First Celebrity Death You Remember

[TQR 14,384]

This has basically turned into the How Old Are DL Users? thread.

 

It’s a very wide age range here; from foetuses like Commtech all the way up to Wee Jum and En Passant and Spade who, judging by the poll, must all be Jeanne Calment reanimated.

[Lord Fellatio Nelson 6,218]

17 minutes ago, TQR said:

Oh that’s not too bad then, you’re a full sixteen years younger than my nan!

Comforting....

[Windsor 2,233]

1 hour ago, RoverAndOut said:

 

This is almost identical to my memory. It was early on a Saturday or Sunday morning. We were having a lazy morning in bed. I could hear my parents talking in bed next door, dad got up and went downstairs. Dad suddenly shouted upstairs 'Diana's Dead!'

Pretty sure it was a Sunday morning. I was staying over at my Granda’s the night it happened. Can remember it being on the news when I got up in the morning. 
 

I don’t really have any major memories of national events. I was a feral child. I remember the fuel protests. They were fun. 

[RoverAndOut 4,745]

38 minutes ago, Windsor said:

Pretty sure it was a Sunday morning. I was staying over at my Granda’s the night it happened. Can remember it being on the news when I got up in the morning. 
 

I don’t really have any major memories of national events. I was a feral child. I remember the fuel protests. They were fun. 

 

Yeah, I thought after posting it must've been Sunday. Saturday mornings were swimming lessons and shopping so it wouldn't have been lazy.

[markb4 892]

Maybe Mr. Rogers?

[Bibliogryphon 9,569]

I think for me it must have been Elvis. My eldest sister had just started work and she said some of the women in her office were in tears at the news.

[Philheybrookbay1 247]

Earl Mountbatten of Burma. August bank holiday 1979. I was 5. 

 

A lovely summers day and as a family we’d been to Dartmoor and we’re driving home from Cadover Bridge towards Plympton. Daft how I remember the exact spot when the news came on the radio about 4pm and we heard. Mum cried that I do also remember. Same day as the Warrenpoint bombing I think? 
 

After that Steve McQueen the following year- although John Lennon passed me by totally. 

[Life Is Beautiful 716]

Diana.

 

PS: After answering ladyfiona I think the correct answer might be Jacques Cousteau, who died some two months before Diana. I was 6.

[ladyfiona 2,575]

Does anyone know notable deaths between 1994-1997 that isn't Princess Diana? I'm trying to think but all I can recall is Princess Diana's funeral in 97.

 

I also remember being taken to London to see the flowers and to sign memorial book at Windsor Castle. I was 8.

[Life Is Beautiful 716]

29 minutes ago, ladyfiona said:

Does anyone know notable deaths between 1994-1997 that isn't Princess Diana? I'm trying to think but all I can recall is Princess Diana's funeral in 97.

 

Richard Nixon, Kurt Cobain, Jackie Kennedy, John Candy, Bill Hicks and Kim Il-sung from 1994

Jerry Garcia, Selena, Dean Martin and of course the assassination of Yitzah Rabin from 1995

Francois Mitterand, Ella Fitzgerald, Gene Kelly and Marcello Mastroianni from 1996

Deng Xiaoping, Jacques Cousteau, Robert Mitchum and Jimmy Stewart from 1997 (up until late August), with the last two less than two months before Diana.

 

 

[CVJJ 9]

Dustin Gee. This was Jan '86 and I was 6 at the time. I used to watch the show he and Les Dennis did on BBC one on Saturday nights (their parody of David Bowie and Mick Jagger is etched into my memory) and I clearly remember hearing he had just dropped dead. This was right at the start of the broadcasts of the shows third season. I'll bet no-one younger than early 40s has a clue who he was now, but at the time he was a major prime-time TV star.

 

I also remember clearly Pat Phoenix later that year, and all the news coverage of her illness leading up to her death. 

 

And I distictly remember Fred Astaire's death being on the news the following year. I had no idea who he was but from the importance of how his death was being covered I felt compelled to tell my mum about it, assuming she would know who he was (which she did).

 

 

[Bibliogryphon 9,569]

9 minutes ago, CVJJ said:

Dustin Gee. This was Jan '86 and I was 6 at the time. I used to watch the show he and Les Dennis did on BBC one on Saturday nights (their parody of David Bowie and Mick Jagger is etched into my memory) and I clearly remember hearing he had just dropped dead. This was right at the start of the broadcasts of the shows third season. I'll bet no-one younger than early 40s has a clue who he was now, but at the time he was a major prime-time TV star.

 

I also remember clearly Pat Phoenix later that year, and all the news coverage of her illness leading up to her death. 

 

And I distictly remember Fred Astaire's death being on the news the following year. I had no idea who he was but from the importance of how his death was being covered I felt compelled to tell my mum about it, assuming she would know who he was (which she did).

 

 

Dustin Gee is always very helpful in explaining to the younger generation who cannot understand why Les Dennis is famous. 

 

Dennis was a better impressionist but Gee had better comic timing

[Handrejka 1,903]

18 hours ago, ladyfiona said:

Does anyone know notable deaths between 1994-1997 that isn't Princess Diana? I'm trying to think but all I can recall is Princess Diana's funeral in 97.

 

I also remember being taken to London to see the flowers and to sign memorial book at Windsor Castle. I was 8.

Labour leader John Smith in 94 and actor Jeremy Brett in 95.

[diego 1,980]

Ayrton Senna

[Sinbabad 1,110]

François Mitterrand in 1996. My dad was driving me to school and we heard it on the radio.

[Lafaucheuse 4,043]

Just watched "1917" yesterday and had an epiphany : one of the very first death I remember clearly was the one of Lazare Ponticelli (wiki), last french WWI veteran who died in 2008 aged 110. I remember talking about him and WWI in class and we had a one-minute silence in all public schools. I vividly remember it was everywhere at the time and I didn't understand how important it was. 

[Great Uncle Bulgaria 1,282]

On 16/01/2023 at 09:41, Great Uncle Bulgaria said:

Pete Duel, was watching Alias Smith and Jones and my Mum told me, at that age couldn't understand why anyone would want to kill themselves.

I would have put it as later than Duel, but I remember the death of F1 driver Jochen Rindt which I've just noticed was a few months before the above in 1970.

As a 7 year old I was apparently quite an F1 nerd, something I grew out of fairly rapidly (on discovering 'live' stock car racing and subsequently speedway locally) and have barely watched it since the days of James Hunt and Niki Lauda. My 91yo Mum still loves it.

[DoorSlammer 561]

I think Yugoslavian/Serbian footballer Velibor Vasovic is the first one I have both active memories of and it was a death that had just happened. It was in the morning news and they called Cruijff for a tribute.

[CVJJ 9]

Now that I think about it - I remember Ray Bolger's death being on the breakfast news back in Jan' of '87. I had seen the Wizard of Oz the previous Christmas Eve on BBC, so I knew exactly who he was at this point... (I was 7 btw).

On 20/01/2023 at 18:48, CVJJ said:

Dustin Gee. This was Jan '86 and I was 6 at the time. I used to watch the show he and Les Dennis did on BBC one on Saturday nights (their parody of David Bowie and Mick Jagger is etched into my memory) and I clearly remember hearing he had just dropped dead. This was right at the start of the broadcasts of the shows third season. I'll bet no-one younger than early 40s has a clue who he was now, but at the time he was a major prime-time TV star.

 

I also remember clearly Pat Phoenix later that year, and all the news coverage of her illness leading up to her death. 

 

And I distictly remember Fred Astaire's death being on the news the following year. I had no idea who he was but from the importance of how his death was being covered I felt compelled to tell my mum about it, assuming she would know who he was (which she did).

 

 

 

[Fridaythe13th 73]

John Candy. 

[Handrejka 1,903]

On 20/01/2023 at 18:48, CVJJ said:

Dustin Gee. This was Jan '86 and I was 6 at the time. I used to watch the show he and Les Dennis did on BBC one on Saturday nights (their parody of David Bowie and Mick Jagger is etched into my memory) and I clearly remember hearing he had just dropped dead. This was right at the start of the broadcasts of the shows third season. I'll bet no-one younger than early 40s has a clue who he was now, but at the time he was a major prime-time TV star.

 

I also remember clearly Pat Phoenix later that year, and all the news coverage of her illness leading up to her death. 

 

And I distictly remember Fred Astaire's death being on the news the following year. I had no idea who he was but from the importance of how his death was being covered I felt compelled to tell my mum about it, assuming she would know who he was (which she did).

 

 

I remember Dustin Gee's death really well. A girl in my class at school had some sort of connection to the panto he was starring in at the time (think she may have been a dancer in it) which made it seem more real somehow. I also remember his last series with Les Dennis being shown posthumously which I found strangely fascinating.

[jimbean1121 238]

the earliest death i can remember was robin williams and young me not knowing who he was or why there was such a big hubbub 

[DCI Frank Burnside 3,880]

John Candy and then  Ayrton Senna a few months later 

[Flufen 27]

The first celebrity death that I remember was that of Ernest Borgnine, but the one I remember even better was Margaret Thatcher when I was 9 - I was sat in Sainsbury's cafe with my mum, saying something like "she was a great woman" (all i knew about her was that she was the first female prime minister) and my mum said "no, she really wasn't" then said what she'd done. My hatred of the tories started not too long after that

[Surprise Demise 70]

Shortly after Michael Jackson's death, my dad made the very clever parenting decision to show me this video, which ensured five-year-old me struggled to sleep for at least a week.

 

I'm sure I also remember some of the Madeleine McCann coverage from before that too, although not sure whether that'd really count as a celebrity death.