Another Three Bite the Dust...

It is often said that bad things come in threes and so it has occurred. There I was, sat down to write about the passing of a relatively minor star, in global terms, from my childhood when suddenly, two more slightly better known personages also leave this mortal coil. You know who I mean, but more of them later.

My original post was to be about Duke D’Mond (b. Richard Palmer), singer with one of those rarest of bands, the comedy group. In their heyday in the 1960s, The Barron Knights – for it was they – produced a string of hit singles with the same formula. They would take a theme and then impersonate groups of the day rendering a verse or two of their current hit with words suitably altered to raise a laugh or two. This required several skills; vocal impersonation, visual impersonation and comic lyric writing as well as being a competent band in their own right.

The Searchers, Freddie and the Dreamers, The Bachelors, The Rolling Stones and even The Beatles were parodied mercilessly. The Dukes’ vocal ability and uncannily hilarious impersonation of Mick Jagger will remain with me always. Duke died in April this year aged 66.

The second death was that of Farrah Fawcett and to anyone who remembers Charlie’s Angels (no, not the dreadful film) she will forever be the blonde one in an enjoyable yet highly improbable TV series. To die of cancer is most people’s nightmare and it is so sad to see a once vivacious person struck down and reduced to a shadow of her former self. Certainly for me, she will live on as the iconic 1976 poster, bedecked in red swimsuit, head tilted back to allow her mane of unruly curls to cascade around that million watt smile.

And so to Michael Jackson. In truth, the real Michael Jackson died about twenty years ago, but that doesn’t lessen the shock that such a talent should be cut down at age 50. I’m probably of the wrong generation but Michael was never really part of my growing up and although I own ‘Thriller’ along with most of the planet, I was only really aware of him from the sidelines. Nevertheless, I hope that his work from the 70s and 80s will be his epitaph and not the ‘wacko’ exploits of his later years.

Two thoughts spring to mind on his passing. First, what will happen to his children (although whether they are really ‘his’ remains to be seen – I see no evidence of black genes in their appearance)? I feel dreadfully for them, now at the centre of a global media circus yet again. Second, will Paul McCartney see the remaining rights to the Beatles songs returned to him?

Whatever the outcome, what unites all three of these people is age. None of them reached the biblical 70 and this seems to be happening more and more, yet we are told that life expectancy is increasing. Perhaps it is - but not for the famous.