2016:- The gift that keeps on giving

What a year! And still time for Cliff! But Someone doesn't seem to want him. The list of vacuous narcissists of no to negative consequence just keeps on growing - it is the gift that keeps on giving. David Bowie gave us permission to be ourselves. Leonard Cohen gave us permission to be our big-nosed sulky selves. And George Michael attempted to reinvent the drive-thru. Each time, the world changed and would never be the same again. Although you can watch them on youtube when they were better. But who would you most like to see die next? Yes - it's your friends and colleagues who have suddenly become 5 yrs old, and that twat on the news who never knew fucknobody. But apart from them? Which celebrity would you most like to see next shuffling off into a hastily cobbled together crockofshite TV #tweet fest? Everyone will have their own personal favourite 'Top Ten', but I'll probably get bored halfway through....

1. That other one out of Status Quo.

Really, that other one out of Status Quo is not the only other one out of Status Quo, but with the B-listers dropping like flies, and the rest of the alphabet dying at over a million a week, there just aren't enough candles for everybody. Sneering snobs have attempted to diminish the musical achievements of this seminal band, but if it really were that easy to make a multitude of hit records sound the same, then every one would be it. Apart from that first one, which instead merely sounded like someone else.

2. Bob Geldof

A popular choice with tax and planning authorities everywhere, Bob's greatest achievements must surely include forgetting Midge Ure, and making Nigel Farage look the lesser wanker. His famously inspired ad lib 'Give us your fucking money' was in fact rehearsed over many years, but such was his professional delivery that even today it seems off the cuff, and people don't always appreciate the years of practise that go into every act behind the scenes.

3. Bob Monkhouse again

Shrewd observers of Bob Monkhouse will have noticed that he was never truly alive, merely a stacked nesting of fabricated GOSUB routines, all written out and colour coded in that famous book of him, but it was still fun to hear that he had died, albeit sadly only in 2003. Perhaps his greatest joke was the one about faking sincerity, but no it wasn't - that was merely a sinister confession. It was instead 'They laughed when I said I was going to be a comedian. They're not laughing now'. Although we can still say this without his actual physical presence, it still somehow seems a shame he can't die again.

4. Terry Wogan again, twice, to be sure, to be sure

You wouldn't think someone would steal money from Children in Need, but then you are not a sadly missed celebrity, and so can't spell steal 'small non-commercial fee'. It takes a consummate mastery of presentation to be able to do this while simultaneously reading off the autocue just how many lives this money would otherwise save - every little helps - and of course Terry 'would gladly have done it for nothing' if the freedom of information request had forced him to a quarter of a century earlier.

5. Simon Cowell

Even the most leathery cynic amongst us will feel it a tragedy that Simon's mother never lived to see him die. Very much an outward-looking man, Simon invented the talent show, the talent show, and the talent show, and who knows what he might invent next - there seems no start to his ability. Although already immortalised in dentistry, the flesh remains weak, and though these records will outlast him, one just can't help hoping he takes forever to die, a hollow, empty husk of a human, gazing at the reflection that must be so transparent to himself, watching his life slowly evaporate, all the time acutely, exquisitely, horrifically aware of the impending eternal vacuum he never really left.