Octopus of Odstock

It's not the results. Ian Porterfield was a completely sh*t manager for us, but he did his job with dedication, commanded respect & did his best to help Reading out of a financial crisis which was not of his doing. Thus, at his passing last year, there was sadness for a man much higher than 6 loan games as a player & two rubbish years as a manager deserved. It's the man. Scrapped our reserve & youth teams out of his own choice. No financial pressure - just sacked 20 hard working members of staff (including Alan Pardew, who later came back & saved us from the brink). Then sacked the reserve & youth playing staff in one fell swoop - some as young as 14 year old kids. Then there's his treatment of the remaining first team staff - http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn41...11/ai_n14484966 Then, there's the small matter of turning a club which made £2.1 million profit the season before he arrived, to a club that made a loss of £5.7 million at the time he was sacked, with the club heading to relegation & oblivion - with Burns pocketing a HUGE amount for himself, but freezing the wages of the club's kit cleaner "to save money". His contempt of the fans was such that he never once turned up for a Fans Forum. He openly presided over a drugs & drink culture at the club which saw two players getting sacked (Jim McIntyre & Byron Glasgow) & the club being investigated, The PFA said it was the worst case of player management they "had ever seen." In short, Burns pocketed at least a million in cash & left the club, its players, its future players & its fans to rot. You can't do all that from just looking at the league table & going "oh that's not so bad", you have to know the truth behind it. I make no apology for it. Burns is a twat & I don't have time for twats on this earth. One less twat in the world is fine by me. Here endeth my Burns rant & the end of the topic. If you really want to take it up further, PM me, but let's keep on topic in at least ONE DL thread, heh? PS You missed a relegation, CR. He got us relegated once. That in itself is not a crime worthy of evil, but it didn't help his record.

Yes. The man is pure evil - a spineless, uncaring, meglomanic twat. People like him don't just destroy football clubs, they destroy livelihoods and the whole fabric of society. In effect, he carried out Robert Maxwell's dirty work for him 15 years on. We have long memories down here - Jim Rosenthal will also be shot on site if he ever enters the Madejski peripehary. LG, I'm not the only one, there's a good 10,000 people that agree with me. RFC wanted to lay on a benefit for Burns after the first cancer report. They sold no tickets. No-one would part with their money for his benefit. Ray Stubbs joins my list of the evil, but for reasons that he is a complete bell-end anyway.

I'm prepared to get irate guest abuse about this, but...... good. He's up there along with Gordon Brown, Mohammed Al Fayed & Robert Mugabe as people I would all like to see leave this earth as quickly as possible. He's going on my DDP list for next year - I have a spot free now, anyway.

Apparently he's got an infection of the brain right now to add to all his other woes. My money, as it were, is still on Thompson of Dundee Utd to go first, however.

What a great day - Royals out of the relegation zone with a good win, Newcastle in freefall, Man Utd out & Barnsley beat Chelsea. Plus Wales won away in the rugby & Scotland tonked England. Happy, happy days! It'll all go wrong from now on, you just wait & see....

'tis done also. Whilst you're at the Commons, you couldn't check the current health of some of the older Lords could you? Good luck!

Pollack. Did anyone guess the 3rd to go correctly? I can't find the thread for some reason... EDIT Found it, and yes, they did. TMIB, Phantom & I. Well, that makes a change - I think that's the first I've ever got right...

Woohoo! Parteeee! Umm.. bringing a little more respect to the news, I am hardly surprised, for, as I might have mentioned before, I worked for the NHS in Bedfordshire in 2003-2004. Pym was receiving regular medical treatment for dementia-type symptons then, so it was obvious he was only going one way, as it were. There were only two famous people receiving major treatment in Beds at that time - one was Bob Monkhouse, who died whilst I was there (the two ARE un-related ) & the 2nd was Pym. Time to get a job with the NHS in London me thinks.... P.S. Pym's cabinet colleague Lord Carrington lives near where I live now. The last I heard (January) he was still doing pretty okay for his age.

Hurrah!! Now watch me get the other 19 hits.... I'm going to resist temptation to remove the 0 by my name & do an update tonight, cos I've spent most of the morning uploading photos, so I'll probably do an update at the weekend (just in case anyone else goes overnight or Staurday - might as well kill two birds with one stone). Now a two-way tie at the top - DDT has been kicked out of the bed & Godot & TMIB are sharing it very closely...

Well.... There's certainly some truth in the story - he has been in hospital lately.. 5th February: http://www.pr-inside.com/swayze-s-mystery-...ery-r422606.htm and http://fametastic.co.uk/archive/20080205/9...inal-procedure/ (Both saying more or less the same thing) Secondly, he heasn't appeared in public for the last month, or given any interviews etc. - not necessarily a sign of death, of course, but unusual for one so in the spotlight as Swayze. Personally, I hope it is untrue - I kinda like the guy, even though he's a chick flick hero, and not normally the type of actor I enjoy watching. But every time I've seen an interview with him, he seems quie grounded & open.

Not much, Godot old chap, but if you check the scoreboard you may notice something slightly different at the top.... * Sorry, TMIB, but you've had long enough up there for now! *

It wasn't so much the age, it was more to do with the fact that I don't get an awful lot of time to go on the birthday thread & wish people Happy Birthday, so I didn't want to put my birthday up as I felt it was then hypocritical for me to expect birthday wishes from people & then not respond to them as & when they reached the same happy day. So to everyone who has had a birthday, or is yet to have one this year, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! But thanks all the same to TMIB.

Crumbs! Juran, Raymond, Healey, O'Neill, di Stefano AND Gurung dead or obituary-met in a day! Well, I had thought of leaving the next update til Tuesday/Wednesday, but not now... Will be done later this evening. TMIB, 1) Note how well Rude Kid is doing now he doesn't have to host the thing. Note how poorly I am doing - thing is, only Christodolous came close to my final 20 and I dropped him because I didn't think he'd get an obit. 2) It was my 30th birthday on Saturday 1st March.

Two more: Profilic & best-selling author Julian Rathbone has penned his last, whilst on the same day one former KGB head steps down as President, another is going one step further & dying - Vitaly Fedorchuk was 89 years old.

Hmm.. quite a lot to update on the DDP it seems. One I don't have to update but was mentioned very briefly in despatches here was Vincent Anania, father of Elizabeth Edwards, wife of former Presidential candidate, John. Considering Anania got an obit in the UK press, albeit the Guardian of course, then maybe Mrs. Edwards will too.

I'm still on 0.

Hmmm... Quite possibly so. But considering the 2nd report contains the "suicide" quote from the same man that thinks Rudolph Hitler was leader of the Nazis, then I'm hardly inclined to believe anything he might say. Anyway, in other news, Jeff Healey has cancelled all forthcoming concerts due to complications in his cancer fight.

Excellent article on Andy Griffith - sounds okay to me - mind he's had a lot of heart attacks...

The fat bugger has fallen and is in hospital, after, one presumes, stretching for the bratwurst in the fridge.

Mike Smith, lead singer of the Dave Clark 5, has died.

I need some of the punning wizardry involved in the cake death thread, as the best I can come up with for ex-World Champion hairdresser John Phelps, is that he has perm(anently) dyed. Which is sh*t. Phelps was mentioned in despatches here before & was a DDP pick, but whether he'll get the obit he needs is up in the air right now. For some reason the forum software isn't letting me load the obit on here, so I'll link to this general site instead - http://news.google.co.uk/news?svnum=10&amp...5&as_maxm=2

Paul Frere was a delightful man and an inspiration & I'm greatly saddened to hear of his passing. He was also the catalyst for me gaining an interest in the history of the sport after I read his book "From Starting Grid to Chequered Flag" covering his early days of racing until his Le Mans win in 1960. Although he was a decent driver in F1, he was a true all-rounder, particulary so in sportscars & had he not had so much time constraits due to his journalism, which he did in tandem with his racing, who knows how his career would've progressed. He continued testing high speed cars right up until a couple of years ago when he suffered - but survived - a serious crash - at the (incredible) age of 89. As this slowed him up only a small amount, it was expected he'd probably go on for some years yet, so, despite his age, this comes as a surprise. The Le Mans win more or less spelt the end of his top-line career, wanting to finish at the top, but his links, reports & books from then on made him one of the most popular former drivers in the paddock - and that rarity - a famous Belgian. 2008 is almost seeing one driver die every two weeks right now....

Hurrah!!! Makes up for my complete lack of success in the DDP. Also proves it sometimes pays to check Wikipedia as I wouldn't have discovered Janez was a form of John otherwise!

UK Obit CP, any idea where a picture of this lady can be procured for DDP purposes?

Emmanuel Sanon, one of the the FIFA World Cup's great underdog heroes, has died of pancreatic cancer at 56. Forever remembered for beating Dino Zoff to end his record unbeaten run of not conceding a goal in the 1974 World Cup, and producing one of Haiti's few happy moments in sport. Thing is, I knew he was ill & all, but debated* whether he'd get a UK obit. Ah well.... * (Can you have a deabte with yourself? Probably, knowing the way I'm going...)