Some Musings on the Dead (2017)

If 2017 couldn’t (cross fingers) live up to the rampant terror of 2016, that’s only because nothing could. Muhammad Ali, David Bowie and Terry Wogan could only die once, after all. 2017, however, tried to follow this with quantity. In the days when I thought I’d have time to write my annual In Memoriam, the list had reached over 700 noteworthy people before I gave up the ghost. 

In particular this year the Reaper seems to have had it in for my childhood personally. So farewell Paddington, Cleggy, Batman, Siegfried Farnon, lots of Doctor Who alumni, etc. As I became ludicrously busy this year, I ran out of time to do my usual obits, and whilst the long read versions are the most popular, I felt it unkind and morbid to cherry pick a list. And, besides, anyone knows I could write 4000 words on why John Hurt was great. We know these things to be self-evident. A good 400-500 words on why we should spare a thought for, say, Jan Pruitt, matters just as much, if not more.

So, with that said, here are some musings on the dead. A few thoughts, here and there, off the top of my head, on some folk we lost this year. There may be big names missing, and names you don’t know included, but it’s deliberately aimed to get a flavour of the year. Had we but world enough and time, everyone would have had their spot, but then, had we that, everyone would get the David Bowie treatment. 

The BBC will produce their We Remember video later today, and in doing it a week early, almost certainly jinx others. See last years George Michael, Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, Richard Adasms, Liz Smith, Vera Rubin and Piers Sellers among others. I hope to avoid that by making clear this is not a definitive Memorial. Its just musings. 

Without further ado, some musings:

- After his retirement from the House of Commons (he was one of the many SNP MPs who lost their seat in the 1979 election), George Thompson was ordained as a priest.

- George Kosana’s role in horror film history looms large despite its focal brevity. He plays the Sherrif who appears at the end of Night of the Living Dead. We presume that he has arrived to save the day, only to see his men kill our sole survivor. When he wrote this ending, George Romero (who also died in 2017) had not intended it to be a political point. He wrote his characters race blind. But with the casting of the wonderful Duane Jones, the finish took on a darker, stronger tone. We’ve spent the entire movie fearing the living dead, and then come face to face with the 1960s. Why fear the fantastical, when real life is that more horrifying? For this, Night of the Living Dead is the great American horror film.


- Jan Pruitt, who sadly died of cancer aged only 63, founded and ran the North Texas Food Bank for many years.


- Nicky Coia was the owner of Coia’s Café, a familiar landmark in the East End of Glasgow.


- Peter Sarstedt’s Where Do You Go To My Lovely was once called the worst song ever performed by John Peel. Quite a grave comment from a man who found greatness in The Undertones.


- Michael Chamberlain fought for far too long to clear his and his family’s name of wrong doing when his daughter Azaria was killed by dingos in 1980.


- Despite being relatively low key (he was one-half of the cringe worthy named tag team Well Dunn in the 1990s), Timothy Well had a sort of notoriety beyond his fame. He had two fake death notices, so that when he actually died, many fans assumed it was another.


- Clare Hollingworth was a legend. Beyond her career which was acclaimed by all, but let’s resume again: pioneering female journalist, scooped the news that WW2 had started, front line war journalist during WW2, uncovered atrocities during the French/Algeria War, front line in Vietnam and Cambodia, and uncovered Philby as the Third Man in the spy group, among many others. But ignore that for a second. In the late 1930s, in Poland, while liaisoning with the passport office, Hollingworth used her British status to help fast track thousands of refugee passports, to get Jewish people out of Poland and surrounding countries before the Nazis stream rolled in. It is estimated she had a hand in saving thousands of lives. This incredible work is summed up in 2 paragraphs in her autobiography Frontline. What an incredible woman. When she turned 104, she was asked her biggest regret? “Twitter coming along too late for me!” We salute you, Clare!


- It is hard to begrudge Ronald Buxton his brief time as an MP. True, it was he who beat Patrick Gordon Walker in the Leyton by-election, but there none of the horrific racism that besmirched the Smethwick election a year previously. Indeed, Gordon Walker pointed out the campaign had been a clean and honourable one. Buxton knew Leyton however, having stood in the seat for the previous three elections. He lost the seat in 1966.


- Tommy Allsup did well to reach 85, especially when you realise he had a 50/50 chance of dying in 1959. He tossed a coin with Ritchie Valens for the last seat on a plane on 3rd February 1959. The plane that crashed, killing everyone on board, including Valens, The Big Bopper and the great Buddy Holly. On such twists of fate is life determined. A well-regarded guitarist, Allsup was the last surviving Cricket.


- James Ferguson-Lees was one of the world’s foremost experts on the Peregrine Falcon.


- Kenyon Wright was a lifelong campaigner for Scottish devolution, and chairman of the Scottish Constitutional Convention.


- Faig Jabbarov was little known in Britain, but not only did he win the Azeri Footballer of the Year award, he was a defender who helped his club, Kapaz, win the Azeri league undefeated in 1997. The only time that has happened.


- Anthony King’s relationship with Shirley Williams has sometimes been characterised as an affair by the papers. I find this unfair in the extreme: King was a widower, and Williams husband had done a runner with another woman. They remained lifelong friends. His summary of the 1997 election will go down in history: “this isn’t a landslide, it’s an asteroid hitting the earth and wiping out all life!”


- Forget his luck and issues at England. Graham Taylor was a remarkably underrated football manager (3 promotions in 4 years with Watford, plus achievements at Aston Villa) but more importantly, he was an underrated human being. Countless tales of his kindness or decency hit social media after news of his premature death, but one that strikes is his helping Elton John out of serious addiction. The song Someone Saved My Life Tonight, Elton has dedicated to Taylor in live performances. Graham was only 72 when he died of a heart attack, and whilst it was a great loss for British football, it was a greater loss for British society.


- Zhou Youguang spent his 111 years on the planet well, imo. Not only did he create Pinyin, a simplified written version of Mandarin which widely increased Chinese literacy rates. Not only did he suffer at the hands of Mao, and survive. Not only were his books banned in his homeland. How did he spend his final days, at advanced age? As an outspoken critic of the Chinese government! Do not go gently in that good light, eh?


- Eugene Cernan walked on the moon, and sang about it. That’s how I like my science. Walking on the moon is incredible, Cernan and Schmidt showed the world the giddy excitement of it.


- Wayne Barrett was Donald Trump’s biggest rival. An investigate journalist, Barrett wrote several books on Trump and his dealings. He took his own vow never to see Trump become President very seriously, dying the day before the inauguration of cancer!


- Actor Gordon Kaye’s comic timing was sublime. He could portray an entire scene through Rene’s world weary face.


- John Hurt was one of my favourite actors. Too many great roles to mention, but let’s bring in The Shout and The Hit, which got forgotten in the avalanche of justified praise. Bloody pancreatic cancer. I am also fond of his role as the ill fated Ward in Scandal, the film about the Profumo Affair. In particular, the bit at the end, in court, when he suddenly realises he is being made a scapegoat for the entire thing and yells out “This isn’t fair!” sticks in the mind. Ward might not have been a very sympathetic character in life, but he was right there, it wasn’t fair.


- Sometimes it felt like there wasn’t an opinion Tam Daylell didn’t disagree with on general principle. Whilst he could be cheered on safely or groaned at as he attacked a point of view in forensic detail (depending on your own view on the subject), there was no doubting his overall integrity and honesty in his views.


- David Rose was one of those underrated figures in British TV history. A floor manager on 1984 (1954), he was the original producer of Z-Cars, casting most of the key roles, and later became BBC Head of Regional Drama, giving early breaks to Alan Bleasdale and many others. He also helped found FilmFour.


- Before his untimely death at the age of 47, Mark Spitz was an acclaimed music journalist, who wrote biographies of David Bowie and Mick Jagger.


- Raymond Smullyan’s philosophy touched the hearts of millions, but This Book Needs No Title contains one of my favourite quotes about life: “why should I worry about dying? It’s not going to happen in my lifetime!”


- Steve Sumner scored New Zealand’s first ever World Cup goal. It was in 1982, against Scotland. Well, of course it was…


- Sir Peter Mansfield, one of our great physicists, won the Nobel Prize in 2003 for his work on advancing MRI techniques. Not bad for someone told, aged 15 by a teacher, that he had no future in science!


- Your mileage may vary on Hancock’s Half Hour and Steptoe and Son being the greatest of British TV comedies. I find Hancock’s Half Hour holds up remarkably well. That they are still in the debate, however, speaks highly of the superior scripts by Ray Galton and the now late Alan Simpson.


- Chavo Guerrero Sr was a fine pro-wrestler, overshadowed by his brother Eddie (and to an extent, his son Chavo who had a lengthy run in the WWE). However, he was once asked by a friend of a friend for his opinion on their Hall of Fame ballot, and Chavo Sr sat down and discussed it in great detail for 90 minutes, unprompted. This sums up my main memories of the man.


- The third ever WWF Champion, Ivan Koloff, isn’t in the WWE Hall of Fame. He wasn’t on the outs with the company, and actively wanted to be in it. His omission is staggering and comes across, however intended, as a deliberate snub. And now, of course, when he does go in, he wont be able to see it for himself.


- Chris Wiggins was a character actor with many hits to his CV, but for children of a certain age (hi) he is the voice of Cornelius in Babar. Perhaps it is a shame to reduce a Genie Award winning actor to that, but being part of a child’s joy is no small feat, imo.


- BBC journalist Steve Hewlett’s interviews with Eddie Mair and Guardian articles, both on the subject of his imminent death from cancer, were highly moving and philosophical, and worth a listen.


- Much has been said about David Waddington's tenure as Home Secretary, but let’s not forget the fact that, as defence lawyer, he cocked up a murder case badly, putting forward a plea without permission and forgetting to include crucial evidence, and let an innocent man, Stefan Kiszko, spend 16 years in prison. It lead to Kiszko’s early death too. One might uncharitably say he was as good a Home Secretary as he was defence lawyer.


- Tommy Gemmell is, to date, the only Scottish footballer to score in two European Cup finals.


- One of France’s greatest footballers, Raymond Kopa won three European Cups in the 1950s with Real Madrid.


- Ronald Drever’s work on gravitational waves, which started with his post doc at Glasgow, deserved the Nobel Prize. Indeed, it won it this year, but sadly Drever died after a long period of ill health in March and was thus ineligible for the prize shared by his living colleagues.


- Boxing trainer Lou Duva’s greatest achievement was clearly his role as personal trainer at WrestleMania 2 for Roddy Piper before his boxing match with Mr T. Pre-determined? As if Vince McMahon would promote pre-determined matches…


- Anibal Ruiz’s Paraguay never got the rewards it deserved. In the 2004 Copa America, they beat Brazil, only to go out via a goal which came from a deflected pass. At the 2006 World Cup, they were a long way from home, and got none of the breaks in tight games against England and Sweden. He responded to a weather related postponement while assistant manager of Puebla, by dying of a heart attack. Bit drastic.


- Colin Dexter brought a lightness of touch to the detective novel which few beyond Christie have successfully achieved. His Morse is fallible, flawed and yet usually solves the case through sheer determination. The books produced an award winning TV show, which cemented Jon Thaw’s interpretation of the character on the national psyche.


- Apparently Ronnie Moran, serving as Liverpool coach at the time, would, at the end of a season, put the medals won out on a table and tell the squad to pick one up if they felt they deserved it. Of course, such man management has its flaws: people like me, for example, wouldn’t feel like picking up a medal then even if they’d just had 50 goal season!


- Sib Hashian’s drum work can be heard at the heart of Boston’s More Than A Feeling, one of the songs of the 70s.


- Peter Shotton was not only one of the last surviving Quarrymen, but also a lifelong friend and confidante of John Lennon.


- In a roundabout way, David Storey is responsible for the success of Doctor Who. It was Storey who wrote This Sporting Life. Both the book and the film. The filming led to the casting of William Hartnell in a small role. Verity Lambert seeing Hartnell in the film led to her casting him as the first Doctor Who. Hartnell’s role as the Doctor was instrumentally in cementing the show beyond a few weeks curiosity into becoming a bit of a juggernaut. So, really, it’s all down to David Storey. I’ve no idea if he were a fan of the show.


- Ronald Hines had a highly successful career. Early roles in Sink the Bismarck and Whistle Down the Wind were followed by appearances in all the usual TV fare: Emergency Ward 10, Avengers, Armchair Theatre, etc. He was the dad in Sugar and Spice (an episode of Shadows of Fear) which still stands as one of the most unnerving pieces of TV I have ever seen. He narrated Jackanory, was William Cecil in Elizabeth R, and was the star of A Woman Sobbing and several other BBC Play of the Months. He was the Foreign Secretary in Yes Prime Minister, an Inspector in Bergerac, and Sir Bernard in David Suchet’s adaptation of The Kidnapped Prime Minister. He starred opposite Jeremy Brett’s Sherlock Holmes, and even into the 1990s, he was in Casualty and starred in the 90s Middlemarch mini-series as Standish. As pointed out above, he had a long and successful career as an actor in the popular spotlight. This makes it all the bigger shame that his death, in March, was completely ignored by the press.


- Christopher Morahan directed The Jewel in the Crown. Tim Pigott-Smith starred in it. They died on the same day. Pigott-Smith’s last role was as Prince/King Charles in the TV adaptation of the play King Charles III. Having been nominated for both a Tony and an Olivier Award for the stage role, I already suspect he will be nominated for a BAFTA for the TV version, and can’t help but wonder if he’s already won it.


- Toby Smith, the keyboardist, not only performed as part of Jamiroquai, he co-wrote two of their biggest hits: Virtual Insanity and Deeper Underground.


- Eric Pringle wrote The Awakening, a tight two part Doctor Who story from the 1980s, which breezed by so well and memorably that he was never brought back to the show. A shame.


- While not gaining much fame beyond his session play, Bruce Langhorne does have a key to fame, for he is the Mr Tambourine Man that Dylan’s song is about.


- While Sean Scanlan was a recognisable face on TV, one of his last roles was in Cbeebies Katie Morag as the grandfather, making him recognisable to a younger audience.


- Matt Anoia’I (aka Rosey) was overshadowed somewhat by his own family. His brother is a three time pro-wrestling World Champion, and his cousins include Rikishi (Hall of Famer), Yokozuna (former WWF Champion, Hall of Famer) and The Rock (The Rock). However, as a tag wrestling specialist, Rosey was highly underrated, and won the WWE Tag titles with Greg Helms in 2005 as a spoof superhero act.


- Robert M Pirsig’s book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a good read. Some folk love the philosophy and skim the motorcycle bits. Others love the motorcycle bits and skim the philosophy. As a book written to aid recovery from a health relapse, I particularly like the bits of father/son getting together, despite all the flaws in the way. The postscript, when Pirsig reveals his son is now dead, is a kick in the guts.


- Despite being one of the most recognisable figures in his sport, and appearing in a Disney film, Sasha Lakovic got no British obituaries on his death.


- The scene towards the end of Silence of the Lambs, with fast cuts between an FBI raid on a suspects house, and the killer answering his door, is remarkably well done, as is the killer punchline to the scenario. With moments like that, Jonathan Demme showed an eye for the cinematic flair. With his response to LBGT sadness over the villain’s motivation being that he made Philadelphia next, he also showed an art for cinematic listening.


- Richard Dalby produced a number of ghost story anthologies in the 1990s, and helped keep some names in circulation like Wakefield, AJ Alan and Rosemary Timperley. His books mixed old classics and new stories with ease, and his “For Christmas” series stands up now as it did a quarter of a century ago.


- There are earworms, and then there is Robert Miles’s One and One. Sure, he had Children too, but it’s the song with lyrics that will now be stuck in my head all day.


- Geoffrey Bayldon might well be the 20th Century’s most underrated British actor. Any man who can move from children’s TV to Hammer Horror in a flash without any difficulty, playing heroes or villains like it was second nature, was an actor of the finest quality. Be it To Sir With Love, or Shakespeare, or Asylum, or yes, Catweazle, Bayldon was there and in top form. His performance in Doctor Who outshines everything else in that story – Creature from the Pit – and his timing is clearly seen to have Tom Baker trying not to corpse at times. A legend.


- John Cygan was one of those faces on American TV, but we know him best as the man given an etiquette lesson by Frasier Crane in High Crane Drifter.


- Powers Boothe is very good as the villain in Tombstone. One of the stands outs of that particular film, alongside the shock reveal that Val Kilmer could act.


- While others are remembered fondly for their songs or films, few who went this year actually saved the world. Stanislav Petrov, on deciding that a computer error was a computer error and not radar evidence of an American nuclear strike in 1983, elected not to respond to it. Thus saving the world from nuclear disaster. Thanks, man!


- It’s sobering to think that there is now a footballer, in Cheick Tiote, that me and Sadie have watched play at a World Cup together, and is now dead.


- I loved Andy Cunningham’s Bodger and Badger as a kid. Mum hated it. Everyone: “everybody knows, Badger loves MASHED POTATO…”


- Errol Christie, Helen Fawkes and Paul Van Zandvliet all showed considerable fight against terminal illness. Rugby star Van Zandvliet suffered from the double whammy of cancer of the pancreas and glioblastoma (the worst type of brain cancer), yet continued to raise money for charity until early summer. Journalist Fawkes outlived original prognosis by 3 or 4 years. As for Christie, a top British boxing contender of the 80s, his lung cancer had an outlier’s chance of a year’s survival. He made it to 27 months, despite having over 200 malignant tumours inside him. Inspiring folk, the lot of them.


- Despite being a former leader of the SNP, Gordon Wilson was critical of Alex Salmond’s Independence push, claiming it had failed to do the basic homework and show the benefits of independence. As much as Wilson likely had a permanent huff about his replacement and the fight of 1990, you have to admit he did have a point.


- Ulli Lommel’s films have some of the lowest ratings on IMDB. One review of a film states that, after seeing it, the reviewer and his wife were so angry, they had to shag for a few hours to get over it. And that’s a bad review?


- So much has been said about Roger Moore since his death earlier this year. Of how he fought to get better roles for women in the Bond franchise. Of his legendary niceness to fans. Of his charity work and so on. Instead of reiterating all of this, I’ll point to a non-Bond role. If you haven’t seen The Man Who Haunted Himself, you should. Not only is a great low budget British horror film, but in a dual role, ,Moore proves his acting chops and is bloody good as a man on the edge. Also, while many would claim Sean Connery to be the Bond (Daniel Craig has his fans now, and we contrarians will point to the quality of the Dalton films), I would go on record that the majority of the Roger Moore Bond films are the most child friendly. There is a lot of genuinely horrific stuff going on in the Connery era, and, while the Moore era brings up problematic stuff at times, films like Moonraker are, on the whole, mostly OK to enjoy as a child. If you ask me I’d wish the entire series was more like Moonraker and less like You Only Live Twice.


- The role of Norman Clegg was written with Peter Sallis in mind, but nobody told the actor on the day he showed up for his audition. He showed up in a tatty old suit, un-ironed trousers, and looking like he’d not had a square meal in some time. As the producer wondered if his ideal actor was so down on his luck, Sallis spoke: “This was my de-mob outfit. I thought it’d fit the character?” Yes, Peter Sallis was so suited to play the role of Norman Clegg, that the outfit for Norman Clegg came out of Peter Sallis’s own wardrobe. And you know, that show, Last of the Summer Wine. Which, incidentally, is great. People fondly remember Bill Owen’s pratfalls, or Brian Wilde’s… Brian Wilde in a sitcom spot. If that shot didn’t have Peter Sallis’s immaculate comic timing to anchor the whole thing, it wouldn’t have lasted a year. And whilst I joke about him playing himself above, he was a remarkably talented actor, and that’s the greatest sign of it: that he made the whole thing look effortless.


- Actor Roger Smith’s death at the age of 84 was impressive in itself, given it took place nearly 50 years after a brain colt had pretty much ended his acting career.


- If it ain’t Adam West, it ain’t Batman.


- You might think I am too young to have known Brian Cant in Playdays, and that I know him best for being exterminated by the Daleks in Doctor Who. You would be exactly right.


- Back in the 1980s, Michael Bond was on a London tube when he heard two old ladies talking about the Paddington Books. “Who wrote them?” said one. He was about to say, when the other went: “Oh that Michael Bond, he’s dead now of course!” Slightly premature, and a dozen books in between that and his actual demise. He claimed Sadie inspired one of his last books – Love from Paddington. Lovely man. Sadly missed.


- Mum’s go to anecdote on Barry Norman was during the Oscars ceremony when he spotted Steven Speilberg getting up out of his chair to accept Best Picture for Saving Private Ryan, before the reveal they’d lost to some comedy about Shakespeare. Norman was a fine analyst of film, and a canny judge of talents, see his promotion of George Lucas pre-Star Wars. I remember, back in my more binary teenage days, getting hold of 100 Best Films of the Century. Younger me was stunned to find Norman, who I had pegged as one of the good guys, had named the reprehensible Birth of a Nation among his 100. So I read the analysis, which points out all the standard film techniques invented in the film. In a piece he admits he has no great desire to watch the film because of its horrendous racism, he finishes (and I paraphrase): “There can be no doubting D.W. Griffith’s genius and importance to the history of film. Sadly there can be no doubting his bigotry, either.” I had prejudged the master. Lesson learned.


- Chuck Blazer was the FIFA executive turned whistleblower. He died of cancer before any imprisonment went his way. He was known for being somewhat rotund, and moved around in a mobility scooter. Anyhow, when he was divorcing his wife, he got custody of their pet parrot. Her response? She taught it to swear at him.


- Barbara Sinatra was married to Frank Sinatra and one of the Marx Brothers. Not a lot of people can say that!


- Whilst he had a strong career on Irish TV, perhaps it was apt that Peader Lamb became best known on British TV for his role as a farmer, Fargo Boyle, in Father Ted.


- Lofi Zadeh’s death had Wiki in denial. One Wiki editor refused the word of his own family, the US Ambassador to Azerbaijan, French newspapers, and so on, as credible evidence of his death. As the man behind fuzzy logic, I think he’d have approved!


- Victor Pemberton likely script-edited The Moonbase. Victor Pemberton, we salute you. His Fury from the Deep is top notch stuff too.


- The death of Jim Marrs, conspiracy theory book author, has ruined one of my favourite bits of topical humour. That being, that his book claimed the JFK conspiracy team could bump off Popes, Mafia dons, and 1 President, but left a single journalist alive for 50 years.