Britain is no country for old soldiers, Captain Joe Eastwood and Colonel Ian Brazier and a battalion called the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers

The Defence Secretary, Philip Hammond was interrupted during his Conservative Conference speech yesterday by 76 year old Captain Joe Eastwood and 59 year old, Colonel Ian Brazier and , who both served in The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5K45zmpPFYc

The Minister asked the two old soldiers to let him finish his speech as the Colonel shouted:  "

Tell the truth about the disbandment of the Fusiliers. I write you letters, you don't respond. The public must know the truth - the Fusiliers are loyal soldiers, you have betrayed them. Sir, you need to be looking at defence. This is denial, not defence. You're a disgrace."

The Colonel and the Captain were then escorted out of the Conference hall by security.

Outside the main hall to reporters, the good Colonel, Chairman of the Fusiliers Association, said he was speaking on "behalf of all retired fusiliers. I am very angry about the fact the 2nd Battalion, the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers is to be disbanded."

Minister Hammond said the decision was made by the Army :
"If they'd stayed in the hall a bit longer they would have heard the case that I was building in my speech for why we have to invest in the new capabilities we need to defend Britain. While we all cherish our military traditions - and we have great regiments with proud histories - we have to reduce the size of our conventional armed forces as we are investing for example in new cyber. The Army has made the decision about how it needs to restructure to be able to defend Britain in the future with a smaller army than we've had in the past. These two RRF guys - the campaign's been long running - they know very well the point that we are making."

The Colonel said :
"It's our battalion, thousands of soldiers. Your battalion because if you live in Manchester or Birmingham we've been recruiting there for 300 years. We're not some passing fantasy - 1674 our regiment started proudly and has served its country through generation after generation."

 

Britain, no country for old men suffering from dementia today, will continue to be, for more and more of them tomorrow

As the population of Britain ages, an increasing number of old men and women are living with dementia. Some 800,000 are already affected and that number is set to rise to 1 million by 2021 and to 1.7 million by 2051. Last year dementia is estimated to have cost Britain £23,000,000,000.
In Britain in 2013, almost half of us have a relative or close friend with the condition and one in three of us will develop it ourselves in the future, yet  it is currently estimated that 55% of those living with dementia haven't been diagnosed.

 

At a recent seminar hosted by 'The Guardian' and in focused on  how can this huge challenge be met, Alison Cook, Director of External Affairs at the Alzheimer's Society said :
" Dementia is the most feared disease in the over-50s and very many people are frightened to talk about it."

Sarah Rochira, 'Older People's Commissioner for Wales', recounted seeing many dementia patients "staring at the walls all day" or stripped from the waist because their continence issues were too difficult to deal with. "I have seen many wonderful front line services but I've met too many people for whom we are not getting it right for us to be complacent. I think we have a long way to go. Our benchmark should be to provide the best care for the people we care about and for ourselves in the future."

Professor Tom Dening, 'Chair of Dementia Research at the University of Nottingham', said : "Various parts of the current system that make me want to weep", particularly the lack of adequate support for people who have just been diagnosed with dementia. "We are under such pressure with the cascade of people we are referred we can't provide continuity and we simply shove them back to primary care until there's a crisis."

Trish Morris-Thompson, 'Director of Quality and Clinical Governance' at Barchester Healthcare, said prejudices in society about old people, and those with dementia in particular, needed to be addressed. All services needed to work together to bring about change. "I don't believe piecemeal works – it has to be right across the system. We have to have the ambition to get the right care in the right place and we can only do that by collaborating."

Prime Minister David Cameron launched his 'Dementia Challenge' last year saying : "Dementia is one of the biggest challenges we face today – and it is one that we as a society simply cannot afford to ignore any longer."

So, Sarah thinks : "We have a long way to go." Tom : "could weep". Trish calls for 'collaboration', David talks about our : "biggest challenge" and JohnBoy says : "Old men with dementia are very low on the social agenda" and he "doubts if very much will be done at all."

My earlier Post :
Tuesday, 21 May 2013

Britain is no country for old men with dementia without support and in the dark about what is happening to them
http://britainisnocountryforoldmen.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/britain-is-no-country-for-old-men-with.html

 

 

 

Britain is now, but for forty years, was no country for an old film director called Robin Hardy and a film called 'The Wicker Man'

I saw Robin Hardy's film, 'The Wicker Man', when it was released 40 years ago. It remains the creepiest film I have ever seen. Written by Anthony Shaffer, the story centres on the visit of Police Sergeant Neil Howie to the isolated island of Summerisle in search of a missing girl the locals claim never existed. Howie, a devout Christian, is appalled to find that the inhabitants of the island practise a form of Celtic paganism. The film title is taken from the large wicker statue of a man, once used by the ancient druid priests for human sacrifice by fire and burning and reserved in the film for the good sergeant.

What you possible didn't know about the 84 year old Robin, seen here on the right on location with Anthony Shaffer in the centre, that :

* his film has been almost fully restored to its original length after it had been ignominiously cut to form a B-feature below Nicolas Roeg's 'Don't Look Now'.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXFYU3v-wL4

* in 2004 saw the film magazine, 'Cinefantastique' describe his film as : 'The 'Citizen Kane' of horror movies' and during the Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony London 2012 saw it included as part of a sequence that celebrated British cinema.

*  in 2006, disassociated himself from the ill-received  American remake starring Nicholas Cage.

* has seen the film's music composer, Paul Giovanni pass away in 1990 :
Willow's Song : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFbAM84SejU
and writer Anthony Shaffer in 2001, followed by the actors Edward Woodward in 2009, Ingrid Pitt in 2010, Ingrid Pitt in 2010 and Diane Cilento in 2011.

My earlier post : Thursday, 25 November 2010 : Britain is a country where old men remember 'Countess Dracula' and say "Goodbye" to a remarkable woman called Ingrid Pitt http://britainisnocountryforoldmen.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/britain-is-country-where-old-men_25.html

 * shares the success of the release of the film's final cut with 91 year old Christopher Lee and 71 year old Britt Ekland.

* has directed 3 films in the 40 years since the release of The Wicker Man.

Clips from the film :

Sergeant Howie meets the islanders in the pub :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gsaep-xLKG4

The maypole scene :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2vUs2kj1kQ

Final Scene :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0Szoz8LxDA

" I think I could turn and live with animals. They are so placid and self-contained. They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins. They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God. Not one of them kneels to another or to his own kind that lived thousands of years ago. Not one of them is respectable or unhappy, all over the earth." - Lord Summerisle

P.S.
My earlier post about film director Nicholas Roeg :

Thursday, 15 August 2013 : Britain is still a country for and says "Happy Birthday" to an old cinematographer and film director called Nicholas Roeg http://britainisnocountryforoldmen.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/britain-is-still-country-for-and-says_15.html

Britain is still a country for and says "Happy Birthday" to a very old academic called Richard Hoggart who changed its cultural landscape half a century ago

Richard  whose book, 'Uses of Literacy' published when he was 39 in 1957, propelled him, then an extramural lecturer at the University of Hull, to the forefront of the changes that swept British culture from the sclerotic 1950's into the swinging 60's, is 95 years old today.

What you possibly didn't know about Richard, that he :

* was born in Leeds in 1918, where his father, who had served in the Boer war, was a house painter and served in the First World War in the pay corps and died in 1920 of brucellosis, leaving Richard, with his brother and sister, to be brought up by his mother in a 'stone cottage with a small yard and outside loo. It really was something out of Dickens. She managed on £1 a week, which was what the local social security, as it is called now, gave her.'

* when he was eight, returned home from school one day to find his mother collapsed on the floor and witnessed her die  of TB shortly afterwards and then went  to live with his Grandmother and for several years, had to share a bed with an uncle.

* gained a place at grammar school and won a scholarship to Leeds University at the age of 18 in 1936 after an aunt gave him elocution lessons because he couldn't pronounce his 'Rs' or 'Ls' and became, in his own words : 'a very hard-working student and because there were no books in the house, I would spend long periods in the reading room of the library. I discovered Swinburne for myself there, and other poetry, which was wonderful." 

* within a week of graduating, started an MA on Swift, which he completed in nine months, then two months later, in 1940, he was called up to fight in the Second World War in the Royal Artillery and took part in the invasion of North Africa.and served in Naples, which he called "Leeds in Technicolor", before returning to England, being demobbed in 1946 as a staff captain. 

* became a lecturer at Hull University in the extramural department and described the impulse to write 'The Uses of Literacy', as being like an 'intellectual tapeworm' and in which he asked the questions : as a society becomes more affluent, does it lose other values? Are the skills that education and literacy gave millions wasted on consuming pop culture? Do the media coerce us into a world of the superficial and the material or can they be a force for good?
 
* soon after publication, was asked to contribute to the 'Albemarle Report on Youth Services' and in 1958 he moved to Leicester University as a senior English lecturer and two years later, joined the Pilkington Committee Inquiry into broadcasting and drafted the final report, which recommended that the proposed third television channel, BBC2, should be given to a public, not private, broadcaster.

 * in 1960, was asked by Allen Lane of Penguin Books to help in the obscenity trial of the D.H.Lawrence book, 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' and later said : "I agreed to speak if necessary but when I got a call I really didn't know what to expect, Then I was met at the Old Bailey by one of the defence team, who told me I'd better get in there and dig in hard because the prosecutor, Griffith-Jones, who was snobbish and a bully and everything I come out in spots about, had just made a distinguished woman professor cry."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yGuXL4OP_U

* with the failure of the obscenity trial, found himself in the vanguard of the cultural change which ushered in the 'permissive sixties' which breached many old taboos.

* with his profile raised, was offered a chair at Birmingham University and accepted on condition that he would  to start a 'centre for contemporary cultural studies' and later said : "The Lady Chatterley trial made me think there should be a body that was interested in English not just as it was academically defined, but also as it applied to the general culture. At that time the definition of English studies was very rigid and yet outside there was a culture that was not derisory but was little understood and said something about the human spirit."

* in 1970, accepted the post of Deputy Director-General at Unesco in Paris where he worked for five years and on his return to Britain at the age of 57 in the mid-70s, became warden of Goldsmiths College in South-East London and then served and was dropped from the Arts Council because Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher, did not regard him as 'one of us'.


* was described by Sir Roy Shaw, then Executive Head of the Council, as : "he has never become in any way pompous, no matter how important his job was. He always stayed an ordinary bloke, although in fact he was always an extraordinary, ordinary bloke."

* has said of himself : "I was driven by my childhood to get on, but not in the sense of becoming a millionaire or anything like that. The ambition was to do something useful and interesting and somehow involving my writing. And I did have an impulse to criticise because there was a lot to criticise. I was brought up in a world where just about everyone assumed they would stay there all their lives and I resented that deeply. There are two types of life; the first is the escalator life, where you move inexorably upwards, the other type is the carousel where you go round and round. One of my arguments is that there are enough people making it their business to ensure that people stay on the carousel."
 

Britain is no longer a country for and says "Goodbye" to an old doctor epidemiologist called David Baker who showed that mothers were the key to the good or bad health of old men

David, who has died aged 75, put forward, the initially controversial, but now widely accepted 'Barker Hypothesis' or 'foetal programming hypothesis' that ;

* the environment of the foetus and infant – determined by the mother's nutrition and the baby's exposure to infection after birth – determines the pathologies of later life.

* that common chronic illnesses such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes result not always from bad genes and an unhealthy adult lifestyle, but from the poor intrauterine and early postnatal health of mothers.

* "Across the world there is now general agreement that human beings are like motor cars. They break down either because they are being driven on rough roads or because they were badly made in the first place. Rolls-Royce cars do not break down no matter where they are being driven. How do we build stronger people? By improving the nutrition of babies in the womb. The greatest gift we could give the next generation is to improve the nutrition and growth of girls and young women."

What you possibly didn't know about David, that he :

*  was born in London, the son of a concert cellist mother and engineer father and at the age of 11, after the Second World War, attended Oundle independent boys' boarding school in Northamptonshire where his interest in science was encouraged by his exceptional biology teacher, Ioan Thomas (right), who also inspired the biologist Richard Dawkins when he was a pupil there.
http://britainisnocountryforoldmen.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/britain-is-still-country-for-and-says_26.html

* was given the freedom to roam the fields, woods, and riverbanks around the school, where he developed his interest in British beetles and was given after-hours access to the biology classrooms and used the equipment to classify his finds and when he left school, the Natural History Museum asked him to mount an expedition to collect plant specimens from the Icelandic offshore island of Grimsey.

* undertook medical training at Guy's Hospital, London and took a year out to do a BSc in 'Physical Anthropology, Comparative Anatomy, Embryology and Mammalian Biology' and during that time, studied under the famous zoologist, JZ Young (left) and wrote his first paper, on the 'effects of testosterone on bone density', published in 'Nature' in 1962.

* after qualifying as a doctor became a research fellow in the Department of Social Medicine at Birmingham University in 1963 studying under Tom McKeown, a social epidemiologist looking at factors influencing  health and disease in the population.

* at the age of  31, with a grant from the Medical Research Council took his wife and four young children to Uganda, to research 'Buruli ulcer', a little known disabling infection thought to be mosquito -borne with the Scottish surgeon Wilson Carswell (left), later famous for his work on the origins of AIDS and the inspiration for the book and film, 'The Last King of Scotland'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV_QgKJFZP0

* demonstrated that wounds caused by the razor-sharp reeds growing near the River Nile were behind the transmission of the Buruli disease and in the process  learned the importance of observing how people lived in order to fully understand disease.

* had his stay in Uganda cut short when President Idi Amin plunged the country into crisis with his coup in 1971 and with his declaration that westerners were no longer welcome, feared for his family’s safety and drove them at night into neighbouring Kenya, ostensibly for a holiday but actually in flight.

* back in Britain became Professor of Clinical Epidemiology at the University of Southampton Medical School at the age of 41 in 1979 and in 1984, Director of the M.R.C.'Environmental Epidemiology Unit' and made his maps of Britain showing neonatal and post-neonatal mortality in the 1910's and 20's showed a strong geographical correlation with maps showing death from heart disease 60 to 70 years later and for the first time, was hit with the realisation that an adverse environment in the womb and during infancy might be linked to the risk of chronic disease in later life.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpkYmXNXNAE

* set out his ideas in a series of books, starting with 'Mothers, Babies and Disease in Later Life' in 1994 and saw his new field of research named the 'Developmental Origins of Health and Disease', with his thinking that 'the poorer health of people in lower socio-economic groups or living in impoverished places is linked to past and present neglect of the welfare of mothers and babies'.

* is remembered fondly by his colleagues for his humour with his Unit always alive with banter and his brilliant  after-dinner speaking which he agreed to perform only rarely, but prepared for in meticulous detail, giving astonishing performances but remained a deeply private, thoughtful and caring man, for whom family life was central.

  

P.S.
An earlier post :                  

Saturday, 7 May 2011

Britain is a country whose old men are much older than they thought they were

http://britainisnocountryforoldmen.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/britain-is-country-whose-old-men-are.html

                                                 

Britain is no country for old men in Manchester who won't have a healthy future but is one for those in Richmond upon Thames who will

The Office for National Statistics has published, for the first time, estimates for 'healthy life expectancy', the age at which old men and women  are likely to reach, before ill health seriously affects their quality of life. They show that old men living in the green, suburban, affluent borough of Richmond upon Thames in south-west London can expect to live for 70.3 years, before succumbing to ill health, compared to the paltry 55 years their middle aged counterparts in Manchester (below) can expect, not far behind Tower Hamlets at 55.7 years.

 The findings are based on the 'Annual Population Survey', which questioned more than 250,000 people and asked whether people’s general health was : 'very good,' 'good', 'fair', 'bad' or 'very bad' and whether they had any long-standing disabilities which limited day-to-day activities.

Michelle Mitchell, Director General of charity 'Age UK,' spoke out against plans to raise the state pension age for men and women  which will begin to go up to 66 after 2020 and will rise to 68 in the 2040s, warning that in future most people will not be able to enjoy any of their retirement while still healthy and said :
 "These figures reveal the huge variations in the health of older people across England. It is further evidence that wealthier parts of the country have significantly more older people in good health than poorer areas. These glaring health inequalities must be tackled urgently, particularly as the Government is contemplating further increases to the state pension age. Otherwise the situation could easily arise where the average person in many areas will not enjoy any retirement in good health."

 

Dr John Middleton, of the 'Faculty of Public Health' said:

"These figures are an important part of a bigger picture of data that tells us why some people live longer than others. We know healthy life expectancy is determined by our chances  of being in a job, living in decent housing and having an adequate income. Clearly having a healthy lifestyle makes a big difference, but so does being in employment'.

So old men in the borough of Richmond Upon Thames in 2013, you are Britain's favoured old men because you live in one of a number of affluent villages like Kew, Barnes and Hampton, in green and open areas and where unemployment stands at just 4%.

While you old men in Manchester, you are less than favoured, confined as you are in an urban environment, brown and enclosed, where unemployment is high. 

Richmond upon Thames and Manchester in 1813, also 'a place' and 'no place' for healthy old men. Two hundred years. No change.


 

Britain is still a country for an old, brave Scots comedian called Billy Connolly

When 70-year-old Billy underwent an operation for prostate cancer in the US which was ‘a total success’, doctors spotted signs of Parkinson's disease which affects 127,000, mostly old Britons and whose symptoms include tremors, rigidity of muscles, slowness of movement, unsteady balance and memory loss. This chimes with the fact that fans were concerned earlier this year when he started to forget his lines during performances and a show at the Waterfront Hall in Belfast in April was interrupted by moments when he asked the audience what he was talking about and said :
" This is terrifying. I feel like I’m going out of my mind."

Despite all this, the old Scot is determined to soldier on, keeping commitments to start filming a TV series in the near future, as well as undertaking an extensive theatrical tour of New Zealand next year.
 
Apparently, about 5 in 1,000 old men and women in their 60s, and about 40 in 1,000 very old men and women people in their 80s in Britain have the condition for which there is no cure and no known cause.
 

TV chat show presenter, 78 year old Michael Parkinson, who is also battling prostate cancer himself and helped launch Billy's career said :
"I spoke to Billy before his surgery to wish my old friend well, and I’m pleased it has all gone well. I’m looking forward to seeing Billy back doing what he does best – making us all laugh."
 
Bob Geldof said his ‘great friend’,  married to psychologist and actress Pamela Stephenson, would not be deterred by his illness :
"He’s helped me lots in my endeavours. Pam and Bill are great mates. He’s as strong as an ox mentally from everything he’s been through as a kid, so I don’t think this will deter him from being that individual that we know."

When Bob refers to 'everything he’s been through as a kid' he might have been referring to the fact that Billy :

* was born at home in Anderston, Glasgow where his mother abandoned him and the other children when he was barely four years old and when his father was still away in the Army.

* was brought up with his elder sister by two aunts who resented them for the fact that they had to sacrifice their young lives in order to look after them and Billy himself suffered physical and sexual abuse by his father, which began when he was ten and lasted until he was about fifteen.

* in his teens, joined the part-time Territorial Army Reserve Parachute Regiment and later recalled his experiences in the 'Weekend Soldier' :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmioXLfTl6w

* in 1966, after completing his five-year boiler maker apprenticeship in the Glasgow shipyards, accepted a ten-week job building an oil platform in Nigeria and on return to Scotland, focused increasingly on being a folk singer and worked with Gerry Rafferty (left).
http://britainisnocountryforoldmen.blogspot.com/2011/01/britain-is-no-longer-country-for-sad.html

After the rocky beginnings went on to enjoy fame as a circuit comedian and :

* at the age of 33 appeared on the 'Parkinson Show' :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Slw08b3bHFE

* at 38, in 1980, made Angie Dickinson convulse with laughter :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DcDzJmW6Qg

* at 54, as John Brown in the 1996 film 'Mrs Brown' with Judi Dench as Queen Victoria :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsnOyuU2o6A

Steve Ford, Chief Executive at 'Parkinson’s UK', said:

"One person every hour will be diagnosed with Parkinson’s in Britain, despite this, it remains a little understood condition and we salute Billy’s bravery in speaking out about his condition at this difficult time. Many people, with the right medication, continue to live a full and active live with Parkinson's, but for some, it can be life changing and it is vital that Billy gets the support he needs to live with this complex condition. We wish Billy and his family all the best as they come to terms with this upsetting diagnosis." 

Britain is no country and Shoreham-by-Sea no port for an old Russian sea captain called Mikhail Polyakov but for the help of the Apostleship of the Seas

Captain Polyakov has apparently had a 40-year career at sea, which puts him at least in his sixties and he looks as though it might be his late sixties.

What you almost certainly didn't know about Mikhail that he :

* began his sea life has taken him from novice sailor in a Soviet outpost to the helm of his decommissioned East German warship which for nearly eight months, has been impounded in the waters of Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex leaving him marooned on board after 'Independent Shipping', the British company which hired him, failed to pay a £32,000 fuel bill.

* had his ship, the 'Independent's served with an arrest notice in January by the Admiralty Marshal and cannot leave port and over the ensuing months has seen most of the nine-strong crew leave ship with no wages, some paying their own way home to Russia or Ukraine, leaving him alone on board, save the company of a  Ukrainian able seaman, Igor Aleynykov..

* is owed almost £18.000 in salary but is in good spirits and jokes that he has spent a year in British waters and will be able to marry an English woman and enter the country while his wife in Russia exists on her doctor's salary.

* without a full visa, is tied to the port with local 'Apostleship of the Seas' volunteers taking him to the shops and spends his days on board checking the ropes and tending the auxiliary engines and said : "I look after them as if [they were] a child."

* is troubled by the risk of fire

* on aboard his deteriorating ship, once Destroyer Number 41 in the navy of the former German Democratic Republic, is troubled by the risk of fire and the state of the ropes because when the 2,000-tonne ship strains at its mooring, there is a danger of it breaking free.

* had some back pay paid in March and another £5,000 in July, but chose to forward it to another member of his unpaid crew and said that : "I am absolutely sure : if I leave, I will never get my wages and my crewmen ashore will not."

Chris Grosscurth, General Manager of 'Independent Shipping' said : "We were struggling like any other normal company. It's a terrible situation but the best thing we can do is sell the ships."


John Green, Development Director of 'Apostleship of the Seas,' says: "We come across a lot of abandoned crews, but this is exceptional in the duration. When a firm is in trouble, the crew's wages are pretty much the first things to go. It's often difficult to put your finger on where the whole thing lies, but this affair just shows that the welfare of seafarers is precarious. Who's there for them?"

Britain was once a country for and now says "Goodbye" to an old celebrity photographer from the Swinging 60's called Lewis Morley

Lewis, who created many of the era-defining photographic images of the 1960s, has died in Australia at the age of 88 and although that Continent had been his home since 1971, he was a resident in Britain for 26 years from 1945 and this is where he produced his most memorable work.

What you possibly didn't know about Lewis, that he :

* was born in Hong Kong in 1925, one of the three children of a Chinese mother and English father, who was chief pharmacist to the colony and during the Second World War from 1941 to '45, was held, with his family, in Stanley Internment Camp (right) by the occupying Japanese army.

* on release, emigrated with the family to Britain, did National Service in the Royal Air Force where he experimented with photography in the style of Cartier-Bresson, then used watercolours he produced in the Camp to win a place to study at Twickenham College of Art at the age of 24 in 1949.

* had a portfolio of photographs published in 'Photography Magazine' at the age of 32 in 1957 as the latest 'Young Britain' discovery, then worked for 'Tatler Magazine' photographing fashionable subjects : the newly married Peter Hall and Leslie Caron in 1961 and the swinging sixties 'Jay Twins', daughters of the Labour Minister Douglas Jay, in front of the new red-brick University of Sussex the year before I too became an undergraduate there in 1965.

* became 'de facto' photographer of the new satirical 'Private Eye' magazine and moved his studio to an upper floor above  Peter Cook ran the Establishment Club in the heart of Soho and produced spoof portraits of  'Spotty Muldoon' wearing a brown paper bag over his head and fashion photographs such as 'The Loony Look' in 1967, featuring Willie Rushton, Barry Fantoni and Diana Clarke satirising fashions of the day by posing in army surplus clothes.

* photographed the 'Beyond the Fringe' Revue team of Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller in Regent's Park against builders' roadwork screens as the cover for their bestselling album which subsequently became the prototype of a pop group's album cover, albeit that they were satirists rather than pop stars.

* dabbled in real fashion stories, working with models Marie-Lise Gres and Jenny Boyd for the magazines  'She' and 'Harper's Bazaar' and took the first published photographs as a fashion model of Jean Shrimpton for 'Go!' Magazine in 1961 and of Twiggy in an old fur coat, published in 'London Life' magazine in 1965, before she officially became 'the face of 1966'.

* was introduced to theatre photography at the Royal Court by Lindsay Anderson who commissioned him to photograph 'Serjeant Musgrave's Dance' in 1959, the first of more than 100 stage plays including Albert Finney as 'Billy Liar' (left0 as well as stage actors Tom Courtenay, Peter O'Toole, Alan Badel and John Hurt.

* was in 1971, persuaded by friends who had already left Britain, to emigrate with his family to Australia where he began a new career specialising in interiors photography and some portraiture, retired in 1987 and lived to see his work recently enjoy critical approval in Australia's leading museums.

* had this year, 50 years on from the 1963 'Profumo Affair', in which the Government Minister John Profumo, the Secretary of State for War, resign after an affair with 'call girl' Christine Keeler, his only surviving vintage print of her straddling his studio chair, on display in the National Portrait Gallery Exhibition, 'Scandal 63'.

* was filmed, not so ling ago and when very much alive and proving : "You can take the boy out of the 60s, but you can't take the 60s outta the boy" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbioRFDZoR4