… Jones was born in Colwyn Bay and went on to study at Oxford University, where he met his future Python pal Palin in the Oxford Revue – a student comedy group.
Alongside Palin, Idle and the likes of David Jason, he appeared in the BBC children’s satirical sketch show Do Not Adjust Your Set, which would set the template for their work to come with Python.
He wrote and starred in Monty Python’s Flying Circus TV show and the comedy collective’s films, as a range of much-loved characters. These included Arthur “Two Sheds” Jackson, Cardinal Biggles of the Spanish Inquisition and Mr Creosote.
He also directed their film The Holy Grail in 1975, with fellow Python Terry Gilliam, and took sole directorial charge of 1979’s Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life in 1983. . .
Farewell, Terry Jones. The great foot has come down to stamp on you. My god what pleasure you gave, what untrammelled joy and delight. What a wonderful talent, heart and mind
Actor Derek Fowlds, known to millions for playing Bernard Woolley in Yes Minister, has died at the age of 82.
He also played sergeant-turned-publican Oscar Blaketon in ITV police drama Heartbeat for 18 years, and was “Mr Derek” on the Basil Brush show in the 70s. . .
Fowlds released his autobiography, A Part Worth Playing, in 2015 in which he recalled how he started to act “just for kicks”.
“Growing up the thought of acting as a living never crossed my mind. I wanted to be a footballer or sportsman,” he said, adding he started acting in school plays.
“I enjoyed mucking about the stage,” he wrote.
He told the tale of how in his first play a child, he got his sword stuck up another actor’s skirt and “I heard the sound of audience laughter for the first time in my life, and I was just knocked out”. . .
In the beginning, the ball is huge. You can’t move the box without the ball hitting the pain button. It rattles around on its own in there and hits the button over and over. You can’t control it – it just keeps hurting. Sometimes it seems unrelenting. pic.twitter.com/Wcas2p4vab
Over time, the ball gets smaller. It hits the button less and less but when it does, it hurts just as much. It’s better because you can function day to day more easily. But the downside is that the ball randomly hits that button when you least expect it. pic.twitter.com/fevAttojBg
For most people, the ball never really goes away. It might hit less and less and you have more time to recover between hits, unlike when the ball was still giant. I thought this was the best description of grief I’ve heard in a long time.
From that distance, we can’t see the terror that must have struck, the efforts to rescue the visitors and the heroism of the rescuers.
Last photos: here are the White Island Tour operators rescuing people, timestamp 14:24 (~12-14 minutes after eruption). Endless gratitude to that crew for stepping up as first responders.
Broadcaster, critic, poet, TV presenter and prolific author – Clive James cheerfully criss-crossed the boundaries between high and lowbrow.
He was as much at home hosting a Shakespeare documentary as he was at fronting a programme showing people suffering indignities on Japanese TV.
His sardonic tones graced a host of TV documentaries in which he brought his own acute observations to bear on a wide variety of subjects.
A journalist on The Sydney Morning Herald once wrote: “His gift and lasting contribution has been to recognise that mass appeal does not translate into lack of substance.” . .
But try, if you will, to imagine that David Letterman also wrote long, charming critical essays for The New York Review, published more than 30 books, issued memoirs that moved readers the way Frank McCourt’s do, knew seven or eight foreign languages, and composed poems that were printed in The New Yorker, and you are getting close.
When England loses Clive James, it will be as if a plane had crashed with five or six of its best writers on board.
A devoted, dear and longtime friend of Quadrant, Clive’s wit and insight pepper our archives. Below, a sampling of the many reasons the world is today so much poorer for his passing. But first, as a reminder that five decades’ residence in England had not in the least thinned or in any way diminished the Australia that was in his blood, an expat’s memory . .
The journalist and author Ian Cross has died aged 93.
He is best known for his classic novel The God Boy but in a wide-ranging career he achieved distinction in other spheres, notably as editor of The Listener and chairman of the Broadcasting Corporation.
A journalist for many years, he began writing fiction in his spare time.
His four years as Listener editor in the 1970s helped to expand the magazine to an unprecedented mass circulation, and he then served as executive chairman of the Broadcasting Corporation before retiring in 1986. . .
RT @NZNationalParty: Remember the Government's handling of meningococcal in Northland and measles? They need to learn from their previous m… 2 hours ago
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