Wishing you all a happy and healthy 2015! (unlike the people on these lists...)

[strange_complex]

The Year of Augustus is officially over at last, and it's time to wish you all a happy and healthy 2015! May it be full of goodness and satisfaction for you all.

I spent my New Year's Eve this year seeing Some Like It Hot (1959) and The Apartment (1960) at the Hyde Park cinema with ms_siobhan (both of which I shall write up separately), before returning to my place where we were joined by planet_andy and Mr. & Mrs. ZeitgeistZero for champagne, canapés, a cosy fire and lots of wicked laughter. It was a lovely evening, and has only left me feeling moderately delicate today, so all in all just right.

Under strict instructions from glitzfrau, we made sure to compile the annual Death List and Scandal List, which we do most years and which I have occasionally published here (example), but which I don't think we got round to last year. The rules are that if anyone on the list dies or becomes embroiled in a scandal in 2015, we all get 10p, though I'm not sure from whom - ourselves, probably. Also, it's fine for people to be on both lists. Re the Death List, some people are on there in hope, others as a protective charm (since people on the list very rarely actually die), and some out of pure pragmatism, but I will leave it to you to guess which. And re the Scandal List, we have suggested specifics in some cases, in which case we get double points if those come to pass, but we still all get our statutory 10p if those people are involved in any kind of scandal, even if it's not the one we predicted.

So, without further ado, and in the utterly random order we wrote them down last night while drunk, here goes:

2015 Death List
Prince Philip (who has now taken Mrs. Thatcher's traditional place at the head of the list)
John Craven
Ex-Pope Benedict XIV (oops!) XVI (natural causes)
Current Pope Francis (suspicious circumstances)
Elizabeth Butler Sloss
Beryl Bainbridge (ah - actually, just looked her up on Wikipedia now, and it turns out she died in 2010. So nul points for us there I think.)
Katie Hopkins
Michael Heseltine
Kirk Douglas
Terry Pratchett
Alan Bennett
David Hockney
Mark E. Smith
Paul McCartney
Ken Dodd
Rolf Harris (in prison)
Stephen Hawking
Clint Eastwood
President Hassan Rouhani of Iran
President Muhammad Fuad Masum of Iraq
President Assad of Syria
George Bush Snr
Bruce Forsyth
Jimmy Tarbuck
Mickey Rooney
Maggie Smith
Paul Daniels
Any current Blue Peter pets
Mike Lee

2015 Scandal List
Justin Bieber (glue sniffing)
Nigel Farage (auto-erotic asphyxiation and / or found with an orange up his arse)
Boris Johnson
Katie Hopkins
Bono
Gary Barlow
Ed Miliband (turns out to be a LARPer)
Richard Dawkins (converts to Islam)
Jeb Bush
Jedward (it's possible that at this stage we were drifting into playing word association)
Any male BBC news reader
Lorraine Kelly
Neil & Christine Hamilton
Noel Edmonds
George Lucas
Damien Hirst
Paul Daniels
The McCanns
Noddy Holder

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Comments

[ms-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Those aren't quite the names I gave you....there are obscenities missing, were you worried you'd get RSI repeatedly typing out the f-word and it's variants? ;-)

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Yes, sorry - I do seem to have missed out a few middle names, there. But when everyone has the same one, it does seem superfluous to keep on typing it! :-)

[ms-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Indeed :-)

Will be in touch re film dates but I reckon the first dvd one we watch has to be Sunset Boulevard as it is so wonderful and one of my desert island dvds.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Sounds good to me. Also, so that we've got it for reference and I don't forget, this is the current list of films you've got that I'd like to see:

Frank Lagella's version of Dracula
Plague of The Zombies
And Now The Screaming Starts
Blood from the Mummy's Tomb

No rush, or anything - I'm literally just writing that down so I don't have to keep carrying the list round in my memory any more.

[ms-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Good List :-)

[rosamicula.livejournal.com]

When I see you two at the end of the month, I will explain why Jedward are beyond reproach!

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Is it because they're not really human beings, but mindless automata?

[ms-siobhan.livejournal.com]

I have chums who have met the Jedward and described them as 'chemically enhanced'. I am still in love with their epic song Lipstick and think they were robbed of rightful Eurovision victory.

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

I presume you mean Benedict XVI rather than the long-dead Benedict XIV..!

[ms-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Yep - that's the one. Not long for this world me thinks.

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

You are right to add Pope Francis to the list, nefarious deeds or not!

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Oops! Yep. This is of course a great example of why you should never, ever trust any number transmitted via a Latin manuscript.

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

Almost as open to confusion as binary, I expect.

[qatsi.livejournal.com]

It's extremely disturbing that you managed to get the words "Farage" and "erotic" into the same sentence.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Hehe - apologies for the brain-weevils thereby generated!

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

The nigel farage thing - is that about the joke of a man with an orange for a head?

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Not that I'm aware of, though I didn't come up with that bit. You'll have to tell me the joke now though, anyway!

As I remember it.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

So, a man, as is often the way in this kind of story, goes into a bar. And, at the other end of the bar, as is rarely the way in this kind of story, is a man with an orange for a head.

The newcomer is surprised, as I suppose anyone would be, but is polite, and says nothing, but after a few drinks his curiosity gets the better of him, and he sidles over to where the man-with-an-orange-for-a-head is conversing in an intimate manner with a stunningly beautiful woman. He notes the man-with-an-orange-for-a-head's expensive watch and immaculately-tailored suit, and the way that he pays for his drinks with fifty-pound notes and doesn't ask for change.

After a while the stunningly attractive woman excuses herself and the newcomer clears his throat and says "Well, I'm terribly sorry for intruding, and I expect you hear this all the time, but —"

"Ah", says the man-with-an-orange-for-a-head. "Don't worry, I don't mind telling you the whole story. A few years ago I was in a junk shop and found an old lamp that looked interesting; I picked it up to have a closer look, and, butterfingers that I am, dropped it, smashing it. There was a puff of smoke, and a genie appeared from among the shards, terribly grateful, terribly powerful, uncountable aeons trapped, all that lark. Well, he offered me three wishes; clichéd, but not something you say no to. And so I wished for a billion pounds; and the genie deposited it straight into my bank account, no questions asked. Then, for my second wish, I said I wanted the love of the most beautiful woman in the world, again, clichéd, but I can't say I regret it — that was the lady that you saw beside me just now"

"But," put in the other man, "how did you come to have an orange for a head?"

"Well, that was my third wish."

Re: As I remember it.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Aha! Very good. But no, definitely nothing to do with our creative plans for Nigel Farage's sticky ending.

Re: As I remember it.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

Or sticky end, in this case.

[howlin-wolf-66.livejournal.com]

You won't get any money out of Mickey Rooney, either - he was a victim of last year...

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Ah, dammit! We really should check the obituary columns more carefully before we write these things...

[ms-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Is it too late to add Prince Andrew or rather Andrew York to the scandal list?

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Not at all, especially since we have had to strike two people off the death list already for having died already. I'd say there's plenty of room.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Ah - having now seen the news, which I hadn't when I read this comment previously, I'm now inclined to be a little stricter. I think adding names who are as-yet untainted by scandal is probably fine, but adding them after the fact is a bit cheaty... :-)

[ms-siobhan.livejournal.com]

'as yet untainted by scandal' is not a phrase you could apply to Andrew - there have been numerous allegations about him and his financial affairs and his relationship with a convicted criminal prior to this but this is the most unpleasant allegation. I was thinking more of his dodgy business dealings being revealed....