BB FANS

Googie Withers dies in Australia aged 94

Actress Googie Withers, best known for starring in Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes and TV series Within These Walls, has died in Australia aged 94.

She was born Georgette Lizette Withers in what was then British India. She died at her home on Friday.

She was the first non-Australian to be awarded an Officer of the Order of Australia and was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Her last role was in the 1996 Australian movie Shine.

Withers's family moved back to Britain from India and she began acting at age 12.

She had been given her nickname Googie by her Indian nanny.

She was working as a dancer in a West End production in London when she was offered work in 1935 as a film extra in The Girl in the Crowd.

Withers, who had three children, appeared in dozens of films in the 1930s and 40s.

She played Blanche in 1938's The Lady Vanishes, opposite Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave.

Later in her career she appeared in several television productions, including prison drama Within These Walls on ITV and the BBC's Hotel du Lac and Northanger Abbey.

In 1958, Withers moved to Australia with her husband, Australian actor John McCallum - he helped create the classic television series, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo.

The couple co-starred in 10 films, and they lived together in Sydney until McCallum died last year at the age of 91.

BBC

Eric Delaney

Eric Delaney, who died on July 14 aged 87, was one of the most inventive and exuberant of British drummers, captivating audiences with his energetic leaps across the stage from drums to timpani.

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He also pioneered the technique of playing timpani with wire brushes, something that no percussionist had ever tried before.


Telegraph

Obituary: Lucian Freud
Lucian Freud Lucian Freud: he leaves a lasting legacy of great art

Lucian Freud, one of Britain's most distinguished and highly regarded artists, who has died aged 88, was once described by art critic Robert Hughes as the greatest living realist painter.

A grandson of the psycho-analyst Sigmund Freud and the son of an architect, Lucian Freud was born in Berlin in 1922 and came to Britain with his family in 1933, when he was 10.

In his mid-teens he went to art school in London and then to another in East Anglia.

At first he confined himself to drawing, and when he was 17 had a self-portrait accepted for reproduction in Cyril Connolly's magazine, Horizon.

He later characterised his early work as the product of "maximum observation", achieved "by staring at my subject matter and examining it closely".

Freud was recognised as a brilliant talent and, after a spell in the Merchant Navy in 1942, had his first one-man show in 1944, when he was 21.

He had begun painting in the early 1940s and after the war went to France and Greece, before returning to Britain in 1948 to teach for 10 years at the Slade School of Art. By then he was working more with oils.
Autobiographical painting

Lucian Freud's portraits were not concerned with flattery or modesty - disturbing was one adjective applied to them - and some were said to have compelling nastiness.
Lucian Freud in 1958 His early work was the product of "maximum observation", Freud said

Though sometimes startling, his portraits could also be beautiful and intimate. Freud had been an admirer of the artist Francis Bacon and painted a striking portrait of him.

Freud, who lived and worked in London, said his work was purely autobiographical - he painted "the people that interest me and that I care about and think about in rooms I live in and know".

A close relationship with sitters was important to him. He painted several affectionate portraits of his mother and his daughters Bella and Esther were also models.

Sittings could last for a year and sitters were often profoundly affected by the process. One of them once said: "You are the centre of his world while he paints you. But then he moves on to someone else."

Freud seldom accepted commissions. His work is in a number of galleries in Britain and overseas, but much of it is privately owned.

He was one of few artists to have had two retrospective exhibitions at the Hayward Gallery in London.
A private man

Freud was married twice: his first wife was sculptor Jacob Epstein's daughter, Kitty, the subject of his celebrated Girl With a White Dog. His second wife was the daughter of the Marquess of Dufferin and Ava.
Auction of Freud's portrait of Kate Moss Kate Moss was one of many famous sitters for a Freud portrait

Although Freud, who was made a Companion of Honour in 1983, had a reputation as a great womaniser and a reckless gambler, he was a private person, gave few interviews, and would not have a telephone in his studio.

His love of animals was demonstrated in 2010 when he was tempted out of seclusion for the short film "'Small Gestures" by the prospect of being filmed with a kestrel and a zebra.

He had vowed never to give up working, stating that he intended to paint himself to death.
BBC

Betty Driver obituary

Singer, comic actor and stalwart of Coronation Street


Betty Driver, who has died aged 91, was a gutsy and durable comic actor who meant one thing to young audiences and quite another to those who could remember the second world war and the years immediately after it. To the youthful, she will be remembered as Betty Turpin (later Betty Williams), the barmaid, shoulder to cry on and wife of the policeman Cyril Turpin in Granada television's Coronation Street, whose cast she joined in 1969.

To a much older audience, she will also be remembered for her appearances in repertory theatres and in stage revues; as the child star who took over from the popular singer Gracie Fields on a stage tour, doing some of her best-known numbers; and as the principal singer for a year with the leading dance orchestra leader of the time, Henry Hall, on his BBC radio programme, Henry Hall's Guest Night. She sang for seven years with Hall, and with him and far more mature artists than herself entertained the troops during the war.

Driver was one of the pre-feminist female singer-comedians who made their mark with a perky, slightly rebellious manner in the tradition of Marie Lloyd and Cicely Courtneidge. There was little of the wilting English rose about the songs she sang or the parts she played, even if the bright edifice often concealed her own emotional pain. It helped that she was a large woman who once considered it a victory when she got her weight down to 13 stone.

Born in Leicester, she spent her childhood in Manchester. Her parents were a police inspector and a pianist mother, determined that her daughter should get a foothold in show business. Her husband was too weak a character to defend his daughter, eventually leaving the police force to run a nightclub in Manchester. In her memoir Betty: The Autobiography (2000), Driver wrote that she had been at the mercy of "an overbearing, ambitious, cruel and pushy mother whose insistence on putting me into show business at a young age effectively robbed me of my childhood ... [Nellie Driver] was one of the most loathed women in the business."

At the age of seven, Betty joined the Terence Byron repertory company and played with The Quaintesques, a group of men dressed as women who visited Manchester once a year. The star of this show, Billy Manders, had heard her in the audience loudly singing the choruses and invited her on to the stage. They brought the house down and she was given a bottle of toffees. Soon she was taken by her mother to perform in a police charity concert at Manchester Hippodrome, and was presented with a gold watch by the chief constable, which pleased her mother and father more than her.

When mother and daughter came to London at the end of her schooling – at her mother's instigation – they did not find theatrical managements receptive. Tours of their offices produced no offers. Instead her mother decided to go straight to individual theatres.

Presenting themselves at the stage door of the Prince of Wales theatre in September 1934 changed their luck. Without a band rehearsal, Betty was allowed to go on stage and sing a number of her favourite songs, and was hired to appear as Gracie Fields's double in Mr Tower of London. After her first performance, one journalist described her as "a little tomboy from Lancashire". She was later hired for a long tour of Mr Tower of London when Fields moved on to other projects. Films, BBC broadcasts and appearances in the revues of the leading impresarios CB Cochran and Prince Littler followed.

It was not until she was 16 that, with the aid of her younger sister Freda, she rebelled against her mother's view of her as a lucrative child star who should carry on singing in the style of Fields. Freda, who had never been as overawed by her mother as Betty and their father were, threw the songsheets her mother wanted Betty to sing on to the fire and substituted more modern and adult ones. Betty appeared in the cheeky It's Foolish But It's Fun at the London Coliseum, and did film work, notably in Ealing Studios comedies. She made Boots! Boots! (1934) with George Formby, Penny Paradise (1938), Let's Be Famous (1939) and Facing the Music (1941). Her hit recordings started with Jubilee Baby (1934), and went on to include The Sailor With The Navy Blue Eyes, Macnamara's Band, Pick The Petals Of A Daisy, Jubilee Baby and September In The Rain.

In her 20s, she had a breakdown and collapsed on stage in Birmingham. Her mother, in the wings as usual, threw water over her, and insisted she do the evening performance. When she blacked out again in the evening, her mother still maintained that she was "faking".

There were other strains. Aided by her sister, she took control of her own financial affairs, only to find that instead of banking her earnings – which often reached the then impressive sum of £150 a week – her parents had spent it all on cars, drink and other luxuries for themselves and left none for her.

But she was still bankable. In 1952 the BBC gave her her own regular radio programme, A Date with Betty, broadcast live, and she married her South African husband, Wally Peterson. By then a household name, she appeared in several TV series and had her own roadshow. In 1953 she went to Australia, where she appeared in musical revue, then toured the Middle East and entertained British troops in Cyprus and Germany.

In 1958, she starred on stage in The Lovebirds, followed by a short break as a housewife in South Africa, which did not suit her. Back in Britain, she played in Pillar to Post, made cabaret appearances and did summer seasons, including the immensely popular What a Racket with Arthur Askey at Blackpool. Finding that her husband was not only a philanderer, but was spending her money freely, she separated from him after seven years of marriage. They were divorced 11 years later.

It was her switch to drama that led to her long association with Granada and Coronation Street. She appeared as Mrs Edgeley, the masterful canteen manager in the TV series Pardon the Expression (1965-66), a Coronation Street spin-off, which also included Arthur Lowe in his Coronation Street role of Leonard Swindley. At one point, she was required to throw him, and in doing so dislocated her hip and injured her back. She appeared with James Bolam in the Granada production of Love On the Dole (1968), Walter Greenwood's story of poverty and unemployment in the 1930s, before making her first appearance in Coronation Street itself in June 1969.

By then Betty had virtually given up show business, discouraged by the damage done to her back. "I decided to retire, and with Freda, we ran a couple of hotels in Cheshire. It was there that Harry Kershaw, producer of Coronation Street, persuaded me to audition for Hilda Ogden – just think, I could have been wearing curlers for 30 years," she recalled in her 80s. That came to nothing, but a few years later Kershaw stood in one of the bars, heard her talking to other customers and simply asked her, "How would you like to pull pints in the Rovers Return?" He told her that the barmaid character he had in mind for her to play would be called Betty Turpin, and would have her own "warm, homely, nice-to-everyone temperament".

Betty Turpin, later Betty Williams, became one of the longest-serving characters in the soap, well-known for serving up her signature dish, Betty's hotpot, in the Rovers Return – indeed, so well-known that a Lancashire pie manufacturer marketed a hotpot to Betty's recipe. Cyril died in 1974, and in 1995 Betty married her wartime sweetheart, Billy Williams, only to be widowed again two years later. She appeared in more than 2,800 episodes of the show, the final one broadcast last May.

Driver took part in a Royal Variety Performance in 1989, and ten years later was appointed MBE. She kept faith with her northern roots by living near Altrincham, Cheshire, and collected paintings and antiques.

• Betty (Elizabeth Mary) Driver, actor and singer, born 20 May 1920; died 15 October 2011


Guardian

Obituary: Sir Jimmy Savile
Sir Jimmy Savile Sir Jimmy Savile: "I'm just unusual"

In his distinctive Yorkshire tones, the words "Now then, now then" meant Sir Jimmy Savile was getting down to business.

For more than six decades, Sir Jimmy, who has died at the age of 84, was one of Britain's most established showbusiness figures and a leading charity worker.

The country's first pop disc jockey, Sir Jimmy was also a seasoned television presenter, marathon runner, Mensa member, wrestler and fundraiser.

With his trademark tracksuit and chunky jewellery, he pre-dated hip-hop fashion by about 40 years.

But for both his on-screen recipients and the beneficiaries of his charity campaigns, he was the iconic Mr Fixit.

Eccentric exhibitionist

Jimmy Savile was born on 31 October 1926 in Leeds, the youngest of seven children.

During World War II he was conscripted as a Bevin Boy, working in the coal mines as an alternative to active service in the armed forces.
Jimmy Savile in 1974 Sir Jimmy Savile was Britain's first pop disc jockey

In an era dominated by live music, he started playing records in local dance halls.

In 1947, according to his autobiography, he started using twin turntables and a microphone, effectively becoming the first disc jockey.

As the manager of local dance halls, Savile cultivated a tough image, which he carried into professional wrestling clubs.

He lost match after match, but claimed later: "I've broken every bone in my body. I loved it."

A born exhibitionist, Savile was spotted by television cameras spinning discs at his own Plaza dance hall in Manchester.

A look back at the life of Sir Jimmy Savile

He grasped the opportunity to become a broadcaster, working at Radio Luxembourg before moving to Radio One.

Hospital help

He was the first host of Top of the Pops in 1964, and helped front the programme for more than 20 years.

Sir Jimmy also had a role on the music show's final edition in 2006.

Even among his fellow medallion men Savile revelled in his eccentricity, hanging upside down, appearing in a banana costume and generally refusing to follow fashion.

He was on BBC television for nearly two decades from 1974 in his guise as a perennial Santa Claus, granting viewers' wishes from his magic chair on Jim'll Fix It.

The programme received 20,000 letters a week. A handful of correspondents went on to see their dream come true, and with it they received a hallowed Jim'll Fix It badge.

Savile maintained this benevolent persona beyond the screen, raising more than £40 million for charity over the decades.

He personally helped the nursing staff at Leeds Infirmary and ran the entertainments section of Broadmoor high security psychiatric hospital.

He ran more than 200 fundraising marathons, and as a devout Roman Catholic was given a Papal knighthood for his efforts.

He was similarly rewarded by the Queen in 1990, and acted as an unofficial advisor to the Prince of Wales for a number of years.

For more than three decades, Savile was most actively involved with the spinal unit at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire. He stayed there so often he had his own suite.

Mother love

The hospital is close to prime ministerial residence Chequers, leading Savile to spend time there.

In an interview he said he had been entertained by Margaret Thatcher there during her premiership.

"We used to have marvellous arguments," he recalled.

Savile was relentlessly gregarious in his professional duties. But his appearance - that of a platinum-haired, cigar-smoking, entertainment stalwart - hid a complex personality.
Sir Jimmy Savile with a massive Jim'll Fix It badge in 1988 On and off screen, Savile was determined to Fix It

He eschewed the services of a manager or secretary, and shrank from the intimacy of personal relationships.

He claimed to have always slept alone, and saved his greatest affection and reverence for his late mother.

He called her the Duchess, and lived with her until her death in 1973. For the rest of his life, Savile continued to own the house they shared.

He kept her possessions as she had left them, even having her clothes annually dry-cleaned. "There's no reason for death to spoil a good friendship," he explained.

Savile was a millionaire but always lived frugally. He owned a score of Rolls Royces, but seldom changed his clothes and bought his first bottle of alcohol on the day his pension came through.

His eccentric personality, unconventional lifestyle and irrepressible self-belief all defied convention, invited personal speculation, and bemused many an interviewer over the years.

Some questioned the motivation of the man behind such a singular public persona, but his energy and ability were beyond doubt.

A self-professed loner, he nevertheless made an indelible impression on his audiences and, by virtue of his charity work, touched many lives.

"The reason I can do things that other people can't is because I'm a single guy and have plenty of time," he said.

"I don't want anything from anybody. I'm just unusual."


BBC

Joe Frazier: Boxer forever remembered for his epic fights against Muhammad Ali

Joe Frazier – "Smokin' Joe" – will be remembered as one of the finest heavyweight champions, a fighter of rare will and commitment who played a leading role in what is regarded as the greatest period of heavyweight history, the early- to mid-1970s, in which he held centre-stage with the man with whom his name will be forever linked, Muhammad Ali. In three epic encounters, beginning in 1971 and culminating four years later in "the Thrilla in Manila", Frazier and Ali redefined the term "champion", proving that titles and belts often have little bearing on a fighter's claim to greatness. As Ali put it, "I couldn't be what I am without him and he couldn't be what he is without me."

Born in Beaufort, South Carolina, in 1944, the 12th child of poor farmers, Joe Frazier's interest in boxing was sparked by a relative's pronouncement that he would one day be "another Joe Louis." His strength built by farm labouring, "Billy Boy", as he was known, spent hours with a makeshift punch-bag: "And from the git-go, the left hook was my weapon of choice. Boom-boom-boom: I'd throw it like a wrecking ball against that burlap sack and feel a tingle from head to toe from the impact it made."

After leaving for New York in 1959, Frazier settled in Philadelphia and found work in a slaughterhouse, where he would practise his punches on frozen sides of beef, a routine later immortalised by Sylvester Stallone in Rocky. Under the tutelage of trainer Yancey "Yank" Durham, he made rapid progress through the amateur ranks, winning a place on the US Olympic team when Buster Mathis withdrew through injury. In the 1964 Tokyo Games, Frazier, fighting with a broken thumb, beat his German opponent in the final to win the heavyweight gold medal.

The following year, backed by a consortium of Philadephia businessmen, Frazier turned professional, stopping his first 11 opponents before surviving two knockdowns to win a 10-round decision over future contender Oscar Bonavena in 1966. At just under six feet tall and with short arms, Frazier's style was all-out-attack, a tactic encouraged by Durham, whose exhortations to "make smoke come from those gloves" gave rise to Frazier's nickname. A fourth-round stoppage of the tough Canadian George Chuvalo in 1967 propelled Frazier into the front ranks of a heavyweight division thrown into chaos by the decision to strip Ali of the title following his refusal to be inducted into the army.

In 1968, having boycotted the World Boxing Association's elimination tournament to determine Ali's successor, Frazier fought Buster Mathis for the New York State version of the title, which he won by an 11th-round knock-out. He defended his title four times before facing Jimmy Ellis, the winner of the WBA tournament, for the unified title in New York in 1970. A fourth-round knock-out brought Frazier recognition as undisputed champion but many, including Ali, regarded his claim as invalid until he faced the former champion.

A Supreme Court decision cleared the way for what was immediately described as "The Fight of the Century" – the first heavyweight fight between two undefeated champions. Although Frazier had publicly supported Ali during his exile, he now found himself on the receiving end of Ali's gamesmanship, denounced as an "Uncle Tom" and "the white man's champion". Both vicious and untrue, the slurs only strengthened Frazier's resolve, while laying the groundwork for the bitterness he would feel towards Ali.

The fight, at Madison Square Garden on 8 March, 1971, lived up to its billing. In front of a crowd filled with celebrities and the sharpest-dressed denizens of Harlem, Frazier, always a slow starter, fell behind before gradually working through Ali's stinging punches to land his left-hook combinations. With Ali producing his best work in the ninth, Frazier ground inexorably on, gradually closing the points gap, until in the 15th and final round, he launched the best left hook of his life, knocking Ali to the canvas and effectively winning the fight. Gracious in defeat, Ali said, "Joe's the champ. I call him champ now. Not before but I do now."

A rematch was inevitable, but while Ali worked his way back into contention, Frazier underlined the message he embodied – "Smokin' is bad for your health" – by crushing two over-matched challengers, Terry Daniels and Ron Stander, in 1972. The following year, he defended his title against his successor as Olympic heavyweight champion, George Foreman, in Kingston, Jamaica. Although firm favourite, Frazier was brutally dethroned inside two rounds, during which he suffered six knockdowns—one punch actually lifting him off the canvas. Three years later, in a non-title fight, Foreman repeated the drubbing over five rounds, in what was Frazier's last serious contest.

Following a points win over Joe Bugner in London later that year, Frazier fought Ali again, in January 1974, for the largely irrelevant North American Boxing Federation title. It was keenly contested but less intense than their previous encounter, Frazier losing the decision over 12 rounds. With the seemingly invincible Foreman installed as champion, it seemed as though Frazier had run out of options, but following Ali's victory over Foreman in "the Rumble in the Jungle", Frazier re-established himself as the leading contender with wins over Jerry Quarry and Jimmy Ellis.

And so the stage was set for the third and final meeting between Frazier and Ali, in the exotic setting of Quezon City, in Manila, on 30 September 1975. Bankrolled by President Marcos, the bout saw Frazier earn a purse of $3 million dollars against Ali's $6 million (both fighters had earned $2.5 million for "The Fight of the Century"), but was not expected to reach the heights of their first encounter. Again, Ali humiliated Frazier in the run-up to the fight, declaring it would be " a killa, a chilla, a thrilla when I get the gorilla in Manila."

In suffocating heat and humidity, the fight unfolded in a familiar pattern, Ali building up an early lead before Frazier came on strong. Like many observers, Ali had felt that Frazier's best days were gone, but the relentless challenger bobbed and weaved forward, pounding his fists together before launching yet another combination. "They told me you was washed up," said Ali. "They lied," replied Frazier.

Eventually, however, Frazier's left eye started to close and Ali was able to land punches at will, a right-hand in the 13th sending Frazier's gum-shield flying across the ring. As concern mounted in both corners about the toll being exacted on each fighter, Ali dominated the 14th round but was on the point of collapse when he returned to his stool. By then, however, Frazier's trainer, George Benton, had seen enough and refused to let Frazier out for the final round. "Sit down, son," he told him, "It's all over. But no one will ever forget what you did here today."

Frazier would make one ill-advised comeback after the second Foreman fight, earning a disputed draw against Jumbo Cummings in 1981. He later trained and managed fighters in his Philadelphia gym, including his son, Marvis, whom he guided to a title fight against Larry Holmes. His bitterness against Ali, which was not unjustified, surfaced periodically, most harshly when his old foe was chosen to light the Olympic flame at the 1996 Games. But it seems fitting to leave the last word on Joe Frazier to Ali, spoken after their epic encounter in Manila – "Joe Frazier is a real, real fighter. He is the toughest man in the world ... If I'd taken the punches he took in there I'd have quit long before he did. He is a man."

Joseph William Frazier, boxer: born Beaufort, South Carolina 12 January 1944; married 1963 Florence Smith (divorced 1985; five children); at least two other children; died Philadelphia 7 November 2011.
Guardian

Jackie Leven: Musician whose songs were peopled by loners and lost lovers


The singer-songwriter Jackie Leven chronicled the inner lives of what his friend and fellow Kingdom of Fife native Ian Rankin described as "disappointed hard men". His lyrics, often set in the raw landscapes he saw as a boy, were populated by hard-drinking loners, their lost lovers and mothers. He found a redeeming sadness in such characters, which were partly self-portraits of a life marked by addiction and exile from human company. Stardom briefly seemed possible with his notorious post-punk group Doll by Doll, but he remained on the margins.

Born in 1950 in the conservative community of Kirkcaldy, Fife, to a London-Irish father and Northumbrian mother, both Romany Gypsies, he was an outsider from birth. His mother played blues records around the house, and by 16 Jackie was playing in local folk clubs, and briefly married. Though a prize-winning pupil at school (where Gordon Brown was in his year), he was the first Scots student expelled for drug-taking. A vendetta by a local gang forced him to flee Fife aged 17. During the late 1960s, he spent months huddled homeless around London's South Bank, and worked as a labourer in Kerry, Berlin and Madrid, where he recorded his first album, Control (1971), under the pseudonym John St Field. He also once mentioned he had married a millionairess.

He met his Doll by Doll bandmates while squatting Dorset farmhouses in the early '70s. "In some respects the best days of our lives, in a wonderful dream of Old England," he recalled. They reconvened in 1975, in a west London squat, Bristol Gardens, a street with "a huge contingent of badly damaged, but nevertheless wonderful fun Scottish guys ... prostitutes and petty thieves". Doll by Doll carried their own "serious unresolved edges". Leven had a near-fatal overdose before they made Remember (1978), a blunt instrument of a debut which approximated their confrontational live act. "I can remember a couple of nights at the Marquee where I would have given anything to be in that audience," he recalled. "At the same time, there were people thinking, 'If I don't get away from this band right now, I might literally go insane.'"

Their second album, Gypsy Heart (1979), was Leven's lyrical breakthrough. Its romantic Celtic soul music explored what would become enduring themes: identity, wanderlust and landscape. "I've never had my own place to live, I've always ended up living at other people's, and that continues to this day," he told me in 2007. "But that record made me feel I had a place in the world, even if it was a very unpleasant place that wasn't going to do me any favours."

Record-company politics and their own unstable natures did for Doll by Doll after two more albums. In 1983, Leven was strangled and had his throat slashed in a mugging. Unable to speak or sing for over a year and dropped by his label, he found solace in heroin. He would sit for weeks in Marylebone station, silent and profoundly depressed.

Recovering in 1985 via acupuncture and "psychic healing", he co-founded the CORE Trust, a charity which offers holistic help for addiction. Through it, he met Princess Diana. Moving to Scotland's West Coast, he soaked up the "fierce warmth" of trawlermen in the bars at night, and began to write again.

In 1994, he returned to music with The Mystery of Love is Greater Than the Mystery of Death, the first of 24 albums for Cooking Vinyl. These formed a prolific, redemptive songbook about a cruel world, often sung and played with deceptive lightness. His own partial healing, and 1990s fascination with the "Iron Man" philosophy of Robert Bly, gave him new perspective on the scarred tough men of great songs such as "Classic Northern Diversions". He settled happily in Hampshire with his long-term partner Deborah Greenwood, but each year he took a sleeping bag, and wandered country lanes again. "My missus says, 'Jackie, you're a vagabond and I accept that'," he said.

In concert he was a charismatic troubadour. Settling at the bar for a pint before the gig, he'd then leaven his songs with dryly hilarious tall tales. Four live albums released in 2009, under the general heading "The Haunted Year", give the fullest picture of his work. A yarn where he announces Sting's death on a Kirkaldy commuter train is inseparable from the songs. His last album, Wayside Shrines and the Code of the Travelling Man, was released this year, during which he continued to tour, until the cancer which killed him made it impossible. "I sometimes think I'm too connected to the pain of other people," he once said, unsure if this was a good thing. "Out of that, and anger about that, I find myself writing." This sympathy for often violent, stoic people who were rarely offered it had, in his finest songs, few parallels.

Nick Hasted

Jackie Leven, musician: born Kirkcaldy 18 June 1950; one son; twice married; died 14 November 2011.


Further to your obituary of Jackie Leven (17 November), when I was writing a book about the British on holiday, and wanted to include a chapter on cruising, a mutual friend put me in touch with the singer-songwriter, who in his droll Scottish manner told me about his experience as the "entertainment" on a two-week cruise of the Norwegian fjords in 2002.

Jackie had serious misgivings about the trip, not being a man even to cover an Elvis Costello song, let alone Dean Martin's "Amore". He was no Jane McDonald. But the money was good and the Norwegian "ents" officer was happy for him to perform his own rather poignant material. On the first night, however, after he had sung three of his songs and was about to embark on a fourth, a big Englishman in his sixties walked purposefully towards the stage. "Can I have a word?" he said. "Sure," said Jackie.

"You see that table over there," said the man, jerking an agricultural thumb towards a large group of glowering Lancastrians. "Well, they're my friends, and we've saved up for years to come on this cruise, and you're depressing the hell out of us. Now, we're going to be in this bar most nights. And if we hear one more song from you, I'm going to lamp you. In particular, don't ever, ever sing 'My Way'. Is that understood?"

There was never much chance of Jackie singing "My Way", but he reported the threat, which had also contained about 30 expletives, to the ents officer, who listened sympathetically. "I think all you can do is not play," she said. "It is one of these things. Just relax and enjoy the cruise. Very often we get English groups like this, and they get drunk, fall out and stop speaking to each other, and many of them leave the ship at Hammerfest. It will be OK."

The Lancastrians did get drunk, did fall out, but didn't leave. So Jackie didn't play. Instead he shared a dinner table every night with a genteel group of German birdwatchers. "I kept passing the English guy and his friends on board, but they didn't say anything," Jackie told me. "There was just this kind of menacing low-level rumble."

Eventually, the cruise returned to Bergen, and everyone disembarked. But as they walked down the gangplank, Jackie found himself behind his nemesis, and couldn't resist crooning, "Regrets, I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention..." The man spun round, ready to confront him, but Jackie stopped him. "I did as you asked, but now we're off the ship, I'm no longer an employee and you're no longer a passenger. So if I see you again, I'll be the one lamping you. Is that understood?"

The man fell instantly silent, as if injected with some sort of meekness serum. It was a classic case of the bully bullied – and, by all accounts, classic Jackie Leven.
Independent

Christopher Hitchens obituary

Author, journalist and secularist who broke with his leftwing roots over the Iraq war Guardian - more links on Christopher Hitchens life here

Sue Carroll: Piers Morgan and Ed Miliband lead tributes Mirror

Sue Carroll: A born fighter who stood up for the underdog

Mirror

Bob Weston: Early '70s guitarist with Fleetwood Mac

Originally a British blues boom band led by Peter Green and Jeremy Spencer, Fleetwood Mac were at something of a crossroads by September 1972. The founder-member and drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie – the rhythm section the group was named after – had added McVie's wife, the keyboard-player and singer Christine McVie, formerly of Chicken Shack, and Bob Welch, an American vocalist and guitarist, but felt they needed a pedigree soloist able to recreate the contrasting guitar styles of his predecessors, particularly the slide playing of Spencer, for concert engagements.

Fleetwood and the McVies recalled witnessing Bob Weston's versatility as an accompanist with both Graham Bond and Long John Baldry and recruited him, along with the singer and harmonica-player Dave Walker, an alumnus of Savoy Brown, another British blues outfit.

"Dave and I joined on the same day, we were the new boys," Weston remembered. "It looked very promising from the start. Initial rehearsals were full of energy. This was further endorsed with the initial Norwegian tour. Then the Penguin sessions began, and so did the doubts."

However, while Walker's tenure only lasted until June 1973, including the making of the Penguin album, the band's first Top 50 entry in the US, Weston was a sterling contributor to both Penguin and Mystery To Me, the next Fleetwood Mac album, released in October 1973, and seemed to be fitting in well with the smoother radio-friendly direction of the group's then primary composers, Welch and Christine McVie. "I deferred to their talents, I was the baby writer, just starting out," said Weston, who created "Caught In The Rain", Penguin's ethereal closer, and co-wrote "Forever" with Welch and John McVie on Mystery To Me.

"Both of those albums were a blast to be involved in," he said. "It seemed I'd been building up for years to hit this zenith. Bullseye! In addition, it was a wonderful opportunity to tour America on a very professional level. I learned a lot." Unfortunately, during a run of US dates in the autumn of 1973, Weston embarked on an affair with Fleetwood's wife Jenny Boyd, who confessed everything to her husband and left the tour with their children. The band tried to put this setback behind them and continue with their itinerary but eventually Fleetwood snapped and Weston was dismissed in Lincoln, Nebraska.

"I had an early morning call from the tour manager, John Courage, insisting I come up to his room," said Weston. "I was greeted with an air of hostility by the crew chiefs of lighting, sound, etc. The tour manager told me very simply that the tour was cancelled. Mick had already left for Africa, John and Christine for London. Obviously, it was a fait accompli. I was handed a plane ticket and driven to the nearest airport. I didn't see any of the band between waking up and getting on the plane." It was, he admitted, "the most expensive affair I've ever had in my life. Cost me a career, that did."

In fact, the incident nearly did for Fleetwood Mac as well, as their unscrupulous manager Clifford Davis argued that he owned the band's trademark and hastily assembled a bogus line-up to pick up the dates. This was foiled by Courage and led to a lengthy legal battle which put the real group out of commission for nearly a year.

When Welch also exited, Fleetwood reorganised the band with the addition of the singing and songwriting duo Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks in 1975, and Fleetwood Mac entered the multi-million selling, superstar era of Rumours and Tango In The Night that Weston had been the unwitting catalyst for. Nevertheless, Welch and Weston's contribution during the so-called "bridge era" of the group's storied career is held in high regard by their fans.

Weston, who was left-handed but played right-handed, attributed his distinctive style to the fact that he played the violin first, switching to the guitar when he was 12. "The fingers were already mobile," he said. "My influences were the great blues masters, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy and sidemen such as Hubert Sumlin."

After moving to London in the mid-1960s, Weston joined The Kinetic, one of several British groups working in France, where they released an album in 1967 and supported Jimi Hendrix and Chuck Berry in Paris. Following his return to the UK, Weston had stints with the singers Aliki Ashman, Graham Bond and Long John Baldry, with whom he recorded the album Everything Stops For Tea produced by the Baldry acolytes Elton John and Rod Stewart in 1972.

He later worked with Dana Gillespie, Sandy Denny and Murray Head, who he backed on the Say It Ain't So and Between Us albums, and on French tours. In the early '80s Weston issued two solo albums in France and composed music for films and television. He died of a gastrointestinal haemorrhage and cirrhosis of the liver.

Robert Joseph Weston, guitarist and songwriter: born 1 November 1947; died London c. 3 January 2012.
Independent

Turkish Cypriot ex-President Rauf Denktash dies

Rauf Denktash, who headed the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus for more than 30 years, has died aged 88, his family says.

Mr Denktash became president of the territory when Cyprus split in 1974 and retired in 2005.

His health has declined considerably in the last decade and he suffered multiple organ failure after being admitted to hospital on 8 January.

He was regarded as a staunch supporter of Turkish Cypriot independence.

Correspondents say he was a controversial figure, regarded as a hero by Turks but hated by Greeks.

He took power in the northern half of the island after a Greek-inspired coup prompted a Turkish invasion.

But his state has only ever been recognised by Turkey.

UN-sponsored talks to reunite the island have not so far born fruit despite a 2004 reunification plan, and the dispute has been a source of tension between Greece and Turkey for decades.

BBC

RIP Whitney Houston ....

Just heard the very sad news Stinky, the poor woman never did get back on track...

Ive now watched spme of her recent live performances on youtube, she was clearly in trouble. Very sad end story for a super talented lady.