Spade_Cooley

Pretty sure TMIB has Google alerts set up for this stuff, guest.

I will stand up for a lot of lowest common denominator TV, but the truth is Britain does LCD really, really poorly. No British reality show has ever come close to the schadenfreude excellence of My Super Sweet 16, the catty bitchiness of Next, or the improv effortlessness of the first few series of Jersey Shor. All three shows are as dumb as a box of nails/Andy "The Hammer" Hamilton, but they have an effortless entertainment about them. What are the... not even great, acceptable British trash TV shows? Take Me Out is key as a guilty pleasure, Snog Marry Avoid has its moments but other than that... there's probably not been a key British reality show since George Galloway was pretending to be a cat.

Prodigious DL fan Melvyn Bragg wades into the debate.

Leonard Rosoman who was, up until his death, the oldest living member of the Royal Academy, has died aged 98. More importantly, this sends me to the top of the DDP. I'm off to pop Cristal with a bunch of models who will find this fact arousing.

See, why bother going to all that rigmarole of "research" and "setting up google alerts" and "reading the newspapers" to find out the health of your DDP picks when you can just ask people on Twitter? Dom ‏ @ichlugebullets @bigdaddybunce Have you got an update on Mickey Duff's health? I heard he was on his last legs over Christmas... Steve Bunce ‏ @bigdaddybunce @ichlugebullets I'm on it. Thanks. Adios. Hide conversation 1:34 PM - 24 Feb 12 via Twitter for iPad · Details

Gerard "One for the Ladies" Butler has checked into rehab for painkiller abuse. The Mail's story contains the line "Butler, who is a teetotal, also spoke previously about how he became addiction to alcohol", so congrats to their subs desk.

I think maybe my views are a little clouded perhaps because I grew up a) during Thatcherism and in an immigrant family, so maybe I'm too eager to over-simplify. Indeed, ITV was always bigger with immigrant audiences because it used to look like a foreign TV channel. every night being variety show night. Also, immigrants loved "Mind Your Language". I've watched that show on YouTube, I'm really glad that Barry Evans died alone and broke. The traditional working class of this country doesn't exist anymore tbh, the right destroyed the unions and the left destroyed the churches. So outside of Islamic Fundamentalism (which is becoming increasingly middle class, you seen how much a return to Islamabad to train costs these days?) and the EDL, there's no real massed gatherings of the working man these days. Which is a shame, but I can't imagine there's anything we can do on a message board dedicated to zinging corpses that'll help revive the proleteriat. Feel like deadpooling is working class anyway, there's a sense of a lack of respect or a refusal to bow to authority inherent in it.

Yep, it is. That's what I get for not bothering to read the front page. Have this YouTube video of Norman Collier's hilarious microphone routine, which spreads a little insight into one of the most prodigious comedy minds of the past 50 years.

Am I imagining things or did we have a thread to count out which members of the cast of The Comedians were still alive?

Charitable to the last, he only died because he heard Whitney Houston was in heaven and wanted some craic.

You see, that's what I've based my heavily-researched thesis on. From my understanding back in those days there was a clear class divide when it came to Blue Peter/Magp (and, I won't lie, I only vaguely understand what Magpie was, something to do with talk radio nutjob Tommy Boyd right?). And in my youthful days of the late 80s/early 90s, CBBC seemed a lot... worthier. CITV was all bright colours and people being splatted with cream pies and Knightmare with that beardy dude haunting my darkest dreams for the next two decades as he cackled over graphics of the children competing's faces turning to skulls and Julia Sawahalahala being a solid 7 on Press Gang. CBBC was just, like, lots of TV shows that had the faint aroma of Enid Blyton around them. And The Movie Game,which is as an obscure a reference as you'll ever see on this website. In the process of researching this answer (read: trying to remember what The Movie Game was called), I found out that the 1980 series of Screen Test was won by Jan Pinkava, director of Ratatouille.

Going to need a new crown jester to step up and tell shit, outmoded Irish stereotype gags now. Hopefully Ian Paisley takes up the gig.

OK, teams in, I'll get some stats up at the weekend. maryport, you picked Eric Sykes twice, we're gonna need a replacement up in here.

Spade that's bollocks. You know it's true. It's the CITV/CBBC divide. It's not a coincidence that New Labour's destruction of traditional values of working class values coincides with the death of CITV.

Only middle class kids watched Blue Peter.

What about Ed Sheeran?

Timothy Well, one half of the utterly dire Well Dunn, has died in Puerto Rico. Dunn died a few years ago. Do your own puns.

Chisora manages to be an embarassment in the morally and culturally bankrupt world of heavyweight boxing. That's an achievement. Bring back Andrew Golota.

Kinda feel I could become the "dying journalist" guy on these forums. Guardian hack Simon Ricketts has thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension, which means he has little chance of making it past more than a decade and, if his upcoming operation isn't a success, he could be out for the count within the next few months.

Steve Kordek who, among other things, invented the multiball function in pinball machines, has died aged 100.

Wild and out. If blacktwitter keeps blowing up with "Nick Cannon is ill" stories, we should give him his own thread. Not because he's going to die, but just to really confuse the 40-year-old+ posters on this site.

Well... I noticed via Journalisted that one of my picks, Daily Telegraph hack Cassandra Jardine, has only written one article in nearly four months which, for a woman who used to write to or three pieces a week, is quite stunning. So I did some googling and found Saint Helena's Church parish newsletter was asking for prayers for her. So I might just sneak over the line there. Reading the "requests for prayers" section of these newsletters is a whole new venue for deadpool research, imho.

Shut it you tart.

Only just noticed this: Wendy Butler, former RBS executive and captain of DDP big hitters "Wormer He's A etc etc etc" this year, died in early February. Despite her being one of Radio 4's "Inspiring Women of 2011", no mainstream media coverage yet.

Two-time Pulitzer winner and New York Times foreign correspondent Anthony Shadid has died of an asthma attack.