RIP Thread for Notable People

I enjoyed Going for Gold back in the day... Henry Kelly was an amiable enough host.

Jennifer Johnston I would have come across indirectly through adaptations eg Railway Station Man with Donald Sutherland, was repeated on BBC4 after Sutherland's passing last year.
 
Novelist and playwright Jennifer Johnston (95)
President Higgins led the tributes to her... good job she wasn't a world renowned neuroscientist or he's have said nothing.

I've heard of her but knew nothing about her, though I just read that one of her book was made into a film starring Anthony Hopkins.
 

Ireland has a very elegant sufficiency of light entertainers and there seems to be no lack of people wanting to come into this sector.

Kelly was no more than average as an Irish Times news reporter. If his reporting had a particular slant it seemed to be that of the nice Belvedere boy shocked by the realities of on-the-ground politics. Like his contemporary, John Feeney, his serious journalism phase didn't last too long. He seemed to reserve his most energetic efforts for panel debate on shows like the Late Late where he could animatedly tell all us plain Irish folks from the depth of his mid-30s middle-class Maida Vale experience how nice and decent most British people he met were; how understanding they were as regards him not being like the Balcombe St bombers or drunken labourers; and how London was - despite its cosmopolitan veneer - such a nice place to live and not have your car damaged on the street.

I guess Henry found his true vocation filling in time between pieces on Classic FM. You don't want explicit reality on BBC Radio 2, 3 or 4. Still less on Classic FM - you might upset people looking forward to going to a concert that night at St John's, Smith Square. What you need is a smooth chap in a nice poloneck and jacket, a suave manner after a gin & tonic and above all a man with the 'right' social sensibilities.
 
Wow, was only thinking about him the other day when watching the film "The Firm" with Tom Cruise
And mentioning to Mrs C that I don't think I've ever seen a film with him in it that I didn't enjoy
Time to dust off a few DVD's and go for a trip down memory lane this weekend
 
Perhaps that was just the truth though. My own experiences in the UK while the IRA were still active were similar. I didn't regard them all as anything other than decent people and they didn't assume I was a murdering terrorist.