so many deaths

No ramblings today – I have to go to Burbank Airport to pick somebody up; then we are going to Chili John's in Burbank for – a chili!!
This gets me thinking as the guy that used to own Chili John's, Gene, died a few months ago from Pancreatic cancer which is what killed Patrick Swayze the other day; he was a great guy, Gene, and even though I only knew him for the last two years or so of his life I felt I had known him for years.
What I was thinking is that so many people – besides Gene – who are famous have died over the past few months or so - Farrah Fawcet was the first, but was overshadowed by Michael Jackson on the same day, and today I see that the Australian actor Ray Barrett died last week.
He was the fella in the BBC series The Troubleshooters and the voice behind one of the characters in Thunderbirds are Go. He said he owed his career to the pock marks on his face; he got them after suffering from acne as a teenager but when a journalist asked him how he got them he joked that he got them from catching himself on a barbed wire fence whilst helping fellow prisoners of war escape from the Germans during the second world war and was surprised to see that the journalist had used the story in the article.
Another person who died last week was Larry Gelbert the TV and screenwriter; he wrote the movie Tootsie and created the TV series, from the movie, MASH; I met him a few times as he was a friend of a friend. The first time was at a birthday party and he came up and introduced himself to me 'I'm Larry Gelbart' as if I didn't know; in fact I've found this quite often when famous people introduce themselves.
The other time I met him was at his house in Beverly Hills when he invited friends of the same mutual friend when she died and he was as charming as before coming over and chatting to me as he had with everybody else there.
I'm sorry this blog is about death – but nobody reads it in any case!!