One thing I like to try and do each day is to read the obituaries in The Times. Most often they are people I have never heard of or only know vaguely of. Even these can be interesting. I read a short while ago of a Gwilym Roberts (not that one) - outstanding civil engineer who helped design football stadiums after Hillsborough and gave Baghdad a modern sewerage system - including how when working on Cairo's sewerage system a problem arose with holes in the concrete, which he discovered was caused because workers would spit their date pips from lunch time into the cement mixer.
Anyway recently there have been at least four names I recognised well - two sportsmen, a comedian and a conjuror and sceptic.
1. Nobby Stiles was a member of the World Cup winning England side in 1966 and the Manchester United side that beat Benfica in the European Cup in 1968 (United were my dad's team). With his dentures out, his shin pads off and his no-nonsense tackles, he was a character, very much of his age. Not many of the '66 team left now.
2. J J Williams was one of a galaxy of Welsh rugby stars that made the Welsh rugby team in the seventies almost invincible. Four triple crowns and two grandslams in thirty games is seismic.
3. Bobby Ball with Tommy Cannon was part of one of those northern double acts that were so popular at one time. (Bobby died of covid like Sid Large, a similar kind of comedian). My parents saw Cannon and Ball more than once and were fans. I remember seeing them in panto in Cardiff in 2002. Most interesting in the case of Bobby Ball is that he appears to have become a genuine Christian at some point. I do not know the details (newspapers are quite ignorant about these things generally and simply refer to finding religion and so on).
4. James Randi is the name you are likely to be least familiar with but I saw a documentary on him a few years back and so was very familiar with him. He was a conjuror and sceptic in the Houdini mould. Interestingly he was set on his way at the age of 15 when in church. Some charlatan tried to pull a fast one, claiming a hotline to God and Randi saw right through it. He later exposed Peter Popoff and Uri Geller among others. I love sceptics like this, they are real allies, but sadly they tend not to know where to stop and I have no reason to suppose Randi believed in the supernatural at all - until now, of course.
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