Imelda

It's the older employees of Maplins I feel sorry for

BBC obit http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13374487

so good they named him twice...

I hope he pulls through - 36 is no age to go. I did toy with putting him on my list but decided against it on the balance of probabilities that a fit and young(ish) man had a better-than-average chance of beating it. Hope I'm proved right.

He looks like a 50 something year old man in a blurry, over-saturated photo to me.

Bar his guesting on other band's tracks (Insprials, Elastica etc) the only Fall track I've come across that I'm inclined to listen to off my own back is Wings - which funnily enough is a B-side. The Graun did a compendium of tracks here https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2014/jun/11/the-fall-10-of-the-best

The similarity between him and Stephen Hawking became uncanny towards the end

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Saunders

My first hit of the year. Shane MacGowan next?

New Look in trouble - https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2018/01/new-look-crisis-deepens-considers-cva/ Can't compete with Primark.

Another chronically ill despot / crooked businessman making a miraculous recovery upon the recipt of good news regarding their lack of jail time. Mubarak, Ernest Saunders etc etc...

I've been telling anyone who'll listen that Debenhams are the next BHS and it seems that their latest figures are lending weight to it: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42563593 They are in a similar position - John Lewis have the upper-end of the market and keep abrest of what those consumers want. Debenhams are lost. At Xmas, for example, they were selling Nutella. Not festive Nutella or 'gift' Nutella, just Nutella. Now there are stacks of discounted Nutella, retailing at roughly the same price as a regular supermarket, where normal people would buy their Nutella anyway.

We've been running a Dead Pool at the Nags Head in Reading for the last few years. I seem to have rather a knack for it. Much more than Fantasy Football anyway. Some of you might be amused to know that, having retained my title, I cracked open the loot envelope earlier today only to find that £117 of it is in decomissioned currency. So a trip to Threadneedle Street is in order to cash it in if the Co-Op won't take it tomorrow...

Olivia and Zsa Zsa notwithstanding...

1 Emperor Akihito; 2 Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi; 3 Fiona Apple 4 Daniel arap Moi 5 Pope Benedict XVI; 6 Nick Boles MP; 7 Peter Bonetti; 8 Leah Bracknell; 9 Barbara Bush 10 George Bush Snr; 11 Gay Byrne; 12 Montserrat Caballe 13 Clarke Carlisle; 14 Jacques Chirac; 15 Robbie Coltrane; 16 Tim Curry 17 Eileen Derbyshire 18 Kirk Douglas; 19 Alberto Fujimori 20 Aretha Franklin; 21 Dr William Frankland 22 Jill Gascoigne; 23 Graeme Garden 24 Gaston Glock; 25 Mikhail Gorbachev; 26 Rev Billy Graham; 27 Valerie Harper; 28 Olivia de Havilland; 29 Len Hawkes; 30 Ian Holm 31 John Hume 32 Clive James; 33 Tessa Jowell 34 Ayatollah Ali Khamenei; 35 Dilip Kumar 36 Val Kilmer 37 Stan Lee 38 John McCain 39 Shane MacGowan 40 Stirling Moss; 41 Linda Nolan 42 Geoffrey Palmer 43 Prince Phillip; 44 Chris Rea 45 Burt Reynolds; 46 King Salman 47 Prunella Scales 48 Mark E Smith 49 Nobby Stiles 50 Herman Wouk Got 20/50 in 2017 and reckon I can go better this year.

I'm not. She'll still be with us in five years. They're trying to turn her into the new Clive Dunn.

Wasted pick.

Cheerio King Mick. If the Nags was PaddyPower they'd be paying out my winnings tonight.

Emperor Akihito of Japan is to abdicate on 30 April 2019, aged 85, in the first such departure from the Chrysanthemum throne in about 200 years, the government has said. Akihito’s eldest son, Crown Prince Naruhito, will ascend the throne the following day, beginning an as-yet-unnamed era. The decision was made on Friday at a meeting of the Imperial House council, which was chaired by the prime minister, Shinzō Abe, and included parliamentary leaders, supreme court judges and family members. Akihito expressed his wish to abdicate in August 2016 after he suggested that his age and health problems were affecting his ability to carry out public duties. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/01/akihito-become-first-japanese-emperor-abdicate-200-years

Former Bristol Rovers Chairman Geoff Dunford dead at 66 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-41609571 The Dunford family are remembered fondly by many Gasheads for helping keep the club alive after taking over in 1986 with the club staring into the abyss - there was a very real chance that Rovers would have gone out of existence within the following 18 months.

And if you have a spare hour and a quarter it will be well-spent watching this fantastic documentary, which profiles how close nuclear apocolypse was to becoming reality in 1983 with reference to this incident as well as Abel Archer etc. With a fantastic set of 80's tracks thrown in for good measure (you know it's going to be good from the intro sequence alone): http://www.veoh.com/watch/v55760583xQkAkrNQ (32 mins in for Petrov)

“very unwell but safe” in a Liverpool hospital after he was reported missing on Friday https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/sep/15/police-concerned-for-clarke-carlisle-after-ex-footballer-reported-missing

I raise you a Gretchen Wilson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82dDnv9zeLs