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.