msc

I'd add to this by noting that since we're discussing a Cosgrove Hall name, Brian Cosgrove himself is still alive. Mark Hall died years ago, though. So many childhood memories from that lot. Also speaking of 70s/80s/90s kids TV, Peter Maddocks is still alive. Who is Peter Maddocks? The creator of the Family Ness, Jimbo and the Jet Set and many others. He's 93 now. Was also a Telegraph and Private Eye (among many others) artist for ages too.

Well if the list of the recently shagged must continue then expect a few quips when the inspiration hits.

Curious way to style hair!

Thought this was done already but couldn't find it. Anyhow, longest droughts in the DL. (Not counting 1987-89 due to rumours there was no 1988 DL) 1. Jill Ireland to Jim Joel 1990-1992, 676 days 2. Papandreou to Xiaoping, 1996-97, 252 days 3. Sugar Ray Robinson to Ray Moore, 1989, 233 days 4. Clement Stone to Hardy Amies, 2002-2003 183 days 5. Bunny Austin to Stanley Kramer, 2000-2001, 177 days 6. Kitty Godfree to Dan Maskell, 1992, 175 days 7. Elia Kazan to Queen Juliana – 2003-2004, 175 days 8. Les Dawson to Bill Bixby, 1993, 165 days 9. Betty Ford to Harry Morgan, 2011 – 152 days 10. Mondale to Bouteflika 150 days 11. Since June Brown, 2022, 132+ 12. Deng Xiaoping to Jacques Costeau, 1997, 125 days 13. Arthur Ashe to Les Dawson, 1993, 123 days 14. Secombe to Longford, 2001, 114 days updated 14th August 2022 Let's see how far up the table this current run gets. Top ten doesn't feel out of reach.

I'm a bit confused Willz as I just checked 3 random videos and the upload date is on all of them. Are you using the mobile version?

Oh I wasn't say the records are discredited, more that it might explain discrepancies with other actors who may have had similar life experiences. It's not like how some records (most baptismal and educational but those things can be useful too) in Glasgow are lost because the daft sods forgot to remove the records from the buildings they were in before their demolition!

This isn't really a call for help, more a curio I thought @Ulitzer95 and others would like. Actor Anthony Ainley, who played The Master in the 1980s, is long gone now, of course. Died in 2004. Popular chap at conventions, he used to bring food to his convention Q&As to share with the fans! Anyhow, there used to be a mystery over his date of birth which the obits cleared up (as much as possible) by giving him a DOB of 1932. However, as someone reminded me about the old rumour that Ainley was considerably older than he claimed, I remembered that you can find him in the BMD's and it's an odd one. (In the pic, 2nd row, Holmes, Anthony, born Marylebone.) Now, what's odd about this is that its WRONG. Ainley wasn't born in 1938. He moved to the Actors Orphanage in Surrey in 1938 and that's when his birth was recorded for the first time. (He attended the 1940s equivalent of latter stage high school/secondary school in 1948-50 and had his first adult job in late 1950, in case people need more convinced the BMD has inaccurate info.) So the reasoning behind this is murky but seems to be: Ainley's father was a famous actor who slept around a lot. This produced a lot of kids, one of whom was the future Dr Who actor, at some point in the 1930s. One can fill in the gaps of child left to live with his mother who didn't register him, then later moving to the orphanage who died. But also the "much older" legend is clearly a myth going by his school years. He was born 1932. Anyhow, it ended well for Anthony (apart from the whole dying aged 71 of cancer bit) - he wound up inheriting his dad's fortune and by his 40s was considerably richer than his early childhood. However, I thought, if this is one case the birth certificates are bogus, perhaps we should be wary of them being similar wrong with cases we are not so familiar with?

I saw "Lil Mikey" in the update and was all ready to come in here and go "that's a shame" because I instantly thought it'd be about Mikey Whipwreck instead...

Yeah, I think so. For all the jokes about magical money trees, a lot of the stuff done during pandemic has a price tag - especially as it was done a lot of the time without any forward planning. Plus there's other issues on the horizon. Must stock up on tins this week... Sunak is very good at basking in the good publicity and doesn't like the bad stuff, like how his big Eat Out plan last summer helped usher in a new covid wave. The shine's going go off him very quickly when he's not handing people money. Well, other people. I got none of it, the bastard... Devils advocate - the way Boris JOHNSON (happy, @The Quim Reaper ) reacted to the Gove announcement by basically going "Woe is me", crying, and pulling out (not something he does a lot, by looks of things) of the leadership contest showed me exactly why he was unsuited to the job of Prime Ministers. A good PM doesn't wait for the job to come to them, they grab it. They'd have gone "Right, fucketybye Gove!" and then plotted to crush him in the leadership contest. He had enough friendly MPs onside and the membership, he just lacked the work ethic and effort. And he still fucking well does. This is why "great Prime Ministers we never had" Rab Butler didn't deserve it - you get 3 or 4 chances for the job and don't make the move, that's your fault. Ditto Dave Miliband. Whereas Thatcher took on Heath when it "wasn't the time" and undone most of the Tory heavyweights of the time by going for the jugular. She wanted it, she got it as a Cabinet outsider. Boris Johnson wants the plaudits and praise and historical praise of a Thatcher, Attlee or Churchill, but doesn't want to put in the actual work required to get there. And it was self-evident from 2001 or so on, but underlined in marker pen during that 2016 election.

Genuinely thought he was Des's brother.

Apart from Larry King who was on the road out clearly even before covid, there was nothing on Jan 1st to suggest the others were at more danger this year than any other. Maybe Saint, but as seen by the low number of teams who had him in the DDP, his quietness on his health had been taken as good news by most.

There are still bits and bobs missing (like an A-Z of obits from the new site, and maybe transferring over some of TMIB's work*) and the 2011 analysis was sent by email so pretty much lost and therefore reconstructed in 2003-7 style minus the maths and tables/graphs, but I wanted to make it so people could basically find stuff which was all over the place. On three different websites in places. DI checked a lot of the earlier drafts and provided help and suggestions. The added history bits I thought there would be more of, tbh, but hopefully they are interesting insights. *This was already done with his End of Year bits as they just weren't linking properly in the old blog format. The Stats and Facts, on the other hand, are a fucking nightmare to manually update. I'm glad to never have to do that one again!

She's not a BBC staff member, she's someone they go to as an interviewee on News 24 sometimes. I couldn't have picked her out of a crowd. The gofundme appears to be more to get people to buy stuff for her house than about the cancer, which is apparently under control?

Second of two updates. The DDP Archive is finally here. The entire history of the competition, as much as we have, in one place. Links to old competitions, the analysis from the hosts, historical bits that might help. I hope it is of use.

First of two DDP updates tonight. Firstly - The Stats and Facts Page has been updated for the first time since 2017.

If you go to the front page's 2008 archive here, you'll see Hofmann had the best headline for a DL obit ever. Also I am on record that the Albert Hofmann DL thread is one of the best on this forum:

Arthur Scargill being a fuckwit made Thatcher's job easier, and Thatcher being a fuckwit made Thatcher's job easier.

But as you can see... As per tradition, peyote is on the allowed substances list of course. PS Where's the folkie in 2021, DDT? I can count the Irish, the criminal and the religious leader!

Same show but mid-90s. One vivid childhood TV memory is of Rula Lenska on This Is Your Life and they brought out her ancient mum who had escaped the Nazis during WW2. And after the end credits, the serious BBC voiceover man cut in to say something like "We regret to inform you that since this was recorded, Rula Lenska's mother has sadly died." Cue awws from all.

Any Democrat would have won. The economy had just tanked in a huge way, and people forget now how much the average voter was scared of Sarah Palin getting near the Presidency.

He's not dead but Weaver's Week recently did a long career appraisal of Michael Aspel which was a good read for folk who enjoy these sorts of things. (Although it does read a bit like an obituary in places.) Also, I genuinely didn't realise he was 88 now! Would have sworn 80 tops.

ELLIS - Mary Irene Colette (nee McCrossan) (stage name Colette O'Neil) Mary Irene Colette passed away peacefully on Sunday 11th July 2021. Actress and much loved mother to Dominic, Lara, Natasha, sister to Pat and grandmother to Nyree, Aaron, Maisy, Mya and Grace. Family and friends welcome to attend a service to celebrate Colette's life held at St Gabriel's Church, Merrylee Road, Glasgow, on 11th August at 10am. Family flowers only, if wished donations to Alzheimer's Research UK please. In the Herald. This is for Scottish actress Colette O'Neil (born 1937). She appeared in Taggart, Shetland, Hamish MacBeth, Adam Adamant Lives, Wallander, Z-Cars and Doctor Who (Snakedance, she played Martin Clunes's mum) among many others. Looks like the family only just announced it 2 days ago. Lucky to make it to 84 after a near fatal accident performing on stage in the 1960s!

I knew I'd read it somewhere, you were probably the source! Grace Slick also claims their LSD was bought off university connections made fresh so nothing in it. (Although in line with Ulitzer, everyone looks at Grace, and ignores the rising death rate among her younger bandmates from that era). Also, yes, agreed. I take it you know the reasons booze/ciggies were available but weed and so on banned was due to heavy government lobbying. Not to ban dangerous drugs, but by the alcohol and smoking companies trying to get a rival successfully banned! I've often thought that legalising, say, weed and taxing it would de-stress a lot of areas of society all at once - criminal, medical, societal, etc. The biggest drugs killer worldwide tends to be the old "too many painkillers and a wee sip of something". And you can buy painkillers from nearly any shop in the UK, for around 50p a box! The one name playing in my head is Ozzy of course, who was fired from Sabbath due to being unfunctioning at the time, cleaned up several times briefly to record before crashing into incoherence again (he puts it that anytime he suffered a bereavement or depression he self-medicates...), and has the well documented genuine arrests/hospital stays on his CV. I've been around alcoholics and regular drug users and even before his Parkinsons you could see the familiar traits in Osbourne.

You've heard the story of Keith Richards drinking from a Jack Daniels bottle during an interview, going to the loo, and the journalist discovering the Jack Daniels bottle was actually full of iced tea then? All part of the PR legend. (There are exceptions but you tend to find they have massive support groups who stepped in to prep them up long enough to release an album/single/whatever before they relapsed again.)

Blueberry on course but probably needs another pick or two (watch Joanne Woodward and Clarissa Eden, I guess!).