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Post by ltd on Nov 16, 2022 20:26:24 GMT
Heh at Rycott and his L-Reg Marina coupe. His choice of wheels tells us this is a man who has failed in life, even before we learn about his spot of bother and six years back in uniform as a woolly suit. No wonder he's so bitter and twisted. Don't forget Rycott's car would only be about 6 or 7 years old at the time of filming. Yeah, but it's a Marina. Mind you, a 6 or 7 year old one of those probably does qualify as a classic car by rarity value alone.
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Post by ltd on Nov 3, 2022 10:34:31 GMT
Very sad to read this. I remember him in Minder as the syrup purveyor, very funny. 'Burt Reynolds' Enjoyed this at the time. I think he used to do that character on Laugh? I Nearly Paid My Licence Fee as well, but called Edgar Bloodlusten? A parody of the presenter of the 1950s true crime series Scotland Yard. I remember the sketches became progressively more gory and absurd, culminating with Robbie Coltrane sitting there with his throat cut, covered in claret, but still conducting his usual po-faced monologue to camera.
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Post by ltd on Oct 15, 2022 12:47:55 GMT
That scene from Supergrass was immediately the one that came to mind as his stand out scene. That must have taken some nerve, the waves hitting him side on look pretty bloody powerful. He doesn't even flinch though.
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Post by ltd on Oct 14, 2022 18:54:14 GMT
I think one of the first things I saw him do was Mason Boyne, as a left-footer of Irish extraction it had me in stitches. The one eyed pirate radio DJ actually in the Young Ones' radio was another that made me laugh, "We're scuppered!". So versatile though.
RIP Big Man
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Post by ltd on Oct 13, 2022 14:46:55 GMT
Not been mentioned so I'll give a shout out for her role as the duplicitous, and dangerous, mother in The Manchurian Candidate. Only three years older than Laurence Harvey who played her son.
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Post by ltd on Oct 8, 2022 21:47:28 GMT
RIP McVicar. Like many here, I just know him from the movie and he has a very very rough backstory. More surprised to learnt that he was the same in the 1990s, going to prison. I'm pretty sure he stayed out of prison after being paroled in 1978. He lost a civil action to Linford Christie in the 1990s but the penalty would have been financial in that case. His son went to jail in 1998 and again subsequently - maybe that's who you're thinking of Westie?
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Post by ltd on Oct 4, 2022 9:40:40 GMT
Re-reading In the Underworld now. MacVicar's just got out of nick and met Laurie Taylor and one of his colleagues in a pub full of screaming queens. Alas Taylor being an academic doesn't milk this scene for its full comic potential. They soon move on to a spieler and before long McVicar is escorting Taylor to all sorts of Winchester-eaque drinking dens where they encounter assorted colourful characters.
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Post by ltd on Sept 29, 2022 9:44:25 GMT
He didn't seem to be prepared to let anyone get the better of him. He does seem to have been the sort of bloke who'd go a long way just to prove a point. Re: the Linford Christie allegations, I found the judgement where McVicar appealed to the European Court. I didn't read the whole thing, just the summary. He lost there as well. Case probably of some academic interest to serious legal-beagle types.
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Post by ltd on Sept 28, 2022 11:56:14 GMT
At the risk of infringing the good thought guidelines...for all his undoubted intelligence he does seem to have had a self-destructive or perverse streak in him. The Linford Christie allegations strike me as ill-advised, and the claim that Barry George was some sort of Usual Suspects style criminal mastermand was utterly bizarre. Wouldn't mind giving his autobiography a look, and definitely going to give The Underworld another read. I don’t know anything about the Linford Christie allegations. Must have passed me by. It was back in the late 90s. The irony of course was that Christie subsequently failed a drug test. McVicar said he was going back to court to get the libel ruling against him overturned, but I don't know if he ever did.
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Post by ltd on Sept 28, 2022 9:50:07 GMT
At the risk of infringing the good thought guidelines...for all his undoubted intelligence he does seem to have had a self-destructive or perverse streak in him. The Linford Christie allegations strike me as ill-advised, and the claim that Barry George was some sort of Usual Suspects style criminal mastermand was utterly bizarre.
Wouldn't mind giving his autobiography a look, and definitely going to give The Underworld another read.
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Post by ltd on Sept 27, 2022 12:19:16 GMT
The book he did with Laurie Taylor, the Underworld is a good read, especially when McVicar becomes exasperatad with Taylor's tendency to analyse everything in sociological terms. Some of their adventures are straight out of Minder, including a visit to an after hours drinking club full of cheque kiters, fences and other ne'er do wells.
Billy Rags by Ted Lewis owes quite a lot to McVicar's life story. If you've seen the film you'll find scenes in the book that feel very familiar. I think Lewis and McVicar had some sort of gentleman's handshake deal on what would go in the novel, although McVicar was reportedly not happy at the results. The details are quite murky, even Nick Triplow's Lewis biography can't really get to the bottom of it. I think McVicar, for all his rehabilitation, would still have been a chap I'd've been very wary of crossing.
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Post by ltd on Sept 24, 2022 10:05:00 GMT
Had a long stint in Deep Space 9, good performance in an unsympathetic role as a conniving religious leader.
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Post by ltd on Sept 18, 2022 16:10:41 GMT
I enjoyed his eccentric performance in Ghost Dog Way of Samurai as the aged mob boss. I find a lot of the perfomances in that film a bit too studied and artificial, but he plays it just right.
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Post by ltd on Sept 13, 2022 6:20:23 GMT
Like all of you I remember her best in Grange Hill as the diminutive but still formidable Mrs McCluskey, nobody dared call her Bridget the Midget to her face. As to other appearances, she was really good in an episode of early 70s crime series Villains, playing an accomplice of the bog-robbers.
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Post by ltd on Sept 10, 2022 6:10:28 GMT
Like a few here I'm not much of a royalist, but always had a personal regard for the Queen. If the country has to be a constitutional monarchy it's difficult to imagine anyone else better in the role. Performed her duty right to the end, seeing one primeminister out and welcoming another in.
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Post by ltd on Sept 2, 2022 21:40:54 GMT
Been listening to a lot of early Motorhead recently, and Leaving Here is pure class.
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Post by ltd on Sept 2, 2022 21:37:33 GMT
Read The End of the Cold War by Robert Service a few years back, and it's really good on the situation in the USSR at the time. Gorbachev and his colleagues come across as decent people who realise that the world is changing and they can't carry on in the same old way. They're also human as well: Gorbachev returns from a visit to E.Germany and describes Honecker as an "ar*ehole" who's got no idea what's going on. Both Gorbachev and Reagan are depicted as sincere in their desire to reduce, if not eliminate, nuclear weapons.
The present Russian regime of course blames him for the parlous state their country got into post '89 but most of that is down to the Yeltsin years. It's a pity a great man should be traduced by his country, but I suppose it's a variation on the old maxim about a prophet being without honour in his own land.
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Post by ltd on Sept 2, 2022 8:25:21 GMT
Remember him being interviewed by the barmy Wycombe Wanderers fan site SMBU - came across as very genuine and a good bloke.
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Post by ltd on Aug 30, 2022 19:30:08 GMT
I quite like it, but I imagine Pentagram's "Bride of Evil" wouldn't go down well at the wedding reception disco.
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Post by ltd on Aug 24, 2022 14:38:25 GMT
Enjoyed his appearances as Cousin Tel. As I mentioned on the Hazell thread I thought he'd nailed the character's speech patterns exactly as they are in the books. Fine list of stage credits too in the obit, plainly far more to the man than playing cockney geezers (good at it though he was).
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Post by ltd on Aug 16, 2022 7:41:51 GMT
Good point well made. Especially as Rycott was on the case. Chisholm no, Rycott yes, Jones and Mellish highly likely. I don't think Jones and Mellish would be involved in anything that dodgy. Jones was a realist and would compromise with local villians e.g. helping to keep The Winchester open in Days of Fines and Closures, but takes a strong line on the corrupt antics of his fellow masons in The Wrong Goodbye. Mellish always seemed very strait laced, despite having Rycott as a guvnor.
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Post by ltd on Aug 5, 2022 12:09:57 GMT
I can also imagine him being in 'The Sweeney', given that e.g. Alfred Marks, Roy Kinnear and Bill Maynard had prominent guest roles. The Sweeney was good for letting actors better known for comic roles do something different. Warren Mitchell and Julian Holloway in Big Spender come to mind as well. I can easily imagine Bernard Cribbins in Bill Maynard's role, although given the tough streak he displays in Dangerous Davies he'd have made a good main antagonist for Regan, either as cop or villain. A missed opportunity maybe?
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Post by ltd on Jul 31, 2022 16:48:39 GMT
He was in everything. But not Minder, Pros or the Sweeney oddly enough. It's strange that, he'd have been a natural for Minder - and I'm sure he could have more than held his own as a guest star in The Sweeney.
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Post by ltd on Jul 28, 2022 8:43:29 GMT
A voice from my childhood, as Wynn says above he's inextricably linked to the Wombles - although I think the obituary is right about his versatility. He was really good in Gerry Standing's New Tricks swan song as a corrupt retired senior officer and I liked his performance in Dangerous Davies - the Last Detective. He's convincingly menacing in the scene where he loses his rag and beats up a suspect in a tube carriage. Not surprised to learn he did his national service in the parachute regiment. He's got the right stocky build for a para.
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Post by ltd on Jul 26, 2022 6:17:13 GMT
He played a fair few of those sort of parts and I guess he's best known for Goodfellas. I thought he was particularly good though as James Caan's mob-connected bookie in The Gambler. There's a great scene between them where Sorvino's character gives vent to his sheer exasperation with compulsive gamblers and how they're all looking to lose, and they know it.
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Post by ltd on Jul 25, 2022 16:43:00 GMT
Brought gravitas to so many productions, some arguably unworthy of his talents but that's not really the point - you could always rely on him to put in a good performance whatever he was doing. A true professional. Per ontheslate's comment about his radio work, one of my favourite performances is as Ed Reardon's father who emigrates to Australia to live with a surfer chick at least half his age.
He'd have made a good Dr Who I think.
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Post by ltd on Jul 12, 2022 18:43:59 GMT
Good old Tommy Vance. Rock fans were treated like lepers by the mainstream media back in the day and prior to Kerrang magazine there only was Tommy and the Sounds music paper that I knew of to hear and read about rock and metal. I was having a drink with my brother last Saturday and Tommy's name came up. We agreed that he and the rock show played a major part in shaping our musical taste(s). Suffice to say we raised a glass to Mr Vance's memory.
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Post by ltd on Jul 12, 2022 14:53:53 GMT
I recall my brother taping the 1990 Donington gig from the radio and I think it might still be around somewhere. From memory there seemed to be some frantic solos and Adrian Vandenberg was booed when DC introduced him to the crowd. For a Yorkshireman, Coverdale gave it some of the London geezer patter, shouting "Can't 'ear ya!" to gee up the audience and a bit later urging them to take the f------ roof off. The Beeb weren't impressed and Coverdale informed punters in a sarky tone that he'd been told by the BBC he had to stop swearing. Whaddaya have to say to that, asked the Covester, which elicited the expected two word reply. Having the BBC on site recording was hardly ever a deterrent on the effing and jeffing front. I remember the Friday Rock Show used to broadcast festival performances some weeks after the event so they could edit out all the foul language. Motorhead's 1986 Donington appearance springs readily to mind. Lemmy swearing, threatening a bottle thrower and making an off colour joke or two all got the snip in the radio version.
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Post by ltd on Jul 8, 2022 18:41:06 GMT
Off the back of his performance in The Godfather didn’t he win some award like This Years Best Italian American or something daft, only to have to politely turn down the award on the grounds that he was Jewish or something. I remember him telling an amusing anecdote about being blackballed when he tried to join a country club. He asked his agent, "It's because I'm Jewish isn't it?" Only for his agent to tell him the members thought he was a genuine mafioso, a made guy "who'd been down town".
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Post by ltd on Jul 7, 2022 20:13:31 GMT
The Gambler's another good one, although I think both Paul Sorvino and Burt Young give him a run for his money in the acting stakes.
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