Here's an artist whose work I admire (and I suspect most of you lot do too):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/jul/06/harry-eccleston-obituary

I would dearly loved to have met this man.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/7866571/Amedeo-Guillet.html

Amedeo Guillet, who died on June 16 aged 101, was the Italian officer who led the last ( Read more... )

It has taken me a long time to come to appreciate Roger Ebert. My first exposure to him was in the '80s when I saw some of the Siskel and Ebert TV shows. It seemed a shallow thing, perfectly attuned to American viewing habits, with a few bickering soundbites and an up-down verdict from the reviewers. Even Barry Norman, fecker though he is, had the ( Read more... )

So, Troy Kennedy Martin is Hovis. Please mark me down as one of his great admirers.
Craven: How was El Salvador ( Read more... )

Oh dear. Dominick Dunne is Hovis. That great chronicler of Hollywood criminality and venality is gone.

For those of you who were fans of his acid pen, his first Vanity Fair article, about the trial of his daughter's killer, is here:http://www.vanityfair.com/

One thing you will see little of in the various obits on the 'controversial' Robert McNamara is his role in the planning of the firebombing campaigns against Japan. He was rather proud of his part in the incineration of 100,000 Japanese. It is something he will be given a pass for.

Robert S. McNamara is Hovis.

McNamara was a figure who became very familiar to me in my researches for Downtown. He was an odd fellow. One of the brightest men of his generation who will probably be ranked as one of the worst American SecDefs. A son-of-a-bitch who devised a particularly industrial method of waging war, against the NLF in South ( Read more... )

I'm at that age where all the icons of my youth are disappearing. No, I don't mean Michael Jackson, as he never had that much impact on me. I think I was more affected by the recent passing away of Danny La Rue, one of those last links to the variety TV that I grew up with, now gone to that same place in the memory as Frankie Howerd, Kenneth ( Read more... )

Just after Farrah pops her clogs we discover poor, tragic, creepy, monstrous, brilliant old MJ is Hovis.

I'm going to miss his dancing. I loved watching him move. He threw some pretty unique shapes.

Click to view

So Farrah Fawcett is Hovis. Strange to think she was in her 60s. All I can remember of her was the Charlie's Angels pinup. Though she was never the one I fancied...