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Comedian Mel Smith dies aged 60

Comic actor and writer Mel Smith has died of a heart attack, aged 60, his agent has confirmed.

The British comedian - known for the sketch shows Alas Smith and Jones and Not The Nine O'Clock News - died at his home on Friday, Michael Foster said.

Smith formed a lasting partnership with co-performer Griff Rhys Jones with whom he set up the independent television company, Talkback Productions.

Rhys Jones described his friend of 35 years as a "brilliant actor".

In a statement on behalf of his wife, Pam, Mr Foster said: "Mel Smith, comedian and writer, died on Friday aged 60, from a heart attack at his home in north-west London."

An ambulance was called to Smith's home just after 09:00 BST where he was found to have died.

Friends and colleagues have paid tribute to him.

"I still can't believe this has happened," said Rhys Jones.

"To everybody who ever met him, Mel was a force for life. He had a relish for it that seemed utterly inexhaustible."

He said the pair had never had an argument and "loved performing together", adding: "He inspired love and utter loyalty and he gave it in return. I will look back on the days working with him as some of the funniest times that I have ever spent."

He went on to describe Smith as a "gentleman and a scholar, a gambler and a wit".

The pair met, along with Rowan Atkinson and Pamela Stephenson, working on Not the Nine O'Clock News, which ran from 1979 to 1982.

The programme's creator, John Lloyd, told the BBC his friend had been ill for some time.

He said: "Mel did an extraordinary thing - he taught us all how to make comedy natural. He was a brilliant theatre director... Not only was he a great actor, he was a wonderful editor."

Smith and Rhys Jones together created Talkback Productions, which made a number of much-loved comedies - among them Da Ali G Show, I'm Alan Partridge and Never Mind the Buzzcocks.

"What that did is produce a gigantic raft of new material," Mr Lloyd said. "That, I think, is a contribution that will never go away."

Their business partner and agent at Talkback, ITV director of television Peter Fincham, said Smith had "extraordinary natural talent".

"Life was always exciting around Mel," he said. "Being funny came naturally to him, so much so that he never seemed to give it a second thought.

"Mel and Griff were one of the great comedy acts and it's hard to imagine that one of them is no longer with us."

Atkinson, who starred in Bean - The Ultimate Disaster Movie, directed by Smith in 1997, paid tribute to a "lovely man of whom I saw too little in his later years".

"He had a wonderfully generous and sympathetic presence both on and off screen," he said.

Other friends and colleagues took to Twitter to send their condolences, with comedian and broadcaster Stephen Fry writing: "Terrible news about my old friend Mel Smith, dead today from a heart attack. Mel lived a full life, but was kind, funny and wonderful to know."

The son of a bookmaker from Chiswick, west London, Smith was already directing plays with friends at the age of six.

He went on to read experimental psychology at New College, Oxford, where he was involved with the dramatic society.

Writer of hits JJ Cale dead at 74

Musician JJ Cale, whose songs "Cocaine" and "After Midnight" were made famous by Eric Clapton, died Friday night after suffering a heart attack, the president of his management agency said. His contemporaries considered him a legend, even if many fans weren't familiar with his name.

He was 74.

"JJ Cale was loved by fans worldwide for his completely unpretentious and beautiful music," said Mike Kappus, president of the Rosebud Agency. "He was loved even more dearly by all those he came in contact with as the most real and down-to-earth person we all knew."

Lynyrd Skynyrd made Cale's song "Call Me The Breeze" famous, and bands including Santana, The Allman Brothers, Johnny Cash, and many others covered his songs.

He won a Grammy for his 2006 album with Clapton, called "The Road to Escondido."

"He was incredibly humble and avoided the spotlight at all costs but will be missed by anyone touched by him directly or indirectly," Kappus said. "Luckily, his music lives on."

The singer-songwriter passed away at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, his official website said.

There were no immediate plans for funeral services, it said.

"We've lost a great artist and a great person," Clapton wrote on his Facebook page.

His official biography describes Cale as someone for whom music is all he's ever known.

"I remember when I made my first album, I was 32 or 33 years old and I thought I was way too old then," Cale said, according to his bio. "When I see myself doing this at 70, I go, 'What am I doing, I should be layin' down in a hammock.'"

He was living in Tulsa and had given up on making money in the record business when his career was suddenly made by Clapton's cover of "After Midnight."

That moment changed everything for the musician, his biography states. After Clapton picked up his song, Cale drove to Nashville to record his first album.

He is credited with helping create what is known as the Tulsa Sound, a laid-back style that contrasted with the psychedelic rock that was heard at the time.

"I'm so old, I can remember before rock 'n' roll come along," Cale told CNN in 2009. "When I was a young fellow, I played guitar for other people, so I'd have to learn (cover tunes). ... So the guitar players on all those early recordings, I guess, influenced what I did. I never could get it exactly right the way they played it, and I guess that helped the style that evolved."

Other musicians who covered Cale's work include The Band, Chet Atkins, Freddie King, Maria Muldaur and Captain Beefheart, according to his biography, which also notes he was asked whether it bothered him that fellow musicians considered him a legend while many fans did not even know his name.

"No, it doesn't bother me," Cale said. "What's really nice is when you get a check in the mail."

Gilbert Taylor, Star Wars cinematographer, dies aged 99

Gilbert Taylor, the veteran British cinematographer of Star Wars, The Omen and Dr Strangelove, has died aged 99.

According to his wife Dee, he died on Friday with his family at his bedside at his home on the Isle of Wight.

Born in Bushey Heath, Hertfordshire in 1914, Taylor entered the film industry in 1929 as a camera assistant, working at Gainsborough Studios in London.

His many credits include Ice Cold in Alex, the Beatles' film A Hard Day's Night and Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy.

He also worked with Roman Polanski on such films as Repulsion and Cul-de-Sac, for which he received back-to-back Bafta nominations in consecutive years.

According to his wife, Taylor "turned down a Bond picture" to work with Polanski, "because he thought Roman was a very interesting guy".

"The three of us became very firm friends, and we've been friends until this day."

Taylor had a hand in the special effects for 1955 classic The Dam Busters and was director of photography on the 1980 fantasy Flash Gordon.

To many, though, he will be best remembered for his contribution to the first Star Wars film, on which he worked under the auspices of director George Lucas.

"George avoided all meetings and contact with me from day one," Taylor would later tell American Cinematographer magazine.

"So I read the extra-long script many times and made my own decisions as to how I would shoot the picture."

Taylor would have happier memories of his time photographing Ken Adam's famous War Room set for Doctor Strangelove, Stanley Kubrick's 1964 Cold War satire.

"Lighting that set was sheer magic," he later recalled. "I don't quite know how I got away with it all."

Taylor's distinguished career included six years with the Royal Air Force during World War II, shooting the results of night-time raids over Germany at the personal request of Winston Churchill.

He went on to become a founder member of the British Society of Cinematographers, which presented him with a lifetime achievement award in 2001.

Taylor also worked on television, shooting episodes for such 1960s series as The Avengers and The Baron.

He stopped making feature films in 1994 but continued to shoot commercials while turning his hand to painting.

Gilbert's widow said their life together had been "a Technicolor dream".

Dee, a script supervisor, was 23 years his junior. They met on the set of the 1963 Tony Hancock film The Punch and Judy Man and married four years later.

They continued to work together for the rest of their lives. When the British film industry went through hard times in the mid-1970s, they set up a dairy farm with 250 cattle.

Mrs Taylor remembered her late husband as "wonderful, kind, funny, amusing [and] terribly talented in every aspect".

"There was nothing he couldn't do," she told the BBC.

Former This Day Tonight presenter Bill Peach dies

Bill Peach, the former presenter of trail-blazing ABC current affairs program This Day Tonight (TDT), has died.

Peach died of cancer in a Sydney hospital early this morning aged 78.

The award-winning journalist began hosting TDT when it launched in 1967, fronting the ground-breaking current affairs show for its first eight years.

Peach worked on the show alongside journalists including Richard Carleton, George Negus and Gerald Stone.

Negus says Peach was Australia's first true news and current affairs anchor.

"In a way, quite strangely actually, [anchor] was a word that fitted Bill in more ways than one," Mr Negus said.

"Not only was he anchored to the desk most of the time ... but he was an anchor to the program as a bloke.

"He was very calm, very composed, very together and very sensible when he was surrounded by a bunch of cowboys like myself at the time."

Broadcaster and writer Sir David Frost dies at 74

Veteran broadcaster Sir David Frost has died at the age of 74 after a heart attack while on board a cruise ship.

A family statement said he was aboard the Queen Elizabeth on Saturday night where he was to give a speech.

Sir David's career spanned journalism, comedy writing and daytime television presenting, including The Frost Report.

Internationally, he will be remembered for his revealing interviews with former US President Richard Nixon.

A statement said: "His family are devastated and ask for privacy at this difficult time. A family funeral will be held in the near future and details of a memorial service will be announced in due course."

The BBC's Barney Jones edited his Breakfast with Frost programme on the BBC for more than 10 years.

Of his friend and colleague, he said: "David loved broadcasting, did it brilliantly for more than 50 years and was eagerly looking forward to a host of projects - including interviewing the prime minister next week - before his sudden and tragic death. We will all miss him enormously."

Prime Minister David Cameron said: "Sir David was an extraordinary man, with charm, wit, talent, intelligence and warmth in equal measure.

"He made a huge impact on television and politics."

Born in Kent, Sir David studied at Cambridge University where he became secretary of the Footlights club, and met future comedy greats such as Peter Cook, Graham Chapman and John Bird.

After university he went to work at ITV before he was asked to front the BBC programme That Was The Week That Was, which ran between 1962 and 1963, and The Frost Report in 1966 and 1967.

Casting a satirical eye over the week's news, That Was The Week That Was boasted scriptwriters including Peter Cook, Roald Dahl, Eric Sykes, John Betjeman and Dennis Potter.

The Frost Report brought together Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett, and writers including future members of The Goodies and Monty Python, in a sketch show which would influence comedy writers for a generation.

Sir David's often-mimicked catchphrase "hello, good evening and welcome" was by now in full use.

The Frost Programme for ITV followed, which saw Sir David move away from comedy into in-depth interviews with political figures, royalty and celebrities.

It was on this programme that he had a terse interview with then prime minister Margaret Thatcher over the sinking of the Argentine cruiser Belgrano during the Falklands conflict.

At the same time, Sir David began work on The David Frost Show in the US.

He later conducted a series of interviews with Nixon, who had resigned the presidency two years earlier, in which the former president came close to apologising to the public for his role in the Watergate scandal.

Their exchanges were eventually made into the film Frost/Nixon - based on a play - which saw Michael Sheen portray Sir David Frost to Frank Langella's Nixon. Sir David himself appeared at the premiere of the film in 2008.

His simultaneous work on both sides of the Atlantic led to him becoming the most frequent traveller on Concorde, making an average of 40 flights per year for 20 years.

In the 1990s, Sir David presented Through the Keyhole, which he also produced, alongside Loyd Grossman.

The show saw Grossman take a tour round the home of a celebrity while a panel of guests tried to guess "who lives in a house like this".

In 1993, the year he was knighted, he began presenting Breakfast with Frost - which had begun life on ITV - a Sunday show on BBC in which he interviewed newsworthy figures.

Sir David joined broadcaster Al-Jazeera in 2006 when it launched its English-speaking service.

He married his second wife, Lady Carina Fitzalan-Howard, in 1983 and they had three sons.

He worked closely with a number of charities over the years, including Alzheimer's Research Trust, the Motor Neurone Disease Association and health charity Wellbeing of Women.

Audio pioneer Ray Dolby dies aged 80

Ray Dolby, who pioneered noise-reducing and surround-sound audio technologies which are fundamental to the music and film industries, has died aged 80.

Dolby had suffered from Alzheimer's disease for a number of years and was diagnosed with acute leukaemia last July, Dolby Laboratories said in a statement.

The Oscar-winning scientist died at home in San Francisco, the company said.

"Today we lost a friend, mentor and true visionary," said Kevin Yeaman, president and CEO of the company the young Dolby created in 1965.

"Ray Dolby founded the company based on a commitment to creating value through innovation and an impassioned belief that if you invested in people and gave them the tools for success, they would create great things.

"Ray's ideals will continue to be a source of inspiration and motivation for us all."

Graduating from high school in San Francisco and from Stanford University, Dolby became chief designer at Ampex Corporation, developing the electronic side of the first practical videotape recording system.

After founding his own company in his early 30s, he went on to spend decades developing technologies that have become the audio gold standard in recording and movie studios.

He held more than 50 US patents, including most recently for his Atmos system, which sends commands to individual speakers so that sounds - whether rain drops, footsteps or explosions - appear to come from specific spots in a movie theatre.

Last year, his firm sealed a deal to have its name on the venue of the annual Academy Awards, rebranding it as the Dolby Theatre after bankrupt camera company Kodak was forced to end its sponsorship of the Hollywood landmark.

Over the years Dolby and his company won 10 Oscars and 13 Emmy Awards for its groundbreaking achievements.

"My father was a thoughtful, patient and loving man, determined to always do the right thing in business, philanthropy, and as a husband and father," son and Dolby Laboratories' Board of Directors member David Dolby said.

"Our family is very proud of his achievements and leadership.

"He will be sorely missed, but his legacy of innovation will live on."

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During the 1970s, Jacobs played the small, recurring role of Mrs. Carson in Number 96 and Muriel Palmer on The Young Doctors. Her popularity grew when she played Esme Watson on the long-running Seven Network drama series A Country Practice. She appeared in the pilot episode in 1981 and became a regular starting with Episode 99 in 1982. Having worked on the series for 12 years, she was one of the show's longest-serving actors. She remained with the show until it ended in 1993.

Guitarist Phil Chevron, of Anglo-Irish folk-punk band the Pogues, died on Tuesday at the age of 56 after a long battle with cancer, the band said.

Chevron joined the Pogues in 1984 and became a core member as the group made its name internationally in the 1980s and early 1990s with albums including Rum, Sodomy and The Lash and If I Should Fall From Grace With God.

Chevron, whose real name was Philip Ryan, wrote the band's popular ballad Thousands Are Sailing.

"He was unique. We'll miss him terribly. Dublin town, and the world, just got smaller," the Pogues said in a statement on their website. "His loved ones are in our thoughts."

Chevron, who was born in Dublin, started out with the Irish act The Radiators From Space, which has been described as Ireland's first punk band, but he moved to London where he joined the Pogues, fronted by fellow Irishman Shane MacGowan.

As well as playing guitar for the Pogues, he turned his hand to banjo and mandolin and occasionally took lead vocals.

Chevron stayed with the Pogues after MacGowan left in 1991 to be replaced by Joe Strummer, former frontman of The Clash.

But Chevron quit the band three years later due to poor health spurred by drug and alcohol abuse. The band split up in 1996.

Chevron later reformed the Radiators with ex-Pogues bassist Cait O'Riordan.

When the Pogues reformed in 2001 and interest in their music revived, Chevron remastered the band's back catalogue on CD and took a big role in their annual reunion tours.

He was diagnosed with head and neck cancer in 2007 and was given a clean bill of health in April 2012, but the cancer returned.

His last appearance was at a testimonial concert in his honour in Dublin two months ago.

NOTORIOUS Melbourne criminal Mark "Chopper'' Read has died after a long battle with liver cancer.
Read, who bragged of killing more than a dozen criminals, was surrounded by family when he passed away at the Royal Melbourne Hospital.

But former homicide detective Charlie Bezzina declared Read's life should not be glorified, saying: "He's been revered, and people forget his violent past."

DEFIANT: 'I'm not afraid' says Chopper

TIME'S UP: 'I'll be dead by Christmas'

"You can never lose sight of the fact that he was a criminal, and spent 23 years behind bars."

Read, whose life was immortalised in a film starring Eric Bana, was diagnosed in April last year.

The 58-year old's death comes just two weeks after he performed a sold-out stand-up show at Melbourne's Athenaeum Theatre.

He was admitted to hospital just days later but went home last week to be with his family before returning to hospital.

Doctors had told the father of two that he would not live beyond Christmas.

In August, Read told the Herald Sun he would prove the doctors wrong.

"I took great offence at that. I told her: 'How dare you predict my death at Christmas! I'll tell you when I'm going to die, not you tell me','' he said.

Read said his illness stemmed from contracting hepatitis C while in prison.

He had also battled cirrhosis.

"My time has come,'' Read said. "They told me to go home and die.''

Read's manager Andrew Parisi said he fought a long and courageous battle against cancer.

"Despite his failing health, he delighted the audience (in his last show) with his skills as a raconteur and storyteller. This is how he would wish to be remembered, as someone who spun a great yarn and made many people laugh,'' he said.

Mr Parisi said despite Read's criminal past, he had lived a quiet life with his wife Margaret in their Collingwood home for more than 15 years.

"He worked as a writer, painter and public speaker, paid his taxes and took care of his family,'' he said.

Mr Parisi said he hoped people would remember Read for the way he changed his life, rather than his criminal upbringing.

"We ask that people reflect on how Mark was able to overcome his past and, after more than 23 years in prison, find a way to re-enter 'normal' society. It is as a husband, father and friend that Mark will be missed most deeply,'' he said.

Crime Victims Support Association president Noel McNamara said he and Read had their differences, but he bore no hard feelings.

"He was all right, apart from some of his ideas being different to mine. We had our arguments," he said.

"He was a larger than life character, I guess you'd call him."

Read had an uneasy start to easy life. He was made a ward of the state at age 14 and was placed in various mental institutions as a teenager.

In these institutions he claims he received up to 60 episodes of shock treatment.

Between the ages 20 to 38, Read spent the majority of his life behind bars for a range of crimes including armed robbery, assault, arson, kidnapping and firearm offences.

He was well known for his sadistic torture methods involving a blowtorch and bolt cutters, which were often employed to remove victims' toes.

Read, who claimed to have been involved in the killing of 19 people and the attempted murder of 11 others, was last freed from prison in 1998, after serving six years for inflicting grievous bodily harm on a bikie by shooting him in the chest.

Read's Twitter bio tells you nearly all you need to know about a man who was unashamed of the hard life he had led.

"23 Years 9 Months Jail. Stabbed. Bashed. Shot. Run Over. 60 serves of shock treatment. Certified 3 times. Author. Artist. Actor."

Read claimed to have been stabbed seven times and gouged to the head with a claw hammer.

He had a fellow inmate cut his ears off while in prison, which he said was part of a plan to avoid an ambush at Pentridge's H division.

Read's books were always popular with a broad readership, so much so that he became Australia's most popular crime author.

In 1991 he released Chopper: From the Inside, which sold more than 300,000 copies.

He also sold out at least four art exhibitions, and in 2003 sold a self-portrait to the State Library of Victoria for $1400.

Read also dabbled in a wide variety of music from gangsta rap to the the Blues.

Marcia Wallace, voice of The Simpsons' Edna Krabappel, dies at 70

Actress and comedian Marcia Wallace, the voice of Edna Krabappel on The Simpsons, has died aged 70.

Wallace, who had survived breast cancer, died at home, according to a Fox publicist, Antonia Coffman.

Wallace played the chatty receptionist Carol Kester on The Bob Newhart Show. She also appeared on The Merv Griffin Show and game shows such as Hollywood Squares and The $25,000 Pyramid.

She is best known as the voice of long-running Simpsons character Edna Krabappel, Bart Simpson's crabby fourth-grade teacher.

"I was tremendously saddened to learn this morning of the passing of the brilliant and gracious Marcia Wallace," said executive producer, Al Jean. "She was beloved by all at The Simpsons and we intend to retire her irreplaceable character."

Wallace published an autobiography Don't Look Back, We're Not Going that Way, in 2004. Her husband, hotelier Dennis Hawley, died in 1992. She had a son, Michael Hawley.