[seankenny]

A veteran journalist on twitter - can’t remember who - said Fisk was steeped in the 1970s newsroom culture of embellishing stories. I thought the obit was a little catty but excusing war crimes is a big, big deal.

[andy popp]

excusing war crimes is a big, big deal.

I agree, which is why the obituary should have made a serious attempt to parse this turn in Fisk's work, rather than trading in snide innuendo. I wouldn't have posted about Fisk again (I carry no brief for him) but I thought this was a hugely shitty and unprofessional piece of work that shames the Guardian.

[northern yob]

Democracy and the British trad climbing ethic. Sad times indeed!

[Nigel]

I wouldn't have posted about Fisk again (I carry no brief for him) but I thought this was a hugely shitty and unprofessional piece of work that shames the Guardian.

Just read that - agreed, really awful stuff. Have to say that I haven't read Fisk's journalism much in recent years as I can't abide the Independent website, so I don't know what the controversy is. But as Dan says his book The Great War For Civilisation is excellent and illuminating.

[cheque]

Bruce Swedien, engineer of huge amounts of jazz, soul, funk & pop records, most famously almost everything Quincy Jones did.

[andy popp]

Journalist and author Jan Morris, who accompanied the 1953 Everest expedition (and famously sent a coded message signalling success that arrived intake for the Queen's coronation) and lived in a long, fascinating, and very productive life.

[andy popp]

Obituary here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/nov/20/jan-morris-obituary

[duncan]

Raise a glass to Hamish MacInnes. An amazing life: climber, inventor, writer, photographer, and mountain rescue innovator. Modern climbers will admire the cheek of bolting Dinas Cromlech!

I really enjoyed the BBC Scotland film Final Ascent, partly a biography.



 

[gollum]

Christophe Dominici a truly inspiring and mercurial rugby player.

[Johnny Brown]

Raise a glass to Hamish MacInnes. An amazing life: climber, inventor, writer, photographer, and mountain rescue innovator. Modern climbers will admire the cheek of bolting Dinas Cromlech!

I really enjoyed the BBC Scotland film Final Ascent, partly a biography.

Coincidentally I watched this last week. Despite his prolific output and broad influence he seems to have dropped off the radar in the last 30 years, I can recall barely anything from voraciously devouring climbing media since around 1988. I guess that would square with his age, but I felt like I got very little insight from the film where to me he remained fairly distant and inscrutable. I guess taciturn and highy competent was some sort of fifties ideal Scotsman but through the modern lens it would tend to raise questions about hidden (perhaps muddy?) depths.

[rginns]

Maradona.

[Andy F]

Maradona.

The hand of God gets to shake the hand of God.

[mrjonathanr]

Write up on BBC https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/54810392

[cheque]

He’ll always be the greatest player to me, clearly a factually inaccurate opinion but football’s a lot more about how you feel (or how you felt as a child) than facts isn’t it? My greatest memory of him is of a trip to the film & TV museum in Bradford the morning after Argentina had thrashed Greece in the 94 World Cup. There was a camera set up that would film you and immediately play the results back in slow mo and me and my mate Nima spent a good half hour recreating Maradona’s unhinged celebratory run towards the TV camera again and again.

The glorious, tragicomic story of his career eclipses either Messi or Ronaldo (neither of whom are likely to ever lift the World Cup or play for anyone but the giant bully clubs  ) and is up there with any in football, or, you could argue, outside it, encapsulated in the 86 England match (one goal the most famous example of blatant unpunished cheating in the history of the sport, the other one of the greatest ever scored) but going far beyond that. I imagine anyone reading this who loves football will have seen Kapadia’s film about him but I strongly recommend it to anyone else as well.

[andy popp]

Himalayan legend Doug Scott.

[andy popp]

Raise a glass to Hamish MacInnes. An amazing life: climber, inventor, writer, photographer, and mountain rescue innovator. Modern climbers will admire the cheek of bolting Dinas Cromlech!

I really enjoyed the BBC Scotland film Final Ascent, partly a biography.

Rather delayed Guardian obit: I think it's a bit flat and uninspired - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/06/hamish-macinnes-obituary

[tomtom]

Himalayan legend Doug Scott.

Great Obit/Blog in the Vertebrae blog by Jon 👏👏

https://www.v-publishing.co.uk/blog/v-publishing-blog/2020-12-07---remembering-doug-scott/

[andy popp]

That's a great piece Tom.

Here's Ed Douglas' obituary in the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/07/doug-scott-obituary?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

[seankenny]

I did a feature on Scott when I worked for the Nottingham Evening Post many years ago. After our chat he wanted a session down the wall, which obviously I persauded the desk was a vital part of the interview. There was a certain faded glory and forlornness about him: "I'm more of a poster-seller who does a bit of climbing these days, than an actual climber."

I mean, what do you do after you've been to the Moon?

[Johnny Brown]

I remember seeing his Crawl down the Ogre lecture at Parr Hall back in the eighties. It seemed pretty fresh at the time, only 10 or 12 years after, but I was amazed to see he was still touring the same lecture over twenty years later. Fair does if that was his living.

Andy, re the Macinnes obit, that's what I was getting at on the previous page. I got the same from the film, apart from catching a glint in his eye back in his heyday there was very little personality making it past the accomplishments.

[cheque]

When I was first getting into climbing as an adult (I climbed as a kid due to being in a Scout group with climbers as leaders but forgot all about it as soon as I left) I read every big snowy mountain book I could. Himalayan Climber (and whatever the Bonington equivalent’s called) was the first I got my hands on that had big colour pictures and gave me a real idea of what the authors were really talking about.

Learning that Scott was from the city I lived in and had started climbing in the Peak led to me starting to climb again myself and seeing how cold and miserable everyone looked in all the pictures led me to lose any interest in “proper” mountaineering so you could say that it was a really important book!

I was involved in a magazine about Nottingham culture at the time and he would have been an ideal interviewee but he never replied to my emails.

[tomtom]

From Pete Trewin on the Friends of Pex Facebook group

"Amazing as it may seem, Doug Scott was once a pekkie and was involved in a well-known rescue there when Gary Smith fell from the top of The Abort soloing and fractured just about every bone in his body. Two elderly climbers ran over, made Gary comfortable and called the ambulance. Doug Scott and Ken Wilson. Months later when Gary had recovered, he invited the pair to his house for a thank-you party. Gary's mum, carrying a tray of drinks, tripped and deposited the lot in the Ogre crawler's lap. 'Aye,' said Doug, as calm and as dry as you please. 'I see it runs in the family.' Thanks to Steve Boote for the story and blame him for any inaccuracies."

[andy_e]

Harold Budd

[Johnny Brown]

From Pete Trewin on the Friends of Pex Facebook group

"Amazing as it may seem, Doug Scott was once a pekkie and was involved in a well-known rescue there when Gary Smith fell from the top of The Abort soloing and fractured just about every bone in his body. Two elderly climbers ran over, made Gary comfortable and called the ambulance. Doug Scott and Ken Wilson. Months later when Gary had recovered, he invited the pair to his house for a thank-you party. Gary's mum, carrying a tray of drinks, tripped and deposited the lot in the Ogre crawler's lap. 'Aye,' said Doug, as calm and as dry as you please. 'I see it runs in the family.' Thanks to Steve Boote for the story and blame him for any inaccuracies."

Ah that's great. Gary was one of the first proper climbers I met and took me for my first day ice climbing. For my Dad's fiftieth we joined a Vag's trip to traverse the Matterhorn. Gary and Tony were obviously the dream team and went first, I managed to hustle us into second and two other pairs followed. We didn't see much of the dream team as they sped ahead up the Italian, but on the way down the Hörnli they made a routefinding error which I clocked from above and we caught them up at a belay. The look of dismay on Gary's face was one of the highlights of the trip. The other four were a bit slower and ended up benighted in the Solvay bivac. It snowed overnight and they then had a torrid 48 hours getting their uninsured scouse asses off the mountain.

[SA Chris]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/08/chuck-yeager-obituary

Anyone pick this up? Redefines the word bold. Uberwad, still flying supersonic in his 90s.