A member of Celebrity's Charmed Circle, James was known for his literary pretension and his sneering. That cultural giant, the Daily Mail, proclaimed that James died surrounded by his friends and his books. Me, personally, I can think of nothing, absolutely nothing worse than dying surrounded by others; fuck that for a game of soldiers. Still, no business like showbusiness.
Disappointingly, Lord Death and his Sergeants failed to simultaneously harvest the unspeakable antipodeans,
Barry Humphries,
the pornstar professor and pisshead, Dame Germaine Greer
and that surviving ugly bloke bastard from the BeeGees,
a woefully unappealing trio of falsetto warbling popsingers who somehow managed to escape their just transportation to Australia and then infest the radio waveband of Eternity with shrieking, agonising disco music.
Jive talking, they called it.
Another celebrity culled at only eighty was self-publicist and polymath, Dr Jonathan Miller.
A current Radio 4 dramadoc series reveals that Johnny, despite his self acclaimed brilliance, was a casualty of the birthing wars of the National Theatre, a victim of towering thespian towering giant, the towering
Sir Peter Hall and never really worked again, unless it was in the construction of toweringly facetious abstract sculpures. One of those gifted men, Jonathan, could turn his hand to anything, badly.
My only knowledge of his work is his dismissive critique, still here, on my shelves, of Marshal McLuhan's seminal Understanding Media, a work which resonates the louder with every passing decade.
It was McLuhan who, in the '60's, coined the phrase and thus the consciousness of what is now the everydayism of the Global Village. McLuhan's perspicacious understanding of what we now call media, what he properly saw as extensions of self, foreshadowed the corrosive and all-consuming juggernaut of social media, McLuhan declaring that in an age of electronic media, minority groups could no longer be suppressed; his aphorism that individual consciousness is an evolutionary dead end is vividly accentuated as billions upon billions grasp futilely for roast-beef-dinners, i-things, dish washers and BMWs. Miller, an airhead dilettante, dismissed McLuhan's insights and prophecies as the ramblings of a provincial Canadian academic. No tears, here, therefore, in Ishmaelia, for the passing of another lucky Oxbridge dunderhead.
In other Dead News, celebrity shit-peddlars are aghast at the death of Sir Gary Sugar.
Gazza, for a long time the public face of the British Sugar Corporation, entreated children and their parents to stuff their faces with his patron's product, never troubling his rock-star head with thoughts about obesity, heart disease and Type 2 diabetes, conditions which he enthusiastically promoted, the cunt.
Speaking for the entire food-whore industry, the BBC's Sir Gary Crisps
said that he was totally and absolutely gutted by the death of his old mate, Gazza.
I mean, I sell greasy, salty and entirely unhealthy products to generations of children. The BBC only pays me a million and a half pounds per year to talk shit about football. How'm I supposed to make ends meet if I don't earn a crust from poisoning the little ones?
And so it was with Gary Rhodes, selling poison to children. 'Snot like he was a drug dealer or anything, is it?
Sir Peter Hall and never really worked again, unless it was in the construction of toweringly facetious abstract sculpures. One of those gifted men, Jonathan, could turn his hand to anything, badly.
My only knowledge of his work is his dismissive critique, still here, on my shelves, of Marshal McLuhan's seminal Understanding Media, a work which resonates the louder with every passing decade.
It was McLuhan who, in the '60's, coined the phrase and thus the consciousness of what is now the everydayism of the Global Village. McLuhan's perspicacious understanding of what we now call media, what he properly saw as extensions of self, foreshadowed the corrosive and all-consuming juggernaut of social media, McLuhan declaring that in an age of electronic media, minority groups could no longer be suppressed; his aphorism that individual consciousness is an evolutionary dead end is vividly accentuated as billions upon billions grasp futilely for roast-beef-dinners, i-things, dish washers and BMWs. Miller, an airhead dilettante, dismissed McLuhan's insights and prophecies as the ramblings of a provincial Canadian academic. No tears, here, therefore, in Ishmaelia, for the passing of another lucky Oxbridge dunderhead.
In other Dead News, celebrity shit-peddlars are aghast at the death of Sir Gary Sugar.
Gazza, for a long time the public face of the British Sugar Corporation, entreated children and their parents to stuff their faces with his patron's product, never troubling his rock-star head with thoughts about obesity, heart disease and Type 2 diabetes, conditions which he enthusiastically promoted, the cunt.
Speaking for the entire food-whore industry, the BBC's Sir Gary Crisps
said that he was totally and absolutely gutted by the death of his old mate, Gazza.
I mean, I sell greasy, salty and entirely unhealthy products to generations of children. The BBC only pays me a million and a half pounds per year to talk shit about football. How'm I supposed to make ends meet if I don't earn a crust from poisoning the little ones?
And so it was with Gary Rhodes, selling poison to children. 'Snot like he was a drug dealer or anything, is it?
