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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