Last year, after a long battle with rectal cancer, the actress Farrah Fawcett died at the age of sixty-two. Fawcett was probably best known for her role as Jill Munroe in the iconic seventies television series, ‘Charlie’s Angels’. Her final screening was the highly acclaimed and very moving, ‘Farrah’s Story’, an hour long film released just weeks before she died which documented her battle with cancer and allowed people a very realistic insight into cancer treatment.

Several other actors died last year, notably Natasha Richardson, Patrick Swayze, David Carradine, Jean Simmons and Brittany Murphy. At the Oscars’ ceremony on Sunday night, during the ritual ‘in memoriam’ tribute that has been part of the ceremony since 1993, the work of these actors was recognized by including them. For Farrah Fawcett there was no mention, causing distress to her family who said in a statement that they felt “bereft with this exclusion of such an international icon who inspired so many for so many reasons”. Her long term partner – the actor Ryan O’Neal – spoke of how Farrah had been a member of the academy for over forty years! On the social networking site, Twitter, Jane Fonda headed a flood of people criticising the decision not to include Fawcett, and expressing the letdown they felt at her exclusion.
The man who has been responsible for the ‘in memoriam’ section since its inauguration began, is Bruce Davis. Following all the critical comments he said, “There’s nothing you can say to people, particularly to family members, within a day or two of the show that helps at all. They tend to be surprised and hurt, and we understand that and we’re sorry for it.”  However he admitted that the decision to exclude Fawcett had been made deliberately after giving it some consideration. He said that the Academy had attempted to recognize as many as possible of the unusually high number of distinguished screenwriters who had died this year. He explained that given Fawcett was mostly known for her television work, it felt more appropriate for her to be honoured at the Emmy Awards.  While on one level this might be understandable, its credibility as an authentic justification is called into question by the inclusion of Michael Jackson, who is best known for his work in the arena of popular music. When challenged about this decision Davis declared that Jackson had recently appeared in a popular theatrical film – thought to be an allusion to ‘This Is It’. However, his reasoning was somewhat marred by his follow-up comment, “Think of all the blogging we would have gotten if we had left him out.”
When Farrah died in June last year her death – along with other notable figures from the industry – was overshadowed by coverage of Michael Jackson’s death. It is ironic then that her contribution to the industry was - in effect - likewise eclipsed by the Academy’s omission. In her final work, she gave an amazing and uncompromising view of her personal human experience. And this surely deserves to be honoured at least every bit as much as Jackson’s final film.

Tom Jones will be seventy this year. Since rising to fame in the mid sixties he has come to enjoy international success. With numerous hits under his belt and millions of record sales, he was knighted four years ago for his services to music. No doubt this came as a shock to some of the staff of the local employment office in South Wales where he was signing on in the early sixties. Now, forty plus years later, the scathing comments some of them made have come to light contained in several documents found in a skip a few years ago, and currently up for auction.

The documents - consisting of six buff coloured cards – are believed to have been disposed of when the records were computerized. Considered to be highly collectable, it is hoped that they will sell for thousands of pounds when they finally go to Auction on April 15th.  However, aside from any anticipated monetary worth they might have, they are of value in that they offer a biographical ‘snapshot’ account of the performer starting out on what was to become a highly successful career. Thomas Woodward – his real name - was trying hard to make a living out of his singing at this point, but this necessitated him signing on and taking a few manual jobs. The records note that he had a preference not to take on any job that entailed shift work, since it might interfere with his developing singing career, and contain sarcastic comments on this by the unemployment office staff. There are also references to his smart, well dressed appearance when he turned up to sign on.

T he records document the transition from him being a member of an amateur singing group in December 1963, to imminent recording artist by July 1964. The last entry at this point states, “Claimant showed me a letter from Decca Studios confirming a recording session had been arranged. He has been talking about ‘going professional’ since April but he is still signing the UR [unemployment register] and not autograph books.”  It would seem from the evidence that Sir Tom hasn’t looked back!

On Monday seven celebrities set out on a 1000 mile trip from John O’Groats to Land’s End in an effort to raise one million pounds for charity. The Money raised will benefit poor and vulnerable people both here in the UK, and across some of the world’s poorest countries.

The ride is one of the events organized by Sport Relief - an initiative of the charity Comic Relief - when people from ‘the whole of the UK come together to get active, raise cash and change lives’. It was backed by BT, the major sponsor of the event.

The participating celebrities were led by David Walliams, 38, a seasoned and dedicated Sport Relief participant, having raised one million pounds in 2006 with his cross channel swim. The team of celebrities also included Jimmy Carr, 37, Fearne Cotton, 28, Miranda Hart, 37, Patrick Kielty, 39, Davina McCall, 42, and Russell Howard, 29. They underwent training with Professor Gregory Whyte, the Olympic sport scientist who also coached Walliams for his cross channel swim.

The challenge was a gruelling one in hazardous conditions, with freezing temperatures as low as minus 15ºC, and a hill climb of almost 29,000 feet within the first twenty four hours - the equivalent of Mount Everest – and most of that was in the dark! Travelling day and night non-stop, there were inevitably several falls along the way. David Walliams fell three times, once on the notorious one thousand feet Kirkstone Pass climb in the Lake Disrict, where, with a gradient of one in four, “It was so steep you couldn’t get the speed to stay upright”. Suffering from sleep deprivation and extreme fatigue, there were times when for some it felt like they wouldn’t make it to the end. Fearne Cotton said she was ‘running on empty’ on the final day. Walliams said afterwards that it had been far harder than his cross channel swim. It was the thought of the many who had sponsored them and what that money could achieve that kept them going.

They finally arrived at their destination in Cornwall four hours behind schedule, exhausted, bruised and saddle sore, but happy to have reached their million pound target.

Friends, colleagues and fans were shocked to hear that thirty two year old Kristian Digby had been found dead in his flat yesterday morning. It was reported that neither suicide nor a third party was suspected. Unofficial reports have claimed that a bag and a belt were removed from the scene for forensic testing. These items are commonly associated with the practice of auto-erotic arousal where oxygen is deliberately cut off from the brain in order to intensify sexual arousal. It is a potentially dangerous practice leading to the unintentional asphyxiation of the subject. It is suspected that this was the cause of Digby’s death, though the post mortem today did not confirm this, saying that the results were inconclusive.

The practice has been a factor in the deaths of several famous people, for example the death of Michael Hutchence in 1997 – though the official cause of death was given as suicide – and last year the death of actor David Carradine. We don’t hear about it too much, but autoerotic asphyxiation is not all that rare as a cause of death, particularly among young men. There is still a good deal of taboo surrounding the topic, which prevents people discussing the practice, and potentially getting help with it.

Many people who have tuned in to watch daytime television even occasionally, may very well have caught Kristian Digby cheerfully presenting the popular property programme ‘To Buy or Not To Buy’ with his sidekick and friend Dominic Littlewood. Their good-humoured banter was a trademark of the show, and was later followed on by a variety of different presenters. Of course you may also be one of the many who would describe this sort of presentation as ‘cheesy’. Listening to people talking about him, however, you would not doubt the genuineness of the warmth he exuded in whatever he turned his hand to. Littlewood for example, said ‘There’s not a bad word I can say about Kristian. He was a lovely fun, nice, jolly, decent person.’ A neighbour had this to say, ‘He set up a residents’ association and got people together in a way no one had before. He planted trees by the street and tidied up. Everyone wanted to be his friend.’

With a natural ability in the property world per se, as well as in presenting, he was also a talented director working behind the camera for several popular shows. With aspirations as a film maker, some of his early work as a student gained him recognition as a promising newcomer, his film ‘Words of Deception’ winning him a junior Bafta IN 1997, and in 1998 his short film ‘Last Train to Demise’ best student film in the Melbourne film festival.

The death of anyone so young, talented, and loved - as Digby was - is terribly sad. If Digby did in fact die of autoerotic asphyxiation it doesn’t change his essential being; he is still that person, but there is a danger that former admirers of his personality and talent, perhaps even some family members and friends may turn away from what they regard as a perversion; and that is tragic.

On 20th December last year the thirty two year old actress, Brittany Murphy, who co-starred in films such as ‘Clueless’, ‘8 Mile’ and ’Girl Interrupted’ went into cardiac arrest and died. It was reported that she’d been found unconscious on the bathroom floor by her mother, who, concerned that her daughter had been in the bathroom for quite a while, had gone to check on her. Her husband, British director Simon Monjack, made an emergency call, following which paramedics arrived at her home and administered CPR while she was taken to a nearby hospital where she was pronounced dead on arrival. It was later reported that a significant amount of prescription drugs had been found on her bedside table. A post mortem on her body was reported to have been completed a couple of days later, with the outcome being unavailable until the results of various toxicology and neurological tests were complete.

There was widespread speculation as to the cause of her death, with both drugs and anorexia being mooted. Back in 2005 her gaunt appearance provoked similar rumours of cocaine use and an eating disorder, but the star had vehemently denied these.

Yesterday the post mortem results were issued by the Los Angeles County Coroner’s office, and confirmed that her death was accidental, resulting from a combination of medical conditions – including community acquired pneumonia and iron deficiency anaemia – and an assortment of prescription drugs. These medications were said to be consistent with the treatment of a cold or respiratory illness. For a week or so prior to her death Ms Murphy had complained of severe abdominal pain and shortness of breath.  Her husband and mother have said that she had a heart murmur and also suffered from extreme menstrual periods.

Earlier in the month there were reports that prescription drugs were regularly delivered to the actress’ home and that there were questions over why Ms Murphy appeared not to have seen a doctor in the months before her death, given the nature of her medical conditions and the severity of the pain she was experiencing.

A full autopsy is due to be published within the next two weeks and it remains to be seen whether further information will yet come to light.

On the 11th June 1988 Sting launched the Nelson Mandela concert at Wembley with his song ‘Set Them Free’. It was just one of many laudable and poignant contributions that Sting - real name Gordon Sumner - has made to raising awareness and funds for a diversity of human rights issues over the years. This involvement began in 1981 when he was asked to take part in ‘The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball’ the fourth in a series of benefit shows staged by the British arm of Amnesty International. In an interview several years later, Sting acknowledged that prior to this he knew nothing about Amnesty International and its work, nor the existence and extent of torture throughout the world. The benefit show proved instrumental in provoking a whole range of artists to take action for a variety of social and political issues over the years to come - including Band Aid and Live Aid - with which Sting was also involved.

So what has happened to the ethical framework supposedly at the root of these humanitarian and philanthropic impulses so often displayed by Sting? Lots of people have been asking this since it recently came to light that back in October he had performed in Uzbekistan for a fee of between one and two million pounds. For those unfamiliar with Uzbekistan it is a country situated in Central Asia and run by the dictator Islam Karimov with one of the most appalling and widely condemned records on human rights. Accusations of murder and torture are rife, its people are poverty stricken, and there is environmental destruction of a devastating nature. The Environmental Justice Foundation just this week issued a new report documenting how its cotton production, which benefits ‘a small, corrupt, ruling elite’, continues to use forced child labour and ‘remains one of the most exploitative enterprises in the world’. Sting was hired by Karimov’s daughter and heir Gulnara Karimova for what was purportedly an arts and cultural festival, but what Craig Murray, former rebel UK ambassador to Uzbekistan describes on his blog as ‘an event specifically designed to glorify a barbarous regime’.

So what exactly is Sting’s response to those who wonder at his motives in accepting such a commission? First of all he claimed to believe it had been backed by Unicef who responded by saying that they were ‘quite surprised’ to hear this. Sting also stated that while he was aware of the President’s reputation in the arena of human rights, he felt that ‘cultural boycotts are not only pointless gestures, they are counter-productive
where proscribed states are further robbed of the open commerce of ideas and art and as a result become even more closed, paranoid and insular.’

One can’t help but be cynical about this, given that that the price of a ticket to attend the concert was forty five times the average salary in Uzbekistan! Its impossible too, to ignore that huge figure that Sting was paid for his performance, impossible not to question his real motives.
 
Behind all the hype and sanctimonious protestations, it is difficult not to hear echoes of what was supposedly said to Craig Murray by the Foreign Office after he made a stand following the torture and death of a victim of the regime: ‘moral questions aren’t our business’.  Can Sting have turned tail?

Angelina Jolie, in Venice for the filming of her latest movie ‘The Tourist’ in which she stars with Johnny Depp, is provoking much speculation about her somewhat ‘strange’ appearance.She is famous for her almost perfect complexion and good looks, so it comes as a shock to witness the sore looking red skin and the somewhat grotesque marks on her neck., described by one person as ‘very peculiar’ with ‘the two prongs of skin having been stretched off her face towards her neck’. Recent photographs of her with what look like two large tucks under her right ear, have led to much conjecture about the possibility of plastic surgery, and in particular the most recent Hollywood plastic surgery fad, the Ribbon Lift (Endotine). At a cost of £4,000 the procedure requires a small incision to be made around the earlobe, and then a bio absorbable ribbon is implanted to lift and secure the neck tissues. Safe, simple, and effective the procedure is considered to be a minimally invasive alternative to a conventional facelift. Within ten to twelve weeks the neck has healed and the ribbon absorbed by the body.

If indeed Jolie has opted for this procedure, it comes as something of a surprise, since she has always denied having  such cosmetic treatments, and following the birth of her twins 19 months ago insisted on a natural photo shoot minus makeup and airbrushing.

The evidence seems pretty compelling, but a word of caution. -  be careful what you say! A long running feud with her father, the actor Jon Voight lasted for eight years! And those spreading rumours that Jolie and Pitt are about to break up have recently been threatened with legal action!

Born Lee Alexander McQueen, the youngest of six children and the son of a London Cabbie, McQueen was considered by many to be at the forefront of world fashion with his innovative designs which pushed the boundaries and raised the profile of the British fashion industry. He won the British Designe of the Year award four times, and was also named International Designer of the Year in 2003. His eagerly anticipated shows, unconventional  and unpredictable, were an extraordinary extravaganza of  highly imaginative performance and design. McQueen himself described them as “the culmination of everything that goes around in my mind.’’

It has been cofirmed that the upcoming London Fashion Week will honour McQueen by featuring a tribute to him.which is to be discussed with and approved by his family.

When it was announced last week that he had been found dead at his London home, there were reports that he had killed himself. The police would not comment on these reports, but said that there were no suspicious circumstances and that a  post mortem had been scheduled. Statements were issued expressing shock and grief and asking that the media repect the family’s request for privacy.

Today the reports of apparent suicide were confirmed when, following Monday’s postmortem, an inquest into his death heard that he had left a note then hanged himself in his wardrobe. The hearing today lasted only five minutes and a full inquest will take place in late April.

It has been widely reported that McQueen was absolutely devastated by the death, on February 2^nd, of his much adored mother, Joyce, with whom he had a close relationship. He had expressed his grief and the difficulty he was experiencing in coping with this on social networking site Twitter, and took his life the day before her funeral. A few years earlier he had struggled with the death by suicide of his close friend and mentor Isabella Blow. It is believed that some friends and colleagues had been concerned about him of late, but nevertheless, the discovery of his body came as a shock.

The contents of the note McQueen left have not been made public. We have a ‘flavour’ of the anguish he was experiencing in relation to his mother’s death from his Twitter posts. The tragedy is that the essence of the man, the source from which his creative genius sprang, the emotional depths that lay behind the beauty of his inspiring creations may, on this final occasion, have resulted in a pain so unbearable that rather than a beautiful creation, they culminated in the ultimate destruction, the annihilation of the creative genius that was McQueen.

Just exactly what does constitute a deprived childhood? It doesn’t have to involve living in poverty!

Katie Holmes, perhaps best known for her role as Joey in Dawson’s Creek, is far removed from the girl-next-door with natural good looks that she portrayed in the TV series, and who she has said was a caricature of herself. Part of a celebrity super-couple with husband Tom Cruise, she has courted controversy, first with regard to her membership of ‘The Church of Scientology’ which she joined shortly after she started dating Cruise, & more recently, with regard to her upbringing of their daughter Suri.

Suri, aged only three, has frequently been seen and photographed out and about choosing and wearing make-up & sporting high heels, as well as designer clothes, jewellery & handbags. Now, of course, lots of three year olds love dressing up and copying their mums, but Suri’s wardrobe is reputedly worth more than £2 million and Katie has responded to criticism by saying that Suri is allowed to wear what she wants and choose her own clothes! Her father has commented on her mature sense of fashion! Walking round the house in her mum’s high heels is one thing, but indulging their daughter by allowing her to have her own high heels to go out in is surely neglectful of her developing body!

Whilst her parents may be able to give her everything that money can buy, money can’t buy everything! In ‘adultifying’ and sexualising Suri they risk depriving her of her innocence and natural development, exposing her to predators, and teaching her that her worth lies in her outward appearance. From an early age she is being presented with a very materialistic, as well as unrealistic, outlook on life.

Children need the safety of boundaries and to learn that it’s not always possible to do and have what they want. Letting them make the decisions places a responsibility on them that they aren’t capable of dealing with, all of which can leave them ill equipped to cope with life.

Whatever one feels about the eccentricities surrounding Michael Jackson, his determination to protect his children from the spotlight seemed well intentioned, and contrasts markedly with the stance taken by Holmes and Cruise. Styles of parenting vary and each individual that results is unique, with a whole complex set of influences.

It will be interesting to see how Suri develops in the years to come!

Rumours were abound yesterday after Wayne missed his Manchester United training - with many speculating that Coleen had gone into labour.

Kai was born nine days past his due date, so it is understood that doctors made the decision to induce the baby.

The couple got to the hospital not long after 10pm on Sunday, where Wayne stayed with Coleen through the night.