The 2013 Off Topic Celebrity Dead Pool

[Wezil]

Mad Dog Vachon is dead.
http://www.winnipegsun.com/2013/11/2...og-vachon-dies

I remember watching him with my grandmother, who used to yell at the television whenever he fought dirty.

I didn't know we had the same grandma!?

She was fond of watching the midget wrestlers too.

[molly bloom]

United Kingdom lighter by 2 Nobels. Doris Lessing :

The literary world mourned on hearing that Doris Lessing, the Nobel-prize winning author of The Golden Notebook and The Grass is Singing, among more than 50 novels covering subjects from politics to science fiction, had died peacefully at her London home aged 94.

Her younger son, Peter, whom she cared for through years of illness, died three weeks ago.

The biographer Michael Holroyd, her friend and executor, said her contribution to literature was "outstandingly rich and innovative". He called her themes "universal and international … They ranged from the problems of post-colonial Africa to the politics of nuclear power, the emergence of a new woman's voice and the spiritual dimensions of 20th-century civilisation. Few writers have as broad a range of subject and sympathy.

"She is one of those rare writers whose work crosses frontiers, and her impressively large output constitutes a chronicle of our time. She has enlarged the territory both of the novel and of our consciousness."

The American author Joyce Carol Oates said: "It might be said of Doris Lessing, as Walt Whitman boasted of himself: I am vast, I contain multitudes. For many, Lessing was a revolutionary feminist voice in 20th-century literature – though she resisted such categorisation, quite vehemently. For many others, Lessing was a 'space fiction' prophet, using the devices and idioms of the fantastic to address human issues of evolution and the environment.

"And for other readers, Lessing was a writer willing to explore 'interior worlds', the mysterious life of the spiritual self. Though it is perhaps a predictable choice, my favourite of her many novels is The Golden Notebook. And my favourite of her many wonderful stories is her most famous – To Room Nineteen."

Nick Pearson, her editor at HarperCollins/4th Estate, said: "I adored her."

Born in Iran, brought up in the African bush in Zimbabwe – where her 1950 first novel, The Grass is Singing, was set – Lessing had lived in London for more than 50 years. In 2007 she came back to West Hampstead, north London, carrying heavy bags of shopping, to find her doorstep besieged by reporters and camera crews. "Oh, Christ," she said, on learning that at 88 she had just become the oldest author and the 11th woman to win the Nobel prize in literature. Pausing rather crossly on her front path, she said: "One can get more excited", and went on to observe that since she had already won all the other prizes in Europe, this was "a royal flush".

Later she remarked: "I'm 88 years old and they can't give the Nobel to someone who's dead, so I think they were probably thinking they'd probably better give it to me now before I've popped off."

The citation from the Swedish Academy called her "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny".

Pearson, her editor at the time, recalled the doorstep moment vividly: "That was what she was like. That was vintage Doris.

"When I took over looking after her books, she had a fairly formidable reputation, and the first time I went to meet her I was terrified, but she was always completely charming to me. She was always more interested in talking about the other writers on our list, what the young writers were working on – and reading – than in talking about her own books."

Lessing's last novel, although several earlier books have since been re-released as e-books, was Albert and Emily, published in 2008. Pearson said: "That was a very interesting book for her, revisiting the early life of her mother and her father and how they had been touched by the first world war.

"At the time she said to me 'this is my last book', and we accepted that. She was already at a great age, and I could see she was tired."

The publisher's UK chief executive, Charlie Redmayne, added: "Doris Lessing was one of the great writers of our age. She was a compelling storyteller with a fierce intellect and a warm heart who was not afraid to fight for what she believed in. It was an honour for HarperCollins to publish her."

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/17/doris-lessing-dies-94

Frederick Sanger :

The British scientist who helped work out how to sequence DNA and paved the way for the modern revolution in the understanding of genetics, has died. Frederick Sanger, a biochemist who worked at the Medical Research Council's Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge until his retirement in 1983, was 95.

Sanger was awarded a share of the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1980 for his work on sequencing DNA. It was his second Nobel prize, having also won the chemistry award in 1958 for his pioneering work on the structure of the protein insulin. He is one of only four people to have won two Nobel prizes – the highest honours in science – and the only person to have won two Nobel prizes in chemistry.

Compared with his contemporaries, the discoverers of the structure of DNA, James Watson and Francis Crick, Sanger was a relatively unknown figure outside science. He never courted fame (describing himself as "a chap who messed about in his lab") and retired at the age of 65 to devote time to his garden. He even rejected a knighthood because, he told a journalist in 2000, he did not care to be called Sir. He was awarded the Order of Merit by the Queen in 1986.

Reading the DNA letters that make up genes of living organisms is done routinely in modern laboratories, and understanding how particular sequences influence a person's susceptibility to diseases such as cancer and heart disease is a major focus of medical research. Though Watson and Crick had worked out the structure of DNA's double helix in the early 1950s, and revealed that it held a linear code of base pairs (C, G, T and A), it took Sanger and his team at Cambridge to work out a way to read the DNA sequence. In the 1960s and 70s, Sanger developed techniques to clone the DNA of the genes under investigation and then add chemicals to break it into short pieces.

Sanger's group were the first to produce a whole genome sequence – 5,000 letters long of the virus phiX174 – and they also sequenced the first bit of human genetic material, the 16,000-letter sequence of DNA in a mitochondrion, the "batteries" inside biological cells.

Sanger was born in 1918 at Rendcomb in Gloucestershire. His father, a medical doctor, influenced his interest in biology. He graduated from the University of Cambridge in 1939, specialising in biochemistry. He was a conscientious objector and was allowed to continue with his PhD during the war. Over the next decade, he worked on the chemical structure of proteins and developed methods to determine the building blocks of the hormone insulin, something that had been thought impossible. That work led to the first of his Nobel prizes.

In 1962, he moved to the new Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology along with leading scientists including Nobel laureates Max Perutz and Francis Crick and began working on the problem of sequencing DNA. His technique – "dideoxy" or "Sanger" sequencing – is still in use today to read DNA code, including the 3bn base pairs of the first ever complete human genome sequence published in 2003. The Wellcome Trust named the Sanger Centre after him, which is based in Cambridge and was the UK home of the international Human Genome Project.

Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, said: "I am deeply saddened to learn of the death of Fred Sanger, one of the greatest scientists of any generation and the only Briton to have been honoured with two Nobel prizes. Fred can fairly be called the father of the genomic era: his work laid the foundations of humanity's ability to read and understand the genetic code, which has revolutionised biology and is today contributing to transformative improvements in healthcare. We are honoured that the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, which has done so much to develop our understanding of the genome and apply it to medicine, bears his name, and that the Wellcome Library holds his papers for posterity."

Colin Blakemore, professor of neuroscience and philosophy at the School of Advanced Study in London and former chief executive of the Medical Research Council, said: "The death of a great person usually provokes hyperbole, but it is impossible to exaggerate the impact of Fred Sanger's work on modern biomedical science. His invention of the two critical technical advances – for sequencing proteins and nucleic acids – opened up the fields of molecular biology, genetics and genomics. He remains the only person to have won two Nobel prizes in chemistry – recognising his unique contribution to the modern world."

Sanger married his wife, Margaret Joan Howe, in 1940, and had two sons, Robin and Peter, born in 1943 and 1946, and a daughter, Sally Joan, born in 1960.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/nov/20/dna-pioneer-fred-sanger-dies-genetics

The sun ain't gonna shine any more- for Marvin Rainwater :

Marvin Rainwater, a popular country recording artist of the 1950s, died on Sept. 17 after a brief illness. He was 88.

Born July 2, 1925 in Wichita, Kansas, Rainwater grew up during the Great Depression. He was enamored by music – but it wasn't country that captivated him initially. He took classical piano lessons as a child, but any hopes of pursuing that as a career ended after he lost part of his right thumb in an accident as a teen. He then focused his aspirations on becoming a veterinarian, but a stint in the Navy sparked his musical fire once again.

Influenced heavily by the sound of Roy Acuff, Rainwater began to write songs and played concerts around Virginia with his brothers. One of his songs, "I Gotta Go Get My Baby," was recorded by pop singer Teresa Brewer.

His exposure in the area led him to a May 1955 appearance on "Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts" -- arguably the "American Idol" of the day. He won the appearance, which led to a stint on ABC's Ozark Jubilee and a recording contract with MGM.

While early numbers for the label included non-hits like the rockabilly-flavored "Hot and Cold," he hit the brass ring in 1957 with "Gonna Find Me A Bluebird." A No. 3 country single, it also crossed over to the top-20 on the Hot 100.

He achieved three more top-40 country hits through the end of the decade - "Whole Lotta Woman," "Nothin' Needs Nothin' (Like I Need You)," and "Half-Breed," which became his final charted hit – hitting No. 16 in 1959.

Vocal problems began to plague the singer, and he parted ways with MGM in 1960. After taking some time away, he recorded for a series of labels, including United Artists and Warner Brothers, but was never to chart again, though he did continue to write, with his biggest success coming with "I Miss You Already," a hit in 1956 for Faron Young, and 1986 for Billy Joe Royal. He continued to perform on the rockabilly circuit, particularly in Europe, and was a member of the Rockabilly Hall of Fame.

He was noted for his Native American-inspired stage attire, and was 25% Cherokee. He is survived by wife Sheree, five children, eleven grandchildren, eleven great-grandchildren, and five great-great grandchildren.

http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/the-615/5719375/country-singer-marvin-rainwater-dies-at-88

Sir John Tavener:

For the composer John Tavener, who has died aged 69, creativity sprang from religious faith. Many of his works held an appeal for audiences that did not necessarily identify with contemporary music or the theological values from which he started. However, their response meant a great deal to him: he took their engagement as an affirmation that his music was operating on a spiritual level.

It took until halfway through Tavener's career for him to receive substantial recognition. This came with The Protecting Veil (1989), the "icon in sound" for cello and strings inspired by the Mother of God and premiered at the BBC Proms by Steven Isserlis. The soloist found it to be "a gorgeous, romantic piece of music; the first performance was one of the highlights of my concert life", and his 1992 recording was a bestseller. Five years later, Tavener achieved global celebrity when his Song for Athene (1993) closed the funeral service for Diana, Princess of Wales, televised from Westminster Abbey.

In the closing minutes of the old millennium, the impact of the choral work A New Beginning was somewhat lost in the festivities that took place in the dome now known as the O2, on the Thames at Greenwich. Nonetheless, the year 2000 brought Tavener a knighthood, a festival of his music at the Southbank Centre, London, and the first performance of Fall and Resurrection, exploring the characteristic themes of the end of the world and paradise. Tavener's use of instruments such as the ram's horns, nay flute and kaval (both forms of folk flute) saw him pushing the boundaries of his vision ever closer to the east and to eastern religions, another characteristic impulse.

The work was dedicated to the Prince of Wales, with whom Tavener formed a lasting friendship. Prince Charles became a generous supporter of his music, especially his explorations of the universalist approach to religion that the two men shared.

Despite ongoing health problems, Tavener was in demand, and responded prolifically. The events of 9/11 made him more acutely aware of the dangers of religious dogmatism. In a letter to the Times after the atrocity, Tavener urged world leaders to read the 13th-century Sufi poet Rumi, whose saying "sell cleverness, buy wonder" reflected what he was trying to achieve with his music.

He took a huge risk with the seven-hour vigil The Veil of the Temple (2003) at the Temple church in London, but this listening marathon was received with great enthusiasm by critics and public alike. It was the first large-scale expression of his universalism; the work that truly embraced this outlook was his hour-long song cycle Schuon Lieder (2004) for soprano, string quartet, piano and four Tibetan temple bowls. Despite its overall length, this is a masterpiece of miniature writing, setting 19 texts. Tavener told me that he felt particularly proud of it, not only because of the direction in which it was taking him, but also because of the beauty of the verse by the metaphysical poet and philosopher Frithjof Schuon.

Never afraid of controversy, Tavener found it head-on with The Beautiful Names (2007), a meditation on the 99 names of Allah which was given its premiere in Westminster Cathedral, much to the consternation of many Catholics, who staged an open-air demonstration before the performance. Nonetheless, the work was warmly received, and the critic Robert Maycock observed that "if Tavener were to write nothing else, this would surely stand as a summation of what he has tried to achieve".

Tavener was born in Wembley Park, north-west London, the elder of two sons. His Presbyterian parents, Kenneth and Muriel, who ran a family building firm, gave him a religious upbringing and nurtured his musical talents. He began composing and studying the piano at an early age, and gained a music scholarship to Highgate school, north London.

Two early encounters had a profound effect: a performance of Mozart's The Magic Flute – for Tavener the only opera that transcended western tradition – at Glyndebourne, and Stravinsky's Canticum Sacrum. He studied for a time with the pianist Solomon, and entered the Royal Academy of Music. Stage nerves deterred him from performance, and he was encouraged as a composer by Lennox Berkeley. However, it was from a fellow student, David Lumsdaine, that Tavener felt he learned most, through being introduced to the music of Pierre Boulez, John Cage, György Ligeti and – perhaps more importantly – Olivier Messiaen.

Tavener's dramatic cantata Cain and Abel (1966) won him the Prince Rainier award while he was still a student. But the first work to bring him significant public attention was The Whale (1968), based on the biblical story of Jonah and premiered in the London Sinfonietta's inaugural concert.

By now the Tavener family firm was run by John's younger brother, Roger, who did some building work on Ringo Starr's house in Surrey. He and his fellow Beatles were open to outside ideas for their Apple record label, and The Whale was released in 1970.

The following year Apple released Celtic Requiem, the work in which Tavener's streams of metaphysical and musical thought coalesced, and for which he retained a lasting affection. Many of its themes became recurring motifs: a preoccupation with death, the fall from grace and loss of childhood innocence, and the transition from darkness to light.

Benjamin Britten heard Celtic Requiem, and his recommendation to the Royal Opera brought Tavener an opera commission. His first idea, of turning Jean Genet's novel Notre Dame des Fleurs into an electronic opera, would have been as innovative as it was controversial. But Peter Hall, then production director at Covent Garden, was not impressed.

Tavener's fascination with Roman Catholicism had resulted in several works from the late 1960s and early 70s, notably the 50-minute, large-scale choral meditation on texts by the 16th-century Spanish mystic St John of the Cross – Ultimos Ritos (Last Rites, 1974). St John's metaphysical concept of "dying to oneself" registered strongly with Tavener. When Tavener was introduced to the story of St Thérèse of Lisieux in 1971, he immediately empathised with her short life and physical suffering, and was convinced she would be the ideal subject for the Covent Garden commission.

Not everyone concurred. The playwright Gerard McLarnon spent the best part of three years working on the libretto for Thérèse; Tavener himself became musically "blocked" and felt himself drawing away from the Catholic ethos in which it was steeped. The critics were divided when it eventually appeared in 1979. In hindsight, it was something of a cul-de-sac. There was perhaps too much angst in the music, and it was too static in action for a two-hour opera.

Tavener's marriage to the Greek dancer Victoria Maragopoulou in 1974 lasted only a few months. Tavener's inability to sustain the relationship affected him deeply, and the chamber opera A Gentle Spirit (1977), another collaboration with McLarnon, based on a story by Dostoevsky, deals with a marriage that fails to the extent of a pawnbroker's wife taking her own life. In many ways it was far superior to Thérèse, with the internal drama more suited to the stage. Moreover, it touched upon Russian orthodoxy, to which McLarnon had been a convert for several years.

Tavener also converted to the Russian Orthodox church, which he said filled him with a sense of "homecoming". However, his works from this period – most notably Kyklike Kinesis, The Immurement of Antigone, and Palintropos – while still unmistakably his, sought a voice that could combine Orthodox beliefs with creativity. They culminated in the powerful Akhmatova Requiem (1981).

In 1980, Tavener suffered a stroke that left him partially paralysed for a time. He doubted he would ever write music again, and was never entirely well for the rest of his life. He believed that the stroke had shifted his creative outlook, and when he did resume composing he was more at ease in unifying his faith with his music. With the radiantly beautiful Ikon of Light (1984), for chorus and string trio, he can be said to have truly found his voice.

In the same period he produced a rare secular work, To a Child Dancing in the Wind (1983), a setting of the poem by Yeats, one of the few western poets he admired. It also showed him returning to the theme of the loss of childhood innocence.

The death of his mother in 1985 was another devastating blow. The healing effect of his beloved Greece, however, and the shrine of St Nektarios on the island of Aegina, south of Athens, gave him hope. He immediately began work on the moving Eis Thanaton, a setting of the Greek poet Andreas Kalvos's Ode to Death.

It was at this time that Mother Thekla, the extraordinary abbess of an Orthodox monastery on the Yorkshire moors near Whitby, became an increasingly important part of Tavener's life. She assumed the role of spiritual mentor, collaborator and adviser until, in 2003, Tavener's increasing interest in a more universalist philosophy led to a breakdown in their friendship.

The considerable forces required for The Akathist of Thanksgiving (1988) were deployed spatially, and Tavener's preoccupation with man's exclusion from the state of paradise inform the colossal, two-and-a-half-hour work Resurrection and its pendant work, the string quartet The Hidden Treasure (both 1989).

In 1990 Tavener was diagnosed with Marfan syndrome, a hereditary condition affecting the connective tissue, and he remained in a critical condition for some time after an operation. Nonetheless, he continued work on The Apocalypse, a massive work for soloists, chorus and orchestra, which at one time he thought might be his last.

The following year he married Maryanna Schaefer, and they moved to Sussex. This was the first time Tavener had moved in his life, having previously remained in the house where he was born. Greece, too, became an increasingly important refuge and a haven for composing. He returned to opera again with Mary of Egypt (1992), which met with some success at its Aldeburgh premiere.

In later years, once he had acquired a broadly based audience, his universalist focus continued to result in wonderful works, such as the mass Sollemnitas in Conceptione Immaculata Beatae Mariae Virginis (2006) and the Requiem (2008) for cello, soloists, chorus and orchestra, premiered in Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral. Drawing its texts from Sufi poetry, the Catholic Mass, the Koran and Hindu words from the Upanishad, Tavener explained that "the essence of the Requiem is contained in the words 'Our glory lies where we cease to exist'". Like practically all of Tavener's music, it is a story about a "journey" and becoming "one with God".

Days before the premiere of Sollemnitas, he suffered a heart attack while attending rehearsals in Zurich. He spent months in intensive care in a London hospital, during which time his brother died of a heart attack, and it took till 2011 for larger works to begin to flow again, among them the monodrama The Death of Ivan Ilyich (2012). He said he felt particularly proud of this piece, based on Tolstoy's novel, which featured in an evening of his new and rarely performed work at the Manchester international festival earlier this year.

Tavener was renowned for his passion for cars: a newspaper once described him as "the mystic who drives a Rolls-Royce". When he climbed into the passenger seat of my Citroën diesel on the way to give a lecture in Cornwall, he pronounced, typically teasingly: "It's a very sensible car, isn't it?" Not everything had to be on a grand scale: thoroughly representative of the man I got to know when studying with him is the tiny choral work The Lamb (1984).

He is survived by Maryanna and their three children, Theodora, Sofia and Orlando.

• John Kenneth Tavener, composer, born 28 January 1944; died 12 November 2013

• John Tavener official website

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/nov/12/john-tavener

Patrice Chereau, film and theatre director :

Unusually for a director, Patrice Chéreau, who has died of lung cancer aged 68, had more or less equally prestigious careers in the theatre, cinema and opera. Although he was internationally known from films such as La Reine Margot (1994) and his groundbreaking production of Richard Wagner's Ring cycle at Bayreuth (1976), he was renowned in his native France mostly for his "must-see" stage productions, especially during his long stints as co-director of the Théâtre National Populaire (1971-77) and the Théâtre des Amandiers (1982-90).

At these two subsidised theatres, in Villeurbanne, near Lyons, and Nanterre, in western Paris, respectively, Chéreau was able to introduce modern plays and bring a freshness to bear on the classics, particularly Marivaux, whose La Dispute he directed to acclaim at the TNP in three different versions in the 1970s. At the Amandiers, his sensational 1983 production of Jean Genet's Les Paravents (The Screens) used the auditorium as an extension of the stage.

Chéreau was born in the small town of Lézigné, south-west of Le Mans, in the Loire valley. His parents, both artists, instilled in their youngest son a taste for culture at an early age. When the family moved to Paris, Chéreau went to the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, where he started a theatre group for which he directed, acted and designed the decor and costumes.

At the age of 22, Chéreau became artistic director of the Théâtre de Sartrouville in a north-western suburb of Paris, where he met the designer Richard Peduzzi, who was to provide the decor of the majority of Chéreau's stage productions and films. The director placed much emphasis on the visual elements of his mise-en-scene, and the expressivity of the actors' bodies, sometimes using stylised gestures and grotesque makeup.

Chéreau's mentors were the great Italian stage director Giorgio Strehler, with whom he worked at the Piccolo Teatro di Milano (1970-72), and Roger Planchon, who appointed the 27-year-old as co-director of the TNP. Among his other influences were Bertolt Brecht, Antonin Artaud and Orson Welles.

That said, these influences were seldom reflected in Chéreau's eclectic filmography. But however one assesses his films, it is obvious that he set out successfully to disconcert audiences. For his first feature, the murky psychological thriller, Flesh of the Orchid (La Chair de l'Orchidée, 1975), based on James Hadley Chase's pulp-novel sequel to No Orchids for Miss Blandish, Chéreau, using some German Expressionistic visuals, assembled a starry cast including Charlotte Rampling, Edwige Feuillère, Simone Signoret and Alida Valli.

The Wounded Man (L'Homme Blessé, 1983) was a more personal project for Chéreau. He and his co-writer, Hervé Guibert, worked for six years on the scenario, which tells of a love affair between a teenage boy and an older man who is involved in prostitution. According to the director, this very dark view of homosexuality on the eve of the HIV/Aids epidemic is not a gay film but "a description of a closed milieu". As Chéreau, who lived with the actor Pascal Greggory for some years, told the Guardian journalist Stephen Moss: "I never wanted to specialise in gay stories and gay newspapers have criticised me for that. Everywhere love stories are exactly the same. The game of desire, and how you live with desire, are the same."

In contrast to the rather melancholy mode of his first few films, La Reine Margot was a rumbustious adaptation of the Alexandre Dumas novel set during the religious war between the Catholics and the Protestants in late-16th-century France. With its battle scenes, sumptuous settings and depiction of the St Bartholomew's day massacre, it was Chéreau's most expensive and – at 161 minutes – longest film and his biggest box-office success by far. It led to a whole series of historical epics from France.

On a smaller scale and with much handheld camerawork, Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train (Ceux Qui M'Aiment Prendront le Train, 1998), about the interplay of assorted characters on their way to the funeral of a misanthropic, bisexual minor painter (Jean-Louis Trintignant), was melodramatic, sentimental and emptily wordy.

Chéreau's only English-language film, Intimacy (2001), based on short stories by Hanif Kureishi, consisted mainly of loveless, graphically depicted, sexual encounters between a divorced father (Mark Rylance) and a housewife (Kerry Fox) in a grotty London flat. The film, inevitably dubbed Last Tango in London, gained some notoriety because of the unsimulated oral sex performed.

His Brother (Son Frère, 2003) centres on the relationship between two estranged brothers, one gay, the other straight. They come together when the latter suffers from a potentially fatal blood disease. The hospital processes are shot unflinchingly, without sentimentality, which makes this meditation on mortality even more moving. Chéreau's last feature, Persecution (2009), the title of which he describes as a synonym for love, was a gloomy, episodic film, in which a group of lonely people try to interact.

In May 2011, Chéreau came to the Young Vic theatre in London to direct I Am the Wind, a 70-minute two-hander written by the Norwegian Jon Fosse, which Michael Billington in the Guardian found "hypnotic", admiring the production's "visual bravura".

Chéreau acted in a few films, among them Andrzej Wajda's Danton (1982) playing Camille Desmoulins, and in Youssef Chahine's Adieu Bonaparte (1985), as Napoleon. For many years, Chéreau planned to make a film with Al Pacino as Napoleon in exile on St Helena, but he abandoned the project in 2009, when financing was not forthcoming.




• Patrice Chéreau, stage, film and opera director, born 2 November 1944; died 7 October 2013

http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2013/oct/08/patrice-chereau

Felix Dexter, actor and comedian :

The comedian and actor Felix Dexter, who has died aged 52, first worked on The Fast Show in the mid-90s. Paul Whitehouse and I needed an actor for a sketch where a young black guy is talking in heavy urban slang to his "brother", who is utterly mystified and can't understand a single word. We hadn't presumed to write any dialogue for the sketch and Felix came in and improvised the whole thing spectacularly.

Making a character come alive entails a lot more than just doing a funny voice. You have to pin down the attitude, the accent, the physicality and, most importantly, the language. Felix got everything spot on and allowed us to present a sketch in which it was all right to laugh at someone from an ethnic minority, because his character was real, not a lazy stereotype, and because the humour was coming from Felix.

He was a genius at creating memorable characters – earnest African students, Christian fundamentalists, streetwise dudes, posh lawyers who were whiter than the whitest white man, he nailed them all brilliantly and had an enviable ear for dialogue. He was also a real gentleman, tall, charismatic and worldlywise.

Felix first came to the public's attention in the early 90s when he appeared in the groundbreaking "black and Asian" sketch show The Real McCoy playing a variety of characters, and when it finished we worked with him on a pilot for his own show, Felix Dexter on TV. He was typically brilliant in this, but the BBC never picked it up for a series and after that Felix appeared mainly in cameo roles on other people's shows, including Absolutely Fabulous (2003, as John Johnston, father of Saffy's baby), The Lenny Henry Show and, most recently, Adil Ray's Citizen Khan (2012-13, as Omar).

At the same time, Felix kept up his "day job" on the alternative comedy circuit, performing a mixture of straight standup and characters. As one of the earliest alternative black comedians he was a huge inspiration to many black actors and comics and he continued to influence and inspire performers regardless of ethnicity. He never quite broke through into mega-stadium status, however, despite appearances on shows such as Have I Got News for You and Grumpy Old Men, possibly because he wasn't fully comfortable with the "and this is the real me" part of his act.

It was in character that he came alive and in some ways his middle-class lawyer persona was him having fun with his own status. Having moved to London from St Kitts, he trained as a lawyer at UCL before turning to comedy in the 80s and in his act he often riffed on the idea that he was never sure of his place in British society. His lifestyle was more Islington middle-class than that of the Harlesden rude boy he so effectively portrayed in characters like Early D (in our Radio 4 spoof phone-in show Down the Line), although this was never a problem for any of his black fans who would erupt into adulation whenever he performed his characters live.

As one of our most brilliant character actors, he was at the top of our list of people we wanted to play "callers" on Down the Line. The show was entirely improvised, so we had no idea what to expect when we pressed the record button. We always relaxed with Felix, though, because we knew how solid he would be. He could improvise in character all day long and the material would always be fresh and funny, because he knew these people inside out.

When we transferred the show to TV as Bellamy's People in 2010, Felix was equally funny and showed what he could do to a whole new generation of fans.

He is survived by his mother, Doreen.

Charlie Higson

Paul Whitehouse writes: In an era in which people rush to bare their souls to the world, Felix remained very protective of his personal life. In fact, even his real age was a matter of conjecture and all we can be sure of is that he was somewhere in his fifties when he died. If this sounds like an admission of obituary defeat, it kind of is and isn't.

When we recorded the most recent series of Down the Line with him in the spring, I remember urging him to try another take of his character Early D (a kind of "educated" streetwise music producer – and entrepreneur, "Singular! You is my dog from time"). When I asked him to do it again with more of his usual gusto, he demurred, saying Pythonesquely: "I'm sorry, I have a cold." It was a pretty serious "cold". He had had it by then for several years and it was actually multiple myeloma, a pernicious form of blood cancer.

When he got in touch recently, I assumed that it would be to gloat over the fact that Arsenal were top of the league and therefore above Tottenham. The true nature of the phone call was altogether more distressing, even for a Spurs fan like me. At first I didn't believe him because he was capable of some good pranking, but the punchline remained unreached and reality began to sink in. Nevertheless Felix continued pranking until very close to the end.

My first visit gave a false sense of hope, as, although he was confined to bed, Felix was as funny as ever. He still didn't want his condition known generally, even at that late stage, but he was able, despite the pain, to address something that had been gnawing away at him: that he had been too guarded about much of his life. It was very emotional and humbling to be with him when he reached out. A few manly tears were shed and then we moved on to the much safer territory of football and comedy.

And that's how Felix would like to be remembered. As Early D would say: "Niceness. Niceness, my yoot."


• Felix Dexter, comedian and actor, born 26 July 1961; died 18 October 2013

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/oct/21/felix-dexter

[Wezil]

I don't see a lineup of volunteers to take this project over....

[ColdWizard]

I wouldn't be a good arbiter of the rules and Dec/Jan is my busiest time of year.

[Wezil]

I'll be going away in a few weeks and won't return until the final update in the new year.

If there is to be any sort of handoff it will need to happen in the next couple weeks.

[DaShi]

Damn, I should have played and put this game on my list.

[molly bloom]

Nigel Davenport actor on stage & screen :

When the whisky flowed, according to the writer John Heilpern, the actor Nigel Davenport looked "as if he might knock you through the wall for sport". However, words such as "imposing" and "heavyweight", both often applied to his performances on stage and screen across more than 40 years, do not do sufficient justice to his lightness of touch and comic energy.

Davenport, who has died aged 85, was a founder member of the English Stage Company (ESC) at the Royal Court – in the first season, he was in every production except Look Back in Anger – and a distinguished president of Equity, the actors' union; he played leads in Restoration comedy and absurdist drama as well as King Lear.

In a recent rerun of the BBC's Keeping Up Appearances, he loomed as a lubricious old navy commodore coming on to Patricia Routledge's Hyacinth Bouquet in the back of a cab driven by a vicar. With his huge bulk, fruity, growling voice and gleaming left eye, he was as hilarious as he was genuinely alarming.

The "odd" eye was the result of an operation to correct a childhood squint gone wrong, but this only added to his raffish singularity, which made him ideal casting for hirsute, frequently moustachioed, villains as well as the large roster of high-ranking soldiers, aristocrats and monarchs – he was a superb King George III in the BBC television series The Prince Regent (1979) – he embodied with an easy charm and natural entitlement.

He grew up in the village of Great Shelford, near Cambridge, the son of Arthur Davenport and his wife, Katherine. His father was the bursar at Sidney Sussex College and was awarded the Military Cross in the first world war. Davenport was educated at St Peter's school in Seaford, East Sussex, and at Cheltenham college before studying philosophy, politics and economics (changing to English) at Trinity College, Oxford. At university, he was a contemporary of Tony Richardson and William Gaskill, both later colleagues at the Royal Court, and appeared as Bottom and the Cardinal in The Duchess of Malfi with the Oxford University Dramatic Society. He had done his national service in Germany, where he worked as a disc jockey with the British Forces Network.

Davenport made his London debut in 1952 at the Savoy theatre in Noël Coward's Relative Values, playing the Hon Peter Ingleton, a role he had at first understudied. After a season at the Shakespeare Memorial theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1953, he estimated that he played no fewer than 75 roles at the Chesterfield Civic theatre company in two years; that constituted his formal training as an actor.

That experience, and his personal friendship with Richardson, catapulted him into the Royal Court opening season in 1956, when he appeared in Angus Wilson's The Mulberry Bush, Arthur Miller's The Crucible (as Thomas Putnam), two plays by Ronald Duncan, Nigel Dennis's Cards of Identity and Brecht's The Good Woman of Setzuan (with Peggy Ashcroft), and played Quack in William Wycherley's The Country Wife.

In the next two years he was in the Sunday night "without decor" tryouts for two important ESC productions, NF Simpson's A Resounding Tinkle (directed by Gaskill) and Arnold Wesker's The Kitchen (directed by John Dexter), as well as appearing in John Osborne's Epitaph for George Dillon (again directed by Gaskill, with Robert Stephens in the lead) and John Arden's Live Like Pigs.

Having played Horner in The Country Wife at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, in 1955, he returned there to appear in Joan Littlewood's production of Shelagh Delaney's A Taste of Honey (1958), making his Broadway debut with that play in 1960. From this hectic few years at the heart of the new wave of English drama, he turned to television and film; he had made his first TV appearance in 1952 and was soon in demand on screen as a character actor of real distinction.

His major films covered 20 years, including Alexander Mackendrick's A High Wind in Jamaica (1965); Fred Zinnemann's A Man for All Seasons (1966), with Paul Scofield, in which Davenport played a powerful Duke of Norfolk; and two directed by Hugh Hudson, Chariots of Fire (1981), in which he played Lord Birkenhead, and Greystoke (1984), as Major Jack Downing.

Of his later theatre appearances I treasure most his faultless Vershinin, the dashing army captain, in Jonathan Miller's 1976 revival of Chekhov's Three Sisters (with Janet Suzman as Masha). He toured in King Lear in 1986 and in Alan Bennett's The Old Country in 1989, bowing out to live quietly in the Cotswolds after playing a boorish old sugar daddy to perfection in Somerset Maugham's Our Betters at the Chichester Festival theatre in 1997.

Davenport was an active member of Equity, forming a rightwing (though he himself was of middle-ground disposition) and ultimately successful "Act for Equity" faction in opposition to Corin and Vanessa Redgrave's Workers Revolutionary party cell within the union in the 1970s. He served as a healing president from 1986 to 1992.

He was twice married and divorced, first to Helena White (from 1951 to 1960), with whom he had two children, the writer Hugo Davenport and the actor Laura Davenport; and second to the actor and director Maria Aitken (from 1972 to 1981), with whom he had a son, the actor Jack Davenport. He is survived by his children and five grandchildren. His brother, Peter, predeceased him.

• Arthur Nigel Davenport, actor, born 23 May 1928; died 25 October 2013

• This article was amended on 30 October. Davenport's father, and not his grandfather, won the Military Cross in the first world war.

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/oct/29/nigel-davenport

Lewis Collins, a real 'Professional' :

In a 1980 episode of the hit British cop show The Professionals, an ill-advised villain tries to threaten the ex-mercenary William Bodie with his snarling doberman pinscher. After a brief altercation, Bodie, all sang-froid and minimally curled lip, inquires: "Would your little dog like to chew this electric fire? Or maybe you'll just leave."

This kind of butch badinage, along with rugged good looks, helped make Lewis Collins, who played Bodie in all 57 of the show's episodes from 1977 and 1983, and who has died aged 67 after suffering from cancer, into a household name. During that time he formed one half of Britain's answer to Starsky and Hutch, a crime-fighting duo called Bodie and Doyle who worked for a shadowy criminal intelligence agency, CI5, headed by Gordon Jackson's strait-laced George Cowley. At its height, The Professionals was watched by 12 million viewers a week, and Collins became a heart-throb. He was even considered to replace Roger Moore as James Bond.

Of all the many unreconstructed hardmen of 70s and 80s British TV, Collins was the most unremittingly macho in real life. He was a black belt in jujitsu and a crack shot, and had taken the entrance tests to join the SAS. He and Martin Shaw, who played Ray Doyle, worked out in the gym for their roles; and Collins often did his own stunts.

The actor Anthony Andrews had originally been cast as Bodie, but left after only four days on set. Collins quickly made an impression, not just for his hardman aura, but for comedy, an acting skill he had developed in the mid-70s Granada sitcom The Cuckoo Waltz. "You CI5 boys think you're the cat's whiskers, don't you?" asks a CID sergeant in one episode of The Professionals. "Well," retorts Bodie, "at least we're at the right end of the cat."

His character was never troubled by self-doubt. When asked by a besotted, helpless woman (there were plenty of those in The Professionals) which is Bodie and which Doyle, Bodie replies insouciantly: "Bodie's the incredibly handsome one." "That still doesn't tell me which is which," she says.

Perhaps inevitably, Bodie and Doyle were satirised. In a Nissan car ad a few years later, one Professionals-like rogue cop remarks: "This car's well-sprung," prompting the reply: "Yeah, just like your perm." In 1984, Keith Allen and Peter Richardson played Bonehead and Foyle in The Bull****ters, in which two disgraced agents return to crime-fighting to rescue their ex-boss's kidnapped daughter. But John Simm, who starred in the hit cop show Life on Mars (2006-07), acknowledged Collins's influence on his portrayal of Sam Tyler, saying: "If there's anything in my head about the way Sam looks and acts, for me it's Bodie as played by Lewis Collins."

Before The Professionals finished its run, Collins starred in the British film Who Dares Wins (1982). He played an SAS officer, Captain Peter Skellen, who goes undercover to foil a group of anti-nuclear terrorists. It was widely derided for its hawkish politics and for its implausibility, with the critic Roger Ebert remarking: "There are so many errors of judgment, strategy, behaviour and simple plausibility in this movie that we just give up and wait for it to end."

Nonetheless, after the film's release, Collins was invited to meet the James Bond producer Cubby Broccoli, who was looking for a new 007. "I was in his office for about five minutes, but it was really over for me in seconds," Collins said later. "He's expecting another Connery to walk through the door but there are few of them around. He found me too aggressive."

Collins was born in Bidston, Birkenhead, Merseyside. He struggled at school, but developed an interest in martial arts and shooting. He also learned to play the drums that his father, Bill, a jazz dance band leader, bought him, and by 13 was playing in the Renegades, who were occasionally on the same bill as the Beatles at the Cavern Club in Liverpool. It was even suggested that Collins should audition to replace Pete Best as the Beatles' drummer.

Instead, he became a hairdresser. Later, he learned to play the guitar and was hired as bassist for the Mojos, featuring on their singles Goodbye Dolly Gray and Until My Baby Comes Home, but he grew exasperated with the music scene and decided to become an actor. "It was like saying you wanted to be an astronaut," he recalled. "Everyone laughed in the pop business but I really felt I could do it."

In 1968, Collins auditioned successfully for the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. After graduation, he worked at Glasgow Citizens theatre and the Royal Court, London, before, in 1974, landing his TV debut in the police series Z Cars. But it was in The Cuckoo Waltz, in which he was the lodger to impoverished newlyweds played by Diane Keen and David Roper, that he made his name. As Gavin Rumsey, he played the kind of self-regarding Lothario who was not a million miles away from Bodie.

After The Professionals concluded, Collins went on to play several relatively minor TV roles – including a sheriff of Nottingham in Robin of Sherwood (1986), and Colonel Mustard in six episodes of a British TV game-show adaptation of Cluedo (1991-92). But he was never able to match his success in The Professionals and in later years lived quietly with his family in Los Angeles.

He is survived by his wife, Michelle, whom he married in 1992, and three sons, Oliver, Elliot and Cameron.

• Lewis Collins, actor, born 26 May 1946; died 27 November 2013

• This article was amended on 29 November 2013. The original stated that Lewis Collins played the sheriff of Nottingham in Robin of Sherwood. The character he played, Philip Mark, was briefly appointed sheriff of Nottingham in place of Robert de Rainault, the longstanding sheriff played by Nickolas Grace.

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/nov/28/lewis-collins

[molly bloom]

Antonia Bird, film and television director :

As the director Antonia Bird, who has died aged 62 from anaplastic thyroid cancer, moved from the stage into television and film, she retained the ideals that had come out of the political radicalisation of theatre during the 1970s. Though she was at home in other genres, as with the horror-movie satire Ravenous (1999), her main aim was to use whatever medium she was working in, however commercial or mainstream, to tell important stories, highlight issues and champion causes.

In 1985 the producers of the groundbreaking BBC TV soap EastEnders recruited Antonia to direct 17 early episodes, including the renowned two-hander focusing on the disintegrating marriage of Den and Angie Watts (Leslie Grantham and Anita Dobson). She was the initial director on the BBC's drama Casualty (1986-87), responsible for casting and keen to ensure that the writers used this prime-time format to tackle important and controversial subjects.

Her five-part television adaptation of Ann Oakley's feminist novel The Men's Room (1991) starred Harriet Walter, Amanda Redman and Bill Nighy. Through it Nighy, playing a lecherous academic, came to wider attention.

Antonia's own breakthrough came with Safe (1993), a feature film for the BBC based on the lives of a group of homeless young people – Aiden Gillen, Robert Carlyle and myself – in the West End of London. It won both a Bafta award and an Edinburgh festival first film award. The controversial Priest (1994) had a cinema release before its broadcast in the BBC's Screen Two series. Written by Jimmy McGovern in the wake of his criminal psychology drama Cracker, it tells of a young, gay but conservative priest (Father Greg, played by Linus Roache) encountering an older, more radical colleague (Tom Wilkinson). Greg's position is undermined by an indecency charge; he also becomes aware through the confessional of a girl's abuse by her father. This came at a time of growing discussion of priests, celibacy, sex and hypocrisy.
Linus Roache in Priest, 1994, directed by Antonia Bird. Photograph: Photos 12/ Alamy
Hollywood called, and Antonia directed her first film there, Mad Love (1995), starring Drew Barrymore and Chris O'Donnell as a young couple on the run. It emerged rather crushed from the studio system and she returned to London to shoot the gangster film Face (1997), with Ray Winstone, Damon Albarn and Carlyle, who played a bank robber disillusioned by the failure of socialism in 1980s Britain. Carlyle was again the star in her next US venture, Ravenous, as a stranger arriving at a 19th-century US army fort with a tale of cannibalism. By this time, Antonia was keen to gain more creative control. Carlyle joined her in the setting up of her production company, 4Way Pictures, along with the documentary-maker and film critic Mark Cousins and the novelist Irvine Welsh, who saw her as "an amazing life force; a powerhouse of ideas, enthusiasm and positivity".

Her BBC film Care (2000), starring Steven Mackintosh, was a fictionalised account of sexual abuse in children's homes, and won Bafta and Prix Italia awards. Other credits included Rehab (2003), The Hamburg Cell (2004), a fictionalised account of the 9/11 bombers, and a film-length episode of Cracker (2006), in which McGovern returned to the couple at the heart of his 1990s success, played by Robbie Coltrane and Barbara Flynn. Antonia's documentary debut came with Off By Heart (2009). Produced and directed by her for the BBC, it followed primary schoolchildren from across Britain in a poetry recitation competition, and brought her another Bafta award. She was the principal director on Peter Moffat's The Village, the first episodes of which, recounting the often harsh reality of rural Derbyshire life in the early years of the 20th century, were seen on BBC1 earlier this year.

Born in London, Antonia was the daughter of a stage manager mother, Rosemary, and an actor father, Michael. By her 17th birthday she was working as an assistant stage manager at Coventry Rep, where she also became involved in publicity, theatre administration and acting. It was suffering from terrible stage fright that fortuitously settled her on the path of directing. She then joined Michael Bogdanov's innovative company at the Phoenix theatre, Leicester, directing a variety of productions, including Joe Orton's What The Butler Saw.
Antonia Bird with Drew Barrymore, left, on Mad Love, 1995. Photograph: Moviestore collection/Alamy
In 1978 Antonia went to the Royal Court theatre, London, as a resident director. Passionate about new writing, she worked with Hanif Kureishi, Samuel Beckett and Trevor Griffiths, and was the driving force behind Jim Cartwright's Road being premiered in 1986.

At the National Theatre she was assistant director to Richard Eyre on his production of Guys and Dolls, and directed its West End transfer (1985-86). Her casting of Clarke Peters as the first black Sky Masterson was a typically inspired move.
BBC1's The Village, 2013. Antonia Bird was principal director. Photograph: Brian Sweeney/BBC
Once she had started with EastEnders, Antonia never returned to the theatre: she loved the way in which working with actors on film enabled her "to really capture the light in their eyes". She had no time for the manipulation that can go on in the director-actor relationship. Instead, she put great energy into supporting her actors on and off set. I was lucky enough to work as an actor with her six times and came to understand only later how remarkable her attitude was. Along with many others, I will miss her hugely.

She is survived by her beloved husband, Ian Ilett.

• Antonia Bird, film and TV director, born 27 May 1951; died 24 October 2013

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/oct/28/antonia-bird

[Wezil]

Damn, I should have played and put this game site on my list.

Fixed.

[Uncle Sparky]

Paul Walker, actor from the Fast and Furious movie franchise, died today in a car crash.

[pchang]

Bill Beckwith - A host for HGTV's Curb Appeal show.

[Hauldren Collider]

Mandela died.

[Guynemer]

[Guynemer]

On the other hand, that's points for just about everyone.

[regexcellent]

Also, Erich Priebke died two months ago (in much happier news).