Slashdot Mirror
Geoffrey Perkins Is Dead At 55
Dynamoo writes "Legendary comedy writer and producer Geoffrey Perkins has died in a road accident in London. Perkins was until recently the head of comedy for BBC TV. Earlier in his career he produced the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio series, and was a writer, director, and producer of many comedy shows including Spitting Image, The Fast Show, and several others. He also invented the game of Mornington Crescent. The world will be a less joyful place without him."
who?
If anyone from the BBC would have died from a road accident, it would have been someone from Top Gear or Fifth Gear. Not that anyone should die in a road accident at all.
I tried to think of a good sig, and this wasn't it.
who is going to suck my dick now?
The Slashdot editors do realize they've posted a British-centric story at 3:44 AM London time...
Maybe with the idiot responsible for horrible british comedy dead, the nation can thrive. Not much hope in that though, they've been unfunny for centuries.
that's hilarious
maybe now real British comedy can begin anew. The Perkins' style a bunch of rubbish and a very, very, very tired cliche.
dear moderators: shag me baby
And thanks for all the laughs.
I guess we'll have to wait until England wakes up to find out who this was...
Anyway, this still makes the case for ROBOCARS!
There are about to be a bunch of dead niggers floating around New Orleans.
Not being satisfied with his Katrina effort, Jesus has sent a second hurricane to clean the niggers out of New Orleans.
I can't wait to see all those dead niggers floating like rats on CNN.
... someone explain all the rules to me again?
The Fast Show was one of my favourites. So long and thanks for all the laughs Geoff.
The link in the summary goes to a page "explaining" the rules for Mornington Crescent.
It goes into great detail about the origin of the game and its history, but from what I can see the closest it comes to explaining the actual rules is:
"When the game was first played it was based on the 1952 pocket A-Z and a simple formula dictating to which pages one could move and to which pages one could not move."
Sure would be nice if it said anything about the formula...
The Independent is reporting that he might have fainted and stumbled onto the road before getting hit.
Also, Anyone else wonder how someone managed to hit him, drive away and not realize it? I understand he was hit by a lorry and not a smart car, but I remeber a few years ago I hit a cat and I sure felt it.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/police-seek-new-evidence-on-death-of-comedy-guru-geoffrey-perkins-913928.html
The BBC Hitch-hiker radio broadcasts were far and away the best versions of Douglas Adams' story of Arthur Dent, Zaphod Beeblebrox, the destruction/creation of Earth, and the search for the question. While I enjoyed the books somewhat, the original radio series was a spectacular production that couldn't be topped.
Geoffrey Perkins will be missed.
Douglas Adams died at 49, now Perkins at 55... maybe the Universe is killing off people who know The Question.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Well, I suppose I'll start, then.
Bond Street.
Somebody please ban this white supremacist.
Can you imagine what it is like for an African American like me to read these horrible things?
I shouldn't have to put up with this. Ban this guy.
African Americans have a proud and noble history and this type of racist speech takes a long, sloppy dump all over it.
Hey, you neglected to say what road! It is, of course, quite relevant that it was Marylebone High Street, as that of course is rather high for him to have shifted over from Town Hall Approach Road.
It is now official. Netcraft confirms: *BSD is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be the Amazing Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
As Charlie Martin points out:
this week, it looks like the Obama campaign's "Chicago Rules" have turned out to be bringing a knife to a gunfight.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
...if you believe in such a thing.
The world will be a less joyful place without him
The world is a more joyful place because of him.
Somehow along the way I made a bad choice in life and now must live with 0 Karma.
Dude, remind me again what we are "in danger of" here?
"In danger of" falling head-over-heals in love?
Here she is as the starting point guard on the state championship women's basketball team [playing with a STRESS FRACTURE, no less]:
.
Here she is early in her career as a sportscasterette:
And here she is as Governorette of Alaska, sitting on a Grizzly Bear couch, with a stuffed King Crab on the coffee table, wearing flip flops and red toenail polish to work:
Again, I ask you in all seriousness - what's not to like here?
I'm not even sure that Angelina Jolie is qualified to play this chick in the movie version, and AJ played Lara Croft, for Goodness's sake.
I guess this is one of those situations where you had to be there... in the U.K., that is? I'm fairly well versed in movies and social memes and even some of what goes on outside my own country's borders, but I had no idea who Geoffrey Palmer was. The OP seems to presume that in fact we all knew who he was and agreed with his alleged importance. If he was that important, I think his influence would have penetrated even my bubble of American isolation.
it Just 0wnz.', the hard drive 7o erosion of user
I remember Geoffrey Perkins from the days of the radio series Radio Active. Geoffrey played the gleeful and shameless bully Mike Flex, who was always making the life of Mike Channel (Angus Deaton) a living hell.
The series itself was a spoof of the low-budget and lower-standards private radio, the personality defects of the characters, and the toxic atmosphere they created. Each program was also a spoof on a particular genre of programme series, for instance: Round Your Parts (local interest), Probe Round the Back (consumer affairs) and God Alone Knows. After a few series on Radio 4 the show transferred to TV for it's swan song KYTV "You'll never be stuck with KY Telly".
I once sat opposite Mr Perkins on a train, coming back from Waterloo one evening. He looked busy, so to my lasting regret I didn't disturb him to say "thanks" for the Guide, KYTV, etc. And now I never will be able to, and that makes me sad.
Sean Ellis
Follow OfQuack's antics on Twitter.
King's Cross!
Oh shit, where is my musket? Did I renew my subscription to the militia?
Perfidious Albion.