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Comedy actor Inman dies aged 71  
  
Inman had been ill for some time

John Inman TV clips  
Actor John Inman, most famous for the comedy Are You Being Served?, has died in London aged 71, his spokesman said. 
Inman made his name in the 1970s show as Mr Humphries, whose catchphrase "I'm free!" entered popular culture. 

In recent years he was a pantomime regular, most often taking the role of the dame. He also made appearances in BBC comedy show Revolver in 2004. 

The Preston-born actor died in hospital and had been suffering from a Hepatitis A infection for some time. 

  
 John was one of the wittiest and most inventive actors I've ever worked with 

Wendy Richard


Wendy Richard's tribute  

The infection, usually caused by eating contaminated food, forced him to cancel the opening of a pantomime in London in December 2004. 

It was initially hoped he would be able to return to the production of Dick Whittington, in which he was due to play Wanda the Cook, but he never worked again. 

His manager Phil Dale said: "John was known and loved throughout the world. He was one of the best and finest pantomime dames working to capacity audiences throughout Britain. 

"John was known for his comedy plays and farces which were enjoyed from London's West End throughout the country and as far as Australia, Canada and the USA." 

Inman's Are You Being Served? co-star Wendy Richard told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "John was one of the wittiest and most inventive actors I've ever worked with. 

"He was a brilliant, brilliant pantomime dame and he was a very good all-round actor, really. He was a true professional." 

 HAVE YOUR SAY 
 I bet everyone in heaven is laughing non-stop today; one of the funniest men to grace our TV's and stage. 

Alan Darbyshire, Wigan


Send us your comments  
Fans favourite 

Are You Being Served? ran on the BBC from 1972 to 1985 and depicted the antics of the staff of Grace Brothers, an old-fashioned department store. 

Mr Humphries became one of TV's best known characters, and in 1976 Inman was voted funniest man on television by TV Times readers. He was declared BBC TV's personality of the year the same year. 

Trevor Bannister, who played Mr Lucas in the series, told BBC News 24: "The 'I'm free!' was something put in because that is what people in those stores really said. 

"We didn't realise it would become a running catchphrase. 

"It was that way about the whole show - we never realised it was going to as successful as it was." 

Veteran actress and co-star Mollie Sugden, who played Mrs Slocombe, told the BBC: "It's a very sad day. As far as I'm concerned, it's the end of an era." 

Confident comedian 

In the last four series, Mr Humphries was given an assistant, Mr Spooner, played by Mike Berry. 

"I felt like going home at the end of the day and ironing my face, he made me laugh so much! As funny as he was in front of the camera, he was funnier off. 

"He was such an astute comedian as well. He would get the script and mark in pencil the best lines and how to get the most laughs. 

"And he was a confident comedian, which made him generous. He would help you in delivering a line to get the most out of it, he liked to work in a good team." 

'Innocent quality' 

 
Are You Being Served? attracted up to 22 million viewers 
Actress Rula Lenska, who worked with him on TV and in pantomime, paid tribute to his comic style. 

"It was suggestive but never in your face or aggressive. It had an innocent quality that you rarely find today. 

"He was a joy to work with and even after an exhausting day in pantomime he would have time for the fans who crowded round the stage door." 

Fellow pantomime dame Danny La Rue called him "irreplaceable". 

The 79-year-old added: "John was wonderful in panto. The children adored him. He had a magic touch. Panto can be exhausting - but he loved it. 

"He was such a fantastic and inventive actor, and he could play serious roles too. He wasn't all about that flippant catchphrase 'I'm free!' But that's what made him. When that show first started he was just one of the salesmen, but they soon saw a star." 

Inman's long-term partner, Ron Lynch, is said to be "devastated" at his death. 



ke, Charlie (1925-2006) 
 
Comedian, Actor, Writer
  
With his diminutive (5ft 1in) stature, blond curly hair, childlike manner and penchant for knockabout slapstick, Charlie Drake (born Charles Springall in London on 19 June 1925) was, particularly in the early years of his career, a popular comedian with children. However, upon broadening his appeal and finding a wider and more adult audience, he became one of the most popular entertainers on British television in the late 1950s and 1960s.

Drake appears to have made his television debut in an episode of The Centre Show (BBC) on 7 July 1953, in the period when he was an aspiring stand-up comic. In 1954, however, having failed to progress in this venture, he teamed up with lanky 6ft 4in comedian Jack Edwardes to form a double-act (they had first met during war service). 

Following their 1954 appearance in the talent show Showcase (BBC), the distinctive-looking pair refashioned their act to appeal more to children, adopting the stage names 'Mick and Montmorency' (Drake was the latter). As such they made appearances in the children's magazine series Jigsaw (BBC, 1954-55), followed by Mick and Montmorency (ITV, 1955-58), occasionally billed under the title Jobstoppers.

Eager to break away from being seen as purely a children's entertainer, Drake had begun to appear as a solo act in guest spots on the BBC from 1956, and dissolved his partnership with Edwardes shortly after their last ITV series.

Co-writing all his material (which he did throughout his comedy career), he began to establish himself as a comedy star appealing to all age groups with Laughter in Store (BBC, tx. 3/1/1957), followed by such BBC series as Drake's Progress (1957-58), Charlie Drake In... (1958-60), and The Charlie Drake Show (1960-61).

This television fame led to four disappointing attempts at film stardom between 1960 and 1967: Sands of the Desert (d. John Paddy Carstairs, 1960), Petticoat Pirates (d. David MacDonald, 1961), The Cracksman (d. Peter Graham Scott, 1963) and Mr. Ten Per Cent (d. Peter Graham Scott, 1967).

In 1963, he returned to ITV, where he was to remain for the rest of his comedy career, apart from the one BBC series, The Charlie Drake Show (1967-68), from which a compilation of sketches won him the Charles Chaplin Award for Best Comedy at the 1968 Montreux Television Festival.

His ITV series included The Charlie Drake Show (1963), Who Is Sylvia? (1967) and Slapstick and Old Lace (1971), but it was The Worker (1965-70), with Drake as the proverbial little man who is unable to hold down a job, which enjoyed the greatest popularity. With what proved to be his last regular spot on television, in the variety show Bruce Forsyth's Big Night (ITV, 1978), he reprised the Worker format in a series of ten-minute sketches.

Although he was to make the occasional comic guest appearance on television after 1978, Drake largely concentrated on straight drama, with Shakespeare and Pinter on stage and well-received performances on television as the unscrupulous moneylender Smallweed in Bleak House (BBC, 1985), one of a party of Welshmen on a wife-hunting mission in Filipina Dreamgirls (BBC, tx. 15/9/1991) and, stretching credibility to its limits, as a crime boss in an episode of the thriller series 99-1 (ITV, 1994-95).

Drake suffered a serious stroke in 1995 and did not work since, classing himself as 'semi-retired'. He died on 24 December 2006.
John Oliver


 20/11/2006.
KEITH ROWLANDS.

Keith Rowlands, who died on Saturday aged 70, was a towering figure in Welsh rugby football, being capped five times for his country and representing the British and Irish Lions on a further 19 occasions; latterly he was an administrator and became the first chief executive officer of the International Rugby Board.

He also became president of the Welsh Rugby Union, only the 10th former international to hold the post.

Keith Alun Rowlands was born on February 7 1936 at Brithdir, the son of a police inspector. After Cowbridge Grammar School, young Keith moved to Aberdare Boys' Grammar School, where he captained their rugby (1953-54) and cricket teams (1954-55). He won a Welsh schools' under-19 cap against England in 1955.

After London University, he served from 1958 until 1960 with the 1st Battalion of the Welch Regiment. His senior playing career began at Aberaman, a club of which he became patron, then moved to London Welsh, Llanelli and Cardiff, for whom he turned out 149 times between 1961 and 1967.

Rowlands made his debut for the Barbarians at Leicester in March 1962, the month in which, against France, he won the first of his five Welsh caps, and was picked for the British and Irish Lions tour to South Africa, playing in 17 of their 21 fixtures.

When he retired from playing in 1967, Rowlands became a committee member at Cardiff and was club chairman in 1974-5. At the same time he became a member of the Welsh Rugby Union, and served as one of the WRU's representatives on the International Rugby Board (IRB), becoming the world governing body's first general secretary in 1988.

Having been an amateur administrator co-opted on to the original tournament committee, Rowlands went on to become one of the key professionals who helped turn the Rugby World Cup into one of the top four global sporting events. Although he retired following the 1995 World Cup, he agreed to take on the chief executive's role of overseeing the 1999 Rugby World Cup in Wales.

Before joining the IRB, Rowlands worked as a commercial representative in sales and marketing for Arthur Guinness Ltd and the Taunton Cider Company. In retirement he was patron or president of several Welsh rugby organisations.

In 2004 he was elected president of the Welsh Rugby Union, a post he retained unopposed until earlier this year.
 



  
Ross Davidson (25 August 1949 – 16 October 2006), born William Russell Davidson in Uddingston, Lanarkshire, Scotland, was a British actor best known for his role as Andy O'Brien in the BBC soap opera EastEnders.


Career
Davidson started his working life as a PE teacher in Scotland. He also played water polo at international level for Scotland and left teaching to run a pub and disco in Glasgow, but furthered his ambitions to act by attending night classes.

He made his screen acting début on television in A Degree of Uncertainty (1979), a BBC Play for Today set in a Scottish university, then appeared as a kilted dancer in Stanley Baxter on Television (1979). He also had small parts as a mime troupe member in The Comedy of Errors ("BBC Television Shakespeare", 1983) and a photographer in Widows II (1985), as well as appearing in the film The Pirates of Penzance (1983) and the Monty Python short The Crimson Permanent Assurance (1983). In Spain, Holland and Germany, he was seen in commercials for products ranging from chewing gum to beer.

In 1985 he became one of the original cast of BBC's flagship soap opera EastEnders. He played the altruistic nurse Andy O'Brien for 18 months, after which his screen alter-ego went down in history for being the first main character to be killed off.

In 1986 Davidson recorded a pop single, "Jigsaw Puzzle", that failed to chart. He then returned to acting in stage plays (he had previously appeared in Guys and Dolls at the National Theatre) and returned to the small-screen in 1987 as a television presenter. He presented the BBC lunchtime magazine show Daytime Live (1987-88) and the sports challenge series Run the Gauntlet (1989-90).

He later returned to acting and went on to star in the Channel 4 soap opera Brookside; the Welsh soap Pobol Y Cwm and he also played the role of Peter O'Dell in the Scottish soap Take the High Road. More recently he starred as Andy Morgan in the Channel 4 soap opera Hollyoaks from 1999 - 2002.

Personal life
Ross' first marriage to a primary school teacher ended after less than 3 years, which Ross attributes to her dislike of his acting career and the fame that came with it. He took his ex-wife's maiden name, Ross, as his stage name.[1]

While working on EastEnders, Davidson famously dated his co-star Shirley Cheriton, who played his on-screen girlfriend Debbie Wilkins. She broke up with Davidson after five years. He married Barbara Black in 2005 and the couple had a young son together; Drew Davidson. They lived together in the Essex resort of Frinton-on-Sea. Barbara Black Davidson had three children from her previous marriage.

In February 2005 Davidson was diagnosed with brain cancer, for which he was treated surgically in early March. However the following month, Davidson was re-admitted to the Oldchurch Hospital in London, where he was told that he had a glioblastoma Grade 4 - the fastest growing, most virulent form of brain cancer.

In July 2005 Davidson went public with the news that his tumour was inoperable and that his life expectancy was 12-18 months [2]. Davidson had commented "I'm going to try everything to beat this".

He died at home, aged 57, a year and three months after he went public with the news 


Sir Kyffin Williams 

One of the great Welsh artists, he captured the majestic landscapes of his native land 

Rian Evans
Monday September 4, 2006
The Guardian 


The art of Sir Kyffin Williams, who has died at the age of 88, captured the imagination of the Welsh public. His dark, monumental landscapes of Snowdonia came to assume an iconic status and so too did the man, affectionately known simply as Kyffin. But, as a Royal Academician since 1974, his work was also familiar far beyond Wales and, of late, much sought after. This was hardly what was envisaged when, upon being invalided out of the army in 1941 because of epilepsy, a doctor suggested he took up art a "for the sake of his health".

Kyffin liked to say that he had had no talent, partly for fear of seeming boastful, partly because it had taken persistence to develop the underlying gift and his highly distinctive palette-knife style. But once determined on an artistic course, his passion for work was all-consuming and there was never any question as to subject matter. The north Wales of his upbringing, the mountains that he had roamed, first as a boy with his dog, later walking with the hounds, demanded to be drawn or painted.
Kyffin was born at Llangefni on Anglesey. His bank manager father and his mother were respectively the children of Church of England rectors on the island, and Anglesey's country parishes, its farmland and the stone walls that defined his early world would define his drawings. But family tradition ordained that John - for that was how he was known until the need arose for a more painterly name - and his elder brother, Richard, should be sent away, first to prep school and then to Shrewsbury School. It explained the English public-school accent of a committed Welshman, though he liked slipping into dialect with the Welsh-speaking farmers of the Lleyn peninsula to which the family had removed. At 18, work with a firm of Pwllheli land-agents gave him an even greater familiarity with the area and, when a clear day afforded him a vista of Cardigan Bay sweeping down to St David's Head, he was master of all he surveyed.

Joining the 6th Battalion Royal Welch Fusiliers as a lieutenant in 1937 offered new prospects, but the onset of epilepsy put paid to an army career and it was a slightly disillusioned young man who enrolled at the Slade School, evacuated for the war years to Oxford. According to Kyffin, his tutors mainly despaired of him, but the encouragement he received from Allan Gwynne-Jones would establish the tenor of his teaching at Highgate School, where Kyffin was senior art master from 1944 until 1973. Royal Academicians Anthony Green and the late Patrick Procktor were to pay tribute to his influence, and composers John Tavener and John Rutter were pupils too. Yet, throughout his London teaching years, Kyffin's heart remained in Wales, and he returned to paint at every opportunity.

In 1948, his first exhibition at the prestigious Colnaghi's had marked an already auspicious start; he showed there twice again and frequently at the Leicester Galleries and in Wales. Election as an associate of the Royal Academy in 1970 and then as a member in 1974 set a seal on this early part of his career. But Kyffin credited my father, the late poet and director John Ormond, with bringing his painting to an altogether wider public through two early BBC film portraits. It was their friendship that, decades on, led to my present involvement on a biography, though Kyffin's own engaging memoirs in Across the Straits (1973) and A Wider Sky (1991) will always constitute the last word.

In 1968, Kyffin received a Winston Churchill Fellowship to record the Welsh community in Patagonia. That visit resulted in works of unusually vibrant colour; it also reinforced awareness of his roots. In due course, he returned permanently to Anglesey and, as his output increased, he also immersed himself in projects which, arguably, made as important a contribution to artistic life in Wales as his painting. As president of the Royal Cambrian Academy, he inspired a revitalisation and the transfer to a splendid new gallery in Conwy. Other Welsh galleries were similarly indebted to him and he was instrumental in securing for Anglesey the drawings of wildlife artist Charles Tunnicliffe and, in turn, a gallery to house them. To complement that collection, Kyffin had purchased bronzes of birds and animals, often from sculptors whom he invited to show alongside him. Those gestures were characteristic, born of his love of fine work and his concern that Wales should possess such examples. His relationship with the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth was predicated on that understanding. Relations with the National Museum and Galleries of Wales were more fraught. He gave long service to their art committees and was responsible for the acquisition of work by Gwen John long before her importance was generally acknowledged but he was critical of the lack of proper recognition for the sculptor Ivor Roberts-Jones and also of the absence of a specific gallery for Welsh art.

Kyffin was supportive of young artists, but this mild-mannered man could be scathing about"junk art". His views were much quoted, but the criticism sprang from a concern that traditional values and, most of all, the discipline of draughtsmanship risked being eroded. Painting fast and fluently, he was nevertheless fanatical about structure and form and his descriptions of the process of painting were coloured by the language of military engagement; he "did battle" with a picture and being "defeated" by it made him miserable.

The darkness implicit in so many of Kyffin's mountain landscapes was a facet of his own make-up. He recognised in it the Celtic tendency to melancholy, but believed it to be exacerbated by circumstance, instinctively feeling that a certain despair and gloom were the logical sequel to his grand mal seizures. So the ostensibly calm exterior - army officer bearing, country gentlemena tweed suits, aristocratic nose, luxuriant moustache - hid a more complex personality. That was reflected most tellingly in his turbulent seascapes and it was stormy weather, over land or sea, which fuelled the nervous excitement and apprehension that tormented him but, paradoxically, produced his greatest work. A sense of his own vulnerability heightened Kyffin's compassion for others. Thus his astute portraits: catching likeness with a flair which belied the bold slabs of oil paint, but gaining their strength from what he read in the eyes.

Though ardent in his admiration of Richard Wilson and adamant that Wales should reclaim their artists of that stature, Kyffin's influences were primarily expressionist. But the painter with whom he felt an affinity was van Gogh and it was not self-aggrandisement but a perpetual fascination - not least that they were both epileptic - that led to him to make comparisons. It was certainly his perception of the difficulties of epilepsy, and perhaps too its stigma, that caused Kyffin not to marry, despite many loves and also engagements, and being denied a wife and family always pained him. A vast number of devoted friends helped compensate. The generosity and support of the Marquis and Marchioness of Anglesey were almost to constitute patronage: as a tenant on their estate, his cottage faced the Menai Straits, with the peaks of Snowdonia forming his horizon.

Kyffin was immensely lovable, with great charm and smiling eyes but, deep down, he was a shy man who took refuge in the wealth of stories of which he was a brilliant raconteur. This accomplishment, and the ease with which he could talk with anyone from hill farmers to royalty, he attributed to his father. He also had a prodigious memory for detail - visual and factual - and for genealogy. Perhaps inevitably in someone who knew his own line would end with him, he was particularly proud of his antecedents, among them Thomas Williams the 18th-century copper magnate; the great-aunt who married geologist Sir Andrew Ramsay; the great-grandfather who, as incumbent of a parish overlooking Holyhead, would ride out to sea to rescue those shipwrecked on the Skerries.

Kyffin played down his own honours, but they were countless. His name, from "cyffin" denotes a boundary and, while he often thought of himself as an outsider, his deputy lieutenancy of Gwynedd and his knighthood suggested otherwise. He shared his wonderful humour till the very end and the irony that his final illness, lung cancer, may have been caused by the years of using lead-based oil paints, was not lost on him.

· John Kyffin Williams, artist, born May 9 1918; died September 1 2006







     Bert Isaac 

Welsh artist and teacher fascinated by the return of nature to sites of human activity 

Peter Wakelin
Monday April 10, 2006
The Guardian 


Bert Isaac, who has died aged 83, was a leading teacher of art education and one of the senior artists of Wales. His creativity never faltered through more than 60 years of painting and printmaking. Even in the face of advanced Parkinson's disease, he drove himself to make some of his most original and vibrant works.
There was one subject Isaac made his own: the return of nature to abandoned places. From overgrown quarries to tin-shacked moors, he was fascinated by the transformation back to wilderness. His energetic marks and vital colours echoed the redemption wrought by the cycle of nature. The environments he conjured seemed metaphysical - one felt that by pushing through his veils and thickets one might encounter an impossible new world or enter a higher consciousness.

Isaac was born in Cardiff and grew up on the coalfield edge at Church Village. His father was an insurance agent and his mother a colliery secretary, but he wanted solely to be an artist. He was encouraged at Pontypridd grammar school, and his mother cleared a bedroom in their small house as a studio. From 1940 to 1944 he studied at Cardiff College of Art with Ceri Richards, who had already made his name as a leading modernist. The wartime class had only half a dozen students, with whom Richards shared his startling European art publications. Isaac recalled, "He was the epitome of what an artist should be - investigating a way of looking at the world and translating experiences into poetic visual images."
Touring exhibitions showed Isaac neo-romantic artists such as Graham Sutherland and Henry Moore cross-fertilising the romantic tradition with abstraction and surrealism, and Paul Nash's book Outline confirmed his intoxication with landscapes that were "strangely beautiful and excitingly unsafe". Isaac started to draw quarries near his home that opened up the hidden structure of the land. The re-growth he observed must have seemed a powerful theme and consolation during the war years, and he developed a surrealist's appreciation of the transformation of man-made forms to something unexpected. He exhibited for the first time, aged 19, at the National Museum of Wales with fellow civil defence workers - he was a volunteer bandager.

After working at schools in Yorkshire and Manchester, Isaac returned to Wales in 1949, taking a post at Heolgam secondary modern school. He also joined the Glamorgan summer school, a powerhouse of democratic exploration in the arts which became the highlight of 46 summers, teaching alongside musicians Larry Adler and Peter Maxwell Davies, the poet Ivor Cutler and painters Jeffrey Steele, Leslie Moore and Dennis Creffield.

He and Joan, whom he met at Cardiff College of Art and married in 1948, lived in London for 30 years, though returning to Wales with their daughter Susan for holidays in areas of industrial decay. In 1957 he became head of art at Borough Road College. He moved to head the art department in Battersea College of Education in 1968. Finally, he joined London University's Institute of Education in 1979, taking a part-time lectureship that gave him more time for painting. His art and teaching were interdependent, and he influenced student teachers strongly by example, helping them to focus on the creative process, or as one recalled it, "looking, seeing, questioning, discovering - thinking". He was made an MBE for services to art education in 1989.

From the 1950s he exhibited at the Howard Roberts Gallery in Cardiff, and in London at the Leicester Galleries, the Richmond Hill Gallery and Heal's. He was a founder member of the Welsh Group in 1947 and became a senior academician of the Royal West of England Academy and an honorary Royal Cambrian academician.

In 1986, he and Joan returned to her home town of Abergavenny, buying an ironmaster's villa that offered space for picture stores, studios and printing workshops. Joan set up a gallery in the orangery, showing Isaac's work and enthusiastically supporting other artists they respected. A number of large exhibitions followed his retirement in 1988, at London University, Brecknock Museum, Newport Museum and Art Gallery, and the Museum of Modern Art Wales. Isaac was not keen on retrospectives, preferring always his newest work, but he was amused by the efforts of curators to persuade him to show earlier pieces, and the result was a growing appreciation of his development. In 1992 the Old Stile Press published his woodcuts and meditative text on the creative process, The Landscape Within.

A remarkable outflowing of fresh, new work was represented in his final exhibition, at Llantarnam Grange, just months before he died. It seemed impossible that the frail man in a wheelchair at the opening could have created this triumphant display, yet he filled three large rooms with recent pictures, sustained as always by Joan's dedicated support. He was working until two days before he was taken into hospital for the last time, his determination so strong that nurses found themselves handing him his brushes or changing his painting water. Even when the physical challenges he faced seemed unbearable, Isaac never referred to his illness and made work that was ever more vital and expressive. He and his paintings demonstrated powerfully that the human spirit - like the natural forces that were his theme - could be indomitable.

His wife Joan, their daughter Susan and their grandchildren Charlotte and Toby survive him.

· Bert Isaac, artist and teacher, born February 23 1923; died March 21 2006
 ,  Ivor Cutlerto Annan. Following some failed attempts by his travelling salesman father to include him in the business, he took a job as an apprentice fitter at Rolls-Royce. In 1941, determined to prove wrong those who claimed that Jews were not pulling their weight by enlisting, he signed up for the RAF. He trained as a navigator, but was dismissed for being too dr
Unassuming master of offbeat humour whose eccentric take on the world entertained March 3, 2006

Ivor Cutler, the eccentric poet, singer, songwriter and storyteller, who has died aged 83, appealed to successive generations with his offbeat sense of humour and wonder at the world. In more than four decades of performing he attracted a band of admirers and followers that included such luminaries as philosopher Bertrand Russell, Beatles John and Paul, DJ John Peel and comedian Billy Connolly. Pop mavericks such as Oasis discoverer Alan McGee and Franz Ferdinand's Alex Kapranos were also fans. The scope of his appeal was reflected in his dedicated following on BBC Radios 1, 2, 3 and 4 - and many stations beyond.
Cutler's Jewish parents and grandparents came to the UK at the end of the 19th century in the wake of pogroms in eastern Europe. Thinking they were bound for the US, but finding their ship docked at Glasgow, they stayed there. Ivor was born 100 yards from the Rangers ground at Ibrox Park - he perpetuated the myth that his first scream was synchronous with a goal.

His childhood, shared with two brothers and two sisters, should have been happy, but a combination of anti-semitic schoolteachers and the belief that he became a lesser being in his mother's eyes after his younger brother was born seemed to inhibit his development. At the age of three, he tried to kill his younger sibling with a poker, only to be stopped by an intervening aunt. But songs around the piano in three-part harmonies, and the formative moment when, aged six, he won the school prize for his rendition of Robert Burns' My Love is like a Red Red Rose, give a somewhat warmer picture of his upbringing.

Nevertheless, the exaggerated view of a dour Scots childhood, no doubt informed by seeing his peers arriving at school with bare feet - a fact which, he later claimed, helped form his leftwing political views, aged five - appeared in his hilarious writings, Life in a Scotch Sitting Room Volume 2. With lines such as "Voiding bowels in those days was unheard of. People just kept it in," he used a string of fantastical untruths to expose the reality of his life and the Spartan - and sometimes sadistic - Scottish existence.

In 1939 Cutler was evacuated eamy and absent-minded, apparently more interested in looking at the clouds from the cockpit window than locating a flight path. He served out the rest of the war as a first aid and storeman with the Winsor Engineering Company, then studied at Glasgow School of Art and became a schoolteacher.

Working at a school in Paisley, however, did not agree with Cutler. He hated discipline that required the strap, having received it more than 200 times himself, and in a dramatic gesture took the instrument from his desk, cut it into pieces and dispensed them to the class. Leaving Scotland was, he claimed, "the beginning of my life".

That new life included teaching at AS Neill's Summerhill school. Dubbed a hippy academy where a different approach to education was fostered, Summerhill was run with rules agreed between staff and pupils, and the premise was to educate the whole person. This alternative philosophy appealed to Cutler. He lived in the grounds of the school and engaged the pupils with drama and music. He also married and had two children, although the marriage did not last, and elements of his eccentric behaviour surfaced in his parenting, such as his insistence on sending his son to his first day at school in a kilt.

Cutler continued to teach until 1980 for the Inner London Education Authority - to the chagrin of some parents, who found his unorthodox methods subversive (such as having his pupils improvise, during a drama class, killing their siblings). But he also had a showbiz career, and claimed it was teaching that unlocked his creativity. He began with a gig at the Blue Angel, in London in 1957, which he always referred to as an unmitigated failure, and he did not begin writing poetry until he was 42 - maintaining he was not any good until he was 48.

Cutler hawked his songs around Tin Pan Alley and was eventually recognised by a promoter who recorded his work and introduced him to the comedy producer Ned Sherrin. Sherrin was tickled by Cutler's surrealist folk music and booked him to appear on television; he subsequently performed on the Acker Bilk Show and Late Night Line-Up. On one such appearance he was spotted by Paul McCartney, who invited Cutler to appear in the Beatles' film Magical Mystery Tour (1967). Cutler duly found himself playing Buster Bloodvessel, the bus conductor who announces to his passengers, "I am concerned for you to enjoy yourselves within the limits of British decency" and then develops a passion for Ringo's large aunt Jessie.

In another Beatles connection, his 1967 record, Ludo, was produced by George Martin, who was not amused by Cutler's eccentricities during the Abbey Road recording sessions. Maintaining its appeal to a new generation, the record was re-released on Oasis's label, Creation, in 1998. Cutler's distinctive baritone, coupled with the wheeze of the harmonium, became the trademark of his songwriting style as much as his offbeat, imaginative and observant lyrics.

For the latter part of his career, Cutler lived on his own in a flat on Parliament Hill Fields, north London, which he found by placing an ad in the New Statesman saying "Ivor Cutler seeks room near Heath. Cheap!". There he would receive visitors, and his companion Phyllis King, in a reception room filled with clutter, pictures and curios, including his harmonium, some ivory cutlery (a pun, of course) and a wax ear stapled to the wall with six-inch nails - proof of his dedication to the Noise Abatement Society, because of which he forbade his audience ever to whistle in appreciation at his work. The bicycle was his preferred mode of transport, its cow-horn handlebars in the sit-up-and-beg position in line with his Alexander technique practice.

Besides his accomplishments in songwriting and poetry (he was included in Faber's collection of Scottish verse, edited by Douglas Dunn), Cutler also engaged in quasi-performance art. He was wont to carry chalk to draw circle faces around dog excrement on the pavement, and would hand out gold sticky labels inscribed with such legends as "Made of dust", "True happiness is knowing you're a hypocrite" and "Changing your pants is like taking a clean plate".

Although he often took a stern demeanour with strangers, and insisted on them addressing him as Mr Cutler, it was in many ways a front. In less public company, his face would readily break into a grin, and sometimes he would remove his fez or hat to reveal a bald pate, about which he once remarked: "Sur le volcan ne pousse pas l'herbe" (Grass does not grow on a volcano).

Such bon mots were indications of his love of languages. He could quote from Homer, taught himself Chinese and was in the habit of frequenting Soho's Chinatown, where he could display his knowledge - although, typically, he chose Chinese above Japanese because the textbooks were cheaper. With the onset of old age he was increasingly worried about losing his memory, given that his father and brother had both developed Alzheimer's disease. It was a fear that was to be tragically fulfilled. He retired from the stage at the age of 82.

Cutler seemed to live by the epigrams he wrote, particularly "Imperfection is an end; perfection is only an aim," as well as his belief that art was therapy. As a creator of work that was bizarre, unique, sinister, bleak, funny, touching - and sometimes achingly moving - it proved to be therapeutic as much for his fans as for its creator. He is survived by his sons.

· Ivor Cutler, poet, songwriter and performer, born January 15 1923; died March 3 2006 

    SYD BARRETT 
       1946-2006 

Roger Keith Barrett was born in Cambridge in January 1946. The son of a well-known pathologist, he acquired the nickname "Syd" during his teens, a reference to Sid Barrett, a local jazz drummer. 

It was as a student at London's Camberwell School of Art that he became guitarist and vocalist with a band called Tea Set, whose other members were Roger Waters and Bob Klose on guitars, Rick Wright on wind instruments and drummer Nick Mason. 

It was Syd Barrett who christened the new group The Pink Floyd Sound, in homage to two of his own musical heroes, the bluesmen Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. 

After Klose left the line-up to pursue a career as a photographer, Pink Floyd - as it soon became - played standards like Louie, Louie, often embellishing them with free-form interludes, improvisations in the jazz style, yet also influenced by heavy rock. 

 
Syd Barrett founded Pink Floyd in 1965 
By 1966, Floyd was the most influential act in swinging London's burgeoning underground music scene, filling venues like UFO and The Roundhouse with audiences keen to witness their radical sound and its accompanying light-show. 

The following year saw Pink Floyd enter the charts with the Barrett-penned single Arnold Layne which, although banned by the BBC, reached an impressive number 21. 

The follow-up single, the drug-inspired See Emily Play - also written by Barrett - fared even better, going to number 6 in the charts. 

Signing up to the EMI label, the band recorded its first album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, in 1967. 

With Barrett as its driving force, the album included a number of classic tracks, most notably Astronomy Domine and Interstellar Overdrive, and more whimsical offerings like Bike and The Gnome. 

Cult following 

But Syd Barrett soon found himself grappling with his new-found fame and facing a serious drug problem, especially with the psychedelic drug LSD. 

His live appearances became shambolic, often silent or confused and, by the end of 1967, the band had been forced to bring in Barrett's friend, one David Gilmour, as a substitute guitarist. In early 1968, Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd went their separate ways. 

Syd Barrett's solo career was short. His first album, the inconsistent The Madcap Laughs, appeared in January 1970, and its altogether more polished follow-up, Barratt, hit the record shops that November. 

Songs like Gigolo Aunt, Vegetable Man and Dominoes, showcased on his albums and in live sessions recorded for BBC radio, brought Syd Barrett a cult following. 

 
Barrett ended up a recluse in Cambridge 
An Effervescing Elephant, a children's song written by him at the age of 16, has drawn comparisons with Ogden Nash, Hillaire Belloc and Roald Dahl. 

But a lack of popular recognition, combined with the increasing fragility of his health, led Syd Barrett to abandon the music industry altogether and, despite a couple of abortive attempts to re-ignite his career, Barrett remained, for more than 30 years, British rock music's greatest recluse. 

But he did attend Pink Floyd's recording sessions in 1975, ironically sitting in the studio while the band recorded Shine On You Crazy Diamond. 

In recent years, Barrett preferred to be known by his original Christian name, Roger. But, despite continuing mental problems and diabetes, those who met him spoke of a content man who had left his illustrious past behind him. A devoted gardener, regular royalty payments made his later years more comfortable. 

Barrett's influence was rich indeed. Artists from David Bowie to REM have acknowledged their debt to him, as have newer acts like Phish and Pearl Jam. 

  SYD BARRETT 1946-2006 

       Terry Frost 

(born Terence Ernest Manitou Frost) (October 13, 1915 - September 1, 2003) was a British artist noted for his abstracts.

Born in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire in 1915, he did not become an artist until he was in his 30s. Following his army service in World War II, he attended Camberwell School of Art and the St. Ives School of Art. In 1951 worked as an assistant to the sculptor Barbara Hepworth. His career included teaching at the Bath Academy of Art, serving as Gregory Fellow at Leeds University, and becoming the Artist in Residence and Professor of Painting at the Department of Fine Art of the University of Reading.

In 1992 he was elected a Royal Academician and he was knighted in 1998.

He married Kathleen Clarke in 1945. They had five sons and one daughter. One of his sons, Anthony also became an artist. A second, Stephen is a comedian.

   

      London Terrorist
           Attack                
      July 7th 2005

 QUEEN expresses her,
 ''admiration for the people of our capital city who in the after-math of yesterday's bombings are calmly determined to resume their normal lives.  This is the answer to this outrage........'Terrorists will not change our way of life.''

Sir Iqbal Sacranie, Muslim Council of Britain, utterly condemns attacks "these terrorists, these evil people ... All of us must unite ... to hunt these murderers down." 

 In the wake of these horrific 
and indiscriminate  7/7 London Bomb Blasts, aimed at all peoples regardless of age,colour,creed or religon nothing  but nothing can explain away  the absolute futility and mindlessness of this evil  and barbaric violence perpetuated in the name of terrorism .

    Please write an
on-line memorial with  Peoples Tribute  for your loved one.
''OUR THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS OF COURSE, ARE WITH VICTIMS AND THEIR FAMILIES''

Tony Blair'
Prime Minister. 




THE PEOPLES POPE.

       John Paul  ll 
        1920-2005.

       ''The first world evangelist''  Cardinal Cormac Murphy O' Connor. Archbishop of Westminster
    
            ''Our most beloved Holy Father has returned to the house of the Father''  Archbishop Leonardo Sandri. Senior Vatician Official.

            ''A champion of human freedom and a good and faithful servant to God.''  President Bush. 

------------------------------

Tsunami Earthquake Disaster

Peoples Tribute extends its heartfelt condolences  to all the relatives, friends, and survivors of the
Tsunami disaster.

" – as best we can manage it – pray."
 
Rowan Williams 2005
Archbishop of Canterbury

 
 
 
HM QUEEN ELIZABETH THE QUEEN MOTHER
4 August 1900 - 30 March 2002

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother died peacefully in her sleep on Saturday 30 March 2002, at Royal Lodge, Windsor. Queen Elizabeth was a much-loved member of the Royal Family. Her life, spanning over a century, was devoted to the service of her country, the fulfilment of her Royal duties and the support of her family
 


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