Bruce Forsythe 1928 – 2017

Bruce Forsythe, singer, dancer and author of Day of The Jackal, has died.

Bruce was born and raised in Edmonton, Middlesex. He was born to Florence, a singer, and John Thomas Forsythe-Johnson, also known as The Machine.

He started in show business aged 14 with an act called “Boy Bruce, the Mighty Atom” in which, the young Bruce would go 12 rounds with female boxer Barbara Buttrick. It wasn’t long, though, before, Bruce made his debut on television.

He made his first appearance at the age of 11 in 1939, just three years after BBC started. The show was Come and Be Televised, an early foray by the BBC into broadcasting amateur porn.

After this, Bruce tried to develop his career. His first advert in trade paper The Stage read: "Bruce Forsyth: available for anything," which any viewer of Come and be Televised would have known already.

Regular strikes in the seventies meant you could be left waiting at the Post Office for hours

Meanwhile, the other big ticket event of 1939 was the outbreak of World War II. All the nation’s healthy young men were signed up for the fight. Except Bruce.

As it happened, the list of essential-to-the-nation professions protected from being drafted for the front lines included doctors, sewage workers, miners and light entertainers. So Brucey bravely battled the Bosch from Studio B, deploying an arsenal of pithy one-liners in the service of freedom, democracy and a nice chuckle for that tricky hour between the end of the news and the start of the bombing.

 Bruce was probably most famous for his stints on a string of much-loved British games shows. He fronted The Generation Game, a show in which families competed to see who could pedal up the most electricity in 30 minutes, Play Your Cards Right, which asked contestants to look at a playing card and decide if it was a big number, or a small one, and You Bet! where a group of players had to guess which one of them was secretly in recovery with Gamblers Anonymous.

A still from Brucey’s controversial Stork adverts. Many found the strapline ‘buy Stork margarine or I’ll fucking kill you’ a little full-on. 

In 1986, he even went to the United States to host a game show on ABC, Bruce Forsyth's Hot Streak, in which he would interrupt a different sporting event each week by running onto the pitch wearing nothing but a light coating of chilli sauce.

Not all his gameshows were so popular, however. His failures included Takeover Bid (there were no bids), Hollywood or Bust (bust) and Didn’t They Do Well, which was a title just asking for trouble really.

In his personal life, Bruce was blessed with many loves. From 1953 to 1973, he was married to Penny Calvert. After this, he was married to Anthea Redfern, the hostess on The Generation Game. Then, in 1980, judging the 1980 Miss World competition, he fell in love with fellow judge, 1975’s Miss World, Wilnelia Merced.

From marrying the girl next door to wedding a TV celebrity to hitching up with Miss World, it’s hard not to suspect he spent his life working up not just the career ladder, but the wife ladder as well. He did equally well on both ladders.

Forsthye had something of a late-career renaissance as co-presenter of S&M Ballroom Competition Strictly Come Dancing. In fact, it was on a special edition of this show that he made his last ever TV appearance - Strictly Children in Need Special, in which the normal dancers and celebrities were replaced for one episode only by at-risk youth.

In the end, ill-health caught up with Bruce. After a chest infection, and other issues, on 18 August 2017 he died at his home.

He made it to the grand old age of 89, having had a career in television for almost as long as there had been television. Didn't he do well?

Brucey Bonus– five famous Forsythe phrases 

1. “Didn’t he do well.” 
2. “Nice to see you, to see you, nice.” 
3. “Powerful you have become, the dark side I sense in you.” 
4. “You don’t get anything for a pair, not in this game, this isn’t snap, for fuck’s sake.“ 
5. “You’re much fitter than my current wife, will you marry me?”

Glenn Campbell 1936 - 2017

The country singer Glenn Campbell has died.

 Glen Travis Campbell was born in Billstown on April 22, 1936, the seventh son of twelve children. It is not recorded whether his father was also a seventh son, but then nobody has seen a picture of Campbell down by the crossroads either.

Glenn was born to John Wesley, theologian and the inventor of Methodism, and Carrie Dell Campbell. The family were sharecroppers, which meant they grew stock certificates from seed investments.

Campbell started playing guitar at age four after being given a five-dollar guitar as a gift by his uncle Boo, which was a surprise.

By the time he was six he was performing on local radio stations, probably because it was a lot preferable to picking cotton. In 1954 he moved to Albuquerque to join his uncle’s band, known as Dick Bills, a popular slang terms for penicillin prescriptions.

Eventually, Campbell headed West to Los Angeles where he joined the superviliain group the Wrecking Crew, comprised of Bulldozer, Piledriver, Thunderball, and the Wrecker.

Whilst there, he also played on recordings by big names including Dean Martin, Nat King Cole, The Monkeys, Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley.

In May 1961 Campbell was signed up by Crest toothpaste, for whom he created his famous range of soups. In 1965 he finally had a hit, reaching number 45 on the Hot 100 with "Universal Soldier". The song had a deeply pacifist message. When asked about it, Campbell said, "people who are advocating burning draft cards should be hung.” Right then.

Things continued to look up and Campbell had more hits with Wichita Lineman, the ballad of a Kansas cocaine dealer, and Galveston a haunting hymn to the pink indigestion medicine.

Campbell's producer told him it was high time he 'laid down some tracks' 

Campbell’s most famous hit came in the mid-1971s, when he reached number one with Rhinestone Cowboy, from the soundtrack to the New York hustler movie starring Dustin Hoffman.

It wasn’t all good news. his first feature film, 1970's Norwood, flopped almost everywhere, except for a niche South London crowd. And Campbell lapsed into alcoholism and cocaine addiction, possibly due to the stress of his ongoing feud with Macdonalds - he would freak out if he so much as glanced at a fillet-o-fish.

Few remembered Campbell's brief stint as 'Hutch'

In 2011 Campbell revealed that he was diagnosed with Alzheimers. In 2012, he revealed that he was diagnosed with Alzheimers. In 2013 he did the same, at which point it was clear he wasn’t joking around.

He refused to be a victim though. In 2012 he performed his final "Goodbye Tour", before moving into a long-term care facility until his death.

Goodbye Glenn Campbell. We know you’re out there somewhere, still on the line.