Great Uncle Bulgaria

Boris isn't really ill at all, this saga is a con trick to boost sympathy/his popularity and give us all a coronavirus story with a happy ending (matron!).

October 31st

@Great Uncle Bulgaria if you mean Lotte Strauss (author) there is no problem b. 1913 august 2 (not much info really) thanks @SusanStoHelit Thanks Chilean and Susan, that was indeed who I meant. Chosen for the highly scientific reason of sharing a name with Lotte Lenya....

17 (and not just a woman)

tried to avoid looking at everyone else's but no doubt a lot of overlap. Only playinhg for the joy of submitting no 15 on my list really Olivis de Havilland - dead Daisy Langkoonan Amy Winifred Hawkin Anne Buydens Douglas Beverly Cleary Vera Lynn - dead Ruthie Tompson Kane Tanaka Bob Weighton - dead Pappakutty Bhagsvathar - dead Lotte Strauss - dead 11/9/20 Eleanor Solokoff - dead Boris Pakor Vance Trimble Marian Fuks (some going at 105!) subs Ida Keeling Arthur Smith Mary Ward Carmen Herrera

Not for me but like the sparks album title referencing

My pick Linda Lusardi was 'at death's door' with CV 2 days ago but is now on the mend, happily. Maybe it was my having picked her that saved her, does the trick for most of my selections. Got a lot of 1970s sex symbols on my team, don't want to see any of them die, not least because some of them aren't much older than me.

Write an English singing translation of Vivaldi's L'Olimpiade. View a load of (mostly obscure operatic) DVDs I've accumulated in recent years and never watched. Try to avoid watching too much of the Complete Ally McBeal box set that GAB is planning on watching. Try really hard to discourage GAB's notion that this is a great opportunity to have a massive spring clean/clearout. Try and do some fun things with the young wombles, who are going to have to spend a lot more time around GAB and I over the next few months than they had anticipated, particularly the older one who - having thoroughly enjoyed the first half of his first year at Uni - is now stuck back home with us for the next 6 months.

awaiting clearance to include a very well-known but as yet unannounced one? maybe someone whose son was announced to have got it today...

I agree, we can all laugh about having to buy the Sun to make up for the lack of loo roll (for a week at least) but at some point somebody somewhere (probably some idiot youtuber doing it for a 'prank') is going to start online rumours about a lack of basic foodstuffs, which will quickly go viral (pun intended) followed by (even more) stockpiling and we could be looking at food riots within a month.

Dead Kennedys - Kill The Poor - YouTube

Foster and Allen (remember them from late 70s?) resurfaced yesterday on an Irish-themed Pointless. Both looked in decent shape but Henry Kelly looked awful. Could be one for DL2021 if he makes it that far.

Stirling Moss as usual

Son was due to spend a week in Poland from yesterday, until Poland abruptly closed its borders and said anyone arriving would be put in quarantine. Had he flown out 24 hours earlier could have been stuck there for weeks, so at least the timing of the move was OK. Have week in Kefalonia booked for end of June. Odds on things having settled down by then lengthening by the day. Most travel policies will cover you getting ill while abroad. but their cancellation clauses don't cover pandemics. Was going to say 'read the small print before you go', but don't suppose anyone is going anywhere next couple of months anyway.

Ok, maybe I was wrong when I said he was a nonentity who wouldn't obit. That said, with sport and the entertainment industry (major sources of news normally) shutting down, the threshold for what is newsworthy outside of CV is going to be so low that a lot of people who wouldn't have obited in normal times will do so, just so newspapers/online websites still have something else to write about, albeit something depressing like death.

National League (formerly the Conference) is mostly going ahead this weekend, as are National League North and South.

Yes, that's the one! The chorus is more memorable than the verse in all honesty.

Right idea Mr Bond, wrong GB single. Think the follow up, which made about no 35 at a guess....

Nope, nice obscure shout, but that's earlier than Thunderclap Newman. Have you read the Clem Cattini biog btw? (There's an amusing bit about Heinz in there).

Nope, good call but later than that.

Minor UK hit for a man who had previously been lead singer of a band that sounds like a weather phenomenon. Could have been about Boris Johnson, had it only been released nearly 40 years later.

We're all going to get personal exposure to it sooner or later. Shutting schools as a precaution now - especially this close to GCSEs and A levels - is just going to louse up kids' exam prospects. Kids are young and healthy and will cope with it. Same applies to cancelling sporting events. If your constitution is such that it's going to get you then it will do so sooner or later anyway. All these sorts of measures do is delay it going viral (!) by a few more days, weeks at most. The NHS' winter flu season is almost over, may as well bring it on.

Well played HDS, good luck in future rounds...

Stirling Moss (as usual)

Indeed she is. Back in the early 1970s she was battling Sally Carr for pride of place on the burrow bedroom wall though..