The only person on Earth with a bigger head than Sebastian Horsley has died…

Image manipulation: author’s own.

Alan Sillitoe – bullied at school with a name like that?
Relentlessly.

So here’s the headline:
Christopher Hitchens: Alan Sillitoe was an outsider’s outsider

Presumably, within a small circle of outsider’s outsiders, there’s an outsider’s outsider’s outsider.

I have no idea if I’ve got the apostrophes in the right place.

Isaac Hayes dead.

“Relatives found Hayes, 65, unconscious in his home next to a still-running treadmill, said Steve Shular, a spokesman for the Shelby County Sheriff’s Department.”

This is poignant, from his website.

Fat man dies. Big fat racist man dies. A few years ago, I bought a tape of his live act and listened to it in the car. The two things that stood out were i) how good a singer he was; and ii) how surprisingly bad at telling his own jokes he was. He kept putting “fucking” in the wrong places in his sentences, ruining the rhythm for the sake of making it sound rude. He was like a less good Jim Davidson. A slightly nicer, slightly more racist Jim Davidson. Fatter too, of course. Worse hair.

Manning was the voice of racial distrust, and however kind/generous/twinkly he was (take your pick from the obits), it’s hard not to feel glad that such a foghorn of bigotry has finally been silenced.

Here’s a typical tribute:

Frank Carson, on The Comedians with Manning, said: “People that misunderstood didn’t have a sense of humour. He used to make gags about the Irish to me. When I’d come into the room he’d say ‘does anyone smell Semtex’ and I wouldn’t take offence.”

Still funny after the 10,000th time of telling? “Eh – we’ve got a Paki gentleman into tonight! Can we get a light on him? There he is. So who’s looking after the shop?” etc. etc. night after night after night after night. Shut up.

Oh good. He has.

The Godfather of sex scandals, John Profumo, has died. He had sexual relations with a girl whilst sitting back to front on a chair, and for this Parliament never forgave him. A ruined career, but tremendous hair:

In 1995, he sat next the Queen at Mrs Thatcher’s 70th birthday party. I wonder which one he went for. The Queen, I reckon. They probably went up and did it on the coats after the cheese course.

One of America’s greatest comic character actors, Don Knotts, has died. He was 81, and his voice was quivery and nervous right up until the end. Doing nervous was Knotts’ best thing. He’s even listed as ‘Nervous Motorist’ in It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963). And Knotts himself once said: “if you had to sum me up in a word, it would be nervous.”

The universe will best remember Knotts for his quivery and nervous cameo in Cannonball Run II (one of three movies selected in July 1997 to be sent in a capsule into outer space – alongside Bonfire of the Vanities and Rear Window). Knotts’ own space travels began in 1967, with his space caper The Reluctant Astronaut – a film which is summed up by this continuity error, posted on IMDb:

Goofs: Continuity: When Fleming respools the capsule’s programming tape, he has accidentally gotten the peanut butter mixed in with it. The tape reels are so clogged, they cannot play. Later, when Fleming looks out the capsule window at Hawaii, the tape reels are seen in the background running normally. The peanut butter then returns in subsequent shots.

An interesting fact about The Reluctant Astronaut is that it features Leslie Nielsen in a comic version of the serious roles he was already used to playing: some 13 years before Airplane!, in which he supposedly played against type for the first time.

Knotts’ last major work was to provide the voice of Mayor Turkey Lurkey in Chicken Little, which makes me think that Chicken Little might have something to do with Chicken Licken and that fills me with dread.

For me though, Don Knotts with his heavy lids and hollow cheeks will always be the nervous and quivery-voiced Doc Brown of Back To The Future:

 

“Why Marty, I outta kill you!”