#no i am not projecting my failed music career on rip/s

[heatsu]

tfw you left your family to pursue your music career in the big city™ only to get roasted by professors on your entrance exam and not get into university because you don't have enough experience and knowledge for your age

now you have nowhere to go and life is shit

[ellvie]

aaaand here’s the connections list for all of my characters that i’ve basically ripped off of everyone else so under the cut you can find taken & wanted plots for all four of my chars! pls lmk if i missed smth or if you would like to plot!

elvie croft

twenty - four, youtuber/tv show host. obsessed with halloween, horror movies and the 80s. is practically a living breathing cartoon character. from salem, massachusetts.

FAMILIAL

paternal cousins - maxine croft

maternal cousins - willow sparks

ROMANTIC

wife - astrea croft

unrequited crush - open.

flirts with him for clout - courtney summers

PLATONIC

best friend forever - margo massey

best guy friend - duncan mcleod and bennett rhys

close friend / ghost gallery costar - logan palmer

family friends - rosalind cox, open to more.

coolsville costars - margo massey, casey mitchell, rosalind cox

friends - wren daily, sahar santini, genesis iver-zaleski, chance kauri, camila jackson, reese villin, romeo harrington, callie mae randall, open to more.

friend/birthday twin - isla thompson

unlikely friends - eden o’connor, chance kauri, open to more.

online → irl friends - saint bonnay, open to a few.

acquaintances - torrance keynes, axel rivers, casey mitchell, open to more.

frenemies - beckley bovér, open to more.

pretends to be his friend for clout - open to a few.

NEGATIVE

enemies / on bad terms - angel almeida, open to more.

former friends - luna reyes, anastasia sangster, open to more.

hal zaleski

twenty - three, two - time olympic gold medalist and professional hockey player with the new york rangers. loves his cat, a fuckboy, a Tough Guy™, and surprisingly fluent in french. from toronto, canada.

FAMILIAL

former stepsibling - open wc on the main! P L E A S E

current stepsibling - torrance keynes

paternal cousins - warren daily and wren daily

maternal cousins / best friend - alek garcia

ROMANTIC

wife - genesis iver-zaleski

ex - fiancée - isabel nichols

ex on good terms - margo massey, alaska almeida, open to more.

ex on bad terms - ivy petit, open to more.

ex who cheated on him - isla thompson, alexis simmons, open to more tbh. 

“ex” - reese villin

exes on good or bad terms - open to many. PLEASE he has a BUNCH especially on bad terms

former fwb - open to several.

PLATONIC

confidant - mia lancaster

acquaintances - courtney summers

friends - chance kauri, angel almeida, marnie marisol, cade jackson, saint bonnay, ian jensen, open to more.

frenemies - open to a few.

NEGATIVE

on bad terms - casey mitchell, open to more.

riley parker-warrington

twenty - six, lead singer and guitarist for punk band rabid porcupine. born into one of THE WEALTHIEST families in the uk. never goes anywhere without his favorite knife and has a dog named heroin bob. from cheshire, england.

FAMILIAL

older twin brother, can’t stand each other - rian parker-warrington 

future stepsister - genesis iver-zaleski

maternal cousin, don’t get along - open.

paternal cousin, basically the only family member he likes - open. 

ROMANTIC

girlfriend / love of his life - anastasia sangster

ex on good terms - rylee ames

unrequited crush - alek garcia

ex on bad terms - mia lancaster, open to more. P L E A S E

former on / off relationship - open.

former ewb - alaska almeida

former fwb - open to more.

PLATONIC

best friend / ride or die - ivy petit, mason grey

close friend / former pr relationship - reese villin

bandmates - millie windsor, mason grey, lavender brooks

acquaintances - phoebe sangster, open to more.

friends - warren daily, willow sparks, normani baldwin, carter baker, open to more.

party friends - chance kauri, cade jackson, saint bonnay, open to more.

friends / former boarding school roommates / menaces - augustus pierce

unlikely friends - wren daily, open to more.

frenemies - open to more.

NEGATIVE

enemies - give him a million more because he’s A GOBLIN

ex friends - margo massey, logan palmer, open to more.

enemies / lifelong feud - casey mitchell

childhood enemies - angel almeida

JYNX

twenty - five, singer and professional nuisance to record companies, managers, collaborators, exes, and basically anyone who’s ever met her. positive traits are often overshadowed and forgotten due to the intensity of her negative traits. from the upper east side, nyc. 

FAMILIAL

maternal cousin - torrance keynes

paternal cousin - margo massey

stepsibling, grew up together - ajay adani

ROMANTIC

ex / first love - callie mae randall

ex on bad terms - logan palmer, chance kauri

pr relationship - open wc on the main! P L E A S E

exes on good or bad terms - open to a few although she probs has a bunch who hate her

fwb - open to a few.

ewb - open to a few.

one night stand - alek garcia, open to a few.

PLATONIC

best friends / #girlsquad - open to two!

pr friends - rosalind cox, open to a few.

friends ( fake or real tbh ) - alexis simmons, saint bonnay, open to many.

frenemies - open to many.

NEGATIVE

enemies - open to many.

ex - friend / collaborator - romeo harrington

ex - friends - open to many.

family rivalry - open.

people she used to advance her career and then ghosted - open to many.

failed music collaborations - open to many. she’s driven several potential collaborators to quit before the project is finished.

[upalldown]

The National - I Am Easy To Find

Album number eight from the Ohio indie rock band recorded in Aaron Dessner's home studio features guest appearances from Sharon Van Etten, Gail Ann Dorsey, Lisa Hannigan, Kate Stables, Mina Tindle and the Brooklyn Youth Choir

11/13

Necessity’s the mother of invention, and just as U.K. racism gave rise in the late 1970s to the activist, mixed-race Two Tone scene, so has #MeToo informed a new wave of indie-rock. For a culture that likes to fancy itself woke despite an ongoing tradition of sexism and sexual predation, it’s heartening to see not only a new generation of women and non-binary artists up front, but cis bros evidently rethinking their work and privilege in gender-mixed contexts. This year, Conor Oberst and Phoebe Bridgers teamed up as Better Oblivion Community Center. Ezra Koenig unveiled Vampire Weekend 2.0 on Father of The Bride with vocal help from Danielle Haim (and bonus points for the metatextual sample of Jenny Lewis singing the word “boy.”) On I Am Easy to Find, another standard-bearing indie dude brand has reconfigured itself with multiple women’s voices at the LP’s core, a portion of the roughly 77 musicians that temporarily explode the band’s quintet. The album was also conceived of a piece with a luminously sad and lovely short film of the same name, directed with emotive minimalism by Mike Mills (20th Century Women), and starring Alicia Vikander, who pulls off a heartbreaking and quietly astonishing hat-trick by aging from cradle to grave in 26 minutes with no perceivable changes beyond movements and mannerisms.

Evidently, as the African proverb suggests, it takes a village. But this art mobbing isn’t out of character for The National, a band that’s spent much of their career snowballing community, through festival curation (Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, the Eaux Claires Festival), producing friends’ records (for a time at Aaron Dessner’s Brooklyn home studio), operating a label (Brassland), and marshaling outsized projects like a five-plus-hour Grateful Dead homage (Day of The Dead) and the ever-growing 37d03d (aka: PEOPLE) collective.

I Am Easy to Find is, however, the first time they’ve applied this approach to the band itself, and they pull it off without diluting their National-ness. It’s a balancing act. “You Had Your Soul With You” begins with a stuttering melody built of sample-shards and Matt Berninger’s signature baritone incantations, which outline a failed relationship. The third verse is sung by Gail Ann Dorsey, Berninger eventually joining her in rueful harmony. The lyrical and formal suggestion, explored throughout the record, seems to be that it takes two to tango, and despite the canyon that separates our perceptions, however gendered, we all share vast tracts of emotional territory, and are capable of deep empathy. Whether we act on it is another story.

Dorsey’s dusky contralto, once David Bowie’s foil, also melds with Berninger’s voice on “Roman Holiday” and “Hey Rosie.” Tracks featuring higher-register singers plumb different tensions. “Oblivions” begins with Berninger trading lines with French singer/songwriter (and Bryce Dessner’s wife) Mina Tindle, before their voices converge, with Tindle out front, singing about marriage and the fear it fails to erase (“It’s the way you say yes when I ask you to marry me/You don’ t know what you are doing/Do you think you can carry me/Over the threshold/Over and over again until oblivion?”). That Beninger hangs back in the mix is interesting, both because it’s ostensibly his show, and for how pop songs — in mixing and arrangements — have historically treated women’s voices as subservient to men’s, not unlike the way photographic technology favors Caucasian skin tones. Tonal balance and audio separation are small gestures, but they demonstrate the breadth of cultural sexisms that need dismantling.

The duet-centered songs are the strongest. In its poignant tick-tocking piano melody, the camera-shutter percussion, the bleep-blorp electronics, the brightly funereal brass, the elegant choral and string arrangements, the title track beautifully skeins almost every sonic byway the group’s been exploring lately. A Big Apple tale, Berninger sings about “towers,” lies, and the way city life can rip a union apart, with Kate Stables, of the idiosyncratic English folk-rock group This Is The Kit, matching nearly every word. “You never were much of a New Yorker
/ It wasn’t in your eyes,” the couple sing to one another, with equal parts accusation and resignation.

In a similar way, “The Pull of You” suggests the banter of arch, articulate, probably degreed lovers — New York Review of Books readers, in therapy, whose smarts, sensitivity and self-awareness can’t save them or their relationship. And “Not in Kansas” uses a list of the things we use to define ourselves — beloved music, movies, drugs — to pin its character like a butterfly:

Smidges of bad ecstasy Must have left it in my pocket With my Christianity and my rocket I’m binging hard on Annette Bening And listening to REM again Begin The Begin over and over

It’s a tragicomic song, and Berninger sings it mostly alone, though one wonders how much of it was written by his life- and writing partner, Carin Besser, who co-wrote the set’s lyrics along with Berninger and Mike Mills. The loss in the song is palpable, as it is in “Light Years,” which ends the record in a swirl of strings and flashbacks, soft regret and acceptance — that faintly bitter taste that grows strangely appealing over time. Like the short movie, it doesn’t offer any morals or profound truths. Just beauty, and an invitation to savor it while you can.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/review-the-nationals-i-am-easy-to-find-836169/

[magicmenageriestuff]

3am Eternal (Live at the S.S.L.) – The K.L.F.

( The Ancients of Mu Mu )

*

Alien 3  –  Paranoia In Pinewood part 2

The six stages of Film Production : as seen carved into the wall in Pinewood, Studio Five, by someone presumably better-versed in the industry than I :

Wild enthusiasm

Disillusionment

Panic

Search For The Guilty

Punish The Innocent

Reward The Non-Involved 

The above quote from the diary I kept in 1991 while filming Alien 3 in Pinewood Studios.  I released it into the atmosphere as My Pop Life #171 – Praying For Time.  I think it’s time for part 2, don’t you?

*

Somebody send me a clean version of this picture.  thanks.

Things settled down a little after the heart-thumping and deeply paranoid first month recorded in the previous episode.  No one was sacked.  I don’t think.  No one was re-cast.  There was a terrible accident one day when Sigourney’s make-up lady Linda was standing in a doorway on set – one of those science fiction doorways with a sliding panel which goes up and down with a swish.  It was a wooden contraption with a weighted pulley which failed, and it came down suddenly onto her face, right onto her nose. I wasn’t there but it was a nasty accident and she was rushed to hospital.  We never saw Linda again. Later I learned that she didn’t want to claim the medical expenses from the company, but having had a facial reconstruction and various operations I think that she eventually did settle.  Dangerous places film sets.

The cast of Alien 3 with David Fincher on set, 1991

My relationship with Sigourney had subsided into a kind of sulk, and although she would make the odd remark, the earlier fire and brimstone had calmed down a bit.  Not that we’d made up at all.  Sadly we weren’t friends.  I’d confided in other cast members – Niall Buggy thought I was completely bonkers “What are you talking about Ralph, she’s lovely!”  Pete Postlethwaite and Phil Davis felt the same way.  Dhobi Oparei too.  I was happy that they were enjoying working with her, but just as I started feeling cornered, there was Charles Dance asking me how it was all going as we waited for a set-up.  I think I was tentative at first but eventually told him what had been going on.  He confessed that he’d had the same kind of experience. “Is that how you’re going to say it?” and all of the paranoia about how clean he looked, other competitive nonsense.  I felt relieved that I wasn’t going totally mad.  It was only people she had scenes with where the behaviour occurred.  Wait – was Charles Dutton also having this relationship with her?  No.  He was a friend already and he was not the enemy.  Charlie and I have been firm friends ever since.

Charles Dance as Clemens

One day on set Sigourney and I had a scene on a balcony, after the fire. Men had died.  The Alien was trapped, locked in a loading bay. Dutton and his men were praying below us.  The scene wasn’t going well.  But we got it at around 8.00pm and Fincher pulled me aside.  “Dude.  She vampired that scene. Don’t worry I can cut around what you did, we got it.  But you’re letting her get to you.”  I think I said that I was trying to stand my ground.  “If you ever need to leave the set, take five minutes, regain your centre, just say it OK?  I got your back.”  It was another welcome acknowledgement that I wasn’t paranoid.  I went home, cuddled my lady and gritted my teeth for the long haul.  I had to try and protect my performance at the end of the day, that was what mattered.

the balcony scene is in the “director’s cut” on the DVD

As the weeks progressed, all of the actors were called in every day, in case we were needed.  First thing – put through ‘the works’ – costume and make-up – and then sat in our dressing rooms to await the call, often all day.  I often went into the next-door dressing room occupied by the Prison Governor, my boss the legend Brian Glover, who’d memorably played the gym teacher in Ken Loach‘s heartbreaking film Kes.  Brian was from Barnsley and did the voice overs for Tetley Tea Bags : ‘Tetley. Make tea bags. Make Tea.‘

Brian Glover as Andrews

Brian regaled me with stories from his days as a professional wrestler, fighting on the circuit with Giant Haystacks, Big Daddy and Mick McManus. ‘There’s money in ugly Ralph‘ he would announce, his squashed ear a keepsake of his years playing rugby.  Every 45 minutes the lovely 2nd AD Marcia Gay would knock and pop her head around the door – ‘Gentlemen. You won’t be required for the next 45 minutes. Just relax‘.  This became alarmingly irritating until one day Brian swivelled his giant head in her direction and asked ‘Is the money the same?‘  Marcia was puzzled.  ‘Yes‘ she said. ‘Well Fook Off Then!‘ shouted Brian.  Rude and fucking funny.

Fincher on the camera with Alex Thomson alongside him who had taken over as DP when Jordan Cronenweth was too ill to continue

There were eventually four units running at the same time – 1st Unit with David Fincher directing and another legend Chris Carreras as 1st AD.  The eye of any storm, the 1st AD basically runs the set, oversees all of the departments and keeps a keen eye on who is slowing the unit down.  The 1st AD is basically making the film.  Chris had an amazingly calm temperament but I saw him biting his tongue a couple of times.  Years later in 1999 I would contact him and ask him to 1st AD my film New Year’s Day, which he graciously agreed to do.  Without him it wouldn’t have got made. I was going to create a link there to the blog where I talk about the film that I wrote and which actually got made.  So scarred am I from this experience that 220 blog posts later I haven’t even started to think about discussing it.  Watch this space !

Paul McGann as Golic

Meanwhile back in Pinewood, the other 3 units which might or might not need actors for any given day were :  2nd Unit with Martin Brierly directing (and Nick Heckstall-Smith assisting, whom I would also work with later), Action Unit doing Alien Stuff and other SFX, and a Fire Unit which set fire to things and put them out while stunt guys ran around with falmes one their clothes.   We were all required, at one point or another, on all of these units.  But there were interminable days when nothing happened.  Backgammon became institutionalised, with American actors Chris Fields and particularly Holt McCallany relieving us of our wages on a regular basis with ruthless use of the doubling dice. I soon saw the error of this form of time-wasting, likewise poker and other competitive pursuits. 

Clive Mantle as William, Peter Guinness as Gregor

One day when it was clear once again that nothing was going to happen a group of us decided to wander around the studio lot and see what else was going on.  Like a bunch of escaped prisoners escorted by a correction facility officer.  That was me.  We went into one of the bigger studio buildings (Alien 3 had the majority but some were still available for hire) – I can’t remember precisely who was in that gang but I think Peter Guinness, Paul Brennan, Clive Mantle and Danny Webb certainly were. Maybe Niall Buggy and Vincenzo Nicoli too.  And there was a giant pyramid structure with lights on frames around it and people with cloaks wandering about.  We’d asked permission to visit of course, and the producers knew who we were, what we were doing there.  The band was The K.L.F. and they were shooting a video for their single 3am Eternal which had been at Number 1 in the charts that January.  A video it turned out, for the US market. We watched a take with smoke and lights, bleeps and heavy metal guitar chords, acid house beats and rap, capes and cloaks. It was all a bit mental.  Then they took a break.

We wandered into the next studio through a heavy door.  And there was Kylie Minogue, dressed for the Shocked video. We were all introduced and I became suddenly aware of a tiny elfin Australian blonde woman being dwarfed by half a dozen dirty shaven-headed prisoners from outer space.  She shook everyone’s hand then gently wandered away and asked one of her people if they could ask us politely to leave.  Which we did.  Poor love.

Kylie Minogue is Shocked at the power of love in 1991

There’s a curious link here because Bill Drummond, (who with Jimmy Cauty is The K.L.F.) had worked as an A&R man for WEA (now Warners) in London in the mid-80s and had apparently spent half a million pounds on a band called Brilliant who never quite took off.  Stock Aitken & Waterman were writers & producers for Brilliant, and Jimmy Cauty was in the band along with Martin Glover aka Youth from Killing Joke.  And Stock Aitken & Waterman were now writing and producing for Kylie, along with a vast stable of acts including Donna Summer, Mel & Kim and Jason Donovan.  Kylie & Jason had starred together in Aussie soap Neighbours, and to continue the odd waltz between the 2 acts, the K.L.F. had made a single called ‘Kylie Said To Jason‘ which was a hilarious rip-off of ‘Left To My Own Devices‘ by The Pet Shop Boys.  Confused Yet ??

Bill Drummond & Jimmy Cauty

I didn’t make any of these connections at the time.  I was listening to George Michael, Public Enemy, The Breeders. Catching up with Bob Marley and Miles Davis.  Discovering Wagner – again.  Looming on the horizon was Massive Attack. The K.L.F. seemed to me a little like The Tubes, one of my favourite bands to be sure, or the Bonzo Dog Band (see My Pop Life #77), formed by musicians who wanted to lampoon the music and the industry and anything else they could gather into their fiendish net.  Like everything was in quotes. I mean who sang along with the phrase “Ancients of MuMu” without a silly grin on their face?

And of course we were still recovering from the smiley-face rave culture moment from which the K.L.F. appeared to have emerged.  In fact they were rather more like a situationist art project that wanted to burn the whole thing down.  Anarchists.  Their career was inspired partly by the theatre show The Illuminatus Trilogy, written and directed by mad genius Ken Campbell in Liverpool where Bill had been the set designer.  He walked out one day to buy a sandwich and never came back. Later he formed his Pop Group who became The Timelords with big novelty hit Doctoring The Tardis, then The JAMS (Justified Ancients of MuMu) with the single What Time Is Love which got re-issued a number of times from 1988 onward, then The K.L.F.  Their brilliant warped career  peaked a year later in 1992 at the BRIT Awards when Drummond machine-gunned the audience of music industry execs from the stage, and a dead sheep was left at the door of the afterparty with the message “I died for you – bon appetit” attached. A few months later in May 1992 The K.L.F. announced that they had quit the music business and deleted their entire back catalogue.  Other stunts followed such as the infamous burning of a million pounds, the Soup Line, the 17 Choir and other innovative ideas.  Apparently Bill Drummond lived just down the hill from me when I was in Brighton but I never met him, I don’t think.

Niall Buggy as Eric, Danny Webb as Morse

Back on the Alien3 set a few days later it was Valentine’s Day.  I had been sent a card and an AD delivered it to me as we relaxed between shots.  It was of course from Jenny my beloved.  We were not married at that point.  And I could swear Sigourney was looking over my shoulder to see who it was from.  Hahaha.  Fincher was shooting a lot of footage.  “I’m doing long pans & track so they can’t cut into my footage” he explained one day.  It meant that when we had a group scene we could open a book on how many takes it would be.  Anything under five was unpopular.  Over twelve was possible, common even.  I think we did a tenner per set-up.  Someone wrote the names down and the number they’d chosen.  Often no one would win because we went up to Take 17 and no one wanted to put ten of your earth pounds on that.

Here’s an idea…

In fact Sigourney and I had one of our scenes discussing plans regarding telling the company their was an Alien on the planet, and playing a fella who wanted to go home to his wife and kids, rather than perish in some millennial cult group suicide, Aaron ’85’ suggested a plan.  Ripley’s response was tentatively ‘yes maybe‘.  We did a couple of wide shots, then into my single.  Can’t remember how many takes it was – probably around seven or eight.  Then turned round onto Sigourney.  David didn’t like her tone, which suggested that Ripley thought Aaron was a dick.  He didn’t think that was right at that point in the story.  So. One more.  Turn over. Sound Speed. Scene 178 take 17.  Mark it. And….Action! Blah blah blah.  Cut.  Same result.  He’s not your enemy.  Take 22.  Don’t sneer. Take 29.  You think it’s a good idea. Take 34. By which time we were all so exhausted and dizzy from the repetition that Sigourney said the line in a kind of dazed acquiescence and Fincher had the take he wanted.

About a year later in Los Angeles, after the re-shoots, I had two days of ADR in a West LA studio on Olympic Boulevard.  David remembered the scene well, 34 takes.  He’d never done ADR before though – Automated Dialogue Replacement – where you can change the inflexion, emphasis, tone, shade and meaning of a line just by using your voice and matching the lip movements on screen in front of you precisely.  Movie magic.  Some actors hate it, I made friends with the process very early on after I had to voice the whole of my performance as Danny in Withnail & I for the US market. The test screenings had indicated that audience members couldn’t understand what he was saying.  Who could? I did that piece of work at Twickenham Studios in 1987 where the engineer consoled me having to re-do my entire performance at the same speed except more intelligibly by telling me that Michael Caine had done Alfie and Bob Hoskins had also done The Long Good Friday for America.  And yet we were expected to understand Stallone’s mumbles or Pacino’s – hey that’s what it means to be an outlying part of The Empire right?  I can’t remember if I’ve ever seen the US version of Withnail but I suspect it would be a bad idea.  But having said that the experience toughened me up for future sessions.  Especially the Alien 3 session which was two long days – the reason for that was the amount of atmospheric smoke and steam in the design of the film which was very noisy to produce.  Often back in the day on big movies the Sound Department knew that they were recording a guide track only, to be completed and polished in ADR.  So here we were down on W. Olympic and David says – if I’d known about ADR in Pinewood I would never have done 34 takes just for a vocal inflection…

It’s hard to recall now in 2019 how difficult that experience was.  Jenny can remember quite clearly how I would come home every day, full of doubt, full of worry and anguish, just because I was trying to do my best work.  What a fantastic opportunity for me, but you know I was running fast just to stand still.   I remember a visual image I used to produce while trying to explain it to friends, as a learning curve which came from my chest, looped back over my head and stabbed me in the back.  I wondered if, at some point, whether the fact that we were making a horror film in space meant that we had to have a horrible experience in space.  I called Richard E. Grant one day who was shooting Hudson Hawk in Italy – another picnic – and he asked me how much I was getting. I told him. He said

“well – that’s the amount of shit you have to eat then.”

I could almost understand why Bill Drummond had formed The K.L.F.

  My Pop Life #220 : 3am Eternal (Live at the S.S.L.) – The K.L.F. 3am Eternal (Live at the S.S.L.) - The K.L.F. ( The Ancients of Mu Mu )

[yorkshirewerewolf]

Sir Roger Moore KBE 1927-2017 RIP This isn't a full obituary, there are many more in depth accurate ones floating around the 'tinternet. No, this is my personal recollections, reflecting on a hero of mine. Also a serious matter, which I usually refrain from posting, but I think it needed to be included in my text. Like many 50-somethings, my first exposure to Roger Moore was his small screen role of Simon Templar in repeats of the TV series "The Saint" ( its original airing from 1962 -1969.) It was based on the literary character created by Leslie Charteris. Templar was essentially a sixties Robin Hood, except he mostly stole from evil criminal types and kept the Loot himself! This was my first screen exposure to an anti-hero, and Moore, whose acting style was deemed 'wooden' by many of his critics, excelled in this role. His tongue in cheek wit was a big factor in his appeal and his new 1970's TV venture partnered him with a Hollywood screen legend, Tony Curtis. The series was called "The Persuaders! " (1971–1972) and Moore would play a millionaire playboy Lord Brett Sinclair who solved crimes along with his brash American sidekick Danny. The show earned Moore a reported million pounds a season making him the highest paid TV star, but the show wasn't a hit in its target area of the USA, and it soon ended. This was to be for the best and Moore took the role of James Bond, 007. For me, he was my Bond. The humour, action and smutty dialogue made him the man who reinvented and saved the Bond franchise. Sadly, as he was getting older, the quality of the movies were in decline, and from my perspective, Moore had become bored with the role and maybe with movies and acting in general. For me, four of his most overlooked movie role's are; his creepy duel role in the Horror flick "The man who Haunted Himself " (watched from behind a cushion, late on a friday night as a kid) A mercenary with a heart in "The Wild Geese". His powerful acting in the movie "Gold!" ( watched a censored version at my school movie club in the 1970s) His bizarre role as 'Rufus Excalibur Ffolkes', a Counter Terrorism expert in the movie "North Sea Hijack" Then, Roger Moore faded away from my life. He occasionally popped up on various TV chat shows, delivering often hilarious stories and recollections. He became a charity worker, spending time travelling the world as a unicef ambassador. In the eighties he became a puppet character on the satirical ITV comedy show "Spitting Image" which mercilessly lampooned his acting abilities using the puppet's raised eyebrows, which had become Moores trademark. It was sad that such a big star had become a figure of fun, the British press focused on his complex private life and he virtually vanished from our screens. His cameo in the "Spice Girls Movie" during the 1990s and a role in the martial arts movie "The Quest" didn't reboot his acting career and his failed westend debut in an Andrew lloyd Webber Musical again forced Moore back into the acting wilderness. I feel cheated and a little melancholy when I look back at Moores on screen life. I think, given the right projects he could have had the career Sean Connery had. But did he want it? His charitable work gave him more satisfaction than his acting and for this reason I commend his life choice. His death is very poignant to me as my father recently passed away this year, he was also in his eighties. Sir Roger's passing was reported today, it was overshadowed by the terrible bombing at a pop concert in Manchester, which resulted in many deaths, young children included. For a man who was a good will ambassador for the United Nations Children's Fund, I am sure, like any decent human being he would have been horrified and disgusted that children were targeted in such an evil way. in conclusion, Sir Roger Moore to me will always be my first Bond, My first hero and the first Actor who was knighted for the right reasons; his services to charity. A gentleman, a raconteur, a Knight and a man of impeccable taste's. GOODNIGHT, MR BOND.......