JQW

That was probably Junior Scrabble, designed for younger children, with a completed grid on one side, and a simpler scoring system.

As for why Scarborough, I presume it had something to do with Charles White, aka Dr Rock, a Scarborough resident who also penned the official biographies of both Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis. He's still alive I think.

According to the link below, he recorded an album in Manchester for the Silvertown label jn late 1982, and this 9-week season with Cannon & Ball in 1983 was supposedly to promote this album. https://comedykings.co.uk/index.php/summer-1983-scarborough/

The first major music act I saw live. Unfortuantely he was supporting the terribly unfunny Cannon & Ball in Scarborough.

Drummer Albert 'Tootie' Heath reportedly died yesterday aged 88. He was brother of saxophonist Jimmy Heath and bassist Percy Heath, and was still touring last year.

A podcast I won't name, as it features someone on my 2025 DDP shortlist explaining why they're stopping doing what they do for a living. I've heard it's due to severe health reasons, but I've not heard anything confirming that so far.

FFS!

More evidence that The Old Crem is one something even stronger than those working at the Daily Express.

Can we move the Birthday and Death Anniversary posts to their own section entitled "Stuff Nicked From Wikipedia"?

Caroline Dowdeswell, who played bank assistant Janet King in the first series is still around, I believe.

The song was written and originally recorded by Sam Cooke, and has been covered many times. Here's a live performance of it by Otis Redding, Eric Burdon and Chris Farlowe, performed on Ready Steady Go in 1965.

My team has the wrong Michael Russell as my joker. I went for this TT racer - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/northern-ireland/65795090 - and not the Scottish politician.

It didn't get shown nationally until 1989, when BBC2 aired most of the episodes. It had been shown regionally by some of the ITV regional companies during the late 1950s and early 1960s.

That's two hits for my team already this year - last year's entry only managed to acheive three.

And Malcolm Mooney and Damo Suzuki.

As does Chris Hillman.

You Dirty Rotten Swine, You Deaded Them! 1 Michael Russell - Isle of Man TT motorcyclist who's mad enough to compete in both the motorcycle and sidecar categories. 2 James Whale 3 Rob Burrow 4 Nigel Starmer-Smith 5 Phil Collins 6 Jonnie Irwin 7 Esther Rantzen 8 Françoise Hardy 9 Dave Myers 10 Denis Law 11 Franz Beckenbauer 12 Daniel Barenboim 13 Derek Draper 14 Patrick Murray 15 Bruce Willis 16 Rupert Murdoch 17 Mike Oldfield 18 Eric Idle 19 Jimmy Carter 20 Vanessa Redgrave Theme Team - Nice! (Jazz musicians) 1 Sonny Rollins 2 George Benson 3 Kenny Burrell 4 Ron Carter 5 Billy Cobham 6 Jack DeJohnette 7 Lou Donaldson 8 Benny Golson 9 Herbie Hancock 10 Roy Haynes 11 Dave Holland 12 Keith Jarrett 13 Charles Lloyd 14 John McLaughlin 15 Archie Shepp 16 James Spaulding 17 Reggie Workman 18 Bennie Maupin 19 Joe Chambers 20 Lenny White

Old Peculier, again!

I've just submitted two teams.

Then there's the compilcated cases of country singers Hank Williams and Townes van Zandt. Both were found dead on January 1st, but may have died the day before. Bizarrely Townes van Zandt recorded a cover of Hank Williams' "Honky Tonking" on his album "The Late Great Townes Van Zandt".

Are we sure he is even alive? Could be have headed off to Dingitas under the radar, for example?

My main team is about ready to submit, although I'll delay it until next weekend in case a couple of entries have pegged it by then. I've still to work on the theme teams. I'll stick with the jazz one as it's accumulated as many hits as may main team so far. Not sure what to do about the other one.

I've finally thrown together a list of 17 ill people, two more who have mysteriously stopped doing what they're notable for, and someone who has a good chance of perishing in a nasty accident. I'll wait a few more days before submitting it as I've an inkling that a few may not make the starting line, and I've already lost several picks this month.

The guest count will be the number of active sessions currently in the session table, which will start to drop shortly when the sessions begin to expire. Guest will still be logged, but won't be able to get beyond the main screen so should go away.

The guests could possibly be many instances of a mis-configured search engine's bot indexing the site. Board software like this usually detects bots and handles them appropriately, often by comparing them with a list of known bots. However, occasionally they're not detected, and are treated as multiple active guest user sessions instead - but it's usually an easy task to add a new bot to the list and have it automatically detected.