Twelvetrees

No, no, no! Why couldn't it have been musician Philip Collins? You mean Genesis' own Professor of pop? Anyway the former Lancashire cricketer Peter Marner has died at the age of 71. As well as being the youngest ever player to represent his county, he was also the first player ever to win a Man of the Match award in a one-day game.

Definitely dead

Simon Mann looks like he's on his way to Equatorial Guinea, though not in the manner he originally intended. If this goes ahead, and I can't see Mugabe intervening, it leaves him to the less than tender mercies of Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. In anything but name it is a death sentence. This will be an interesting moral conundrum for deathlisters everywhere, though I suspect it will be somewhat more stimulating for Mr. Mann's family and friends.

For those of you with better things to do than read the website of a dying woman, I can tell you that the latest update has been posted on TammyFaye.com. If it's less grim than the last one, that's only because she seems to have accepted the inevitable, despite the increasingly desperate optimism. "The doctors have stopped trying to treat the cancer...I am down weight wise to 65 pounds, and look like a scarecrow." Not being a medical doctor, I shan't prognose. But the idiot in my head who seems to want to comment on everything says "Not long."

Prizes....? Obituary

Time, I think for a quick update from Myanmar. Whilst Senior General Than Shwe is looking in rude health, Prime Minister Soe Win has just returned from Singapore after unspecified treatment. Ever wondered why these top Myanmar officials keep going to Singapore for their treatment? Well, with less than $1 per capita annual health care expenditure, there isn't a lot to go round. Evidently, Than Shwe spent more money on his daughter's wedding last year than the entire health budget I don't think that Hello covered the event, though.

The BBC is reporting Iraqi intellgence claims that Abu Ayyub al-Masri (also known as Anu Hamza al-Muhajer), the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq has been killed. Claims and counter claims to follow, no doubt.

Lo! The ignorant one strikes again. Reported here earlier for those of us who know how to use a search engine. Take your ambivalence elsewhere, please.

I have to go with Roger Hunt. I've got a limerick prepared.

I think you'll find he's been attended to already here

A great shame - as a friend of both Shostakovich and Britten, he was one of the last links with the great composers of the 20th century, as well as a consummate teacher, musician and conductor. RIP, Slava.

The fomer Derbyshire and England fast bowler Les Jackson has died at the age of 86. He played in only two Tests, twelve years apart, despite taking 1733 first class wickets at under eighteen apiece.

Just a quickie - the front pages of both The Guardian and BBC News are reporting the death of Boris Yeltsin.

I am not a linguistic expert, nor am I one of that strange sallow clan who refer to themselves as "Whovians", but I do know that TARDIS is an acronym, and therefore should be pluralized as "Tardises". For the collective noun, may I suggest a "nonsense of Tardises"? Or perhaps a "bonfire of Tardises" would be a more pleasing image?

Evel Knievel has evidently found God (He was down the back of the sofa all the time), and is convinced that he is "a long ways (sic) from dying". Definitely not a deathbed conversion, then.

Not quite sure you've got the hang of this, old bean. This is about evidence-based (admittedly not always very good evidence) conjecture, not wish-fulfilment. If I believed that merely mentioning someone here would bring about their imminent demise I would have suggested Ben Fogle years ago. Whar about Ben Fogle? That would really annoy some seals or something. Yeah.

Whilst we were all looking at Zimbabwe, things were getting hot in advance of the elections in Benin. The President, Thomas Yayi Boni (or Boni Yayi, depending on which soource you read) survived an assassination attempt last month that went virtually unreported. Early reports suggest that his party has been successful in the elections, and that he will be able to continue the anti-corruption drive that he blames for the attempt on his life. I'm sure we all support him in that decision. Incidentally, Benin's (or Dahomey as it then was) former President, Emile Zinsou is evidently still alive. Having been sentenced to death in absentia 32 years ago he's probably stopped looking over his shoulder, but at 88, his days may be numbered. Not a lot of information, though.

Rumours, rumours. In the show they had no children and other than an episode where he got horny supping home brew I don't remember that much evidence of action. Did he get his leg-over the geezer bird off camera? This link suggests that whilst there was little physical contact during the show, there had been a degree of sexual intimacy earlier in the marriage. This is hardly suprising. I see Mildred as a very dominant woman, quite possibly with a large suitcase bursting with plastic paraphernalia. George, after years of supplication, could bear the physical and mental scars no longer, and retreated into a nether world of home-brew fuelled fantasy. In this way some commentators see George and Mildred as a modern Lyistrata, but I understand it more as a classic example of how a seemingly vacuous entertainment can seek to foment the stirrings of revolution by representing the exploitative class relationship between the proletarian masses (represented by George in his ongoing position in the reserve army of labour) and the capitalists (represented by the domineering Mildred). The lack of sexual relations between the two could be read either as - The total repression of the proletariat to the extent that they can no longer produce, evidencing one of the inherent contradictions of capitalism. Or - The first step in the self-consciousness of the masses as they strive to challenge the hegemony of the owners of the means of production (Mildred, with her womb symbolizing the factory system) by withdrawing their labour and refusing to co-operate in their own exploitation. Next week - How Professor Yaffle started the Biafran War.

When I was a child, growing up on the mean streets of Bournemouth, Roy Castle always seemed to have pride of place in the carnival parade every summer. People who met him say he was a decent bloke, but I just remember him as the man off the telly who was sitting in some gas-guzzling American hulk of a car, preening himself and waving to the crowd like a real star - somewhere between the majorettes and a rusting Bedford lorry made up to look like a wild west saloon. I was much more impressed when Brian Murphy turned up to open a local school fete. After all, he had got to shag Yootha Joyce. No wonder he always looked so tired.

Alphonsin, your post was moved to the cricket thread. Chill out, everything will be OK I have some sympathy with Alphonsin here. For the shock death of one of England's foremost openers to be relegated to a thread under the "extra-curricular" heading is surely a little strange! Correct me if I'm wrong (it won't be the first time!) but I thought the threads in that section all related to stuff which was indeed "extra-curricular", i.e. not directly death related (such as discussing who supports the crappiest football team, what you had for breakfast, etc.) Exactly. Are we to then have an extra-curricular 'film stars' thread, or other threads for politicians, or one solely dedicated to left-handed female Polynesian skydivers? My understanding was that 'The Dead' thread was for the reporting of departures of all persuasions, and is the obvious place to go for information on recent deaths. This alteration makes no sense at all, and having to second-guess where any such news might be found hardly makes using the forum easier. Reinstate Bob Woolmer now, and all who follow him into the last pavilion!

The Bangladeshi Test cricketer Majural Islam Rana has been killed as a result of a motrocycle accident. He is the youngest Test player to die, at the age of 22. By the way, the previous holder of this unwanted record was the great Australian talent Archie Jackson who died from TB at the age of 23 on the very day that England regained the Ashes in 1933.

Was I born on the wrong side of the Irony Curtain to fully appreciate this remark?

No news on his health, but at 86 and therefore older than Clive 'Immortal' Dunn, the Disney legend Wally Boag is still with us. I mention him because he has his own myspace page, so we should be able to keep track of him.

Just a quick update on one of my old favourites, Senior General Than Shwe of Myanmar. There is a suggestion that he may need a heart operation, never something for a 74 year-old to look forward to. A previous report highlighted the poor health of his deputy Vice Snr-Gen Maung Aye, who as well as rumours about cancer, is an alcoholic. Now, two other senior Myanmar leaders have been making trips abroad for health reasons; Secretary-1 Lt-Gen Thein Sein has already been fitted with a pacemaker, and Prime Minister Gen Soe Win has also been seeking medical help in Singapore. As well as these, the Party Chairman Aung Shwe and Secretary U Lwin are both in their late 80s. "Any one senior Myanmar politician" would be a good each-way bet at the moment.

Should the unthinkable happen, I'd go for keeping with the Dad's Army theme and have either Bill Pertwee or Frank Williams.