they can go, 'He's human, like us. He has problems.' ''
Even as his health gradually declined, Ali — who switched to more mainstream branches of Islam — threw himself into humanitarian causes, traveling to Lebanon in 1985 and Iraq in 1990 to seek the release of American hostages. In 1996, he lit the Olympic flame in Atlanta, lifting the torch with shaking arms. With each public appearance he seemed more feeble, a stark contrast to his outsized aura. He continued to be one of the most recognizable people in the world.
He traveled incessantly for many years, crisscrossing the globe in appearances in which he made money but also pushed philanthropic causes. He met with presidents, royalty, heads of state, the Pope. He told "People" magazine that his largest regret was not playing a more intimate role in the raising of his children. But he said he did not regret boxing. "If I wasn't a boxer, I wouldn't be famous," he said. "If I wasn't famous, I wouldn't be able to do what I'm doing now."
In 2005, President George W. Bush honored Ali with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and his hometown of Louisville opened the Muhammad Ali Center, chronicling his life but also as a forum for promoting tolerance and respect.
Divorced three times and the father of nine children — one of whom, Laila, become a boxer — Ali married his last wife, Yolanda "Lonnie" Williams, in 1986; they lived for a long time in Berrien Springs, Michigan, then moved to Arizona.
In recent years, Ali's health began to suffer dramatically. There was a death scare in 2013, and last year he was rushed to the hospital after being found unresponsive. He recovered and returned to his new home in Arizona.
In his final years, Ali was barely able to speak. Asked to share his personal philosophy with NPR in 2009, Ali let his wife read his essay:
"I never thought of the possibility of failing, only of the fame and glory I was going to get when I won," Ali wrote. "I could see it. I could almost feel it. When I proclaimed that I was the greatest of all time, I believed in myself, and I still do."
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/sports/m...ead-74-n584776
^Sad news, but he had a rough road for years. RIP.
RIP to the "Greatest of All Time."
RIP. True hero.
I remember when in my early teens playing truant from school to watch the "Thriller in Manila" and the "Rumble in the Jungle".
The fight in Zaire was the first fight I watched on colour TV.
Didn't understand the mans conversion to Islam but in 1974 I didn't really give a shit about his beliefs as long as he could "float like a butterfly and sting like a bee".
RIP Mr Clay.