Slackhurst Broadcasting

It'd be useful if there was a gallery of famous people who died of cancer that let you compare how they looked at a given period before their deaths. You could apply it to people still living - "Celebrity A's looking rough." - "Celebrity B looked worse than that here, and he lasted another three years..."

Lucy Rimmer, occasional vocalist with The Fall in the mid-90s, deceased.

Even if Chris Cross did have X number of effect pedals connected to his bass presumably they weren't manipulating the instrument's strings for him. So how was he not playing it himself? By the way, is he dead? If so he's the first member of Ultravox to go, I think. (When the last one goes, it'll be "All Laid Still.")

Real name Litzi Lara Banulos, which sounds more like it came from a pornstar name generator.

Marian Zazeela, visual artist, wife and longtime collaborator of La Monte Young, dead at 83.

Have there been secret nuclear weapon tests near Balmoral?

I wonder if when she had the abdominal surgery, they already thought there might be cancer? It could have been completely unexpected. Even when there are definite signs it can take time to be certain. Hard to see what the palace could announce in those circumstances.

Rather unfortunate to head that with a big C....

The other day I was reminded of Wavis O'Shave and his 1979 album Anna Ford's Bum and reflected that it wasn't till many years later that a BBC newsreader's bum was displayed to the public.

She looks like Danniella Westbrook on a bad day.

At least he expects to still be around in June.

They came up first on a search at Discogs. I'd never heard their hit, which turned out to be a dreary effort - one of those records that isn't so much "based on" a sample as using it as a kind of musical crutch.

Did it happen early in the morning, very very early without warning?

Replaced with a double, maybe? When she at last makes another appearance in public, will she be barefoot?

It seems that Eric Carmen, of the Raspberries then solo artist, died over the weekend.

In the Fall's later years Mark Smith was working with musicians a good bit younger than himself, some born in the Eighties and even the Nineties. Tracking the group's last surviving members may be a task for whoever's on this forum c.2060.

Re Clem Clempson, I remember reading The NME Book of Rock (1975) and thinking facetiously that people were very into personnel back then, because so many bands' entries were accounts of what other bands the members had been in. But the other week I saw a mid-80s interview with John Peel, and it seems that was actually true - he said how in the years before punk it was almost impossible for a band to get a record deal and promotion if they had no track record from being in other bands. So if you were forming a rock outfit in 1974, Clem Clempson would have been a useful man.

Strange thing: just yesterday I was reminded of the storyline in Brookside where Harry Cross wouldn't talk to his son because he was living "over the brush," and I remembered that he'd been in Grange Hill too. I can't have thought about it since c.1986.

It's funny, when I was a kid it was still quite common to get George VI and V coins, and I occasionally got Edward VII ones, and once even a Victoria penny - not through looking for them, just in ordinary change. I remember the older ones looked visibly worn - the Victoria one was almost unreadable, and the portrait on it was largely a blur. That doesn't seem to happen to coins nowadays.

Perhaps Idle will finally allow Rutland Weekend Television to come out on DVD.

Damo Suzuki had colon cancer for years, he survived it a long time.

Reminds me of the fable of the frogs who wanted a king.

He'll never abdicate. People seem not to realise that Edward VIII's abdication was a disgrace. What could happen is that William became Prince Regent, i.e. a sort of caretaker king. But I don't think they'd do that if Charles was terminally ill.

If there was a thread for British voice-over artists, Michael Jayston would have a place there.