January was a fierce month for celebrity life expectancy, especially if you are in your late forties and feel you grew up with these people. John Updike. Bill Frindall. Patrick McGoohan (‘I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered’). Ricardo Montalban (‘from Hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee’). Tony Hart and Sir John Mortimer and David Vine. But not John Martyn, please no, tell me that’s a mistake. True, he wasn’t in the best of health. Having drunk enough for two alcoholics and taken enough heroin to floor an elephant, he had his left leg lopped off in 2003 when a cyst exploded, and, once confined to a wheelchair, he piled on the weight. He was never going to make old bones. (He might well have eaten them.) But why now, when he was producing decent records again? Why not ten years ago, or in ten years’ time? Why now?
I have to admit, with some shame (entirely fake, obviously), that I am a relatively recent fan.
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