Final Curtain Call

What was it about that week?  In one week alone we lost some incredibly talented, gifted people from the entertainment world.  Somewhere a celestial timer went off which acts as an uncomfortable reminder to all of us that time is short: don’t waste a minute!  So a sad farewell to:

Frank Deasey.  I know you might be scratching your head over him but you are probably familiar with some of his work.  A gifted playwright, he penned the award winning finale for Prime Suspect amongst many other things.  Some of you will know him if you watched The Passion, first screened on channel four and last year on BBC.  Filmed in five half hour slots, it depicts Jesus’ last week as he  sets his face towards Calvary.  Frank wrote it while having to deal with his first bout of cancer four and a half years ago.  He said ‘I poured myself into The Passion identifying with its themes of suffering and redemption’.  He died aged forty nine of liver cancer.

Though sadly he hadn’t been on our TV’s for a while,  who could forget Keith Floyd?  Bow tie, glass of wine in hand, one for the dish, half a dozen for the road.  He really seemed like an old fashioned roué with an eye for the girls, chatting up the French housewife whose kitchen he would be cooking in even though she looked like Dame Edna.  The programme would end with her clearly not quite hating the English as much as when it started.  He made cooking fun and really had a thing about fish which is always a challenge for most of us cooks if we’re being honest.  Will you ever be able to hear The Stranglers again without thinking of him?  He died aged sixty five.

Predator* one of my all time favourite films came out in 1987.  It’s a winning combination, Arnie and a camouflaged alien in a jungle!  Anyway the point is as a result I missed the advent of  Dirty Dancing, a movie that has spawned an industry so vast including a TV series, a stage production and a computer game, I wonder that governments don’t actually invite script writers to run the country.  Without doubt it was the making of Patrick Swayze as Johnny Castle the dance instructor.  Ghost nailed him as the funny, charming yet vulnerable leading man though he was nearly upstaged by Demi Moore’s funky haircut.  He died aged forty seven.

Lots of us I’m afraid are old enough to remember the songs, If I had a hammer, Where have all the flowers gone?  Leaving on a jet plane and the inimitable, rumour laden Puff the magic dragon. Peter Paul and Mary, two blokes with beards and a beautiful blonde, were launched as a super folk group in a coffee house in Greenwich Village in 1961.  Their songs and voices became intrinsically linked  with the anti war and civil rights movements of the sixties.  There were reunions and other songs and albums along the way but they were probably best know and loved for the enduring anthems of their early days.  The beautiful blonde, Mary Travers died aged seventy two.

Way before The Sweeney there was Z Cars.  It might seem a bit black and white and lacking in forensics and stab vests but back then it was radical.  Up till 1962 our perceived image of the British bobby was George Dixon;  kindly, fatherly, more inclined to clip you round the ear than aim a Taser gun at you.  Then along came Troy Kennedy Martin who wrote fast paced scripts with believable situations and proper regional accents, a first for the BBC and mighty successful it was.  He wrote The Italian job which will be remembered forever for putting Noel Coward and Benny Hill in a film together but more importantly for the immortal line, You were only meant to blow the ****** doors off!  Later came the BAFTA winning eco- thriller Edge of Darkness in1985 that explored the nuclear industry and secret intelligence, the kind of thing Dan Brown wishes he could write.  I implore you if you’ve never seen it, get the box set.  It still has the power to haunt after all these years later.   Troy Kennedy Martin died aged seventy seven.

Yet for all their impressive legacy I’m still reminded that ultimately, the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of God stands forever.  All the clever words fall away eventually except the genius words of God, the legacy that matters most to us in this world and the next one.

*  The other one is Predator vs Aliens