Alcee Hastings

ALCEE YOU ON THE OTHER SIDE   US representative Alcee Hastings has died after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. Hastings started out as a circuit judge, becoming the Florida district court judge in 1979. This lasted until a liking for bribes came to be known, and after a long trial he was impeached from […]

Hans Kung

HANS MACABRE Swiss Catholic theologian Hans Kung has died aged 93. Kung was a promoter of inter-faith dialogue and annoyed some religious types when he challenged the concept of Papal infallibility. (Thanks to DDT and Reptile for making me sound vaguely knowledgeable here.) He wrote many books on the spiritual nature of Christianity, won peace […]

Paul Cosford

PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS Sir Paul Cosford, former chief executive of Public Health England, has died aged 57. He had suffered from cancer for several years. Under his job, he had an expertise in dealing with pandemic viruses (luckily we don’t need to fear those), and dealing with health inequalities in society. He was picked by […]

Sarah Hughes

RED FUNERAL Guardian journalist and TV critic Sarah Hughes has died, aged 48, after a long battle with cancer.  Hughes had started off in sports journalism, as a writer for the New York Daily, before going on to work for the Guardian, the Telegraph and the Metro. She was a frontline reporter on war crimes […]

Gloria Henry

GLORIA IN THE HIGHEST American actress Gloria Henry has died a day after her 98th birthday. A regular on us tv, she was best known as her role as Dennis the Menace’s mother. That’s the US version, not the UK one with Gnasher.  She was picked by 4 teams, including Pool Ghoul and Syndication Zombies. […]

G Gordon Liddy

FUNERAL GATE G Gordon Liddy, our “favourite of all the Watergate judges” (TM a pished Joan Rivers) has died aged 90. A former FBI agent turned public prosecutor involved in a long feud with Timothy Leary, Liddy joined Nixon’s team in 1971. He became the go to guy for the black arts of politics, and […]

Sarah Onyango Obama

The step grandmother of Barack Obama has died aged 99. She became part of his story in 2008 when non-fans tried to paint Obama as a non-American, with the birther movement bollocks. She won an award for founding an education foundation in 2014. She was a unique pick for The Old Ones are the Pests. […]

Derek Ufton

CHARLTON CREMETIC English cricketer Derek Ufton has died aged 92, only a few months after The Daily Mail said he was doing great for his age. He played first class cricket for Kent in 149 matches between 1949 and 1962. At the same time, thanks to meeting Jimmy Hill during his army service, he also […]

Beverly Cleary

WE CANT SEE CLEARY NOW THE RAIN IS GONE Children’s author Beverly Cleary has died aged 104. In her childhood she had struggled to read and viewed the books her schools lumped on her as not having any people she knew in real life in them. In the 1950s, she set about writing stories about […]

Larry McMurtry

LONESOME DEATH American novelist Larry McMurtry has died aged 84. He had been suffering from heart issues. He was best known for Pulitzer Prize winning novel Lonesome Dove. He also wrote the screenplay for Brokeback Mountain. Many other books followed include Harmony and Pepper and The Berrybender Narratives. Other films of his own work included […]