the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually still alive

I know exactly what you mean, though. Mad Men travels from Steve Lawrence/Jack Jones (Vic Damone, technically: "On the Street Where You Live" to end the first episode) to Hendrix/Bowie/etc. And Don and Roger never really climb out of the Steve Lawrence/Jack Jones moment.

Johnny Mathis (87) probably fits in there too.

Definitely! Only reason I didn't mention him is I was surprised to discover he was actually still alive.

Is Engelbert Humperdinck (also 87) the harbinger of a later era?

I associate him more with the late '60s--keeping the same tradition alive, in a sense, but his hits don't really sound like those other singers.

He’s a harbinger of Tom Jones, I’d say

vic fontaine still lives

A creaky old English movie from 1952 called "Ghost Ship" is on the TV at the moment, silent because I'm listening to some music. Anyway, cast list includes...

Joss Ackland as Ron, 2nd Fisherman

Yes, we haven't mentioned him in a while so let's hear it for Joss Ackland, 95. Also I've just noticed this interesting detail from his wiki page:

Ackland was born in North Kensington, London on 29 February 1928, the son of Major Sydney Norman Ackland (died 1981), an Irish journalist who had been sent to England to live with an aunt by his parents for seducing their maid, but subsequently seduced his aunt's maid...

... who he married and I assume was JA's mother though it doesn't actually say who his mother was.

Bob Barker, approaching 100

"Ghost Ship" has been followed by the 1959 version of "The 39 Steps" which stars Finnish actress Taina Elg, who is still alive at 93... and who is the mother of guitarist Raoul Björkenheim!

Bob Barker, approaching 100

Lech Walesa, thought he’d died years ago.

photos of famous people in the bath

#onethread

Gilles Vigneault, 94

Bob Barker, approaching 100

Pretty much the closest you can be to 100 without going over

Claire Bloom, 92.

Paedophile and murderer and possible serial killer, Sidney Cooke, 96. Still in prison btw.

James Burton

Norman Jewison, 97.

still Tom Lehrer

As mentioned in Nicholas Lyndhurst revive, his ‘mum’ Wendy Craig.

Constance Towers, 90 (and with TV credits as recently as 2022)

French actress, Micheline Presle, 99.

101 on August 22, 2023.

Marcel Ophuls, 95

Kenneth Cope, 92.

(Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), but not yet Deceased. "Randall", OTOH, passed away in his 40s.
Hopkirk's widow - Annette Andre - also still with us at 84).

Marty Ehrlichmann, the man who discovered Barbra Streisand and managed her for 50 years, 94 in a couple of weeks.

I was absolutely sure that Bill Beaumont died about five years ago.

He's only 71, he looked ancient in the late 80s. Guess that's what rugby does to you.

hang on micheal yarwood has been alive until today !?

Yeah him too, seems like he wasn't on tv since the mid-80s.

i cannot belive mike yarwood was still alive until today

I don't remember Mike Yarwood being on TV since about 1981, and assumed he had died in the '90s or 2000s.

There was an interesting interview with Herb Alpert, a mere 88, in the Guardian yesterday.
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/sep/07/herb-alpert-on-80-years-in-music-mozart-thelonious-monk-all-of-us-have-the-same-12-notes (sorry, Guardian link)

John Rechy, 92.

Bill Rogers, co-founder of the SDP, 94.

Len Deighton, 94

Bill Rodgers, rather.

Len Deighton, wow.

His Wikipedia CV is quite something. Before he even got to the spy novels there was RAF, RCA, BOAC, an illustrated cookery column in the Observer and a spell as a book cover designer that included the first UK edition of On the Road.

oh i thought of one of these last night

erich von däniken, 88

he was in mind bcz i am evidently still salty abt kubrick's star wars movie topping that second poll

anyway to return to nicer topics, the book that collects len deighton's cookery columns is also deighton-designed and is grebt

i have it somewhere and yes

no way is von Däniken only 88, i suspect aliens

I was looking at my copy of Bomber by Len Deighton just the other day. It has a new introduction (2009) by Deighton where he states: "Bomber was the first fiction book written using what is now called a 'word processor'. In 1969 that name did not exist." I have no idea how true that is, or how you could verify such a claim, but I'm happy to go along with it!

https://slate.com/culture/2013/03/len-deightons-bomber-the-first-book-ever-written-on-a-word-processor.html !!

^ fun read!

Yes! Thanks mark

Just saw that Roger Whittaker died, 87. First, I had no idea he was still alive; and for some reason I assumed he was in his 70's back in the 1980's.

Oh no! Why wasn't that reported anywhere??!?!

Oh right, it's just being reported, even though he died last week. Always kind of liked him tbh. A champion whistler if nothing else!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzKQfrNseoI