Death

Alvin Stardust has died.

I did the sound on a Christmas show he was in, the Pied Piper, in about 1991 at the Arts Centre in Horsham. It wasn’t a great choice of fairy tale to build on given the ending.

One thing he didn’t want was monitors in view of the audience as it spoiled the look of the set and having been Shane Fenton in the era before foldback he was fine without it.

Here he is at the tail end of his hits period at the Wheeltappers & Shunters Club in 1975.

Somehow sums up Wogan as well as anything.

Inevitably means someone has died, in this instance Gareth Thomas who appeared in Blake’s Seven, Children Of The Stones and many other things, particularly on stage – at times with the Royal Shakespeare Company. The first two of those incidentally having amongst the best theme tunes yet written.

Don’t watch this last one if you haven’t seen Blakes 7 which for youngsters was a series created by Terry Nation of Doctor Who and particularly Dalek fame and was Firefly / Serenity without the optimism and an even higher attrition rate of lead characters.

…from an era when you’d find added to the end of the credits, ‘Currently appearing in Twelfth Night with the Royal Shakespeare Company’.

Cheer yourself up after the sad news by watching one of his films.. but not that one, or that, that one turns a bit grim, what about – except the whole destruction of the environment theme. Panda Kopanda it is then.