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 Friday16:00-16:30
Sunday20:30-21:00(rpt)
Radio 4's weekly obituaries programme |
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This week |
Friday27th July2007
(Rpt) Sunday29th August |
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Don Arden
(Harry Levy) Music manager and promoter. Born January 4 1926, died July 21 2007, aged 81.
Don Arden, who has died aged 81, was a rock music manager with the reputation of a gangster – a reputation he cultivated. Born Harry Levy in the poor backstreets of Manchester, he began a singing career of his own, before going on to manage American acts like Gene Vincent and Little Richard. He made serious money when he discovered British bands Black Sabbath, ELO and, earlier, the Small Faces. But Arden’s fame came not so much from his nurturing of young talent as the lengths he went to keep it. Flanked by heavies, he thought nothing of using physical intimidation to keep rivals at bay – and to keep his own clients in line. Today’s showbiz fans may feel they know Don Arden, if only indirectly. His daughter is the manager and reality TV star Sharon Osbourne known for her own tough persona. Her brother says she’s nothing less than ‘Don in a skirt.’ Father and daughter had an epic fallout more than 20 years ago. But scan this weekend’s Jewish Chronicle and you’ll see a death notice from Sharon Osbourne, paying tribute to her “beloved father” - clearly reconciled at the end.
Jonathan Freedland talks to Mick Wall who co-authored his autobiography Mr. Big: Ozzy, Sharon and My Life as the Godfather of Rock. |
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Tammy FayeMessner
Televangelist, Born March 7 1942, died July 20 2007.
Jim and Tammy Fay Bakker were American television evangelists when that phenomenon was at its peak. Back in the 1980s, and alongside the likes of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, stood this husband and wife duo –. He would preach, she would sing - and often weep – and the donations just rolled in. Soon they were multi-millionaires, with the six lavish mansions, fleets of Cadillacs and air-conditioned dog kennel to prove it. But then Jim Bakker was felled by a sex scandal and fraud charges that saw him go to jail. The first couple of American Christianity divorced - Tammy Fay remarried and was forced to reinvent herself, undergoing the entire process on camera. Even on the night before her death, shrunken and emaciated by cancer and weighing just five stone, she appeared on CNN’s Larry King Live.
Jonathan Freedland talks to Tammy Faye’s manager and long time friend, Joe Spotts. |
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Mohammed Zahir Shah
Last king of Afghanistan. Born October 15 1914, died July 23 2007, aged 91.
He was only 19 when he saw his father killed in front of him, so beginning a strange and interrupted life as the last King of Afghanistan. Mohammad Zahir Shah took the throne in 1933 but was more a figurehead than a ruler – leaving his uncles to run the country. Emerging in his own right twenty years later, he began to make an impact – seeking to liberalise Afghanistan, enfranchising women and encouraging a free press. But a coup in 1973 forced him into exile in Rome, watching as Communists, the Soviet Union and finally the Taliban took turns ruling his country.
Dawood Azami from the Pashto-Persian Section at the ѿý World Service, the academic Michael Barry who grew up with the Afghan royal family and the writer Bijan Omrani recall the life of Mohammed Zahir Shah. |
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Laszlo Kovacs
Cinematographer, Born May 14 1933, died July 22 2007 aged 74.
Film buffs may know their names but not many of the rest of us can say same. Cinematographers are the backroom boys of the movies and yet they’re often responsible for the images we see on the screen. None more so than Laszlo Kovacs, who has died aged 74. Born on a farm in Hungary, he was a graduate of film school in Budapest when the uprising of 1956 began. He filmed what he could before fleeing for America. Once there he built a career that would see him behind the camera for classic movies including Five Easy Pieces, the Last Waltz and, famously, Easy Rider. Director Peter Bogdanovich recruited him for six of his films including Mask, What’s Up Doc and Paper Moon. Peter Bogdanovich remembers working with Laszlo Kovacs who was not the only Hungarian in Hollywood. His friend Vilmos Zsigmond also became an acclaimed cinematographer. The pair of them had worked together in 1956, filming the anti-Soviet revolt by hiding a camera in a shopping bag with a hole cut out for the lens. They eventually smuggled the footage out to the west in potato sacks.
Jonathan Freedland talks to Vilmos Zsigmond. |
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