I’ve been away for a week but sceduled posts to fill in the gap.

Of course while I was away both David McCallum and Michael Gambon died.

McCallum famously sprang to fame as Illya Kuryakin the side-kick to Robert Vaughn’s Napoleon Solo in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. He soon gained equal billing due to his popularity. I also remember him from Colditz and the film Mosquito Squadron. I knew he was in Sapphire and Steel but that wasn’t a programme I ever watched. Similarly his appearance in NCIS passed me by.

David Keith McCallum: 19/9/1933 – 25/9/2023. So it goes.

Gambon was the Singing Detective and had multifarious TV and film roles before he became the second Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter films but his true métier was the stage. His award list speaks for itself.

Michael John Gambon: 19/10/1940 – 27/9/2023. So it goes.

I had intended to publish remembrance posts today in the one day this year between Armistice Day and Remembrance Day but 2016 just keeps piling it on.

Now it’s Leonard Cohen who has left us.

Not to mention actor Robert Vaughn – aka Napoleon Solo in the Man From U.N.C.L.E. but whose best performance was as a conscientious German officer, Major Paul Kreuger, undone by circumstances in the film The Bridge at Remagen – and, earlier in the week, a voice from my youth (though he was too soft-edged to be a anything like a favourite,) Jimmy Young, once a stalwart of BBC Radio 2.

I suppose everybody will be using Hallelujah to sign Leonard Cohen off. Here instead is one of his songs from 1992, Closing Time.

Leonard Norman Cohen: 21/9/1934 – 7/11/2016. So it goes.
Robert Vaughn: 22/11/1932 – 11/11/2016. So it goes.
Leslie Ronald “Jimmy” Young: 21/9/1921 – 7/11/2016. So it goes.

I heard this morning that actor and singer Noel Harrison has died.

He first came to general notice when he played Stefanie Powers’s co-star in The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. – a spin-off from The Man From U.N.C.L.E. whose theme tune I featured a week or so ago.

The Windmills of Your Mind – a hit in 1968 – might have been recorded as a further cash-in but it’s quite a haunting song.

Noel Harrison: The Windmills of Your Mind

Noel Harrison: 29/1/1934 – 19/10/2013. So it goes.

I remember when The Man From U.N.C.L.E. first started it was broadcast in the UK on BBC 1 on a Thursday night at 8 pm. That meant it was a quick rush home from choir practice, which itself followed straight on from my piano lessons. Thursday nights were busy then.

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. theme tune is very hard to recall. It always gets overwhelmed, at least in my head and also in those of other people of my acquaintance, by the one for Mission Impossible – a show which took over that Thursday night slot from The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

The first episode’s opening with explanatory introduction:-

Later colour version, with altered arrangement:-