Picture from BBC
We woke up in Blackpool yesterday to two pieces of news. The radio in the hotel room stirred me in the morning (we sleep with Classic FM on to help us sleep) with the news that Donald Trump had become the President of the USA, and Clive Dunn, the comedy actor best known for playing Corporal Jones in Dad's Army, had died. Not the best way to start the day I'm sure you'll agree.
On a lighter note, I had a much better breakfast yesterday. Doesn't that look more like it? Pity I can't remember the name, but it is next door but one to the place we went yesterday.
When I first became aware of Donald Trump (and I can't put a year on it) he was just some comically haired businessman who became a celebrity thanks to appearances on American sitcoms that we received and just came across as a laughable buffoon. There's a joke that stopped being funny, I can't believe he was voted in, even in America, so now we wait until the end of the world. Clive Dunn's death was ironic in a way because he always possessed such good timing in Dad's Army but here he was passing away on the very opposite of a low news day. There could be no way that he could get a mention on the radio or television news with all this going on, and I didn't really know what time he died so I wasn't sure if he had breathed his last before or after the newspapers went to press. Dad's Army is on telly all the time so there is very little merit in showing an episode and calling it a tribute, I imagined a documentary might be knocked together in time for the Christmas schedules, which would be followed on BBC2 by a few episodes or maybe the movie spin off?
I tried to work out who was left from the show. Ian Lavender is still going, but of course he was a good few years younger than much of the cast (Dunn himself was younger than he looked but had a skill for playing older men), but I couldn't recall whether or not Bill Pertwee had died or not (he did, in 2013). The one thing I did know was that Frank Williams was still going. So Dad's Army is not yet a 'ghost sitcom' as there are two people left now that Clive Dunn has died.
What? Clive Dunn died in 2012 and I didn't remember it. I decided to have a wander through my blog for November 2012 to see what I wrote and it turns out that I didn't mention it. If he died in 2012 why was this news yesterday? Named in honour of the man who started this weird phenomenon, Clive Dunn has become a victim of what is now referred to as 'Tony Hart-ing'. It is even worse when you didn't know or forgot and pay tribute before you realise, but at least it explained why the media hadn't reported it.
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