picture from Chronicle Live

There may be no factual evidence of this, and it could well be an urban myth, it could even be something I came up with in my head, but isn’t a celebrity supposed to die on Christmas Day? It can’t just be me actually because my dad keeps mentioning it, (we both keep guessing Bruce Forsyth but the old bugger is taking us for fools every year). My ‘wild card’ for this Christmas is Cliff Richard, who will use his death in order to ‘do a Savile’ as I’m sure it is now called; your charity work, Royal connections, friendship with the Government, and gullible fans keep your misdemeanors under wraps until you die and the shit hits the fan.

This year has been a sad one for saying goodbye, especially sad because of who has been left to live. I’m sure we’d all do a deal with God (if he wasn’t a fictional conduit) to swap Rik Mayall for Paddy McGuiness or Robin Williams for Robbie. Just think of all the people who pollute our televisions on a daily basis in the name of celebrity, Andy Warhol gave us fifteen minutes, these people are taking liberties. We could sacrifice them and have Bob Hoskins, Richard Attenborough, Sid Caesar, Joan Rivers, Harold Ramis and countless other people back to entertain us.

An old tradition/superstition has returned with a vengeance this week, famous deaths happening in threes. Joe Cocker was the first to go, although I admired his work I wasn’t a particularly big fan of his – more of an ‘I like what I know’ contribution is what he has done to my music collection. His  famous version of ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’ is a beautiful cover, and as I am known for my enjoyment and appreciation of a well crafted cover version I posted a YouTube video of this song in tribute. Thanks to the wonders of the modern age I was also able to satisfy a niggle in my head that sounded like a made up fact but alas it was true; the song was used as the theme tune to The Wonder Years. Last of the three was sitcom writer Jeremy Lloyd, who I’m sure will have a decent tribute on television very soon.

A name that won’t mean a lot to the majority of people who read this, but whose death I was more upset about, is a man called Mike ‘the mouth’ Elliott. A former standup comedian from Gateshead, he made a name for himself in the North-East as one of the undisputed kings of the late night radio phone in show. I first came across him when I moved back to Redcar in 1995 and heard him on Century FM late one night, he was brilliant; one minute he was moving you to tears with advice to someone in serious trouble and the next minute he was calling someone all the names under the sun for being a waste of time, sometimes he simply hung up on them. I don’t know where he went after Century, although I did once catch him on a late night journey as I was flicking between radio stations. His like will never be seen again thanks to local radio becoming so homogenised, so I’ll raise a glass of ‘glug glug’ to him over Christmas and smile at the fact that nobody will understand that reference.

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