Category: [RIP]

He came, he got it

(post title stolen from a friend on Bluesky—hi Kitty, hi Tim)

Australian celebrity chef Peter Russell-Clarke dies aged 89

Born in Ballarat in 1935, Russell-Clarke began his career at age 14, working as a junior artist at an advertising agency, before moving into freelance cartooning and working as a food consultant for popular magazines, including New Idea and Woman’s Day.
He went on to produce his own cookbooks before shooting to wider fame through his catchy “g’days” which featured in the theme song of his 1980s ABC cooking show Come and Get it.
The show ran from 1983 to 1992, with 900 episodes written and hosted by Russell-Clarke wearing his signature neckerchief.
His appearances on Come and Get It made him one of Australia’s pioneering TV celebrity chefs.
“I realised that the bloke in front of the camera got more applause than the person who wrote it,” he told the ABC in 2017.
“So I wrote myself into the series and I became known as a cook rather than a painter or a writer.”

I share part of PRC’s surname, so, in the 80s when he was at his peak with Come and Get It, the kids at primary school used to amuse themselves singing the theme song with my first name inserted. It was irritating. Still, not going to blame Peter for that, of course, not his fault that primary school kids could be little shits (I mean, I probably was one myself at times, let’s be honest)… Anyway, there goes another one of those people, the ones that were just always there when you were little, maybe not so much as you get older but they’re a presence nonetheless… and when they go, another bit of your own past departs with them. Bye, Peter, looks like you had a pretty decent time among us…

Well that took long enough

So Swaggart kicked the bucket at last, clearly holding on to life with grim determination for two weeks after his impending death was announced. Hopefully we may see his fellow scumbag Jim Bakker, who Swaggart described as “cancer” before his own downfall—wow, WE were a paragon of moral uprightness and superiority to our fellow Christians, weren’t we? Not wrong about Bakker, but Swaggart really was the last person who should’ve been sniping at him—HOPEFULLY, I SAY, we may see Bakker follow him sooner rather than later. For his sake, of course; may the Lord bless him by saving him any more embarrassment at having to hawk those fucking food buckets for the apocalypse on his show so much…

Oh not another one

And just a few hours later it’s goodbye Douglas McCarthy from Nitzer Ebb… no word on what took him out, but he was apparently diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver last year so I’m guessing alcohol caught up with him at last. A damn shame, whatever the case. I was shocked to discover he wasn’t even 60 yet; apparently he was just 15 when Nitzer started, so only 18 when the first single came out.

I never saw Nitzer Ebb live, but I gather they saw me; back in 2006 they were one of the main acts at the Under the Blue Moon festival, performing upstairs at Newtown RSL while I was downstairs with the Inflatable Voodoo Dolls… we were part of the DJ lineup, and also we played a short live set (friends of ours were also playing support upstairs that night), and apparently Douglas and Bon came down to witness our semi-musical shenanigans and enjoyed whatever the hell it was we were doing. So there you go. Lift up your hearts:

And, with rather more hair, here he’s guesting with Alan Wilder’s side-project (as it still was at that time) Recoil on a cover of Alex Harvey’s “Faith Healer”:

We believed you, Mr Wilson

News just breaking that Brian Wilson has left the building. Apparently he was diagnosed with dementia last year, as if the poor bastard didn’t have a life full of problems… one of the biggest of which, of course, was Eugene Landy, who I’m glad Brian outlived and achieved things without (wish he could’ve outlived the scumbag Mike Love too, but we can’t have everything, I suppose). Brian lived a more difficult life than most people in the world of pop music, and he’s at rest at last, and I suppose we can be grateful for that for him.

RIP Mr Stewart

Sly Stone, pioneering funk and soul musician, dies aged 82

Sly Stone, the American musician who lit up generations of dancefloors with his gloriously funky and often socially conscious songwriting, has died aged 82.
“After a prolonged battle with COPD and other underlying health issues, Sly passed away peacefully, surrounded by his three children, his closest friend and his extended family,” a family statement reads. “While we mourn his absence, we take solace in knowing that his extraordinary musical legacy will continue to resonate and inspire for generations to come.” […]
Among those paying tribute to Stone was musician Questlove, whose documentary about Stone, Sly Lives!, was release earliest this year. “From the moment his music reached me in the early 1970s, it became a part of my soul,” he wrote on Instagram. “Sly was a giant — not just for his groundbreaking work with the Family Stone, but for the radical inclusivity and deep human truths he poured into every note … His work looked straight at the brightest and darkest parts of life and demanded we do the same.”

I’ve got to say, the timing of this news is kind of hilarious, given that it comes only a few months after Sly Lives!, the title of which was supposedly a dig at people who, understandably, could’ve sworn the artist formerly known as Sylvester Stewart had in fact ceased to be with us many years ago. Well, he’s definitely not now… The amazing thing about him dying now, of course, is that somehow he lived long enough to do so; given the amount of drugs he was hoovering up during the 70s (which I suspect contributed to at least some of those undefined “underlying health issues”), I’m surprised he made it out of the decade, never mind this far into this one. The band itself was probably doomed to a short life, especially once the drugs took over, but that was a mightily bright flare-up while it lasted… by way of an example, here they are on TV in 1968 before things started to go downhill:

RIP Margaret

Loretta Swit, ‘Hot Lips’ Houlihan on ‘MASH,’ Dies at 87

Loretta Swit, who played Major Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan on seminal TV comedy “MASH,” died Friday at her home in New York City. She was 87.
Her rep Harlan Boll said she died of natural causes.
For her work on “MASH” Swit was Emmy nominated for outstanding performance by a supporting actress in a comedy every year from 1974-83, winning the Emmy in 1980 and 1982.
Her “MASH” co-star Alan Alda remembered her on X, writing “Loretta was a supremely talented actor. She deserved all her 10 Emmy nominations and her 2 wins. But more than acting her part, she created it. She worked hard In showing the writing staff how they could turn the character from a one joke sexist stereotype into a real person — with real feelings and ambitions. We celebrated the day the script came out listing her character not as Hot Lips, but as Margaret. Loretta made the most of her time here.”

A damned shame. Margaret was a great TV character, and though I’ve always been dubious about the show’s gradual turn from a comedy into a drama as it got older, she definitely benefitted from it.

Non habemus papam

Well shit, RIP Frank. Not exactly a surprise, I know, and yet… somehow it is, despite that. He seemed to be doing well after getting out of hospital, well enough to do his Easter business just yesterday. Suppose his timing was good if nothing else. Maybe the thought of having to deal with J. Divans was what finished him off.

I am, alas, inclined to agree with Father Nathan here:

Yeah. With the general rightwards shift going on around the world, I can easily imagine the church doing the same. Not that I think it’s ever been a force for progress as such, but I think old Jorge was more forward-looking than most, and there’s going to be plenty of people in the Vatican who’ll be glad to see the back of him so they can let the Vatican slide backwards…

RIP Elvis Ramone

News just coming through now indicates Blondie drummer Clem Burke has lost the quiet battle he’d been fighting with cancer. He had a pretty extensive career outside Blondie, including a brief stint with the Ramones, and was apparently a large part of why Blondie didn’t break up almost as soon as they’d formed (having rather quickly lost both Ivan Kral to Patti Smith and Fred Smith to Television), and was with them to the end.

RIP David Johansen

I’ve seen stories online recently about David Johansen, the last of the New York Dolls, being super-ill with cancer, as he apparently had been for a number of years. With news just coming through of his passing, it obviously looks like he was even more ill than I realised he was… Alas. That band’s all gone now apart from their fill-ins from the later period of the band and their resurgence in the oughts, but we still have the music. Fuck Whispering Bob Harris for calling this “mock rock”: