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

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

RIP Rog. Definitely my idea of what a folk singer was when I was a kid. Durham Town is a great song.

Pete Murray, by now a regular on this thread and still hanging in there at 98.

Amanda Lear, somewhere around 83

Always impressed by the cloud of confusion around Amanda Lear’s origins, such as for example in wiki:

Contested facts include her birth date and place, the gender she was assigned at birth, names and nationalities of her parents, and the location of her upbringing.

I am a big fan of her sister Shanda

I also think they make jet planes

Actress Barbara Rush, 96

Amanda was just on Drag Race France a couple of months back, kinda great!

If you watched Peyton Place on TV in 1965-1966 you saw two regular cast members who are 95+ now, Barbara Rush and Lee Grant - who is 95, 96, or 97. Also you are old.

Lee Grant's hit the age where you impress people more by adding years rather than subtracting them. Not quite sure where the crossover point would have been though.

Credit where it's due, she looked "about 40" for a good 25 years

Sandy Gall is 96 today

No way!

That was my reaction too

David Graham, the voice of Parker from Thunderbirds, 98.

!

bobby rush, 89, currently touring the US

Don King, 92!

Glynis Johns is 100 years old today. She appeared in Mary Poppins, The Sundowners, and the Burton & Taylor version of Under Milk Wood, but seems to have dropped off the radar after the early 1970s.

Glynis Johns is 100 today, Happy Birthday Glynis 🎁🎂 pic.twitter.com/vhTT94qM0B

— 🇬🇧📺 Classic British TV 📺🇬🇧 (@Classicbritcom) October 5, 2023

Happy birthday!

Glynis Johns plays Diane's mum (!) in an early episode of Cheers from 1982, so not dropped off the radar entirely after the early 1970s.

In the original cast of A Little Night Music, "Send In The Clowns" written for her!

i *thiiiink* i have a copy of sandy gall's "travels with the mujahideen" in a box somewhere (everything is in a box still)

I somehow confused Sandy Gall and France Gall in that moment.

France Gall's Voyages avec les moudjahidines long suppressed, of course.

Director and Warhol associate Paul Morrissey, 85.

film director jerzy skolimowski (85)

made DEEP END (1971), which of course features can's "mother sky" on its soundtrack (as does their LP CAN SOUNDTRACKS)

even more importantly the relevant if annoyingly dubbed extract i just watched on youtube also features BURT KWOUK as a hot-dog seller :)

(i mean he made loads of other films, that was the one i was interested in just now)

I saw it at the NFT a couple of months ago. Along with a few of his Polish films.

I'd thought he died a few years ago but turns out that was Andrzej Żuławski, one for the people you get mixed up thread maybe

Skolimowski's The Shout just played at the Quad Cinema here in NYC. One of the screenings had a "pre-recorded introduction" from the director, but I saw another screening so can't report on what that was about.

i haven't seen the shout for years -- my sister taped it off TV we shared a flat and she was a film student, we watched it quite a lot iirc

Jack Jones (of “Wives and Lovers” fame)

or infamy as it were

Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lipton - famous for writing The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide and numerous works on the psychology of warfare, brainwashing, etc.

LIFTON. (fuck, at least spell his name right)

Judy Chicago. I don't know why I thought/assumed she was dead, but she's got a big retrospective show.

Knew she was alive, but surprised to find out that Madhur Jaffrey is 90.

honestly i thought Jimmy Tarbuck pegged out years ago

lou adler, 88, is still around

...and a year later, he's produced the new Neil Young album!

Been Lou Adler'd, Barry Sadler'd