16 December 2008

Sunday 14 December 08 Cool Yule Volume 1/2 Chat

A new housing development in Dartford, Kent, the town where Mick Jagger and Keith Richards grew up, is to have streets named after Rolling Stones' hits.
"It's not just fun, it puts the place on the map and links to our heritage", Leader of Dartford Council, Jeremy Kite, said when the names were approved this week.
Royal Mail and the emergency services have also OK'd the names, including Little Red Walk, Dandelion Row, Lady Jane Walk, Cloud Close, Angie Mews, Stones Avenue, Sympathy Street, Babylon Close and Ruby Tuesday Drive.
"It's a very groovy development", said Councillor Kite.
It may not have been quite so groovy for future residents if certain alterations hadn't been made; Satisfaction Street has a much more contented ring than the original song title.

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It's an odd thing when someone you know from TV dies.
If they're a good actor you feel you know the person rather than the characters they played.

Otherwise, when an actor dies we recall the roles they inhabited and our relationship with those characters. They anchor us to our past.
Re-runs aside, I'm not sure we feel sorries
t for them, for the roles we'll never see them acting again or for the years that telescope behind them, and us.
So it was with mixed feelings that I learned of the death of Kathy Staff who played battleaxe Nora Batty in BBC TV's Last of the Summer Wine.
Kathy Staff was 80 and it's difficult to remember a time when she hasn't been on our screens in one role or another, as cleaner Doris Luke among the wobbling sets of Crossroads, Emmerdale Farm, Coronation Street or with David Jason and Ronnie Barker in Open all Hours.
In Last of the Summer Wine alone she appeared in more than 240 episodes, and although I have fond memories of the famous wrinkled stockings and patterned pinnies, and Nora's antagonism for the ever hopeful Compo, I have no idea what the real Kathy Staff might have been like.
Her characters lived alongside me for years yet the person who gave them substance remained a complete stranger.
Whoever she was, through her characters Kathy Staff brought laughter, warmth and fun into our homes. For that we thank her.

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