RoverAndOut

You're telling me that's more noteworthy than his composition of Grandad, which must be some kind of DL Anthem given it's singer?

Watched that speech last week when it was on, in absolutely blistering form. Force of nature, imagine her as headteacher of the current Tory cabinet. She'd have them crying for their mummies.

Next election isn't due til 2024 (we'll see) but in that case he'd be nigh on 75. Party moving back to the centre, his moment in the limelight at an end, I can see him stepping down next time around if this drags on. But, his parliamentary career is the only thing keeping him relevant, so maybe not. I could see him winning as an independent, mind. Given his majority, even if he lost half his total to a new Labour candidate, he'd still probably have enough to see them off, unless Labour could nick some votes from other parties.

Just seen this: it said something at the time about one of the support boats was using some kind of device to break the surface tension of the water to reduce the force of the impact. No broken bones and he went to hospital as a precaution. Still a nutter, mind.

Thanks for posting this, really fascinating to listen to. Because it happened without footage and there's been so much written and dramatised about it, it's easy to forget that this really happened - hearing, rather than reading, eyewitness accounts is so much more powerful.

Never considered that, good thinking. Thought it had more to do with Malcolm not being a very regnal name.

I only read about this recently, so it's fresh in my head, but actually that's one really complicated story. Patty Duke (Sean's mum) had a relationship with Desi Arnaz Jr. (son of Lucille Ball) which attracted a lot of publicity. They broke it off, after opposition from his mum (he was only 17 when it began) and shortly after she discovered she was pregnant. To avoid a scandal, she married rock promoter Michael Tell, whom she'd also been involved with, but it ended almost immediately and she claimed for years that it was never consummated. She married John Astin when Sean was 18 months old (having been in a relationship with him for all of Sean's life) and Sean grew up knowing him as his father. When he was a teenager, Patty informed Sean that Desi Arnaz Jr. was his biological father and the two became close. But then in his 20s, he got wind that Michael Tell might be his father. Patty admitted to him she'd had a sexual relationship with Tell too, and Astin did a paternity test to find out the truth. It proved that, biologically, he was Michael Tell's son. He has since developed a relationship with Tell too, while still remaining close to the father that raised him (Astin), the father who believed he was his (Arnaz) as well as his stepfather (his mother's last husband, Mike Pearce). As Sean says: "Desi Arnaz Jr. loves me, and I love him. We are so close...Science tells me...that he's not my biological father. Science tells me that Mike Tell is...I can call any of them on the phone any time I want to. John, Desi, Mike or Papa Mike...my four dads." Anyway, wholly irrelevant really, just an interesting titbit. But I agree he's big enough to have his own thread.

Very true, but I believe in Scotland there was quite a lot of (fairly pointless) controversy when she took the throne as the pillar boxes carried EIIR in Scotland and as far as they're concerned they've never had a Queen called Elizabeth. That's what Paul's referring to (I think). Post boxes in Scotland are different to the rest of the UK to this day. It was known as the Pillar Box War. Officially, apparently, we take the highest regnal number, whether that's Scottish or British. So in the future we might have King Malcolm V, King David III and King Robert IV, despite never having had any of those before.

Good work @YoungWillz! But I helped with the ages at least! Job well done then, but they're still an obscure group!

So, not had much success in tying down whether they're all alive or not and a lot of this is tenuous but bear with me... Allan Twigg - the article you posted suggests he lives on the Isle of Wight, playing with a band called Skybus. Found them on Facebook, friends of one of the band gave me Allan but his profile appears to be private or barely used as there's little info on there. There is a picture from a couple of years ago of him with a woman and it says he's married, so I had a look and found this, which would work: Tracing that back, this looks certain to be right: No word on whether he's alive or dead though. Interestingly, the Coventry Telegraph article suggests he adopted Allan as a stage name but maybe not? Funny coincidence if not surely..? Mike Crowshaw - the article refers to him as Mike Croshaw and searching for that name brought up Michael Croshaw, a musician from Coventry. Barely anything more on it than that as far as I can see, and it hasn't been updated since 2016, so I don't know what to make of that. I came across this as a likely birth in Coventry: Steve Bray - judging from your birthday if not year for him, I'm assuming you came across his Facebook page? Irritatingly not friends with any of his bandmates and strangely his birth doesn't seem to come up easily. If he is indeed from Coventry, he either wasn't born there, or had a different name at birth - I can see why you haven't tied him down. Kevin Harris - according to this that you may have seen (as you said, there isn't too much out there), Kevin Harris moved to London and has been a recording engineer for many years. A search on Facebook threw up this picture from a band called 'Laura and the Flakes' with Kevin Harris at West Eleven Recording Studio. I'll let you judge if that's our guy but seems likely. He doesn't appear to have a Facebook page (hasn't liked the picture or commented underneath). Anyway, even if no DOB has been found, he's almost certainly alive as the picture's from September this year! David Reid is too generic without more info I suspect. Hope this is useful!

In Kenny's defence, the video does claim to show Real Clear Politics' 7-day average...which is now down to 6 points. After 2016, I'm reading nothing into polls, whatever they say.

Glad we agree then. Much more does need to be done, in the grand scheme of things individuals going carbon neutral, etc. isn't going to make the slightest difference, it needs a complete change in thinking about how we power the world and how we live. Funding is key, but governments are more focused on short-term measures than the bigger picture. Even the near-annual floods that affect your part of the country aren't enough to make them think 'maybe we should be taking this more seriously and doing whatever we can to reduce this risk'. They put some wellies on, apologise to you and say it will be better next time, then 3 years later it happens again. There's a difference between stopping climate change entirely (which is a natural phenomenon affected by lots of things) and reducing it's acceleration by altering our way of doing things to be cleaner and more ecologically friendly. Governments are starting to wake up but they're not acting fast enough. Anyway, I apologise for my comment, it was glib.

We've been here for a ludicrously short amount of time in the history of the world. Humans have never faced or survived a mass extinction event (if, indeed, that is what is ongoing, as many scientists suggest - these things don't happen overnight but over ) - the last such extinction wiped out the dinosaurs. An ice age, probably, an extinction, possibly not. Anyway, nothing to affect you in your lifetime, eh?

Apart from, by the very definition, their celebrity.

I don't know whether Trump wants to win again or not - if he didn't, why has he rushed back to the campaign trail so quickly and so frequently? He had a gilt-edged excuse to take a week off but has refused (and it's not a campaign team decision, he does what he likes and they'd probably stand a better chance of winning if he stayed at home). I entirely agree though that if Biden wins he's got a thankless task ahead. Trump has seemingly made it his mission in the past month to discredit any response to the virus and anybody involved in it (Dr Fauci in particular is getting pilloried). That attitude isn't going to go away on November 4th, all his supporters are going to continue ignoring social distancing and masks and will resist any increased restrictions Biden tries to bring in. The FBI have just thwarted a plot to kidnap the Governor of Michigan and put her on trial for treason for trying to bring in a state-wide lockdown. Those nutters aren't going to go away just because Biden's elected - if Trump had acted responsibly at any point in this crisis, particularly after contracting Covid himself, the USA would be a lot better off than it is. But of course once he loses, it doesn't matter if the things he did make Biden's life difficult, it'll be his fault if deaths increase and he can't wrestle it back. I agree wholeheartedly with @Toast, the Tories lack of support is not due to the virus but their incompetence. The suggestion they were widely popular is also suspect: they won solely on a Get Brexit Done slogan, helped by a woefully weak Labour party. It got them a majority but as time's gone on they've proven themselves increasingly incompetent and that's not being partisan in the middle of a national crisis. The only reason there's talk of a new national lockdown (and I talk as someone who's in Tier 3 restrictions) is because Test and Trace continues to be a disaster and the public are rapidly losing trust in the government's advice, which changes even more regularly than weekly. They failed to get on top of the virus early enough, they lumbered from one crisis to another, they dismantled the virus response service (Public Health England) and replaced it with a businesswoman with no medical experience, there's no evidence of planning and/or communication (when North East restrictions were imposed last week, one Sunderland MP was informed of the meeting a minute after it started and, having joined, informed the meeting that there were THREE MPs from Sunderland, not just her. In one of the Greater Manchester briefings, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, MP for Wigan, wasn't told it was happening). Lancashire was installed at Tier 2 on Monday and by Thursday we were moving up to Tier 3, despite having been under enhanced restrictions throughout the summer - those Tier 3 restrictions, by the way, are less restrictive in some ways than the ones we had before! Anyway, as you say, none of this is relevant to discussion of Trump. On the final point, it's all well and good saying we're overreacting, but it's impossible to say the long-term threat at this moment in time. The longest somebody has possibly lived post-Covid so far is 10 months, if they caught it in December (let's say a year if the suggestions it emerged slightly earlier are true). The long-term effects of this disease are entirely unknowable, there are some very odd symptoms (sticky blood for instance) that are still being explored. I hope you're right and that in 10 years, we all think we overreacted and that the threat wasn't as bad as it could have been and that we can prepare much better for the next pandemic whenever it comes, but who knows. The consequences are pretty severe any way you cut it. 'Out of an abundance of caution' - has someone told the rest of her family what that means?

Ok, lots to work through here and after a preliminary look, my first thought is that I'm struggling to be sure that any of these three women are the same person! Obviously it's difficult given the time that's passed.to compare the woman on the tv clip with the woman in Australia and the woman on Facebook but they all look quite radically different. The Facebook woman *I think* is now back in the UK (lots of references to Bristol among the friends on the profile, etc.) but how that matters to the story I'm not sure. One loose end I can immediately get rid of though is Patricia Ann Faraday - she's not your woman. On the directors page on Company House, it lists her and 'Peter Faraday' as directors: Peter Faraday married Patricia A Smith in 1994, I've popped the Ancestry marriage record below. It seems too perfect for the Shoalhaven Ann Faraday to be the same one, given that's where they were living and I suppose maybe she did end up working as a school cleaner, but I agree it seems unlikely. John Wren-Lewis is himself an enigma. I'm not sure he was born with that name - there's no one called Wren-Lewis born according to the GRO records. There is a John W Lewis born in Wandsworth in March q. 1923 that looks promising, but it would mean he was 83 not 82 when he died (not beyond the realms of possibility). That said, the record of his death here says he's "John Peter Wren-Lewis", so we may be back to square 1. With them travelling so much, it's difficult to pin down Fiona too - no idea where she was born for a start or when. The reference to her that wiki uses is from an academic paper she wrote referencing a bus journey with John and Fiona in India in 1980. There's no mention of how old Fiona is and also the wording is interesting: 'Sometime in 1980, John Wren-Lewis, my daughter Fiona and I found ourselves on a crowded Indian bus' - note, "my daughter" not "our daughter" - is Fiona not John's? Not sure if that means she was born pre-1970 when they got together (but then how old does that make Ann?!) For what it's worth, the Fiona on the Facebook profile doesn't look (to me) at least nearly 40 - which she'd have to be to have been around in 1980, even as a baby. Anyway, that's my preliminary thoughts - maybe she just became a cleaner in an Australian school who wants her tv coverage restoring..?

I found a reference on Twitter to Cleveland still working as a tribute act in 2015, but the link broke when it was clicked. His absence is odd, but otherwise, there's no evidence he's dead anywhere. Glad to help. I'm leaving Rose Royce to @YoungWillz if he's game - I'm better on the domestic front I reckon. Been looking into Sad Cafe - I assume you're aware Ian Wilson is still performing as Sad Cafe? Absolutely nothing online about a birthday though, which is frustrating. John Stimpson is far more slippery.

Ok, so here is a record that I think is Hugh Paul's death on Ancestry. His wife Julie's Twitter is based in Tyneside and this death is in Tyne and Wear. Puts his birth in 1955 and his death in 2013, a year before that tweet. I don't have access to Scotland's People so can't do any digging there, but copious stalking of Cleveland Jr.'s Facebook page threw up links which led to this page for Howard McLeod. From there, I found this page for Derek Henderson, which contains this photo from 2017: Howard on the left, Cleveland second in (so still alive in 2017?), Derek and Owen Wisdom. Can't add much else since they're Scottish-based. Strange that Cleveland is nowhere to be seen in any pictures on his son's or ex-wife's Facebook pages. He's originally from the Caribbean - wonder if he's gone back?

Goddammit. I saw Herbert Kretzmer's death this morning and thought nothing more of it. I spotted cricketer John Reid's death on here and realised he was probably a hit for people in Game 1 (he was - for you and Deathray) but it turned out it didn't make any difference to who had completed (you had already finished and Deathers still needs a Dr Who death). Never even checked Game 2. You are indeed correct - 4 months after it ended, we have a podium (sorry, @gcreptile). I won (somehow), Toast 2nd, Death Impends 3rd. Interestingly, aside from Rotten Ali who didn't take part in Game 2, the three people tied for second in Game 1 (with the death of John B. Anderson in the US elections category) were the ones who finished on the podium in Game 2. Maybe we have a knack? Time will tell - Game 3's already well underway!

Never needed this before in this game...

Schumacher matched Senna's mark of 41 at Monza, in 2000 which was a big deal (that's when he cried) but the Most Wins record belonged to Alain Prost at 51. He broke that in Belgium in 2002. While it's an impressive total, as is Hamilton's matching (and no doubt significantly bettering) of it, but neither are that surprising in the grand scheme of things. Both have had the benefit of being in significantly superior cars for the majority of their careers (Schumacher's Ferrari team won 6 constructors titles in a row between 1999 and 2004 and Hamilton's Mercedes have won every title since 2014 - even Vettel in joint-4th was with Red Bull, who won every title between 2010 and 2013). This is not unlike many of the top drivers in the past, but I would argue that with rare exceptions (Williams in 92 for example, McLaren in 88) the difference between the top 2 or 3 teams hasn't been as big as it has over the past 2 decades, even though the team winning has changed. The other major factor is the huge increase in reliability, particularly over the past decade but this was evident even in the mid-2000s. How many races did Prost, Senna, Mansell, et al lose because of car failures? Great drivers, consistently in the fastest cars, that rarely break down (Bottas's power unit today being a rare exception - his 4th reliability failure in 4 years at Mercedes - Hamilton's had 1 in that time) are always going to win most of the races. It'll be the same until Mercedes mess up or Hamilton retires and then someone else will likely take up the mantle - Max Verstappen is 23 and has 9 wins - if he gets in a dominant car for long enough he could well challenge Hamilton's eventual record in the future but we'll see. The race behind Hamilton-Bottas-Verstappen this season is thrilling, 6 teams and 11 drivers in a different order every week. And without wishing to be a downer (that ship sailed), Raikkonen's record won't last the test of time either - Alonso's back next year and just a season behind Raikkonen (although that depends when they both finally give it up) but Hamilton's just over 3 seasons behind Raikkonen and potentially got a good few more in him if he stays interested. Verstappen's already a third of the way to Raikkonen at 23! Kimi couldn't care less about the record, but it's impressive nonetheless - the power of being quick and not ruffling any feathers along the way.

Better than "testing his eyesight" at any rate.

Not sure if @Toast's facepalm is because she thinks I think this is an acceptable defence - for the record, I don't and think they both should have resigned, but given it's been mentioned several times in the press that she was one of those calling for his resignation, surely either she was mistaken then or she should resign now. I'm surprised the press haven't skewered her with that yet. She'll face a recall if she refuses to go I'd imagine - more time consuming but the end result would be the same.

Given she's using the 'the virus changes your decision making' defence, I'm surprised no one's asked her the obvious 'gotcha' question yet: "Following your own experiences with the virus, do you believe you were mistaken in criticising Dominic Cummings' behaviour during lockdown?'