Everyone is Going to Die

[davidn]

I've just woken up to an unusually large pile of of comments on a few of my 80s Youtube videos expressing their condolences about Tony Hart. What a way to find out that he's died - he was an icon of TV when I was growing up and taught our entire generation how to draw (well, he tried his best with me, but it didn't work).

He's the latest in a worryingly long line of people we know from British TV who are slowly dying off. Unfortunately, TV is about the right age for it now - with the end of World War 2 as the starting point, most of the people who joined the BBC in their thirties are at very unstable ages now.

I remember in one of Victoria Wood's shows she had a joke about one of the heap of crime dramas in the 90s suddenly revealing the deaths of John Thaw, Angus Deayton and Richard Whiteley, and that would be the end of television - but with two of those three gone some time ago, that's now sounding a bit too real for comfort.

At least it led to me finding an episode of Turnabout.

Comments

[kjorteo]

As long as David Attenborough is okay, we'll get through this. If anything happens to him, then we panic.

[billyhicks.livejournal.com]

It certainly is sad news. Even as a 90s kid I remember watching his shows a lot, despite the new and hip 'Art Attack' being on the other side (which I also watched). Spanning all those generations of children isn't an easy thing to do and a lot of credit to him for that, that and of course inventing Morph.

It's about a year since we lost Mark Speight too, who followed in his footsteps. Don't think anyone would have placed any bets on Tony Hart outliving him this time a few years ago.

[davidn]

I'd forgotten that Mark Speight had already gone, too. That was a shock, to suddenly hear of someone dying like that after I'd previously thought of him as... as manic as he was.

It's a side effect of the relative dominance of just a couple of channels in Britain that you feel you get to know some of the presenters so well...

[stubbleupdate.livejournal.com]

This is Andi Peters now.

[davidn]

My journal's going to be forever associated with that photo now, you do realize this, don't you?

[e-to-the-ipi.livejournal.com]

If Ant or Dec go, things are really crazy...

And I really can't believe he's gone. Though it's really odd that he outlived Speight...