Tara Palmer-Tomkinson 1971 - 2017

Tara Pamela Timkinson died today.

Born to an Argentinian model and an Olympic skier, Tara Lara-Pumpkinson went to school at the Shergar School for the Posh in Dorset.

After this, her early life followed that of many of her peer group, with absolutely no unfair advantages from being posh. Her first job at Rothschild's bank was inevitable after completing the ideal post-school qualification - a dance and drama course at the London Studio Centre.

But falling into banking was not enough for Flora Burner-Bumpkinson, so she fell into fame instead.

After being pictured kissing Prince Charles on the slopes (and who doesn't like a nice kiss on the slopes eh?), she soon became a favourite of paparazzi in the swanky nightspots of London.

Soon enough, Sara Gurner-Atkinson became famous as an 'It-Girl', which was short for 'nobody knows what she does, but she looks going doing It-Girl'.

It turned out the 'It' that she did was cocaine. And lots of it. A lifetime of parties fuelled by Colombian Self-raising eventually ending with Mara Turner-Albumen and her septum going their separate ways. Medically, this was bad news for the It-Girl, although it did feature the convenient side effect of leaving one giant nostril enabling the hoovering-up of even more cocaine.

Cara developed a taste for white powder at an early age

During this time, Bahama Farmer-Lumpington converted her fame to other outlets, 'writing' a column in the Sunday Times, written by Wendy Holden. The column was titled 'Yah' and is not to be confused with 'Jah!' the Sunday Times' other column penned by Eddie Grant.

Jar-Jar Coma-Lurkington's literary output also included The Naughty Girl's Guide to Life, which is also best not confused with Life Magazine's Guide to Naughty Girls, which is something quite very different.

These outputs helped grow Laura Turner-Hoochington's reputation for wit, including such gems as, "I would never go out with a man who turned right when boarding  an aircraft", a policy which led to her dating an awful lot of pilots.

All her wit and glitz and bravado, though, covered insecurities and a lack of self-confidence that may also have lay beneath her enthusiasm for mood-altering substances. An enthusiasm that was to lead to a spell in rehab in Arizona in 1999.

Whilst fighting her addiction, she continued to play the fame game. In 2002 Plover Gomer-Pileington was the runner up in the inaugural 'I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here'.

She also appeared on shows including Blind Date, Loose Women, and Bognor or Bust which all together sounds like one amazing night out. She also appeared in the Royal Wedding in 2011, and in the show Cold Turkey about her attempt to give up smoking by doing loads of cocaine instead.

in 2011 She-ra attended the royal wedding dressed as the letter 'i'. A few drinks later, she claimed to be 'in italics'.

The latter years of her life saw Farrah Burner-Barnington distance herself from her party girl image. She declared,  “I am not the person I was. I’m much calmer… the party world scares me. I am a very quiet person now. I have a better perspective on life.”

Today she passed away from a perforated ulcer at the young age of 45. Let's hope she's enjoying the endless ski slopes of the afterlife.

Don't do drugs, kids.

John Hurt 1940 -2017

John Hurt, actor, raconteur, drinker, wrinkle-factory, died today. Little is known of the birth of John Hurt, save that it was to the son of a preacher man and Dusty Springield. Hurt was on a particularly elegant sofa.  

A chesterfield such as the one where John Hurt was born

Whilst at school Hurt showed an interest in acting, taking the role of Lady Bracknell Town. He uttered the famous line 'A handbag' in answer to the question, 'what will your skin be like in a few years time?'.

Hurt then went on to study at St Martin's College of art and Design, causing his parents to become excited that their dream of him becoming an art teacher might actually come true.

It did not, Hurt pursued his acting dream, appearing in theatre and television. He starred in the 1974 George Harrison funded film Little Malcolm, later remade for television as Malcolm in the Middle. He also appeared in I, Clavdivs as Calligraphy, the emperor who was mad about lettering. He also played cigarette smuggler Winston Smith in 1984 in 1984.

Hurt's breakthrough performance, though, came in the production The Naked Civil Servant. He portrayed Quentin Crisp. At the time, people said playing Crisp would end his career. Then again people say eating crisps will end your life, but that doesn’t make it necessarily a bad idea. Anyway, they were wrong and Hurt's portrayal won him much acclaim.

John Hurt playing a young Maggie Smith playing Quentin Crisp

Continuing his tendency to portray outsiders and misfits, Hurt then went on portray John Merrick, elephant man and part-time guitarist with Adam and the Ants.

It took seven hours of make up for Hurt to look like the elephant man, which makes you wonder how ugly he must have been beforehand. It was worth it though, critics and audiences alike marvelled at the sensitive portrayal of Merrick. Hurt took home an Oscar for his troubles.

It wasn’t just award-winning films he was in, though. He was in stuff you've seen too, including Harry Potter, Hellboy and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Despite all these roles, however, most people will remember John Hurt like this...

The film is, of course, Alien, in which Hurt is seen here experiencing the consequences of the Galaxy's hottest curry.

Hurt's personal life was as colourful as his screen existence too. Hurt drank with O' Toole, Burton and Harris, or at least thought he did, but couldn't really quite remember for sure as it was all a bit of a blur.

With the drinking came trouble, even as late as 2004 when he was thrown out of Spearmint Rhino for 'boorish behaviour' which makes you wonder if he shouldn't have behaved a little more rhino-ish instead.

All this and more was documented in the 2008 film of stories from John's life, The Hurt Locker. 

Hurt was married four times and seemed to really be getting the hang of it on that last go, when pancreatic cancer unfortunately intervened.

Farewell John Hurt, you will always be The Storyteller to me. Also you were Hazel in Watership Down. Brilliant.  

Graham Taylor 1944 - 2017

Graham Taylor, theologian and manager of the England football team, passed away today.

Born in Worksop, Taylor grew up in Sblockedhorpe, the son of a sports journalist who wanted to write about his son for a living.

Taylor showed promise as a player and soon turned professional, becoming The Apprentice at Sblockedhorpe Town FC but he was eventually fired for not selling enough sausages at a continental market. After this, he turned in performances for Grimsby, scoring 37% on Rotten Tomatoes.

It was as a manager, thought, that Taylor will really be remembered.  He found success as manager of Watford Town, a team captained by pop superstar Elton John who was notorious for getting booked for aggresive conduct if the game was scheduled too late on a Saturday. Taylor guided star names such as Jaqueline Blisset and rapper John Barnes to take Watford to the first division.

After this, Taylor went repeated his success with Aston Villa. Then in 1990 he got the job of managing the England team.

Unfortunately for Taylor, his squad included Alan 'Sheep' Shearer, comedian Robin Ince, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Peter Beardsley and a load of jizz in goal, none of whom could knock it.

As a result, England was knocked out in the qualifying stages, causing The Sun newspaper to liken Taylor to a turnip, cleverly implying that he was useless, whilst retaining the opportunity should he have turned into a success to use the headline 'That's a turnip for the books'.

This frustrating period was captured memorably in the film The Impossible Job, where he became known for his catchphrases including 'Can we not knock it', 'Do I not like that' and 'You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off'.

Sadly, Taylor was unable to inspire the England players to the heights they have subsequently proved incapable of reaching. In 1993 he resigned to spend more time in his allotment talking to vegetables, who were at least more likely to listen to him.

Further management stints at Watford and Hi Ho Wolverhampton  followed, along with a late-life career as a pundit on Radio 5 Live.

After returning once more to Watford as Director and Interim Chairman, Taylor was made honorary president for life of the club he loved. A stand at the Watford ground on Vicarage road bears his name to this day. It is not a turnip stand.

Graham Tayor has passed away. Do I not like that?

David Bowie 1947 - 2016

David Bowie, actor, singer-songwriter and astronaut passed away today.

Born Davy Jones in Brixton to Peggy and John,

1953 move to Bromley

1962 schoolyard punch-up, the pupil in David’s left eye remained permanently dilated, 

As a youngster he formed a band called the Kon-Rads before quitting to set up a new outfit, a blues-influenced band named the King Bees, a name he hit upon after a particularly insect-infested picnic. After this was another band, the Manish Boys who aren't remembered for much, despite releasing a single with Mr T, I Pity The Fool.  

Little-known musical collaborator

After this came another band, The Lower Third, whose name along showed their lack of ambition, so inevitably the day came that Davy Jones went solo. This was also the first time Bowie displayed his astonishing capacity for self-reinvention, changing his look radically so he was barely recognisable - something that was to become a hallmark of his career. 

From Davy Jones to David Bowie - the first transformation

Bowie put together a backing band called The Buzz, suggesting he still hadn't yet recovered from his obsession with bees. After an initial release of a novelty single entitled The Laughing Gnome flopped, he then released an LP entitled David Bowie because he was still having trouble remembering his new name.  

It was about this time that Bowie started studying mime, which doesn't suggest much faith in his singing.

In 1969, whilst working as an astronaut, Bowie released a recording of his messages back to earth, which became the basis for his breakout hit, Space Oddity. Then in 1970, The Man Who Sold The World was released in the US, prompting many to suspect that, whilst in space, Bowie had encountered aliens... after all, who else would you sell the world to?

The answer came with his next band, when Bowie recruited his new extra-terrestrial friends along with Alvin Stardust's brother into the band Ziggie Stardust and the Spiders From Mars.

He went on to score his first UK number one album with Aladdin Sane, the soundtrack to that year's least entertaining panto.

In 1976 Bowie came back to this planet as described in the documentary The Man Who Fell to Earth. It was at this time that he found notoriety by expressing a certain sympathy with the fascism, prompting outrage in the UK so that he ended up seeking to quell people's concerns by relocating to Berlin.

Further success came with the music accompanying seventies throwback cop drama Ashes to Ashes. 

Possibly the peak of Bowie's career, though, came in 1986, when he played Jareth, the Goblin King in the film Labyrinthe, alongside Jennifer Connelly and a number of other muppets.

It was downhill from here, with the formation of Bowie's new band, Tin Ear Machine, and his dabbling in islam resulting in a marriage to a Somalian Imam.

After this, it was basically releasing a load of old rubbish, but in 1997 he put himself back in the headline by releasing Bowie Bonds, a financial instrument that promised investors a big payout if Bowie were to ever construct a substantial piece of national infrastructure.

In latter years, Bowie got his groove back, releasing the single Where Are We Now, giving him his first UK top 10 hit since 1993 and, in 2014 he won the Brit award for Best British Male, which is either an impressive achievement, or speaks pretty badly of all the other British males in the world.

It was to be Bowie's swansong as 2016 was to be the year liver cancer finally got the better of David Bowie.

Thanks for all the tunes, David, you truly were a star, man. 

Carrie Fisher 1952 - 2016

Carrie Fisher, American actress, writer and Space Princess passed today.

The daughter of Burt Reynolds and Isla Fisher, she is most famous for her role in Star Wars. She famously portrayed Princess Leia as a no-nonsense independent woman, and the first woman in the galaxy to run a successful combination hairdresser/patisserie.

During the filming of Star Wars, Fisher admitted to having an affair with Han Solo, the man from UNCLE, in reality actor Harrison Ford. Ford explained his monochrome wardrobe in that film saying, "I could have any colour I wanted, as long as it was black."

Fisher also appeared in cult hit The Blues Brothers, which chronicled the struggle against depression experienced by two of the Reservoir Dogs.

Fisher battled throughout her life with the twin demons of addiction and bipolar disorder. The former caused her to smoke pot plants from the age of 13 onwards, the second rendered her unable to approach magnets. In her desperation to recover, she underwent numerous treatments, including the controversial electrofunk therapy, alienating many jazz funk purists.

It was these troubles that fuelled much of her work as a writer, as which she enjoyed something of a renaissance. Her first foray into writing was actually a collection of missives from U2's 1987 tour, Postcards from the Edge.

Other writings included Surrender the Pink, and Delusions of Grandma neither of which is advisable to Google for yourself. Her final book, The Princess Diarist was published this year, and detailed Fisher's early life as a shy San Francisco teenager who is thrown for a loop when, from out of the blue, she learns the astonishing news that she's a real-life princess!

Fisher was also known for her relationships, including years spent with musician Paul Simon, during which she was known as Al Fisher. The song Heart and Bones is about the relationship, although the title is widely considered a bit TMI.

She also dated comedian Dan Ackroyd, but the relationship couldn't survive his spending long periods of time away with the answer to the question 'Who ya gonna call' never being 'Carrie Fisher'.

Most recently, Fisher was seen on-screen reprising her role as Leia in Star Wars: Episode VII, proving to the world that her buns had not yet gone stale.

She described herself as an, "enthusiastic agnostic who would be happy to be shown that there is a God". So presumably that's been cleared up for her one way or another.

For someone who was part of so many childhoods, in a sense, Carrie Fisher cannot really die. As Princess Leia, she lives on, in a gold bikini and the imaginations millions of once-teenage boys.

Farewell Princess, you will be missed.

George Michael 1963 - 2016

George Michael died today.

The son of a Greek Cypriot restaurant owner and an English dancer, his real name was Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou, which he changed to George Michael in order to fit onto album covers, at a stroke wiping out his chance to become the highest scoring scrabble name in pop.

Inspired whilst eating a candy bar at school, George Michael teamed up with Andrew Ridgeley to form pop duo Wham!

Wham!'s success was extraordinary. Hits included the ballad of a man nodding off in a strip bar, Wake Me Up, Before You Go-Go, Club Tropicana  a tribute to George's favourite juice brand, and Careless Whisper, suspected by many to be about about accidentally farting during a job interview.

In addition to his work with Wham! George performed with Band Aid on the hit Do They Know It's Christmas? to raise awareness of the chronic shortage of calendars in Africa. Although the song raised a great deal of money, critics complained that it was little more than a sticking plaster for the problem.

In 1986 George Michael left Wham! and began a solo career releasing the Album Faith, followed by Listen Without Prejudice, which everyone assumed was going to be rubbish.  Meanwhile Ridgeley went on to marry Keren Woodward who was, interestingly, the Andrew Ridgeley of Bananarama.

It was also in 1986 that Michael was arrested in a public restroom for 'engaging in a lewd act', with a policeman who just happened to be passing, with his penis out, at the time. It was about this time that Michael came out as gay, after briefly considering the alternative, of coming out as a toilet attendant.

The penis-wrangling incident did little to dent Michael's popularity, so he tried again, getting arrested in London for possession of drugs in 2006 and again in 2008, although presumably not the same drugs.  As a result of a conviction for driving under the influence of David Cassidy, he spent four weeks in Highpoint Prison, plenty of time to consider the irony of the name.

Despite the arrests, the scandal and Andrew Ridgeley, Michael managed to become one of the must successful British artists of all time, selling more than 100 million records worldwide and bringing joy to millions with his music.

So long George, I hope you got further than the edge of Heaven.

Rick Parfitt 1948 - 2016

English musician Rick Parfitt died today.

Parfitt was best known as a member of the rock band Status Quo (latin for 'unchanging chords) with motorcyclist Velantino Rossi.

 Parfitt first met Rossi at Butlins in Minehead, where Rossi was playing in a band called The Spectres, later renamed as Traffic Jam, after the least tasty of all the jams.

In 1967 Traffic Jam found themselves going nowhere so they changed their name to The Status Quo, which didn't suggest much more in the way of progress. Nevertheless, it was a The Status Quo that Parfitt had his first hit, with the song Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs by Brian and Michael.

After this, the band dropped the definite article, making them indefinite, appropriate as that is how long many of their songs seemed to go on for.  But the hits kept coming, including 1977's Rockin' All Over The World, Whatever You Want (As Long As It's These Three Chords), and the ever-popular Down Down, written by Parfitt whilst on walkies with an excitable Jack Russell.

In 1976 the band signed a pioneering sponsorship deal with French Anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, promoting his book  Structural Anthropology on all their tours. The band also became known for their distinctive denim-clad appearance, inspired by Irish pop moppets B*witched.

In addition to their foot-tapping tunes, the Quo were also known for their hard partying, regularly spending thousands a week on Vodka and Coke. And coke.

In 2005, Parfitt and Rossi played Cameo in an episode of Coronation Street singing Word Up and sporting red codpieces. In 2010 both men were awarded oboes by the Queen.

Over his long career with the Quo, Parfitt had over 60 chart hits in the UK.

And now, after bringing joy to millions, he's Rockin' All Over the Afterworld.

Goodbye Rick.