Obituaries

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela

2018-04-02T23:49:00.001-07:00

Image copyrightAFP

Image captionKnown as "mama" or "mother of the nation", controversy befell her in later life

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela became a potent symbol of South Africa's anti-apartheid struggle when she was banished and jailed for campaigning for the rights of black South Africans and her husband's release.

For decades she and her then-husband, the iconic Nelson Mandela, were the country's most famous political couple - but Mr Mandela divorced her in 1996.

After their separation she kept his surname and they maintained ties, leading to critics accusing her of attempting to use his name for political mileage.

In later life her reputation later became tainted by a fraud conviction and murder accusations, which she denied.

Born in Bizana in the Transkei in 1936, she met Mr Mandela in 1957. He was married at the time to Evelyn Mase but the marriage was breaking up.

The next year they married - she was a young bride, 16 years his junior, glamorous and strong-willed.

However, they were destined to have little time together as political activism and a period in hiding kept Mr Mandela apart from her.

He was jailed for life in 1964 and only released in 1990.

While he was in prison, she took on an increasingly political role, partly because of constant harassment by the South African security police.

Image copyrightAFP

Image captionThe couple had two daughters before Nelson was imprisoned, Zenani and Zindzi

She became an international symbol of resistance to apartheid and a rallying point for poor, black township residents who demanded their freedom.

'Mother of the Nation'

Her resistance to harassment and championing of the anti-apartheid cause led to periods of imprisonment from 1969, much of it spent in solitary confinement.

In 1976, the year of the Soweto riots, she was banished from the township to a remote rural area. At one stage her house was burned down, with suspicion falling on the South African security forces.

This led to her being dubbed the "Mother of the Nation".

By the mid-1980s and the start of a long period of township militancy against the white government of President P W Botha, she was back in Soweto and at the heart of the struggle.

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela

1936: Born in Transkei

1958: Married Nelson Mandela

1969: Jailed for 18 months for anti-apartheid activities

1976: Banished to rural area by apartheid authorities

1991: Convicted of kidnapping

1996: Divorced from Nelson Mandela

2003: Convicted of fraud

Her image and activism drew to her many anti-apartheid activists, including a group of young men who became her personal bodyguards.

They became known as the Mandela United Football Club.

Her prominence led to great influence over young, radical township activists but also growing controversy.

As activists turned on suspected police informers or collaborators, the use of rubber tyres filled with petrol as brutal murder weapons, known as "necklaces", became widespread. At one rally she controversially seemed to endorse their use.

Even greater controversy came when she was accused by senior anti-apartheid activists of involvement in the killing of a 14-year-old township militant, Stompie Seipei.

Disgrace and divorce

Stompie had been seized by Ms Madikizela-Mandela's bodyguards in 1989 and was later found dead.

Members of the ANC leadership accused her of being behind the killing and of conducting a virtual reign of terror in parts of Soweto.

Image copyrightREUTERS

Image captionThe former first lady remained largely unmoved during testimony against her at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1997

From prison, Mr Mandela continued to support his wife.

In 1991, after his release, she was charged with the assault and kidnapping of Stompie and one of her bodyguards was charged with his murder.

She denied the allegations but was found guilty of kidnapping and sentenced to six years imprisonment.

This was reduced to a fine by an appeal court.

Her marriage to Mr Mandela broke down in the years after his release and they were divorced in 1996.

President Mandela accused her of adultery, and in the same year, dismissed her as deputy minister of arts and culture - the only post she has held in government since white minority rule ended.

Her split from Mr Mandela did little to harm her political standing among poor, black South Africans who saw her as their voice at a time when the ANC had adopted pro-business policies.

But at the same time she became known for an increasingly lavish lifestyle, arriving to testify at Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings in a white Mercedes limousine surrounded by bodyguards.

In 2003, Ms Madikizela-Mandela suffered another blow when a court convicted her of fraud and theft in connection with a bank loan scandal.

Image copyrightAFP

The sentencing magistrate compared her to a modern-day Robin Hood, fraudulently acquiring loans for people who were desperately short of money, but he said that as a prominent public figure she should have known better.

An appeal judge overturned the conviction for theft, but upheld the one for fraud, handing her a three-year-and-six-month suspended sentence.

This dented her career, but she remained respected in the ANC, and was an MP until her death.

At the ANC conference in 2007, she was elected to the party's top decision-making body, the National Executive Committee, and in the 2009 general election, she was placed fifth on the list of ANC MPs nominated for parliament, in a clear sign that then-President Jacob Zuma saw her as an electoral asset.

She would later clash with him and become political patron of the youth leader Julius Malema.

Final years

Ms Madikizela-Mandela described being there for the final moments of her ex-husband's life in 2013, and appeared in a prominent position at memorial services in his honour.

Image copyright

Image captionShe and widow Graca Machel were pictured wiping away tears together while mourning

After his death, she became embroiled in a legal battle over his village home, which she wanted for their two daughters, Zinzi and Zenani. The Supreme Court affirmed a decision that she held no claim to it in January 2018.

The same month she was honoured with an honorary degree from Makerere University in Uganda for her anti-apartheid campaigning.

Although she remained in the political limelight, she was granted leave from parliament in March 2018 due to ill health.

A family spokesman confirmed her death on 2 April, aged 81.

Her family said she had suffered from a "long illness" and had been in and out of hospital in the last months of her life.

"She succumbed peacefully in the early hours of Monday afternoon surrounded by her family and loved ones," spokesman Victor Dlamini said in a statement.

Bill Maynard

2018-04-02T23:47:00.001-07:00

Image copyrightPA

Image copyright

Bill Maynard, who has died at the age of 89, was best known as the loveable rogue Claude Jeremiah Greengrass, in the police drama Heartbeat.

But he had a long and sometimes difficult career that took him from variety shows to cinema and network television

In real life Maynard shared many similarities with his best known character, a predilection for racehorses, greyhounds and booze.

At one stage he was the best paid TV comic in Britain but he squandered his earnings. Maynard then embarked on a career as a stage actor, before returning to the screen in a number of successful television series.

Unpaid taxes

He was born Walter Frederick George Williams on 8 October 1928 in the village of Heath End in Surrey.

At the age of eight he was performing in Working Men's Clubs, doing George Formby impressions.

He later dabbled with the idea of becoming a professional footballer, apprenticed aged 15 to Leicester City and Notts County, but was eventually forced back to the stage by a knee injury.

He returned to show business as a band singer, struggling to get a break at the Windmill Theatre. His luck changed after encountering another stand-up comic, Terry Scott.

By this time he had changed his stage name to Maynard - a name, as he later revealed in a BBC interview, that he saw a on poster for Maynard's wine gums.

Image captionGreat Scott! It's Maynard

He and Scott became TV stars in the 1950s with their own show, Great Scott, It's Maynard. The partnership ended when Maynard decided to embark on a career as a serious actor.

But he was not paying enough attention to his finances and the Inland Revenue took his money, his home and his cars for unpaid taxes.

Maynard spent several years in obscurity, forced to take bit-parts in repertory companies, and making small appearances in programmes like Coronation Street.

Heartbeat

He slowly rebuilt his career His role in the TV adaptation of Dennis Potter's play, Paper Roses, won him critical acclaim.

He subsequently went on to enjoy success with such comedy shows as Oh No, It's Selwyn Froggitt and The Gaffer.

Image captionA role in Dalziel & Pascoe in 2002

In the 1970s he recorded a song in tribute to the sport of Stock Car racing released, to very little acclaim, on the appropriately named Crash Records.

He also appeared in a number of Carry On films, although he professed to be baffled by their popularity.

In 1984, he stood as an Independent Labour candidate against Tony Benn in Chesterfield. He said he had only done it to try and keep Benn out of Parliament and it was his only venture into politics.

He subsequently went on to take his most popular role, that of Greengrass, in the TV series Heartbeat.

It was a part that seemed to have been specifically created for him and Maynard worked with the scriptwriters to develop the character's idiosyncrasies.

At its peak in 1997, Heartbeat attracted more than 60% of the Sunday night audience, earning Maynard a reputed £600,000 a year.

His character was written out in 2000 after he had suffered several strokes, but returned in 2003 in a spin-off series set in a hospital entitled, The Royal.

Away from acting he ran his own video production company and was a long serving presenter on BBC Radio Leicester

His first wife Muriel died from cancer just as he was tasting his second round of success, leaving Maynard to care for their two young children.

He went on to marry speed ace Donald Campbell's widow Tonia.

Sir Roger Moore

2018-03-28T00:36:00.002-07:00

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Image captionSir Roger Moore has died at the age of 89 following "a short but brave battle with cancer"

Sir Roger Moore, who has died aged 89, brought a lighter touch to the role of James Bond, the role for which he was most famous.

Out went the harder, crueller edge of Sean Connery's 007 to be succeeded by sardonic humour and the inevitable raised eyebrow.

He eventually became the longest-serving actor in the role, his seven Bond films becoming the most commercially successful of the franchise.

His tenure in the role also showcased an array of implausible gadgets and a host of new characters, designed to flesh out Ian Fleming's original plots.

Roger George Moore was born in Stockwell, south London on 14 October 1927, the son of a policeman.

At 15, he entered art college, and later became an apprentice at an animation studio, where it seems much fun was had at his expense.

"I was probably the lowliest in the entire building," he said. "They sent me on errands for things like tins of sprocket holes, and the guy in stores would say he didn't have any - and would rainbow paint do instead?"

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Image captionThe actor made something of a name as a male model in the 1950s

Sir Roger was sacked for incompetence, but soon had a stroke of luck. His father, by now a detective sergeant, was called to investigate a robbery at the home of the film director, Brian Desmond Hurst.

DS Moore managed to effect an introduction that led to his son being hired as an extra for the epic, Caesar and Cleopatra.

Hurst paid for Sir Roger to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, before a spell of National Service with the Army where he rose to the rank of captain.

On his return to the theatre, he found acting roles hard to come by but his well-toned physique meant he was in demand as a model. One of his engagements was playing the doctor in Woman's Own medical features.

Dashing hero

He also appeared, suitably attired in a sweater, on a number of knitting patterns, prompting at least one wag to christen him the Big Knit.

And in 1953, his looks and his minor roles in theatre and television plays impressed an MGM talent scout and Sir Roger set off for America.

Married at 17 to a fellow Rada student, Doorn Van Steyn, he was by now living with the singer Dorothy Squires, 12 years his senior, who soon became his second wife at a ceremony in New Jersey.

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Image captionIvanhoe brought Sir Roger to a wider audience

While Squires was popular in Britain, Sir Roger was rubbing shoulders with stars in the States, making his film debut with Elizabeth Taylor in The Last Time I Saw Paris and playing Lana Turner's leading man in Diane.

But it was through television that he first made his mark, as the dashing hero Ivanhoe in a 1950s series that had only a tentative connection with Sir Walter Scott's original novel.

He followed that with the lead role in an American TV series The Alaskans. It was not a great success. Despite being set in Alaska, it was filmed on a hot Hollywood set with the cast dressed up in furs. Moore found the filming difficult and an affair with actress Dorothy Provine did nothing to relieve the pressure.

Wise-cracking

He also appeared in the successful Western series Maverick, where he had the role of Beau Maverick, supposedly the English cousin of the lead character Brett, played by James Garner.

Ironically Sir Sean Connery had also tested for the part but turned it down.

Sir Roger's big breakthrough came in 1962 when the impresario Lew Grade cast him as the dashing Simon Templar aka The Saint, in a television adaptation of the Leslie Charteris stories.

The series, which ran for seven years, made Sir Roger a star on both sides of the Atlantic. Many of the Saint's characteristics, the easygoing manner, mocking eyebrow and ability to successfully charm every passing female, would later be incorporated into his role as James Bond.

Image copyrightREX FEATURES

Image captionSir Roger's suave character in The Persuaders contrasted with Tony Curtis's rough diamond

In 1971 he teamed up with Tony Curtis in the TV series The Persuaders, as one of two wise-cracking millionaire playboys who floated around the fleshpots of the globe as a pair of freelance secret agents.

The success of the series owed a lot to the contrast of the rough-hewn New Yorker Danny Wilde, played by Curtis, and Sir Roger's suave Lord Brett Sinclair.

Sir Roger always denied that he had been considered as James Bond when the franchise launched in 1962 and was only aware of interest in him when Sir Sean announced, in 1966, that he would no longer play the role.

There was a long wait. George Lazenby was cast in the 1969 film On Her Majesty's Secret Service and Sir Sean was tempted back with an offer of £1.5m, a huge sum in those days, to make Diamonds Are Forever.

Headlines

It really was the last appearance for Sir Sean and Sir Roger finally picked up the Walther PPK in 1973 for Live and Let Die.

He went on to make six more films, including The Spy Who Loved Me and Octopussy, before bowing out of the role at the age of 57 with A View to a Kill. It was his last film appearance for five years.

Sir Roger had some success in films such as Shout at the Devil, The Wild Geese and North Sea Hijack, but many of the newspaper headlines after he retired as Bond were about his life off screen.

Image copyrightRONALD GRANT

Image captionHe brought a lighter touch to the role of James Bond

In 1963, he became a father, when his partner, Luisa Mattioli, had a daughter, but it was to be another five years before Dorothy Squires agreed to give Sir Roger a divorce.

He married Luisa and they had two sons, but after 38 years, Sir Roger left her and they were divorced. He married his fourth wife, Kiki Tholstrup, in March 2002.

Sir Roger recovered from an operation for prostate cancer in 1993 and said he had led "an extraordinarily lucky, charmed life".

Achievements

He had homes in Switzerland and Monte Carlo, but devoted much of his time to travelling the globe as a roving ambassador for the United Nations children's organisation Unicef, a role prompted by the scenes of child poverty he had witnessed in India while filming Octopussy.

He took up the position at the request of his friend and predecessor, Audrey Hepburn. His work was recognised by a CBE in 1998 and he was knighted in 2003.

Throughout his life Sir Roger cut a suave figure, always immaculately dressed. In 2015 he was awarded the accolade of one of GQ magazine's best-dressed men.

Image copyrightPA

Image captionHe would also remain associated with James Bond

He was a lifelong supporter of the Conservative Party, giving his backing to David Cameron in 2011 when the prime minister faced criticism over his policy on the EU.

Despite his other work and achievements, Roger Moore never managed to quite shrug off the mantle of 007.

"Of course I do not regret the Bond days," he once remarked. "I regret that sadly heroes in general are depicted with guns in their hands, and to tell the truth I have always hated guns and what they represent."

General Manuel Noriega

2018-03-28T00:34:00.002-07:00

Image copyrightVISNEWS

General Manuel Noriega was one of long line of Latin American military leaders who rose to take political power.

Although he was never elected to office he became the de facto leader of Panama serving a six year tenure as military governor.

A strong supporter of the United States he became a key ally in Washington's attempts to battle the influence of communism in central America.

But it was eventually the US that brought about his downfall and his subsequent imprisonment for drugs trafficking and money laundering.

Manuel Antonio Noriega Moreno was born in Panama City on 11 Feb 1934. His family lived in extreme poverty but he was adopted as a young boy and went on to study at a military academy in Peru.

It was here that, according to various accounts, his pro-US leanings were noticed by the CIA with whom he worked for the next three decades. He was soon recognised as a prize asset in a region that was becoming politically hostile to US interests in the wake of the Cuban Revolution.

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Image captionGen Omar Torrijos led the military coup in which Noriega took part

He rose within the ranks of the Panamanian armed forces and became a key supporter of Gen Omar Torrijos, who led the coup which toppled President Arnulfo Arias in 1968.

Noriega's support was recognised with promotion and appointment as chief of military intelligence.

After Gen Torrijos's death in a mysterious plane crash in 1981, Noriega became the power behind the scenes as head of the security services.

Beheaded

The US relied on Panama as a regional listening post and Noriega obliged with unfaltering support for the Contras in Nicaragua, and in the fight against the FMLN guerrillas in El Salvador.

In 1983 Noriega became commander of the armed forces in succession to Rubén Darío Paredes on the understanding that Paredes would stand as president. However, Noriega reneged on the deal, arrested Paredes and promoted himself to general becoming the de facto ruler of Panama.

He began to play an increasingly repressive role internally in Panama. He called a halt to the counting of votes in the 1984 presidential elections when it became clear his own nominee was going to lose by a landslide.

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Image captionNoriega (c) played an increasingly repressive role in Panama

A year later one of his most vocal political opponents Hugo Spadafora, was seized on his way back to Panama and later found beheaded.

Noriega allegedly played a role in the mid-1980s Iran-Contra affair, which involved the smuggling of weapons and drugs to aid US undercover efforts to support the anti-government forces opposing the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

However, the US became increasingly suspicious of Noriega amid indications that he was selling his services to other intelligence bodies, not to mention drug-trafficking organisations.

Heavy metal

These tensions became public in 1988 when Noriega was indicted in a US federal court on drug-trafficking charges.

The 1989 presidential election descended into farce. With the opposition certain of a comfortable victory Noriega blocked publication of the results. Former US president Jimmy Carter, in the country as an observer, declared that the election had been stolen.

By mid-December that year, ties with the US had deteriorated so far that President George H W Bush launched an invasion, ostensibly because a US marine had been killed in Panama City, although the operation had been months in the planning.

Image copyrightUS ARMY

Image captionBuildings on fire after US troops invaded Panama in 1989

Noriega sought refuge in the Vatican's diplomatic mission in Panama City. The US tactic to flush him out was to play deafening pop and heavy metal music non-stop outside the building.

By 3 January 1990, it had worked and Noriega surrendered. He was flown to the US with prisoner of war status to face charges of drug-trafficking, money-laundering and racketeering.

His trial there was an international spectacle that revealed titillating details of his personal life including a suggestion that he wore red underwear to ward off the "evil eye".

Money laundering

More seriously he was refused permission by the court to cite details of his work for the CIA in his own defence. The government opposed such disclosures on the grounds it was classified information.

He was released from a Miami jail in 2007 having had his original 30 year sentence reduced to 17 on the grounds of his good behaviour but his legal problems were far from over.

In 1999 a French court had convicted him in absentia of using $3m in proceeds from Colombia's Medellin drug cartel to buy property in France.

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Image captionThere were indications he was aiding drug traffickers

In March 2010, the US Supreme Court agreed to a French request extradite him to Paris, where he faced a new trial for money-laundering. Noriega, who denied the charges, was found guilty and sentenced to seven years.

The sentence was criticised by Alberto Almanza who headed the Truth Commission on rights abuses under Noriega's rule.

"He'll die in in prison," Mr Almanza said. "And with him the truth."

Lawsuit

His legal odyssey took another turn on 23 November 2011 when a French court approved a request from Panama to send him back home, where he was convicted in absentia of murder, corruption and embezzlement.

He refused the chance to appeal the decision and flew out of Paris on 11 December 2011, escorted by a team of Panamanian officials and a doctor.

On his arrival in Panama he was placed in the El Renacer prison. It was from his cell in July 2014 that he instigated a lawsuit claiming that the company behind the video game Call of Duty: Black Ops II had used his image without permission.

His main complaint was that the game depicted him as a "kidnapper, murderer, and enemy of the state".

Manuel Noriega was an opportunist who used his close relationship with the United States to boost his own power in Panama and to cover the illegal activities for which he was eventually convicted.

A US Senate sub-committee once described Washington's relationship with Noriega as one of the United States' most serious foreign policy failures.

Peter Sallis

2018-03-28T00:32:00.002-07:00

Image captionPeter Sallis became a household name in the UK in the comedy Last Of The Summer Wine

Peter Sallis was best known as the mild-mannered Norman Clegg in Last of the Summer Wine.

By the time he first appeared in the role he had already carved out a distinguished career in the theatre and on television.

His role as the flat-capped philosopher made him the longest-serving cast member of the much-loved series.

And he reached an even wider audience as the voice of Wallace, the cheese-loving character in the animated series, Wallace and Gromit.

Peter Sallis was born on 1 February 1921 in Twickenham, Middlesex.

After attending Minchenden Grammar School in Southgate, north London, where the family had moved, he emulated his father and went to work in a bank.

The acting bug first struck during his wartime service in the RAF, when he was asked to play the lead role in an amateur production of Noel Coward's play Hay Fever.

"Acting is a matter of instinct," he later said when appearing on Desert Island Discs. "As soon as I was on the stage I just felt so at home."

Image captionPeter Sallis (third from right) as Snug in a 1958 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream

When hostilities ceased he enrolled at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (Rada).

His first professional appearance came in 1946 and for the next six decades he was rarely out of work.

Throughout the 1950s he made a name for himself as a reliable character actor playing everything from Shakespeare to Chekhov.

Arguments

His first play with a star cast was a production of Three Sisters, where he appeared alongside Ralph Richardson and Celia Johnson.

He had film roles in Anastasia, The VIPs and Wuthering Heights, but it was for his television work that he was better known.

He had already acted in two TV plays by writer Roy Clarke, in one playing a transvestite, before landing the role of Clegg in a Comedy Playhouse episode entitled Of Funerals and Fish.

Image copyrightAARDMAN ANIMATION

Image captionWallace was modelled on Sallis

This was successful enough for the BBC to commission a series with the revised title Last of the Summer Wine.

Surprisingly, given its later success, the first series was not well received by either audiences or critics.

Sallis recalled that filming of the early episodes was enlivened by off-screen arguments between his fellow actors Michael Bates and Bill Owen.

"Michael Bates was somewhere to the right of Margaret Thatcher," he said. "And Bill Owen was somewhere to the left of Lenin. It was all incomprehensible to me as I'd never had a political thought in my life."

Modern classics

The series sparked an appreciation society and a deluge of tourists to the Yorkshire village where it was filmed.

Sallis said, "You would not find me getting up to anything crazy that Clegg gets up to, but I have been very lucky to be a part of it all."

Image captionPeter Sallis, Bill Owen and Michael Bates - the original trio in Last of the Summer Wine

As well as Summer Wine, Sallis appeared in the Pallisers and The Diary of Samuel Pepys. In addition, he wrote a stage play, End of Term, and also a handful of radio plays.

Despite calling himself "only mildly well-known", after 30 years of playing Clegg, Sallis's face was one of the most familiar on British television.

And in 1992 his voice became recognisable across the world, when his distinctive tones graced the character of Wallace in Nick Park's celebrated animation films.

As one half of Wallace and Gromit, he appeared in such modern classics as The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave.

Asked for the inspiration behind Wallace, Nick Park called Sallis his automatic choice and explained how the actor had even helped influence the character's face.

He said: "There was something about his voice that somehow insisted I make Wallace's mouth really wide to get it around the syllables."

Peter Sallis considered himself very fortunate to be in the hands of talented scriptwriters.

But his own gentle manner and natural timing certainly helped create comic characters of enduring and wide-ranging appeal.

It was with the mild-mannered Clegg that he felt most at home.

"I am like him in many ways. I am fairly retiring and do not like to be the centre of attention. I think I'm well cast."

Helmut Kohl

2018-03-28T00:31:00.002-07:00

Helmut Kohl earned his place in history by securing the successful reunification of Germany after the collapse of communism.

His 16 years in office made him the longest-serving German chancellor since Bismarck and he was once described as the greatest European leader in the second half of the 20th Century.

He was a passionate supporter of greater European integration and was one of the main architects of the Maastricht Treaty.

Yet the end of his career was marred by economic problems in the old East Germany and a financial scandal within his own CDU party.

Helmut Josef Michael Kohl was born on 3 April 1930 into a conservative, Catholic family,

His political outlook was shaped by his experiences in his hometown of Ludwigshafen in the Rhineland during World War Two.

Because of its huge chemical works, the town was heavily bombed and, at the age of 12, the young Helmut found himself helping to recover the charred bodies of his neighbours from the rubble. What he once described as "the blessing of a late birth" freed him from any taints of Nazism.

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Image captionHe became the youngest minister-president in 1969

After studying politics and law at Heidelberg University, Kohl entered politics in the German federal system where, in the Rhineland Palatinate, he rose to become the youngest Land [federal state] minister-president at the age of 39.

He built up a large network of political allies and forced through important changes, among them the law that outlawed denominational schools unless 80% of the parents approved.

Three years later, Kohl became national chairman of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the dominant post-war West German political party.

He was the CDU's candidate for chancellor in the 1976 election, but was defeated by the Social Democrat/Free Democrat coalition of Helmut Schmidt.

Golden age

Four years later, Kohl looked on as another CDU candidate, and great rival, the Bavarian Prime Minister Franz Josef Strauss, also went down to defeat by Schmidt.

A bear of a man, Kohl was often ridiculed for his love of food - one nickname being "Birne" or pear - and for his often clumsy provincial manner. Beyond this, Kohl's critics relentlessly mocked him for what they said was his lacklustre oratory and apparent lack of vision.

But many underestimated his ability to wield power, which he managed through a complex, but highly effective, network of patronage and political cronies.

Image copyrightPA

Image captionHe clashed with Margaret Thatcher over greater European integration

In 1982, after the Free Democrats had left the ruling coalition, he took over as chancellor from Helmut Schmidt, and would go on to win the next four general elections, staying in power for 16 years.

The 1980s witnessed a golden age of German economic and political power. Together with his closest ally, France's President Mitterrand, Kohl shaped the federal ideal of the European Union and laid the groundwork for the creation of the single currency.

In 1987 there was a groundbreaking visit to West Germany by the East German leader, Erich Honecker. It was part of Kohl's policy of detente with the East, something his party had firmly rejected just 20 years before.

Two years later, the Berlin Wall came down and Kohl began the negotiations that would lead to reunification.

Economic dislocation

Having realised that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's attempts to reform communism would fail, Kohl persuaded him to withdraw from East Germany, while allowing a reunited Germany to remain a member of Nato.

The 350,000 Soviet troops based in the East were sent home, the costs borne by the West German government. On 3 October 1990, East Germany ceased to exist with its five historical states becoming part of the new federal republic.

Kohl's drive for reunification was not welcomed by everyone, with Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir publicly opposing it. While broadly welcomed by the West, there were concerns, notably in Britain and Poland, that a strong unified Germany would come to dominate the continent.

But Kohl was able to convince Gorbachev and US President George HW Bush that a united Germany would not destabilise or threaten Europe in the way Hitler's Germany had done.

"George Bush was for me the most important ally on the road to German unity," he said.

Kohl also made the political decision to grant East Germans immediate economic parity, even though his central bankers told him of the massive economic dislocation this would incur. They predicted correctly that Germany's economy would be badly affected for a decade.

Even so, Helmut Kohl had pulled off a remarkable political coup that might not have occurred had he dithered. But the huge economic repercussions of reunification robbed him of some of the popularity he might have expected, particularly in the former East where, during one visit, he was pelted with eggs.

Under his rule, the East suffered an economic collapse, with high rates of poverty and unemployment the norm. And the costs of reunification led to an economic downturn throughout Germany.

Strained relationship

He was slow to respond when neo-Nazis burned down the homes of immigrant Turkish families and hostels for refugees from Africa. He sometimes pushed aside the concerns of smaller nations to the east, like the Czechs and the Poles.

And he had a strained relationship with the UK and other countries that did not share his vision of a federal Europe.

Chief among Kohl's perceived antagonists was Margaret Thatcher. In a revealing volume of autobiography, published in 2005, he alleged that her anger boiled over in December 1989 after she was obliged to sign a communique supporting German reunification.

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Image captionHe joined Angela Merkel at the 20th anniversary of German reunification in 2010

"I will never forget Margaret Thatcher's angry observation: 'We have beaten the Germans twice. Now they're back.'"

After he lost power in elections in 1998, it was revealed that Kohl had accepted, for his party, millions of dollars of secret political donations.

Despite refusing to name the donors, and despite his destroying much potentially incriminating evidence before he left the chancellery, he was spared possible corruption charges out of respect for his years of leadership.

But his reputation was badly damaged. To his opponents, Helmut Kohl could be insensitive and a bully. The suicide of his wife, Hannelore, in July 2001, seemed to exemplify his political and personal eclipse.

In 2010, an ailing Helmut Kohl joined Chancellor Angela Merkel in celebrations to mark the 20th anniversary of German reunification, something that will be seen as his greatest achievement.

"I have been underestimated for decades," he once said. "I have done very well that way."

Michael Bond

2018-03-28T00:25:00.002-07:00

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Michael Bond's Paddington Bear has become one of the classic characters in children's literature.

A chance encounter with a toy bear in a London shop spawned a long line of books, a BBC TV series, a feature film and a lot of merchandise.

A prolific writer, he also created The Herbs, featuring Parsley the Lion, which became a successful TV series and the tale-telling guinea pig, Olga da Polga.

And for adults there was Monsieur Pamplemousse, the retired detective turned restaurant critic and his bloodhound, Pommes Frites.

Thomas Michael Bond was born on 13 January 1926 in Newbury and raised in nearby Reading. One of his earliest childhood memories was standing by the railway line to watch the Cornish Riviera Express thunder past on its way from Paddington to Penzance.

Bond's father was the mild-mannered manager of the local post office and was the basis for the character of Paddington Bear, the unassuming ursine stowaway.

"My father was a very polite man and he always wore a hat," Bond said. "We'd go on holiday to the Isle of Wight and he used to go in the sea with his trousers rolled up and keep his hat on in case he met someone he knew and would have something to raise. He would have been mortified if he hadn't."

His parents instilled in him a love of books and he later remembered never going to sleep without a bedtime story.

Image copyrightFILMFAIR

Image captionThe Herbs first appeared on the BBC in 1968

Bond's happy childhood was interrupted when his parents sent him to a strict Catholic school where the Brothers kept discipline with heavy rubber straps.

Bond often suffered this brutal treatment, so much so that he left school at 14 and got a job as a clerk in a local solicitor's office.

A year later he was working for the BBC which, impressed with his hobby of building amplifiers and other electrical gadgets, gave him a junior job at a transmitter facility in Reading.

His budding career nearly came to a premature end when four German bombs fell on the building where he was working. Despite the ground floor being blown out he escaped unharmed.

In 1943 he volunteered for the RAF, later transferring to the army. It was while he was stationed in Egypt that he submitted a short story to the magazine London Opinion, which paid him seven guineas for it.

At that point he decided he quite liked the idea of becoming a writer.

Evacuated children

Bond returned to the BBC in 1947, working at Caversham Park which monitored foreign broadcasts. Three years later he became a BBC cameraman, working on programmes including Blue Peter, while continuing to write short stories.

On his way home from work on Christmas Eve in 1956, Bond spied a lonely teddy bear on the shelf in a shop window, and took it home as a stocking filler for his wife. He called it Paddington because they were living near Paddington Station at the time.

While musing over a typewriter and a blank sheet of paper, he wondered idly what it would be like if an unaccompanied bear turned up at a railway station looking for a home.

The seeds of the idea had taken root during the war when Bond saw newsreels of children being sent out from British cities to avoid German bombing. "I had memories of children being evacuated from London with a label around their necks and all their possessions in a suitcase, and this became part of Paddington as well," he said.

"Paddington Bear was a refugee with a label - 'Please look after this bear. Thank you', and he had a little suitcase."

Image copyrightFILMFAIR

Image captionThe BBC's Paddington series proved a success with both children and parents

A Bear Called Paddington appeared in 1958 with illustrations by Peggy Fortnum. Ivor Wood would later take over the drawings and he went on to develop the successful BBC TV series that first aired in 1976.

Wood came up with the idea of a three-dimensional puppet which moved, using stop motion techniques, against a two-dimensional drawn background. Bond wrote the scripts and the actor, Michael Hordern, narrated the stories.

During the 1960s, Bond turned out an average of one Paddington book a year but didn't feel secure enough to become a full-time writer until 1965, when he quit his job with the BBC.

Later that decade came the first of the Parsley books, featuring a lion and his friends including Sage the Owl and Sir Basil and Lady Rosemary. These books too were successfully translated onto TV by Wood and his company, FilmFair, first as The Herbs in 1968 and then The Adventures of Parsley which aired in 1970.

While aimed at children, it became cult viewing for adults who appreciated the dry humour which probably escaped the target audience.

Francophile

In 1971 Bond published the first of his Olga da Polga stories for children, featuring a guinea pig with a penchant for telling tall stories in the manner of Baron Munchausen.

Bond next turned to writing for adults with his Monsieur Pamplemousse books, the first of which appeared in 1983. The idea of a French detective who quit the police and became a restaurant critic came when Bond - a Francophile - was eating in a French restaurant.

Pamplemousse and his faithful bloodhound, Pommes Frites, travel the country, sampling menus and getting into a series of comic mystery adventures. The books are full of the wry humour that was Bond's trademark.

Image copyrightSTUDIOCANAL

Image captionBond described the 2014 feature film as 'charming'

But the popularity of his original creation never seemed to wane and Bond continued to write adventures for the little bear. As well as the books, a huge merchandising operation was built up and Paddington toys remained high on the wish list of new generations of children.

Designer Shirley Clarkson was one of the first licensees to produce the figure with his now famous hat, wellington boots and duffel coat. She made the very first Paddington Bear as a Christmas present for her young son, Jeremy (future presenter of the BBC's Top Gear).

In 2014 StudioCanal released a feature film of Paddington, with the bear voiced by Ben Whishaw. Bond, who had a cameo role, called the film "absolutely delightful".

Since 1958, more than 150 different Paddington titles have been published, and more than 35 million copies have been sold worldwide in more than 40 languages.

Bond was still writing in recent months, with Paddington's Finest Hour published in April of this year. It is a volume of letters from the bear to his Aunt Lucy in Peru - the relative who originally despatched him to London more than half a century previously.

Michael Bond was once asked why the popularity of Paddington had endured for children in the age of computers and video games.

"Paddington is eternally optimistic and always comes back for more, no matter how many times his hopes are dashed," he said.

"It's simply the joy of a little bear who is an outsider getting into scrapes and mishaps - always with the best of intentions - and coming out on top every time."

Robert Hardy

2018-03-28T00:24:00.000-07:00

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With his instantly recognisable voice and British bulldog manner, Robert Hardy enjoyed a distinguished acting career which spanned eight decades.

By the time he endeared himself to television audiences in the BBC's All Creatures Great and Small, he had already carved out a reputation as one of Britain's most versatile actors.

While his earlier career gave him a firm grounding in the theatre his best known roles were in front of the camera - particularly in television, a medium he obviously enjoyed.

He became something of a specialist in the role of Sir Winston Churchill, playing the great man on half a dozen occasions as well as being in demand to reproduce the wartime leader's voice.

Troubleshooter

Timothy Sydney Robert Hardy was born in Cheltenham on 29 October 1925. The youngest of a large family, he was a self-professed "odd child".

His father was the headmaster of Cheltenham College and Hardy himself went to Rugby School before going up to Magdalen College, Oxford to read English.

It was while at Oxford that he struck up an enduring friendship with a fellow student, Richard Burton and both men found their studies interrupted when they were called up and posted to an RAF station in Norfolk.

Image captionRobert Hardy as Henry V in a 1960 BBC production

Unlike Burton, Hardy returned to Oxford after his war service and gained a BA (Hons) in English as well as having enjoyed the opportunity to study under two of Oxford's most eminent names, JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis.

He had always been fascinated by Hollywood films and had determined to become an actor, joining the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in 1949.

He was once asked what was needed to be successful in such a competitive profession.

"A certain amount of talent, luck, a spine of steel, a ruthlessness of mind that does not jib at murder and patience," he replied.

He was much in demand as a stage actor during the 1950s mainly playing Shakespearean roles, although he did make his first foray into cinema in 1958 playing a naval officer in the Glenn Ford film Torpedo Run.

He turned down Sir Peter Hall's offer of a contract with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1960, complaining that it was for middle-of-the-roadish parts.

"I stormed at him one day and I behaved extremely badly," he said.

Volatile

He was reunited with his friend Richard Burton in the 1965 film, The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, where he played the role of Dick Carlton.

A year later he was given his first continuing role as the ruthless businessman Alex Stewart in the BBC production, The Troubleshooters, a drama based on a fictitious oil company called Mogul.

In 1978, Hardy took the part of the irascible but good-natured Siegfried Farnon in All Creatures Great and Small, the long-running BBC series based on James Herriot's best-selling books.

As the senior vet of the small Yorkshire Dales practice, Robert Hardy became one of the best-known faces on British television.

Image captionRobert Hardy, Carol Drinkwater and Christopher Timothy in All Creatures Great and Small

Full of animals, nostalgia and rural scenery, the show became a massive hit, attracting audiences of up to 20 million.

The original run ended in 1978 but the series was revived 10 years later after the BBC obtained permission to write new storylines, having exhausted the original James Herriot books.

But the new scripts failed to meet with Hardy's approval and he rewrote large parts of his dialogue. "All they did was make Siegfried explode and be bad-tempered. I kept changing things."

Hardy cornered the market in the role of blustering aristocrat, often dressed in tweed.

He appeared in The Far Pavilions, The Cleopatras, Bramwell and Middlemarch, and on the big screen in The Shooting Party and Sense and Sensibility.

He explained: "When you've lived a goodish span as I have, it's a case of roaming round the attic and borrowing a few characters."

Laird

Despite this range, Robert Hardy's own volatility and ability to express his wrath were channelled most successfully into his many portrayals of Britain's most revered premier.

He played Winston Churchill many times, even once in French on stage in Paris, but most memorably in the 1981 mini-series The Wilderness Years.

Hardy said himself of his complete immersion into the character, "My family complained loudly about my behaviour while I was playing him."

Image captionHardy played Sir Toby Belch in the BBC's Twelfth Night

He was married twice and had three children. Awarded a CBE in 1981 for his services to acting, Hardy was also a keen student of military history and supported the project to raise the Mary Rose.

In 1995, he gave up his long-time home in Oxfordshire, to become laird of a Scottish mansion, a 13th Century miniature castle situated near Edinburgh, complete with a walled garden and 50-foot tower.

The actor had visited the place as a child and sworn always to return, following in the footsteps of a previous visitor, Sir Walter Scott, one of Hardy's personal heroes.

Longbow

In later years he suffered from cancer of the colon, but recovered to resume as busy a career as ever, including film work.

Although he failed to make the lasting impact on Hollywood enjoyed by some British actors, his face became known the world over when he appeared as the Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge, in several of the Harry Potter films.

He was dropped from the role after the studio balked at paying a £1 million life insurance premium which was demanded because of his advancing age.

Off screen he became something of an authority on the English longbow, his interest having been stimulated when, as a child, he found two of the weapons in the family attic .

He wrote two books on the history of the weapon as well as presenting a BBC documentary on the subject.

Hardy's on-screen temper was matched by a famously short fuse away from the camera and he admitted that, as an actor, he belonged to a set of "difficult people".

He once reflected: "The ego may be essential for survival in the wilderness of acting, but it's something that requires a great deal of control if you're going to make a success of life."

Glen Campbell

2018-03-28T00:22:00.002-07:00

Image copyrightREUTERS

Glen Campbell was one of the most successful country singers of his generation.

In a career spanning six decades, he released more than 70 albums and amassed nine Grammy awards.

His melodic songs found success in the pop charts with hits including Galveston, Rhinestone Cowboy and Wichita Lineman.

And he also made a foray into acting, notably alongside John Wayne in the film True Grit.

Glen Travis Campbell was born in Pike County, Arkansas, on 22 April 1936, the seventh of 12 children.

His father was a sharecropper, a tenant who paid his rent with a proportion of the crops that he grew.

His first guitar cost $7 from a Sears catalogue and he whiled away the time teaching himself to play.

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Image captionBy the mid 1960s he'd established himself as a solo artist

"We didn't have power in the house, but we did have an old battery radio. And whenever I heard a new song, usually on a local country station, I'd learn it."

His proficiency led to an offer to join a band fronted by his uncle, Dick Bills and the Sandia Mountain Boys. There were appearances on local radio and a spot on a children's TV channel.

Campbell moved to Los Angeles in 1960 and became a member of a group of musicians named The Wrecking Crew, who backed artists such as Dean Martin, Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra.

His first solo chart entry, Turn Round and Look at Me, reached 62 in the Billboard Hot 100 in 1961.

Fruitful partnership

He also played a pivotal role in the producer Phil Spector's famous Wall of Sound technique.

"When I met Phil, he was knocked out by my playing," Campbell later recalled. "He was like a child with a new toy."

For three months in 1965 he toured with the Beach Boys, filling in for singer Brian Wilson, who had experienced a breakdown.

Image copyrightRONALD GRANT

Image captionJohn Wayne invited him to star in True Grit

His big break came in 1967 with the Jimmy Webb song By the Time I Get to Phoenix, which reached number two in the US Country charts.

Campbell's partnership with Webb was to be a fruitful one, as hit followed hit. Wichita Lineman went to No 1 in the US and also broke him in Britain where it reached the Top 10 in 1968.

"Jimmy used to write in the studio as I was recording," said Campbell. "When he sang me the parts of Wichita Lineman he'd written, I knew it was a hit."

The song collected a Grammy and became much requested by US soldiers fighting in Vietnam.

Primetime show

He followed it up with Galveston a year later, which again charted on both sides of the Atlantic.

In January 1969 he started hosting his own primetime TV show, The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour.

The show, which ran for three years, made him a huge star and his fame encouraged a glittering roster of stars to appear with him.

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Image captionHis primetime TV show attracted stars like Johnny Cash

Johnny Cash, Roger Miller, Willie Nelson and the Monkees were among the artists who were guests on the show.

He was also invited by John Wayne, a long time Campbell admirer, to appear in the Western True Grit. He won a Grammy for his performance of the film's title song.

His biggest hit came in 1975 with Rhinestone Cowboy, which reached the Top 10 in a number of countries, including the UK. It coincided with a series of shows on BBC television

There was another smash in 1977, - Southern Nights - but both his career and personal life began to slide. He divorced his second wife in 1975 but a subsequent marriage lasted just four years.

Salvation

While country aficionados continued to buy his records, his mainstream audience had begun to desert him.

He turned to alcohol and drugs for solace. "I was fine when I was doing session work. My schedule then would have killed a horse, so there was no time for drugs," he later said.

"But later on, I didn't have any stability. After a couple of failed marriages, it became a bit of a habit."

Image captionHe had a huge fanbase in the UK

His short but high profile relationship with 21-year-old country star Tanya Tucker, 25 years his junior, provided much fodder for the gossip magazines.

His salvation came when he met and married Kim Woolen in 1982 and turned to God.

"I got down on my knees and prayed. And, eventually, I got rid of those demons." Apart from a brief lapse in 2003, when he was jailed for drink-driving, he stayed off the booze and the drugs.

In 2005 he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Throughout this period, he continued to play and record and released covers of songs by artists as diverse as U2 and Green Day.

In 2011 Campbell announced he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and set off on a farewell tour that included an emotional goodbye at the Grammy Awards in February 2012.

"I've accomplished everything I wanted to do," he said in a 2012 interview. "I've been blessed. When I think back to where I came from, I have been able to do some amazing things in my life. And music will always be part of my life."

Sir Bruce Forsyth

2018-03-28T00:20:00.002-07:00

Image captionHe made his stage debut aged just 14 as Boy Bruce, the Mighty Atom

Veteran entertainer Sir Bruce Forsyth had a career spanning eight decades, in which he went from struggling variety performer to Saturday night TV stardom.

On the way, he became one of the most recognisable entertainers in the business, driven by what appeared to be inexhaustible energy.

He became synonymous with the plethora of game shows that seemed to dominate television light entertainment in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, although he often felt he had become typecast as the genial quizmaster.

And at an age when most performers would have put their feet up, his career enjoyed a huge revival with the BBC's Strictly Come Dancing.

Bruce Joseph Forsyth-Johnson was born in Edmonton, north London, on 22 February 1928.

His father owned a local garage and both his parents were Salvation Army members who sang and played music at home.

Image copyrightREX FEATURES

Image captionBeat the Clock was just one of many games he hosted

The young Bruce was a direct descendant of William Forsyth, a founder of the Royal Horticultural Society, whose name was given to the plant forsythia.

His interest in showbusiness was kindled at the age of eight and he was reportedly found tap-dancing on the flat roof after watching his first Fred Astaire film.

"As soon as I got home from school," he recalled, "I'd take up the carpet, because there was lino underneath, and start tapping away."

He made his stage debut at the age of 14 as Boy Bruce, the Mighty Atom, appearing bottom of the bill at the Theatre Royal, Bilston.

Live entertainment was a way of escaping the pressures and dangers of wartime Britain, and there was a huge demand for acts, no matter how bad they were.

Many years later he explained his motivation on a BBC chat show. "I wanted to be famous and buy my mum a fur coat."

Famous Forsyth catchphrases

"I'm in charge."
"All right, my loves?"
"Good game, good game!"
"Nice to see you, to see you nice."
"Give us a twirl!"
"Cuddly toy, cuddly toy!"
"OK, dollies do your dealing."
"You get nothing for a pair!"
"What do points make?"
"Didn't he/she do well?"
"You're my favourite."
"Keeeeep dancing!"

But there was to be no fast track to success. For the next 16 years he performed in church halls and theatres across the country, sleeping in train luggage racks and waiting for the big break.

It came in 1958, at a time when he had been unemployed for more than three months and was seriously considering giving up on showbusiness.

He was asked to present Sunday Night at the London Palladium, a televised variety show, made by Lord Grade's ATV company for the ITV network.

He'd finally found the fame he had always craved, appearing not in front of a couple of hundred people in a theatre, but the more than 10 million who regularly tuned in to the show.

"The pubs would empty when it came on," he told an interviewer. "We would get calls saying: 'Can't you start it later?'"

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Image captionAt one point, he was Britain's highest-paid entertainer

Originally booked for two weeks, he stayed five years, by which time he was Britain's highest-paid entertainer, earning £1,000 a week (£18,700 in today's money).

But he continued touring with his variety show and the strain of combining this with his Palladium appearances took a toll on his private life.

He divorced his first wife, Penny Calvert, a dancer he'd met in the theatre, and she wrote an account of her husband's perpetual absence, called Darling, Your Dinner's in the Dustbin.

A popular element in his Palladium show was a feature called Beat the Clock, in which contestants, egged on by Forsyth, had to complete quirky tasks as a huge clock ticked down.

The segment gave a hint of his future television role and he went on to host some of the most popular television game shows of the 1970s and 80s.

With his catchphrases of "Nice to see you, to see you nice" and "Didn't he do well?" he reigned supreme at the helm of the BBC's Generation Game for six years from 1971, and again at the beginning of the 1990s.

At its peak, the programme attracted 20 million viewers, who tuned in to watch Forsyth seemingly having more fun than the competitors, enthusing over the mundane prizes on the conveyor belt.

The presenter argued with his BBC managers about the show's early evening timeslot but he eventually accepted his role as the "warm-up man" for Saturday night television.

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Image captionThe Beatles were among the stars he introduced at the London Palladium

His co-host on the show, Anthea Redfern, was each week encouraged to "give us a twirl". The couple married in 1973 but divorced six years later.

It was on the Generation Game that he introduced his famous "thinker" pose, appearing in silhouette at the beginning of each show.

The idea came from the classic circus strongman pose, something he'd perfected during his days in variety.

He repeated his success on ITV's Play Your Cards Right, where the audience joined in the cries of "higher" or "lower" as the contestants tried to guess the value of a series of playing cards.

Changing tastes

Michael Grade said of him: "He knows how to get laughs out of people but it's never cruel and he leaves their dignity intact."

In 1995, a year after his final Generation Game appearance, he received a lifetime achievement award for variety at the British Comedy Awards and began hosting ITV's The Price is Right.

The entertainer was, by this time, a Rolls-Royce-driving multimillionaire and married since 1983 to Wilnelia Merced, a former Miss World.

He later claimed that he regretted becoming so associated with game shows and wished he'd done more variety work on TV.

Image captionForsyth with Anthea Redfern on the Generation Game

Play Your Cards Right was axed in 1999 and, with changing tastes in entertainment, his TV career began to slide.

He returned to the theatre - but experienced an unexpected revival after his wife watched an edition of the satirical quiz, Have I Got News For You, and suggested he could present the programme.

After calling show regular Paul Merton, he landed the gig and offered to be "a little bit deadpan".

"But the team said, 'No, be Bruce Forsyth,'" he said.

He used the occasion to parody some of his old game shows, much to the ill-disguised disgust of team captain Ian Hislop.

But the appearance led to Forsyth, an accomplished tap dancer, being offered the job of hosting Strictly Come Dancing, which began a year later.

Viewed with scepticism when it launched, the celebrity dance show became one of the most-watched programmes on TV by the time it reached its fifth series in 2007.

He brought his own brand of avuncular good humour to the proceedings - reassuring many of the contestants with the phrase "you're my favourites".

Image captionHe parodied some of his old game shows on Have I Got News For You

"His particular character and personality went a long way to making the show what it is," said former contestant Ann Widdecombe.

But the presenter once revealed that Strictly "was never the show that I thought it would be".

"I thought it'd be a comedy show - me getting among the contestants and showing them how to dance, and them all falling over," he told ITV's This Morning. "It was a different show."

After missing a handful of episodes because of illness, he decided to "step down from the rigours" of presenting Strictly in 2014.

Golfing passion

"But I'm not retiring," he insisted. "That's the last thing in the world I want to do. This isn't Brucie walking into the sunset."

He continued to host the Christmas and charity editions of Strictly until 2014 - all of which were taped, as opposed to live broadcasts.

Away from entertainment, Forsyth's biggest passion was golf and he took part in many pro-celebrity tournaments.

His house was next to the course at Wentworth, where he played with many of the world's best players, practising in the bunker in his own back garden.

Image captionHe presented Strictly Come Dancing with Tess Daly

During his career, Forsyth's multiple talents and years of application sparked an enduring appeal.

In 2011 he was knighted after years of campaigning by his fans and a parliamentary Early Day Motion signed by 73 MPs.

But he suffered from ill health towards the end of his life, and in 2016 his wife revealed he still had "a bit of a problem moving", following major surgery a year earlier.

Sir Bruce was one of the last entertainers from the tradition of music hall to be working on British television.

In many ways his act barely changed. The same corny gags, the same toothy smile and, above all, the same manic enthusiasm.

"On stage I think I'm 35," he once said. "Working takes over my whole body and I become a younger man - that's why I won't stop."

He will be particularly remembered for his ability to transform run-of-the-mill party games into glorious moments of mayhem that enthralled contestants and audiences alike.

Hugh Hefner

2018-03-28T00:18:00.000-07:00

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Hugh Hefner created a fantasy world for millions of men but unlike most of his readers, actually got to live the dream.

He successfully tapped into a new generation of Americans who were enjoying rising standards of living in the boom years of the 1950s and 60s.

A political activist and philanthropist, he produced not just a magazine, but a whole lifestyle.

And in Playboy's famous bow-tie-wearing rabbit he launched one of the most recognised brands of the 20th Century.

Hugh Marston Hefner was born in Chicago on 9 April 1926, the son of two teachers with strong religious views.

Image copyrightREX FEATURES

Image captionHis timing was just right

After serving in the US Army as a writer, he graduated with a degree in psychology before going to work as a copywriter for the men's magazine, Esquire.

In 1953 he borrowed $8,000 to produce the first issue of Playboy. Hefner was so worried that the magazine would not sell that he left the date off the cover.

Photographs

His mother contributed $1,000. "Not because she believed in the venture," Hefner later said, "but because she believed in her son."

He'd originally planned to name the new publication Stag Party, but changed his mind at the last minute.

"Can you imagine a chain of clubs staffed by girls wearing antlers."

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Image captionHis magazine became the bible of middle-class post-war American males

The first edition featured a set of nude photographs of Marilyn Monroe that Hefner had bought for $500. They had originally been shot for a 1949 calendar.

Whether by luck or judgement, Hefner's timing was just right. The launch of Alfred Kinsey's reports on human sexual behaviour challenged conventional beliefs about sexuality and raised subjects that, until then, had been taboo.

Kinsey was the researcher," Hefner later remarked, "I was the pamphleteer."

Rabbit

Middle-class American society in the 1950s was notoriously strait-laced and the combination of tastefully photographed women and intellectually stimulating articles appealed to the post-war urban male.

"I never thought of it as a sex magazine," Hefner later recalled. "I always thought of it as a lifestyle magazine in which sex was one important ingredient."

It was an unqualified success, selling more than 50,000 copies within weeks. Hefner had found a niche in the market for men's publications, which was then dominated by hunting, shooting and fishing periodicals.

Image copyrightPLAYBOY

Image captionThere was no date on the magazine's first issue in case it did not sell

The second issue saw the appearance of the bow-tie-wearing rabbit, which was designed by the magazine's art director Art Paul. It would appear on a host of products over the following decades.

In 1955 Hefner published a short story by the writer Charles Beaumont, about straight men facing persecution in a world where homosexuals were the majority.

Finest contemporary writing

In response to a flood of angry letters, Hefner replied: "If it was wrong to persecute heterosexuals in a homosexual society then the reverse is wrong too."

In later years he would become an advocate for same-sex marriage describing it as "a fight for all our rights".

Hefner's editorial stance was in tune with the changes in society as the magazine campaigned for liberal drugs laws and the right to abortion.

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Image captionThe Playboy clubs complete with bunnies built on the success of the magazine

For the next 20 years, Playboy dominated its market, with circulation peaking at over seven million in the early 1970s, when a survey suggested that a quarter of all male college students in America were buying the magazine.

At the time it contained some of the finest contemporary writing in the magazine market, with Saul Bellow, Arthur C Clarke, Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal among the regular contributors.

Luxury and indulgence

The articles appeared sandwiched between the obligatory photographs of beautiful women, although far more tastefully shot than many of Playboy's more downmarket competitors.

The centre spread entitled Playmate of the Month featured some famous names including Jayne Mansfield and Pamela Anderson, while other celebrities, including Bo Derek, Kim Basinger, Farrah Fawcett and Madonna, have been happy to pose for the magazine.

The photographs of Jayne Mansfield provoked Hefner's arrest and a prosecution for obscenity in 1963 but the jury was unable to reach a verdict.

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Image captionThe Big Bunny epitomised Hefner's high rolling style

Hefner set out to exploit the success of his magazine with the opening of the first Playboy club in Chicago in 1960, which introduced the Playboy bunny waitresses.

The relaxation of gaming laws in the UK opened up another opportunity and Hefner opened three casinos in the UK. By 1981 they were contributing all of Playboy's worldwide profits.

At this time Hefner was living a life of luxury and indulgence in his two Playboy mansions, accompanied by an ever-changing cast of celebrities and pneumatic girlfriends, and shuttling between them in his personalised DC9, the Big Bunny.

Sexually explicit

Hefner's fortunes went into a major decline during the 1980s. The British authorities shut down the UK casinos following a series of irregularities, effectively cutting Playboy's income.

A year later a casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, was closed after Hefner was judged by the state gaming board to be an unsuitable person to hold a licence.

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Image captionPlayboy had many critics including those whose religious beliefs were offended by its content

Playboy magazine too was failing as more sexually explicit competitors competed for space on the newsstands and traditional Playboy readers got older and moved on.

In a further personal blow Hefner suffered a stroke in 1985 and four years later passed the daily control of Playboy Enterprises to his daughter Christie.

In 1989, at the age of 63, Hefner married one of his playmates, 27-year-old Kimberley Conrad. The marriage lasted for 10 years and produced two children.

Libertarian

The 90s saw a revival in Playboy's fortunes as Christie Hefner took the company into new and more profitable areas including cable TV.

Hefner, meanwhile, had - in his own words - discovered Viagra, and spent his days in his mansion, dressed in silk pyjamas and surrounded by a half-dozen or so live-in female companions.

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Image captionHe was rarely seen in public without a group of companions

In 2012 he married his third wife, Crystal Harris, when he was 86 - 60 years older than his bride.

A libertarian by nature, Hefner's Playboy Foundation continued to support freedom of expression and First Amendment rights. He also donated large sums of money to the Democratic Party, including Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

He was a keen supporter of conservation organisations and, perhaps appropriately, had a species of rabbit, Sylvilagus palustris hefneri, named in his honour.

In his later years Hugh Hefner was much ridiculed as the elderly man who still surrounded himself with beautiful young women.

But in Playboy he created a lifestyle which was in tune with the aspirations of a large section of post-war American society. The feminist Camille Paglia called him "one of the principal architects of the social revolution".

"I am a kid in a candy store," Hefner famously said. "I dreamed impossible dreams, and the dreams turned out beyond anything I could possibly imagine. I'm the luckiest cat on the planet."

Rodney Bewes

2018-03-28T00:15:00.000-07:00

Rodney Bewes, who has died aged 79, found fame as the aspirational Bob in the BBC sitcom The Likely Lads.

Teaming Bewes with James Bolam, it regularly drew audiences of more than 20 million.

Despite the success of a sequel, the two fell out in spectacular style - effectively ending the chance of the series being continued.

It turned out to be the peak of Bewes's career and he later found himself reduced to playing a series of less distinguished roles.

Rodney Bewes was born in Bingley, Yorkshire, on 27 November 1937.

His family later moved to Luton in Bedfordshire where his schooling was often interrupted by ill-health.

He answered a newspaper letter from a BBC producer asking for children to appear in the corporation's Children's Hour.

Image copyrightREX FEATURES

Image captionHe appeared alongside his friend Tom Courtenay in Billy Liar

By the age of 14 he had appeared in a number of BBC TV productions including a role as Joe in a 1952 adaptation of The Pickwick Papers. He also secured a place at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art's preparatory school.

"All the kids were posh and they were the children of actors in the West End of London and I'm just this boy from Bingley, near Bradford, and broad Yorkshire," he later recalled.

After completing his National Service in the RAF he returned to Rada.

He financed his studies by washing up in hotels at night, something that caused him to fall asleep during the day which culminated in him being asked to leave the academy.

He managed to secure some small stage roles, as well as parts in TV productions including Dixon of Dock Green, Emergency Ward 10 and Z-Cars.

New wave

He made his film debut in 1962 in Prize of Arms, a yarn about a gang that attempts to rob an army payroll convoy. The film is notable for early performances by a number of later well-known actors including Tom Bell, Jack May and Fulton Mackay.

A year later he secured the role of Arthur Crabtree in Billy Liar, alongside his friend Tom Courtenay.

It was the age of British cinema's so-called new wave, when film-makers were turning their attention to gritty working-class dramas and desperate for actors with regional accents.

Image captionThere was a brief spell as straight man for Basil Brush

Despite Bewes hailing from Yorkshire, rather than Tyneside, he was cast as Bob Ferris in The Likely Lads, a sitcom conceived by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais.

His aspirational character was in direct contrast to that of his friend, Terry Collier, the workshy, cynical figure played by James Bolam. Much of the comedy revolved around Bob's attempts to become middle-class in the face of constant derision from Terry.

The final series ended in 1966 and Bewes played a number of TV parts and was also in films including Man in a Suitcase, Spring and Port Wine and a star-studded musical version of Alice in Wonderland in which he played the Knave of Hearts.

He spent a year as Mr Rodney, who was one of a series of stooges for the puppet Basil Brush, before creating and starring in the ITV sitcom Dear Mother... Love Albert. It showcased his skills as a scriptwriter and proved to be popular with audiences.

Incensed

In 1973 he teamed up with James Bolam again for Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads, a sequel to the original series.

The series saw Bolam's character Terry return from his time away in the Army to discover that Bewes's Bob has bought his own house, secured a managerial job and is engaged to the boss's daughter.

Off stage the pair enjoyed a warm relationship.

"We were great friends," said Bewes.

"When my babies were born, his was the first house I went to."

In 1975 there was a film spin-off which proved to be the last time the pair worked together. Bolam was famous for guarding his privacy and was furious when Bewes let slip to a newspaper that Bolam's wife, the actress Susan Jameson, was pregnant.

Image captionWhatever Happened to the Likely Lads was even more successful than the original series

After a fraught phone call the two did not speak to each other again. Bolam was so incensed that he refused to appear on an edition of This Is Your Life, which featured his former acting partner.

"It's this actor's ego thing - he thinks he is important," Bewes once said.

"Actors aren't important. I'm not important; I have fun. I think Jimmy takes himself very seriously as an actor."

Bewes's acting career never again scaled the heights of Likely Lads. There were bit parts in the films Jabberwocky and The Wildcats of St Trinians and he was able to use his abilities as a serious actor in a 1980 TV adaptation of the Restoration play 'Tis Pity She's a Whore.

One-man shows

Earlier in his career he had appeared in productions of She Stoops to Conquer and there was a role in a 1984 production of George Gascoigne's play Big in Brazil at the Old Vic Theatre in London, with Prunella Scales and Timothy West.

In the same year he also appeared in a Doctor Who story entitled Resurrection of the Daleks. It was one of his last significant appearances on the small screen.

He had some stage success with his one-man shows, Three Men in a Boat and Diary of a Nobody, which he toured for more than a decade. He won a Stella Artois Prize for the former at the 1997 Edinburgh Festival.

Image captionHis role in Resurrection of the Daleks was one of his last TV appearances

His wife, the designer Daphne Black, whom he married in 1973, acted as his helper, setting up the stage and the props for his various performances.

Bewes never gave up on the idea of a revival of The Likely Lads, feeling that the characters were still relevant 40 years on.

"Instead of being the Likely Lads, we'd have been the Unlikeliest Granddads," he said.

"We would have been sitting on a park bench in a pair of grubby grey anoraks, feeding the pigeons and grumping about youngsters."

Sridevi Kapoor

2018-03-28T00:11:00.002-07:00

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Image captionIndia is mourning screen icon Sridevi Kapoor, who has died aged 54. Her rise to stardom was an extraordinary chapter in the country's film industry, writes Sudha G Tilak.

In the heat of the cruel south Indian summer, Sridevi cut a cool figure. It was the early 1990s and she was in a white, flowing dress in the famous Prasad Studios in Chennai (Madras), the city that spawned her career.

Tall and statuesque, she was almost regal, her hair styled to resemble a cloud - as was the fashion at the time.

As a young reporter, I found her sitting on set between takes of a Bollywood song-and-dance sequence, ready for the interview, her expression giving away nothing.

Despite my prodding her monosyllabic answers shed no light on her life in Bollywood and she remained painfully shy of opening up.

But on screen Sridevi - who was known by her first name, like most south Indian actors - was very different.

Media captionSridevi was an icon in Bollywood cinema

With a filmography of close to 300 movies in at least five Indian languages, she held her own as a leading lady, a box office magnet from the 1970s to the late 1990s.

Sridevi's life on screen began with a successful early stint performing in all the four south Indian film languages and she graduated to an extraordinary career in Bollywood, where she knew neither the language nor the culture of the Hindi film industry.

When she took a break from films, after her marriage to producer Boney Kapoor in 1996, Sridevi was rumoured to be the highest paid in her field and her star power and charisma persisted for years to come.

Image copyrightJAYAKUMAR S

Image captionSridevi at a function in Dubai - one of her last pictures

She embodied feminine mystique and that classic screen-goddess combination of beauty, mystery and intrigue. She lit up the screen with her vivacity and charm, while off it she remained fiercely private.

Film directors repeatedly spoke in awe of her acting prowess, which followed no method but sheer intuition and instinct as she sparkled before the cameras and retreated into a shell when the lights were off.

A fluid, performing talent

Like film legend Greta Garbo, the Art Deco icon of her times, Sridevi was glamorous and beautiful but reclusive and intensely private.

Her glittering costumes and dazzling presence on screen, coupled with her sculpted dance performances in Hindi movies, found die-hard fans among young girls and women.

Her burlesque comic acts and vaudeville capers in films such as Mr India and Chaalbaaz delighted adults and children alike.

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Image captionSridevi had the winning combination of charisma and talent

And her vulnerable sex appeal brought her female and male adulation, while her intuitive skill for acting made her a box-office sensation in Bollywood.

Sridevi's screen career began at the age of four in a 1969 Tamil-language film. The eldest daughter of a small-time Tamil lawyer and a Telugu-speaking mother, she had an active career as a child actor. At just 13 she was cast in the role of a woman avenging her lover's death and as the young wife of an older man in the Tamil film Moondru Mudichu (Marriage).

Sridevi's fan base is fiercely regional, too. Her south Indian fans claim that her best acting phase was in the southern language films, especially Tamil and Telugu, where she played unglamorous and complicated roles.

Notable film roles include:

Moondram Pirai (Rare Phenomenon): The story of a modern young woman who loses her mind in a car accident
Varumayin NiramSigappu (Red is the colour of poverty): An ode to the gritty ideals of the left among a bunch of Tamils in north India
Gaayathri: A tragic tale of a wife tricked into marriage
Pathinaru Vayadinile (Sweet Sixteen): Following the youthful indiscretion of a village belle seduced by a city slicker
Sigappu Rojakkal (The Tamil Psycho): A garments saleswoman captures the attention of a humble man who has a dark side
Johny: A love story between a popular but lonely singer and a petty thief
Meedum Kokila (Again Kokila): An orthodox Tamil Brahmin woman fights to rekindle the love of her husband

However, Sridevi's fans in the north say it was her Bollywood career that really allowed her charisma and glamour to shine.

In 2012, her comeback Bollywood film English Vinglish was a huge hit, once again cashing in on her unique combination of charisma and fluid acting talent.

She notched up several awards, including the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest civilian honour.

Heartbreak and loss

Sridevi's screen profile was glamorous but her private life was one of heartbreak, loss and estrangement.

The Bollywood gossip mill relentlessly spoke of her not being good at conversation, and listed her romantic liaisons and heartbreaks - as well as her bouts of cosmetic surgery.

Her secret wedding in 1996 led to a 16-year hiatus in her film career. She turned to family life and gave birth to two daughters, Jhanvi and Khushi.

Image copyrightAFP

Image captionSridevi, seen here in 2012, flanked by her husband Boney Kapoor and daughters Khushi and Jhanvi (far right)

In recent years she had taken up a variety of roles - and her sudden death at a family wedding in Dubai - has come as a huge shock to India.

Her fans will be devastated to learn that the cause of death was accidental drowning, according to a Dubai forensics report.

But in the hours before she died Sridevi's Instagram posts were alive with her pictures.

Bejewelled and in shimmering couture, her glittering smile lit up the screen as it always had.

Billy Graham

2018-03-28T00:08:00.002-07:00

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Image captionHe continued spreading his message well into his 80s

Once dubbed God's Ambassador, Billy Graham went to the four corners of the world with his evangelical mission.

His soft-spoken Southern style was in direct contrast to the fire and brimstone adopted by so many evangelical preachers.

Over six decades, he preached to an estimated 215 million people in 185 countries and reached hundreds of millions more through his radio and television ministry.

His early audiences were predominantly white, middle-class and conservative.

But, as the civil rights movement gained momentum, he began to preach against segregation and formed a sometimes strained friendship with Martin Luther King.

William Franklin Graham Jr was born on 7 November 1918 and brought up on the family dairy farm in Charlotte, North Carolina.

His parents were members of the conservative Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church.

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Image captionBy the time this graduation picture was taken he had found his calling

When Prohibition ended in 1933, his father forced him to drink beer until he was sick to persuade him of the dangers of alcohol. He remained a teetotaller throughout his life.

He made a commitment to Christ when he was 16 after hearing Mordecai Ham, a travelling evangelist, and he was ordained a minister in 1939.

His plan to serve as an army chaplain during World War Two ended when he contracted mumps. Instead he studied at the Florida Bible Institute and in 1943, married Ruth McCue Bell.

He became a full-time evangelist with Youth for Christ, an organisation that ministered to young people and service personnel.

Segregation

The man who had worked as a travelling salesman during the Depression had emerged as one of the great promoters of the Christian religion.

In 1949 he came to wider public attention when he preached for eight weeks in a giant tent in Los Angeles, which gained the nickname the Canvas Cathedral.

The growing civil rights movement forced Graham to confront the racism inherent in US society.

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Image captionGraham (l) in the Canvas Cathedral with his music director Cliff Barrows

At first he was ambivalent about the need for change and often, in the early 1950s, preached to segregated audiences .

However, a court ruling that segregation in American schools was unconstitutional saw Graham insist on integrated seating at all his meetings.

He was an outspoken opponent of communism, believing that it had "decided against God, against Christ, against the Bible, and against all religion".

After the success of his ministry in the US, Graham wanted to take his message worldwide and he began the process in London in 1954.

Demand

It was a calculated risk. At the time only 10% of Britons were regular churchgoers, compared with 50% in the United States.

He also faced a hostile British press, which was scathing about the motives of the man from Charlotte, and he faced calls from one MP for him to be banned from entering the UK.

He conducted his first full-scale mission in a 12,000-seat auditorium next to a greyhound track at London's Harringay Arena.

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Image captionThousands flocked to hear him preach in London in 1954

Such was the demand to hear him that he filled the arena every night for three months.

The final meeting of his UK crusade was held at Wembley Stadium, when 120,000 people heard Graham speak of the reception he had received in London.

"These meetings have been far beyond anything we had the faith to believe possible," he told the crowd. "The spirit of God is moving across Great Britain as perhaps at no time in the last century."

It was the beginning of what would be a series of missions to all parts of the globe.

Regal treatment

His crusades were always meticulously planned. As his reputation grew, so too did the crowds, from New York to Nigeria. In Korea, more than a million turned out to hear him speak.

In 1957 he invited the civil rights leader Martin Luther King to join him on a 16-week stint in New York, which more than two million people attended.

Graham's friendship with King was sometimes difficult, not least when he attacked King for his stand against the war in Vietnam, branding the civil rights leader as unpatriotic.

Image copyrightBILLY GRAHAM.ORG

Image captionHis relationship with Martin Luther King was not always cordial

But Graham was effusive in his tributes when King was assassinated in 1968, declaring that America had lost "a social leader and a prophet".

By the time that Graham headed back to Britain in 1966, he was receiving almost regal treatment.

During this mission, at a rally at Earl's Court, the singer and film star Cliff Richard made his public commitment to Christianity.

As the years went by, with controversy increasing over the techniques of mass evangelism, Billy Graham's delivery may have become more measured but the focus of all his rallies remained "the invitation".

People were encouraged to come to the stage and personally witness to their reborn faith.

And he was clear about the importance of personal contact with his vast congregation.

"I've had many opportunities to see what the average clergy would never see. And on each of those occasions I've tried to let those I've come in contact with see a little bit of what the Gospel of Jesus Christ is about."

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Image captionHe was seen at the side of numerous US presidents, including Bill Clinton

In a mission that lasted 60 years, he preached in person to more people than anyone else.

Graham's final revival meeting took place in New York in June 2005. Acknowledging his own advanced age, then 86, he told the congregation: "I know it won't be long."

Though a Baptist himself, he encouraged converts to choose a church for themselves and worked for ecumenical unity.

He was to be seen at the side of each American president, though his endorsement of Richard Nixon did not hold him back from criticising the disgraced former leader over the Watergate scandal.

No scandal of any kind ever came to undermine Billy Graham's own ministry, unlike a number of other high-profile evangelists.

However, in 2002 he was forced to publicly apologise for remarks he had made about the "Jewish stranglehold on the media", which came to light when tapes of a private conversation with Richard Nixon in 1972 were released.

But it was his continuing missions, or crusades, that had the greatest impact. The charisma of Billy Graham's preaching and the success of his invitation to witness touched the lives of millions of people from all over the globe.

At the core of his message was the eternal optimism that everyone could find salvation through God.

"I've read the last page of the Bible," he once said. "It's all going to turn out all right."

Roger Bannister

2018-03-28T00:06:00.002-07:00

Roger Bannister, who has died at the age of 88, was the first man to run a mile in under four minutes.

Sir Roger, who was knighted in 1975, had been suffering from Parkinson's disease since 2011.

The record time in Oxford established him as one of the great names of British athletics.

In an age of the gentleman amateur, Bannister saw his running as something to be done in his spare time.

He once wrote that the ideal athlete was one who enjoyed a few drinks and even the odd cigarette.

Roger Gilbert Bannister was born on 23 March 1929 in Harrow, Middlesex.

After leaving University College School in London, he went to Oxford to read medicine before going on to St Mary's Hospital Medical School.

Bannister used his medical knowledge to devise his own training regime and investigate the mechanical aspects of running.

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Image captionBannister (2nd right) warming up for his record-breaking run

He had taken up athletics while at Oxford but his studies meant he could snatch only about 30 minutes a day to practise his technique on the track.

Unlike the lucrative profession it has become today, athletics was always only one aspect of Bannister's student life.

"As soon as I ceased to be a student," he said, "I always knew I would stop being an athlete."

Nevertheless, after just three sessions, he was running a mile in 4:24, which was enough to see him considered as a possible for the 1948 Olympics in London.

Unfavourable weather

Four years later he was selected for the British Olympic team to compete in Helsinki.

Despite being concerned at a lack of fitness, he finished fourth in the 1500m final, setting a new British record.

By the spring of 1954, Bannister was continuing his training preparations for the Commonwealth Games, with one eye on the world record and the other on his arch-rival, Australian John Landy.

Image captionBannister holding his BBC Sportsman of the Year trophy with Sportswoman winner Pat Smythe

Bannister took to the track at Iffley Road, Oxford, on 6 May, a day beset by unfavourable weather.

The race was almost cancelled but eventually the starting gun went off.

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Helped by his pacemakers Chris Brasher and Chris Chataway, Bannister broke the tape in a time of 3:59.4 and history was made.

When timekeeper Norris McWhirter tried to announce the time of "Three...", the rest of his words were drowned out by cheers.

Only when he read the newspapers the following day, did Bannister fully appreciate the scale of his success.

Insignificance

"It had become rather like Everest, a challenge for the human spirit," Bannister reflected on the significance of his own achievement.

His record lasted just 46 days. John Landy ran 3:57.4 in Finland to set up a much-anticipated clash between the two men in the Commonwealth Games in Vancouver.

In a race billed as The Miracle Mile, Landy led until the final bend when he made the mistake of looking back for his rival. Bannister burst through to breast the tape in 3:58.8.

Image copyrightPA

Image captionBannister presents the 2012 Sports Personality of the Year team award to Victoria Pendleton

However, the achievements on the track paled into insignificance for him when he finally fulfilled his ambition and qualified as a doctor.

"You don't have to make the rest of your life boring to be a good runner," he said.

Within 10 years, he was established in his profession as a consultant physician, going on to become a leading neurologist, and later the Master of Pembroke College, Oxford.

Although a motoring accident later caused a broken ankle that put paid to Bannister's leisure running, he forever associated himself with the sport.

He became the first chairman of the Sports Council in 1971 and, during his tenure, he led a crusade on drug-testing in athletics. He was knighted in 1975 and made a Companion of Honour in the 2017 New Year's Honours.

For Bannister, the challenge of the four-minute mile was only ever a psychological barrier, not a physical one and he always maintained that his achievements as a neurologist far outshone his time on the track.

But for most, the image of Bannister will forever be the long-limbed athlete, with his head thrown back, breaking the tape on a blustery May evening in 1954.

Trevor Baylis

2018-03-27T23:59:00.002-07:00

Trevor Baylis believed that the key to success was to think unconventional thoughts.

It was this mindset that saw him develop his clockwork radio after hearing about the problems of educating African people about HIV and Aids.

It enabled those in remote areas without electricity, or access to batteries, to get the information that could save their lives.

But despite the success of this, and other inventions, Baylis never made a great deal of money from his many ideas.

Trevor Graham Baylis was born in Kilburn, north-west London, on 13 May 1937 and brought up in Southall, Middlesex.

His father was an engineer and the young Trevor was introduced to a Meccano building set which inspired his fascination with mechanical things.

Image copyrightTREVOR BAYLIS

Image captionHis diving ability was used to great effect when selling swimming pools

The young Baylis supplemented the family income by working on a local milk round which saw him getting up at 3am each morning.

He was also a proficient swimmer and narrowly failed to qualify for the 1956 British Olympic team, something he greatly regretted.

He left school at 15 to work in a local soil mechanics laboratory, attending day-release courses in mechanical and structural engineering.

Baylis did his National Service as a physical training instructor in the Army. When he left, he got a job as a salesman with Purley Pools, one of the first companies to sell free-standing swimming pools.

Recycled

Because he was a good swimmer he demonstrated the pools at shows, attracting crowds of potential customers.

He went on to form an aquatic stunt troupe which saw him diving into a glass-sided tank and also performing an underwater act in a Berlin circus.

"It was fantastic," he later recalled. "I made enough money to buy a plot of land and and build the house of my dreams

Image captionHe failed to make much money from his invention

The death of a close friend in a trapeze accident prompted him to begin developing products for people with disabilities.

"Her death broke my heart," he said. "You realise disability is only a banana skin away."

He developed a range of products under the Orange Aids label, including one-handed scissors and devices for opening bottles and cans.

But although the products were successful they failed to make his fortune. The costs of getting a patent were prohibitive and companies were able to copy his inventions.

Aids

"I went into the deal which I thought would secure the future of Orange Aids with culpable impetuosity. I had been used to doing business on a handshake and my word of honour, and I made the error of actually believing what the men in the pinstriped suits told me."

It was to be something that dogged his career but he remained philosophical, saying he always followed his heart.

"It's not about the money," he said in a 2004 interview. "I can't imagine anything worse than looking at a computer all day then glancing at your watch because there is an important meeting about the men's toilets at 3pm."

Image copyrightREX FEATURES

Image captionHis workshop was crammed with tools and discarded electrical appliances

The idea for his wind-up radio came while he was watching a TV programme in 1991 about the spread of Aids in Africa and a proposal to tackle it by broadcasting educational programmes on the radio.

Baylis later said he went into a reverie imagining himself as a colonial settler, nursing a gin and tonic and listening to a wind-up gramophone.

The image encouraged him to go to his workshop, which was filled with disassembled domestic appliances and, within half an hour, he had a working prototype of his clockwork radio.

Learning from his Orange Aids experience, Baylis patented the project and went in search of a manufacturer. Everyone he approached turned him down.

Failed

It was an appearance on the BBC's Tomorrow's World programme in 1994 that finally brought his invention to public attention.

"Everyone thought I was a genius whereas, up to then, I was just another silly little man."

Further publicity followed. He was awarded the BBC Design Award for Best Product and Best Design in 1996 and met Nelson Mandela and the Queen.

Image captionHe hosted a BBC programme with Katy Hill encouraging new inventions

A South African company began manufacturing his radio in 1997 but, once again, Baylis failed to make a great deal of money from the product.

"My mistake was that I trusted the people I was working alongside. Large corporations can circumnavigate your patents."

He eventually lost control of his design and the company, somewhat ironically, began making cheaper wind-up radios for a Western market increasingly concerned with green issues.

Undaunted, Baylis continued coming up with new ideas including a shoe that could generate electricity as the wearer walked.

Disarray

He demonstrated them with a 100-mile hike across Namibia to raise money for a landmine charity.

He also set up the Trevor Baylis Foundation to encourage and develop new products and, importantly, advise inventors how to protect their intellectual property.

He was awarded an OBE in 1997 and collected a number of honorary degrees from leading universities.

Image copyrightREX FEATURES

Image captionHe believed Britain failed to appreciate inventors like him

Trevor Baylis never married, believing that no wife would put up with the disarray in which he liked to work.

He strongly believed that Britain was cavalier in its treatment of inventors, meaning many products disappeared overseas.

"Inventors do not get enough credit," he said. "I always say, art is pleasure, invention is treasure.

"Nobody seems to know who invented the paper clip but everybody has one."

Stephen Hawking

2018-03-27T23:57:00.001-07:00

Image copyrightAFP

Stephen Hawking - who died aged 76 - battled motor neurone disease to become one of the most respected and best-known scientists of his age.

A man of great humour, he became a popular ambassador for science and was always careful to ensure that the general public had ready access to his work.

His book A Brief History of Time became an unlikely best-seller although it is unclear how many people actually managed to get to the end of it.

He appeared in a number of popular TV shows and lent his synthesised voice to various recordings.

Stephen William Hawking was born in Oxford on 8 January 1942. His father, a research biologist, had moved with his mother from London to escape German bombing.

Hawking grew up in London and St Albans and, after gaining a first-class degree in physics from Oxford, went on to Cambridge for postgraduate research in cosmology.

Image copyrightREX FEATURES

Image captionHe was diagnosed with motor neurone disease while at university

As a teenager he had enjoyed horse-riding and rowing but while at Cambridge he was diagnosed with a form of motor neurone disease which was to leave him almost completely paralysed.

As he was preparing to marry his first wife, Jane, in 1964 his doctors gave him no more than two or three years of life.

But the disease progressed more slowly than expected. The couple had three children, and in 1988 - although Hawking was by now only able to speak with a voice synthesiser following a tracheotomy - he had completed A Brief History of Time - a layman's guide to cosmology.

It sold more than 10 million copies, although its author was aware that it was dubbed "the most popular book never read".

He received honorary degrees, medals, prizes and awards throughout his career and was honoured with a CBE in 1982. He was reportedly offered a knighthood in the 1990s but later revealed he had turned it down over issues with the government's funding for science.

Media captionScientist in the public eye

Celebrity

Hawking discovered the phenomenon which became known as Hawking radiation, where black holes leak energy and fade to nothing. He was renowned for his extraordinary capacity to visualise scientific solutions without calculation or experiment.

But it was perhaps his "theory of everything", suggesting that the universe evolves according to well-defined laws, that attracted most attention.

"This complete set of laws can give us the answers to questions like how did the universe begin," he said. "Where is it going and will it have an end? If so, how will it end? If we find the answers to these questions, we really shall know the mind of God."

Image copyrightPA

Image captionHe believed the universe evolves according to well-defined laws

Hawking's celebrity status was acknowledged even by The Simpsons - he was depicted drinking at a bar with Homer, suggesting he might steal Homer's idea that the universe is shaped like a doughnut.

He appeared in a special documentary about BBC comedy series Red Dwarf during which he spoke about why he enjoyed the show and also starred in Star Trek: The Next Generation as a hologram of his image.

The rock group Pink Floyd used his distinctive synthesised voice for the introduction to Keep Talking, on their 1994 album The Division Bell.

Undeterred by his condition, he continued his work as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, and in 2001, his second book - Universe in a Nutshell - was published.

Erratic

He believed his illness brought some benefits; he said before he developed the disease he had been bored with life.

But his condition inevitably made him dependent on others. He often paid tribute to his wife, who had looked after him for more than 20 years, and friends and relatives were shocked when he left her for one of his nurses, Elaine Mason, whom he married in 1995. The couple later divorced in 2006.

Image copyrightREUTERS

Image captionHawking later went on to marry one of his nurses, Elaine Mason, in 1995. They were married for 11 years before they divorced

By 2000, Hawking was a frequent visitor to the emergency department of Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, seeking treatment for a variety of injuries. Police questioned several people about allegations that he had been subjected to verbal and physical abuse over a period of years.

He was known to be an erratic, almost reckless driver of his electric wheelchair, and Hawking insisted his injuries were not caused by abuse. No action was taken.

In 2007, he became the first quadriplegic to experience weightlessness on board the so-called "vomit comet", a modified plane specially designed to simulate zero gravity. He said he did it to encourage interest in space travel and booked a seat on Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic sub-orbital space plane.

"I believe that life on Earth is at an ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster such as sudden nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus, or other dangers. I think the human race has no future if it doesn't go into space. I therefore want to encourage public interest in space."

Image copyrightPA

Image captionEddie Redmayne played Hawking in The Theory of Everything

In 2014, the film The Theory of Everything was released, based on Jane Hawking's account of their courtship and marriage. Hawking himself met Eddie Redmayne as part of the actor's preparation for taking on the role of the scientist.

In a series for the Discovery Channel, he said it was perfectly rational to assume there was intelligent life elsewhere but warned that aliens might just raid earth of its resources and then move on.

Hawking also predicted the end of humanity from global warming, a large comet or a new virus.

He collaborated with Russian investor Yuri Milner in 2015 to work on projects to find evidence of alien life.

He once wrote that he had motor neurone disease for practically all his adult life but said that it had not stopped him having an attractive family and being successful in his work.

"It shows," he said, "that one need not lose hope."

Katie Boyle

2018-03-27T23:54:00.002-07:00

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Katie Boyle, who has died aged 91, once said that she was famous for being famous.

But her glamour and ebullience carried her through more than half a century in the public eye, especially as a regular hostess of the Eurovision Song Contest.

Her multilingual outings on these occasions reflected her glamorous but turbulent upbringing.

And she was also a familiar face on TV panel shows and had a stint as an agony aunt.

She was born Caterina Irene Elena Maria Imperiali de Principi di Francavilla on 29 May 1926 in a Florentine palace that had once belonged to the Italian royal family.

Despite the luxurious surroundings, her childhood was marred by her parents' divorce and her father's domineering rule.

After nine months, she was rescued by her English mother who brought her back to London.

Image captionShe hosted four Eurovision Song Contests

Her suave European style soon brought her modelling work and there was a marriage to Richard Bentinck Boyle, 9th Earl of Shannon. The couple divorced in 1955 but she retained the family name.

In the same year she married the racehorse owner Greville Baylis.

She also appeared in a number of films and had a spell as an on-screen continuity announcer for BBC Television.

After a brief appearance on the television show Quite Contrary, she presented the programme for two years.

Sophistication

Throughout the 1960s she was a regular on popular panel shows such as What's My Line and Juke Box Jury.

She also became the face of Camay soap in television adverts, despite being allergic to the product herself.

But her highest profile role was as the four times presenter for that enduring kitsch extravaganza the Eurovision Song Contest.

Image captionHer later life was devoted to support for animal charities

She hosted the show on four occasions when it was held in the UK, three times in London and once in Brighton.

Her poise and sophistication, coupled with her ability to speak several languages, made her a favourite with international audiences.

She hosted a Radio 2 programme, Katie and Friends, and wrote an agony column for the TV Times for nearly two decades.

Following the death of her second husband, she married the theatre impresario Sir Peter Saunders, who had been responsible for the world's longest-running play, Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap.

Later in life she brought her great love for dogs to both television and radio, where she often gave other celebrities advice on looking after their pets. She also became a tireless supporter of many animal charities.

In 2004, she made an appearance on The Weakest Link, fittingly for an edition dedicated to the Eurovision Song Contest, the show that had endeared her to millions many years before.

Sir Ken Dodd

2018-03-27T23:50:00.000-07:00

His swept-up hair, protruding teeth and expression of lunatic bewilderment made Sir Ken Dodd one of Britain's most recognisable entertainers.

He was one of the most popular artists of his time, topping the record charts, filling theatres and starring on TV.

An old-fashioned variety performer with his roots in music hall, he added a unique dash of surrealism to his act,

Even allegations of tax fraud failed to diminish his standing with his adoring public.

Kenneth Arthur Dodd was born on 8 November 1927 in the Liverpool suburb of Knotty Ash, the son of a coal merchant.

His birthplace would play a central part in his later stage show as he wove surreal tales around Knotty Ash and its inhabitants the Diddy people, with their jam butty mines and black pudding plantation.

As a child he showed an early talent for clowning but without any thought of making it a career. However one prank went wrong when he tried riding his bike with his eyes closed and sustained injuries to his mouth that resulted in his distinctive toothy appearance.

Image captionHis appearances on The Good Old Days reflected his music hall roots

Despite getting a scholarship to grammar school, he left at 14 and got himself a little cart with which he went round the outskirts of Liverpool, selling pots and pans.

As he used to say in later years: "If you can sell pots and pans to housewives on their washing day, you can sell anything, even jokes."

But the stage beckoned and, after sending off for a book on how to be a ventriloquist, he set out to entertain the public in local clubs and halls with a dummy given to him by his father.

He served a long apprenticeship as an amateur performer before making his first professional appearance as Professor Yaffle Chucklebutty, Operatic Tenor and Sausage Knotter, in Nottingham in 1954. "At least they didn't boo me off," he later recalled.

Little black notebooks

A year later he appeared in Blackpool, and by 1958 had gained top billing in the seaside resort which has been the making - and sometimes breaking - of a host of variety acts.

During the next decade he gained a steadily-increasing reputation in the northern music halls, and became well known to a wider public for his broadcasts and his recordings of popular songs, like 'Happiness'.

But his debut in the West End of London was deferred until 1965, when he topped the bill at the Palladium in an extraordinarily successful 42-week run. In the same year, he topped the charts with 'Tears'.

Image captionThe Diddymen were a central part of his act

Ken Dodd was devoted to his work, and seldom, if ever, took a holiday.

He recorded all his jokes - and the public reaction to them - in a series of little black notebooks, and rehearsed and re-rehearsed his every word and gesture.

Set down in print, much of his material may seem commonplace. It was the way he put it across that counted.

Possibility of disgrace

Uttered by him, a phrase such as "Good Morning" became charged with outrageous innuendo, and - backed by appropriate pantomime - would throw an audience into paroxysms of laughter.

Dodd's catchphrases, most famously "How tickled I am!", were quoted everywhere.

At a Liverpool theatre in 1974 he told jokes at a rate of 10 a minute for more than three hours - a feat that gained him a place in the Guinness Book of Records.

Image captionThe last of the old time music hall entertainers

Throughout the 1970s and 80s he was a firm favourite on television and radio, and kept up a punishing schedule of stage appearances.

But in 1989, Ken Dodd faced the possibility of disgrace, when he stood trial at Liverpool Crown Court on eight charges of tax fraud spanning a period of 15 years and involving £825,000.

The trial abounded with stories of his eccentricity. He had claimed to live on £3,500 a year, while his personal wealth ran into millions, and he did not take a holiday until he was 51.

It also emerged that he had 20 bank accounts in Jersey and the Isle of Man, and made regular 'cash and carry' flights to deposit money in them which was not declared to the Inland Revenue.

Private man

He also had £336,000 hidden in wardrobes, cupboards and under stairs.

The jury was swayed by Dodd's defence counsel George Carman QC, who remarked: "Some accountants are comedians but comedians are never accountants". Dodd was acquitted, although he faced a reported £2m bill for legal fees and tax he had previously promised to pay.

He took up his career again and later made light of his court ordeal, quipping "I told the Inland Revenue I didn't owe them a penny because I lived near the seaside."

He had another season at the London Palladium in 1990, and was given a British Comedy Lifetime Achievement Award and voted Top Variety Performer in 1993.

Image captionHe was still performing four-hour shows in his 80s

And the TV special, An Audience With Ken Dodd, proved a huge hit, showcasing Dodd's comic brilliance for a younger audience.

He was still touring in his ninth decade with his shows sometimes lasting into the early hours of the morning. "Some of you are optimists," he'd tell his audience at the start of a show, "you've booked your taxis for half-past 12 But they say the breakfast here is good."

Behind the banter Ken Dodd was a private man, and a serious student of comic theory.

As he once put it: "Freud said that laughter is the outward expression of the psyche. But Freud never had to play the Glasgow Empire."

He rejected suggestions that many of his gags, particularly those revolving around blondes, were sexist. "I think in every comedian there is a streak of anarchy. We don't take kindly to people telling us what we should say. But I don't like vulgarity and obscenity - the great comedians never did anything like that, they didn't need to."

Dodd married his partner of 40 years, Anne Jones, two days before he died. Although the pair had a lengthy engagement, Jones - a singer, pianist and flautist - was the support act on his tour.

In December 2016, to the delight of his legions of fans, it was announced that Doddy was to be awarded a knighthood in the New Year Honours.

Ken Dodd was the UK's last great music hall entertainer, from an age when comedians trudged from venue to venue plying their trade of laughter.

"My job," he once told the Daily Telegraph, " isn't to educate people or even do politics, I've got to make people feel good, I want to make them happy."

Martin McGuinness

2017-03-21T04:45:00.000-07:00

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Martin McGuinness was the IRA leader who became a peace negotiator - a committed Irish republican who ended up shaking hands with the Queen.

Together with Gerry Adams, he was the main republican architect of the move towards a political solution to Northern Ireland's problems.

His life followed an extraordinary trajectory between violence and politics, moving from being a senior commander in the IRA to helping broker talks that eventually led to the peace negotiations of the 1990s.

Eventually, he became Northern Ireland's deputy first minister, forging an unlikely alliance with Ian Paisley, the DUP leader who was the fiercest - and loudest - critic of the republican movement.

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Image captionHe and Gerry Adams came to the conclusion that a political solution was the way forward

They developed such a rapport in their years in government that they became poster boys for modern politics, earning the nickname The Chuckle Brothers.

James Martin Pacelli McGuinness was born into a large family living in the deprived Bogside area of Londonderry on 23 May 1950. His unusual third name was a tribute to Pope Pius XII.

He attended Derry's St Eugene's Primary School and, having failed the 11-plus exam, he went to the Christian Brothers technical college, known locally as Brow o' the Hill.

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Image captionMcGuinness's rapport with Ian Paisley earned the pair the nickname The Chuckle Brothers

He did not enjoy his time at college and his failure to qualify for grammar school rankled.

"It is my opinion," he later said, "that no education system has the right to tell any child at the age of 10 and 11 that it's a failure."

He was working as a butcher's assistant when Northern Ireland's Troubles erupted in the late 1960s. Angry about the rough handling of protesters demanding civil rights for Catholics, McGuinness was quickly drawn into the ranks of the IRA.

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Image captionMcGuinness was born in the deprived Bogside area of Derry

By January 1972, when soldiers from the Parachute Regiment killed 14 people in his hometown on what became known as Bloody Sunday, McGuinness was second in command of the IRA in the city.

The Saville Inquiry concluded he had probably been armed with a sub-machine-gun on the day, but had not done anything that would have justified the soldiers opening fire.

In April 1972, BBC reporter Tom Mangold walked with McGuinness through the "no-go area" then known as Free Derry.

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Image captionAs education minister, McGuinness abolished the 11-plus exam, saying no system had the right to tell a child of 10 or 11 that they were a failure

Mangold described McGuinness as the officer commanding the IRA in the city and asked if the organisation might stop its bombing campaign in response to public demand.

The 21-year-old McGuinness made no attempt to contradict the reporter, explaining that the IRA "will always take into consideration the feelings of the people of Derry and those feelings will be passed on to our general headquarters in Dublin".

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Image captionMartin McGuinness (front left) and Martin Galvin (front right) carry the coffin of Chuck English at an IRA funeral in Derry, August 1985

Together with Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness was part of an IRA delegation that held unsuccessful talks with the British government in London in July 1972.

The following year he was convicted of IRA activity by the Republic of Ireland's Special Criminal Court after being caught with a car containing explosives and nearly 5,000 rounds of ammunition.

Security chiefs were in no doubt that he was a key figure in the IRA as it reorganised and rearmed in the 1980s.

Chief of staff

Among its most high-profile attacks was the attempt to kill Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at the Grand Hotel in Brighton in 1984.

Thatcher wanted to starve the IRA of what she called the "oxygen of publicity", so was furious when the BBC broadcast a Real Lives documentary in 1985 featuring McGuinness, who was unashamed of his reputation.

Driving a car through the Bogside, he told the documentary makers that reports suggesting he was chief of staff of the IRA were untrue, "but I regard them as a compliment".

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Image captionMcGuinness at the funeral of Brendan Burns in March 1988

He was later accused of having advance knowledge of the 1987 Enniskillen Remembrance day bombing - something he denied.

The mother of an alleged IRA informer claimed McGuinness had played a role in luring her son home to his death.

He was also thought to have approved proxy bombings, such as the murder of army cook Patsy Gillespie, in which hostages were forced to drive car bombs which were then detonated before they could get away.

But behind the scenes, Martin McGuinness engaged in secret contacts with British agents which laid the groundwork for the IRA ceasefires and peace negotiations of the 1990s.

Image captionLabour's Tony Benn speaking to McGuinness during a Sinn Féin news conference on the prospect of the closure of the Northern Ireland Assembly

When the Good Friday Agreement led to the creation of a devolved government at Stormont, he became education minister. One of his first acts was to abolish the 11-plus examination which he had failed many years before.

Devolution proved an on-off affair, but in 2007 the hardline Democratic Unionists were persuaded to share power with Sinn Féin.

The public witnessed the almost unbelievable sight of Martin McGuinness forging not just a political partnership, but what looked like a genuine friendship with one of his erstwhile enemies, the DUP leader Ian Paisley.

"Ian Paisley and I never had a conversation about anything - not even about the weather," he said in 2007.

"And now we have worked very closely together over the last seven months and there's been no angry words between us.

"This shows we are set for a new course."

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Image captionHis 2012 handshake with the Queen was seen as a landmark in the peace process

His relationships with Ian Paisley's successors appeared cooler.

But as dissident Irish republicans tried to derail the peace project, the now deputy first minister denounced them as "traitors to the island of Ireland". He left no doubt that he believed violence could no longer serve a purpose, declaring: "My war is over."

Martin McGuinness failed in his bid to become Irish head of state in the presidential election of 2011.

But he later struck up an apparent rapport with the British head of state, shaking hands with the Queen on more than one occasion.

In 2012, he announced he was standing down as the Member of Parliament for mid-Ulster although, in common with other Sinn Féin MPs, he had never taken his seat at Westminster.

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Image captionThe relationship between McGuinness and DUP leader Arlene Foster was less amicable than the one he shared with Paisley

He unexpectedly quit his post as deputy first minister in January 2017 following a row over a botched scheme, overseen by then First Minister Arlene Foster, to provide renewable energy for Northern Irish households which could end up costing the taxpayer £500m.

Ill health was also a factor in his decision to stand down. When he arrived at Stormont to hand in his resignation, he looked visibly frail.

He told the BBC it was "a big decision" and he would not stand for re-election.

"The honest answer is that I am not physically capable or able to fight this election, so I will not be a candidate," he said.

His resignation triggered an election in Northern Ireland as, under the peace agreement, the executive cannot function if one side walks out. In the event, the 2 March poll saw Sinn Féin making gains that ended the unionist majority in Stormont.

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Image captionIn January 2017 he congratulated Michelle O'Neill, who replaced him as the northern leader of Sinn Féin

Martin McGuinness married Bernadette Canning in 1972 and the couple had four children. Away from politics he enjoyed Gaelic football and hurling, both of which he had played in his younger days.

He was also keen on fly-fishing and cricket.

As an IRA leader, there is no doubt Martin McGuinness was hated and feared. But as a peacemaker, he possessed a personal charisma that he used to win over at least some of those who had viewed him with suspicion.

Moreover, his reputation as a hard man gave him the authority among Irish republicans to deliver major concessions, such as IRA disarmament and acceptance of a reformed police service.

Chuck Berry

2017-03-19T07:00:00.002-07:00

Chuck Berry's trademark four-bar guitar introduction and quickfire lyrics reflected the rebelliousness of the youth of the 1950s.

He was one of that exclusive group who took rhythm and blues from its black roots and "crossed over" to make it part of most teenagers' lifestyle.

He influenced generations of succeeding rock stars, most notably the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys.

Yet he faced major financial difficulties through mismanagement and had frequent brushes with the law.

Charles Edward Anderson Berry was born into a middle-class family in St Louis, Missouri, on 18 October 1926.

As a teenager he began playing concerts in his local high school but his education was curtailed after he was convicted of armed robbery and spent three years in a reformatory for young offenders.

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Image captionHe had one of the first rock and roll hits

On his release he made a living as a hairdresser, playing in a trio in the evenings with Ebby Harding on drums and Johnnie Johnson on piano. Johnson would remain with Berry throughout his career

He was influenced by blues heroes such as Muddy Waters and T-Bone Walker, as well as white country and western music, though his singing style owed much to the clarity of Nat King Cole.

"My music is simple stuff," he once said.

"Anyone can sit down, look at a set of symbols and produce sounds the music represents."

Charged

His recording career began in 1955 with the legendary Chess label in Chicago, where his first release Maybellene became one of rock and roll's first hits.

In the next few years, he scored a succession of hits, all aimed at an adolescent audience, including Roll Over Beethoven, Sweet Little Sixteen, Carol and the classic Johnny B. Goode.

His music transcended the colour bar that plagued many contemporary black artists as affluent white teenagers in Eisenhower's America reached out for something new.

"I play the songs they want to hear," he said.

"That makes them feel they're getting what they came for."

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Image captionThe so-called duck walk became a trademark

He appeared in several rock films including Rock, Rock, Rock and Mr Rock and Roll, both from 1957; Go Johnny Go from 1959; and Jazz on a Summer's Day in 1960.

In 1962 he was charged with transporting a minor across state lines for immoral purposes.

The girl in question was a 14-year-old from Texas who he claimed he had brought to Missouri to check hats at his St Louis nightclub.

After he fired her, she complained to the police. In court, the judge's summing-up was blatantly racist and the trial was eventually declared null and void.

Double entendres

His conviction at a second trial and the resulting two-year sentence left him embittered.

His release coincided with the rhythm and blues revival in Britain. With his material being covered by bands like The Beatles and the Rolling Stones, his work was discovered by a new generation.

"If you tried to give rock and roll another name," John Lennon famously said, "you might call it Chuck Berry."

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Image captionOn stage with Keith Richards at a 60th birthday tribute

Successful tours followed. He scored a few more hits with No Particular Place to Go and Memphis, Tennessee. His biggest hit came later in Britain with the atypical 1972 novelty record, My Ding-a-Ling, replete with double entendres.

When he wasn't churning out the hits, Chuck Berry was thrilling audiences with his live performances. His trademark became his duck walk, a crouching movement across the stage made during his guitar solos.

Offstage, he could be a prickly character, exemplified in the 1987 film Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll which featured a tour with a backing band organised by devotee Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones.

In the same year, he published an explicit autobiography genuinely penned by himself.

Jail sentence

Berry's attitude to money was notorious. He demanded cash upfront for many of his concerts and in 1979, he served a 100-day jail term for tax evasion.

There were further brushes with the law. In 1988 he settled a lawsuit from a woman he allegedly punched in the face.

Two years later he was sued by a group of women after it was discovered that a hidden camera had been placed in the toilets of his restaurant in Missouri.

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Image captionStill on the road at the age of 87

He also received a suspended jail sentence for marijuana possession.

Despite the advancing years, he continued playing one-night concerts and embarked on a European tour in 2008 at the age of 82.

In January 1986, Berry was among the first musicians to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with a citation that summed up his contribution to popular music.

"While no individual can be said to have invented rock and roll, Chuck Berry comes the closest of any single figure to being the one who put all the essential pieces together."

Berry himself had a simple explanation for his success.

"It amazes me when I hear people say, 'I want to go out and find out who I am.' I always knew who I was. I was going to be famous if it killed me."

John Surtees: Former F1 world champion

2017-03-10T10:02:00.001-08:00

John Surtees, who has died aged 83, is the only man to have won a grand prix world championship on two and four wheels.

A brilliant motorcyclist who dominated the top 500cc class for much of the late 1950s, Surtees moved on to cars and immediately established himself as a leading figure, winning the Formula 1 championship for Ferrari in 1964.
Through the mid-1960s he was one of the towering figures in F1 along with Jim Clark, Graham Hill, Jackie Stewart and Dan Gurney.
The son of a south London motorbike dealer, Surtees was a teenage prodigy on racing bikes and, after making his name in national races, he took the world championship by storm when he was given a factory MV Agusta ride in 1955.
His blistering speed earned him the nickname 'figlio del vento' - son of the wind - and he won the world title in 1956 and again from 1958-60.
Surtees had already made a name for himself while still competing on two wheels. He finished second in only his second Formula 1 race, the 1960 Monaco Grand Prix while driving for Lotus, and at the end of the season he switched to cars full time after winning his fourth bike title.
Two years in privateer teams followed, in which he did enough to catch the eye of Enzo Ferrari, who drafted him into his team in 1963. Immediately Surtees became a major contender.
His first win came in his first season with Ferrari at the German Grand Prix, held at the daunting Nurburgring, and he won the title the following season in a close fight with fellow Britons Clark and Hill, who drove for Lotus and BRM.
The championship went down to a remarkable decider at the final race in Mexico City. Hill went into the race as the favourite, five points ahead of Surtees and nine ahead of Clark.
But Hill was delayed by a collision with Surtees' team-mate Lorenzo Bandini. Clark was then on course to win after dominating from the front, but was forced to stop on the last lap with an oil leak.

Surtees won his sole Formula 1 World Championship in 1964, one point ahead of Graham Hill

Seeing the Scot's problems, Ferrari ordered Bandini to let Surtees by into second place, which gave him the title by one point from Hill.
Through the mid-1960s, Surtees was one of the leading drivers of an era particularly rich in talent.
His Ferrari could not compete with Clark's dominant Lotus in 1965, and despite 1966 starting well with a win in the second race of the season, Surtees walked out on the team following a row with team manager Eugenio Dragoni.
Surtees was Ferrari's team leader, but Dragoni dropped him from the line-up for the Le Mans 24-hour race after a rule change demanded only two drivers per car.
When Surtees asked for an explanation, Dragoni told him that he did not think he was fit enough to race for 24 hours as a result of injuries he had sustained in a serious accident in a Can-Am race in the US in late 1965. Surtees quit on the spot.
The decision was perfectly understandable in the context but it almost certainly cost him a second world title, for the Ferrari was more than competitive enough in his hands to have beaten eventual winner Jack Brabham.
Instead, Surtees found a temporary home at Cooper, before moving to the new factory Honda team in 1967.
He won for them in Italy and finished fourth in the championship, but the team left F1 at the end of the following year, partly because of the death of Frenchman Jo Schlesser in one of their cars.
Surtees had counselled against racing a new car with a body made of magnesium for lightness and an engine cooled by air rather than water because he felt it was unsafe.
But the team overruled him and gave the car to Schlesser to drive at his home race. He crashed at a fast downhill right-hander after just two laps. With almost an entire race's worth of fuel onboard and made of magnesium, the car caught fire immediately and Schlesser had no chance.
After two years with BRM, Surtees formed his own team in 1970, initially as a driver-cum-team boss, before retiring from full-time racing at the end of 1971 to concentrate on running the outfit.

John Surtees' own team, Surtees Racing, had less successful ventures than its boss. The team's best finish was third in the 1973 US Grand Prix

But it was not a success. After several uncompetitive seasons the team failed to find enough sponsorship to continue after 1978 and was disbanded.
Surtees stayed involved in motor racing, competing in classic events for cars and bikes, and in 2005-7 was chairman of the British team in the now-defunct A1 Grand Prix series.
After that, he helped guide the nascent career of his son Henry, who was killed aged 18 in an accident in a Formula Two race at Brands Hatch in 2009.
In the wake of his son's death, John set up the Henry Surtees Foundation to help people recovering from brain and physical injuries return to society and to support motorsport-related educational programmes.
He was widely admired as a warm character who was generous with his time, and many will echo the words of Damon Hill, who has known him well since childhood. "Such a lovely man. We have lost a true motorsport legend," said the 1996 world champion.

Debbie Reynolds

2017-02-21T01:05:00.003-08:00

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At the age of 19 Debbie Reynolds sealed her status as a Hollywood legend with her spirited performance as aspiring actress Kathy Selden in the 1952 musical classic Singin' in the Rain.

Her daughter Carrie Fisher was also just 19 when she auditioned for the role that would define her career as the feisty Princess Leia in the Star Wars films.

Reynolds died at the age of 84 following a stroke that came on just one day after her daughter's death - the stress was "too much", according to her son Todd Fisher.

"She wanted to be with Carrie," he said simply.

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Born Mary Frances Reynolds on 1 April 1932, in El Paso, Texas, her father was a carpenter for the Southern Pacific Railroad, and the family moved to California in 1939.

She made her entry to the world of American entertainment after being spotted at a beauty pageant in 1948, aged just 16, and she won a contract with film giant Warner Bros and later MGM.

It was her wholesome appeal that made her a major star by the mid-1950s, and she appeared in a string of films through the decades. Reynolds even made a stab at a career in pop music with her album entitled "Debbie" in 1959.

Her performance in The Unsinkable Molly Brown, a true-life rags-to-riches tale of a brash society doyenne who survived the sinking of the Titanic, earned her an Oscar nomination.

When accepting a lifetime achievement award at the Screen Actors Guild she told the audience: "My favourite movie was the Unsinkable Molly Brown and in that movie I got to sing a wonderful song called 'I Aint' Down Yet'

"Well I ain't," she asserted to huge applause.

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Her gift for dancing and performance ensured her dozens of roles in the musicals and light comedies Hollywood churned out in this era, but few came close to the fame Singin' in the Rain earned her, considered one of the industry's greatest musicals.

Throughout her life she was devoted to the heritage of Hollywood, the industry that made her, by assembling an astonishing collection of memorabilia that included Orson Welles' fur coat from Citizen Kane and a pair of ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz.

While she remained largely wholesome on screen her private life was not spared scrutiny.

Reynolds was married three times. Her first husband was singer Eddie Fisher in 1955 with whom she had two children; Carrie Fisher and Todd Fisher.

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Image captionDebbie Reynolds and husband Eddie Fisher in 1957

Their divorce became one of Hollywood's most notorious scandals when Fisher had an affair with actress Elizabeth Taylor who was at the time a friend of Reynolds'. The story gripped the public with Reynolds sometimes cast in the role of "America's Sweetheart". Years later Taylor and Reynolds revealed they had reconciled.

But in 2010 Reynolds disclosed: "I forgave, but I don't forget."

Reynold's second husband was millionaire businessman Harry Karl. By the time that marriage ended in 1973, Karl's gambling and investments meant Reynolds too was facing financial difficulties. She filed for bankruptcy in 1997.

Reynolds was also married to real estate developer Richard Hamlett from 1984 to 1996.

"All of my husbands have robbed me blind," she said in 1999. "The only one who didn't take money was Eddie Fisher. He just didn't pay for the children.''

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Image captionElizabeth Taylor and her husband Mike Todd at Derby Day with Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds in 1957

In her later life, a different image of Debbie Reynolds came through in the writings of Carrie Fisher. Theirs was a tempestuous but close relationship and Fisher's 1987 novel Postcards from the Edge is thought to be a thinly disguised portrait of Fisher's struggle with drugs and her sometimes difficult relationship with her Hollywood royalty mother.

In a 2010 interview with the New York Times , alongside her mother, Fisher says: "If anything, my mother taught me how to sur-thrive. That's my word for it. She would go through these amazingly difficult things, and the message was clear: Doing the impossible is possible. It's just not fun."

Shortly after Carrie Fisher died, Reynolds posted a poignant message on her Facebook page: "Thank you to everyone who has embraced the gifts and talents of my beloved and amazing daughter. I am grateful for your thoughts and prayers that are now guiding her to her next stop."

She signed off simply: "Love Carrie's mother".

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Image captionDebbie Reynolds with daughter Carrie Fisher in 2015

Graham Taylor

2017-02-21T01:03:00.000-08:00

Graham Taylor will be remembered by many for his unfulfilling spell in charge of England - but by plenty more as an outstanding club manager at Watford and Aston Villa and one of the nicest, most genuine men in the game.

The reaction to Taylor's death on Thursday at the age of 72, and the affection expressed for him, was the true measure of his standing inside and outside football.

Born in Worksop in Nottinghamshire, Taylor was the son of a journalist and rose to prominence in the game as a manager after retiring as a player with Lincoln City in 1972. He became manager and coach at the club, winning the Fourth Division title with them before moving to Watford in 1977.

It was here, in tandem with his chairman Sir Elton John, that he produced arguably his finest work, taking the club from the Fourth Division to the top flight in the space of five exhilarating years.

Taylor nurtured Watford legends such as Luther Blissett and John Barnes, remarkably finishing second behind Liverpool in their first season at that elite level and reaching the FA Cup final in 1984, where they lost 2-0 to Everton.

Not so long ago he joked with me, with his usual broad smile: "You know I have never watched any of that game from that day to this - but I don't need to see it again to know that second goal from Andy Gray was a bloody foul on our goalkeeper Steve Sherwood."

Taylor's unlikely partnership with the flamboyant rock star worked against the odds, the manager's down-to-earth approach dovetailing with his chairman's lavish lifestyle. They remained friends for life, as demonstrated by Sir Elton's heartfelt tribute.

On trips abroad when he worked as a BBC Sport pundit, Taylor would gladly tell stories of that partnership, always with a laugh and underlining the genuine affection they shared.

Taylor's brilliance inevitably attracted attention from elsewhere and, perhaps feeling he had achieved all he could at Vicarage Road, he left for Aston Villa in May 1987.

Villa were in reduced circumstances having been relegated to the second flight. Taylor soon put that right by winning promotion in his first season - and, not content with that, rebuilt the club with such success and shrewd management that he took them to second place behind Liverpool in 1990.

Taylor's methods were tried and trusted and yet he often received criticism for what his detractors perceived as "long ball" football. He, with much justification, pointed out his willingness to use wingers and flair players such as Barnes and the young Mo Johnston, whom he brought to England from Partick Thistle.

England inevitably looked in Taylor's direction after Sir Bobby Robson left following the 1990 World Cup in Italy, where his side lost to West Germany on penalties in the semi-final.

This was, without doubt, the darkest and most frustrating period of Taylor's career and is one of the reasons his other work has been so criminally underrated over the years.

Taylor took over at a tough time after the loss of England mainstays such as goalkeeper Peter Shilton and past captains such as Terry Butcher and Bryan Robson. He gave players like Alan Shearer and Martin Keown their first England caps - but he drew criticism for selecting players many simply felt were not international class, such as Carlton Palmer.

England reached Euro 92 in Sweden under Taylor but produced a series of disappointing performances, going out at the group stage after losing 2-1 to Sweden in Stockholm.

Taylor courted controversy and criticism in that decisive game by substituting England captain and main marksman Gary Lineker for Arsenal striker Alan Smith with a goal still needed - it never arrived and Lineker never played for England again. The manager was vilified and lampooned as a "turnip" in the Sun newspaper.

The campaign to qualify for the World Cup in the United States in 1994 also ended in failure, and was brutally chronicled in the fly-on-the-wall documentary 'The Impossible Job', which gave an intimate insight into the pressures Taylor was under.

Those struggles were illustrated starkly in the game that effectively sealed his fate, the 2-0 loss to the Netherlands in Rotterdam.

The tortured Taylor is seen on the sidelines pleading with officials after Ronald Koeman somehow escaped a red card for a foul on England's David Platt, only to be reprieved and score the brilliant free-kick that sent the Dutch on the way to victory.

He resigned the following month and stayed out of the game until returning at Wolves in March 1994. During his spell in charge he took them into the second-tier play-offs in 1994-95, where they lost to Bolton Wanderers.

Taylor left in November 1995 before returning to revisit old glories. Sir Elton John was back at the helm at Watford so it was no surprise when he turned to Taylor to come back to Vicarage Road as general manager in February 1996.

It was once more the perfect fit and he was back as manager a year later, winning the third-tier title in 1998 before putting Watford in the Premier League at the end of the following season after a play-off final victory over Bolton.

Watford, despite an early win at Liverpool, were relegated and the following season Taylor decided to retire - only to change his mind and make a comeback at Villa in February 2002. He retired for a second and final time after they struggled the following season.

It was the end of one chapter and the start of another as Taylor became a respected pundit on BBC Radio 5 live, a role he performed with total assurance and perception.

Taylor was part of the radio team that covered England. It was a sign of the esteem in which he was held by fans as well as players that whenever he encountered supporters abroad, he was treated with complete respect.

There was barely a reference from England followers to any of his struggles in charge of the national team. To them, Taylor was a true gentleman, to be given his due not just for his work but for his warm personality and willingness to discuss football matters with anyone he met.

He may have operated at the highest level but he never talked down to supporters and was always interested in how they viewed the game.

Archive: Media treated me like dirt after England - Taylor
Archive: Taylor told me to stick to cricket - Botham

As a BBC Sport colleague, Taylor was unfailingly co-operative and the consummate professional, willing to take a call at any time, even when he was meant to be spending time with his beloved wife Rita.

And as well as a fount of knowledge and a man with strong opinions, Taylor was also an endless source of entertainment and stories, just as happy to poke fun at himself as everyone else.

Graham Taylor was a top-class manager at club level and a true gentleman inside and outside of football. He will be greatly missed and perhaps now his work in management, viewed through the prism of this sad news, will finally get the credit it fully deserves
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Liz Smith

2017-02-21T00:57:00.001-08:00

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Liz Smith found fame as an actress at an age when most people are considering retirement.

It was a long road to eventual stardom, during which she struggled to raise a family after a broken marriage.

She became best-known for her roles in The Vicar of Dibley and The Royle Family but her talents encompassed serious drama too.

And while she made something of a name playing slightly dotty old ladies, the real Liz Smith was far removed from these on-screen personas.

She was born Betty Gleadle in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, on 11 December 1921.

Her early life was not happy. Her mother died in childbirth when she was just two years old and her father abandoned her when he remarried.

"My father was a bit of a sod, really. He just went off with loads of women and then married one who said he had to cut off completely from his prior life and that meant me."

She started going to the local cinema with her grandfather when she was four and she quickly gained a fascination for acting.

Image captionHer mastery of comic timing came to the fore in I didn't Know You Cared

By the age of nine, she was appearing in local dramatic productions, often playing the part of elderly ladies.

World War Two thwarted her plans and she joined the WRNS because, as she later told the BBC's Desert Island Discs, she loved the cut of the naval uniform.

She continued appearing in plays and entertainments while serving in the Royal Navy. She met her future husband Jack Thomas while she was stationed in India and the couple married at the end of the war.

Her grandmother had left her enough money to buy a house in London. Smith later remembered that she had picked it at random from a magazine and bought it without crossing the threshold.

Entertainer

But what had been an idyllic marriage failed shortly after the family moved to Epping Forest in Essex and she was left to bring up her two children alone.

With money tight, she worked in a number of jobs including delivering post and quality control in a plastic bag factory.

But her love for acting remained and she began buying the theatrical magazine, The Stage, and sending her photograph to casting agents.

Eventually she became part of a group studying method acting under a teacher who had come to the UK from America.

Image captionThe dotty parishioner she played in the Vicar of Dibley was far removed from her own character

She performed at the Gate Theatre in west London and spent many years in repertory, as well as spells as an entertainer in Butlins holiday camps.

In 1970, she was selling toys in London's Regent Street when she got a call from the director Mike Leigh to play the downtrodden mother in his film Bleak Moments.

Leigh cast her again in Hard Labour, part of the BBC's Play for Today series, a role that allowed her to shine.

She received critical acclaim as the middle-aged housewife who endures a life of domestic drudgery, constantly at the beck and call of her demanding husband and daughter.

Glamorous

It was the breakthrough she had sought for years and, as she later recalled: "I never went back to grotty jobs again."

She was seldom off the screen over the next 20 years, with appearances in a number of TV programmes including Last of the Summer Wine, The Sweeney, The Duchess of Duke Street and The Gentle Touch.

She was cast as Madame Balls in the 1976 film The Pink Panther Strikes Again, but her scenes were left on the cutting-room floor. However, she did appear in the role six years later in The Curse of the Pink Panther.

In 1984 she received a Bafta for Best Supporting Actress when she played Maggie Smith's mother in the film A Private Function.

Image captionHer role in the Life and Loves of a She Devil was one of her favourites

Two years later she appeared as Patricia Hodge's alcoholic mother in the BBC drama The Life and Loves Of A She Devil.

It was a part, she said, that she really enjoyed as it gave her the chance to wear more glamorous outfits than her usual roles required.

And she was able to dress up again for her next film appearance, this time in the role of Grace in Peter Greenaway's film The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.

She was still much in demand at the beginning of the 1990s, appearing in the sitcom 2point4 Children and in the series Lovejoy and Bottom.

Lucky

In 1994 she became a household name with her portrayal of Letitia Cropley in the series The Vicar of Dibley.

The character was famous for her idiosyncratic recipes such as parsnip brownies and lard and fish paste pancakes, but was killed off in 1996.

Two years later Liz Smith starred as Nana in The Royle Family, a sitcom that ran for nearly four years. She took the part again in 2006 in a special edition in which Nana died.

Typically, she attributed her success to Caroline Aherne's scripts rather than her own talent.

Image captionShe credited Caroline Aherne's scripts for her success in The Royle Family

"They were great roles," she later remembered. "I was so lucky that things did come my way then."

Unlike some actors, she watched recordings of her own performances looking for ways in which she could improve her acting.

She continued to appear in feature films, playing Grandma Georgina in Tim Burton's 2005 version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and she was the voice of Mrs Mulch in Wallace & Gromit -The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

In 2006 she published her autobiography Our Betty and moved into a retirement home in north London but continued acting.

She appeared in the BBC's Lark Rise to Candleford, finally announcing her retirement in 2008 at the age of 87.

It was a belief in her own talent that drove Liz Smith on when her life was at a low ebb. "All I wanted was a chance," she told the BBC. "It was wonderful when it did happen."