John Bird
John Tusa, Trinity College, Cambridge, 1956-60, writes: At Cambridge in the late 1950s, John Bird (obituary, December 31, 2022) was known for his theatrical abilities rather than as a satirist. His directing of All the King’s Men with David Buck and Joe Melia was an eye-opener to our generation of what we were learning to call American “method acting”. It was a refreshingly far cry from the beautiful vowels of the Marlowe Society’s Shakespeare. John himself was said to follow an “American lifestyle”, which was as impressive as it was incomprehensible for his contemporaries. How would he have fared as a satirist in today’s censorious times? Would his Idi Amin take-off have been permitted?
Maxi Jazz
Nigel Williamson writes:When I interviewed Faithless for The Times in 1997, I told them that they were my teenage son Adam’s favourite band, and Maxi Jazz (obituary, December 29, 2022) immediately asked about him. When I said he was at Edinburgh University, he said, “We’re playing Edinburgh in a couple of months, we’ll put him on the guest list and get him an access-all-areas pass so he can come backstage and say hello.” He was true to his word and when Adam and his girlfriend went backstage after the gig, Maxi invited them on to the Faithless tour bus and took them out for a night’s clubbing with everything on his tab. He was without doubt one of life’s true gentlemen.
Barbara Walters
Philip Moger writes: When Barbara Walters (obituary, December 31, 2022) was the first female co-anchor of any evening news in America the interest was huge and the first night ratings reflected that. But it wasn’t an auspicious debut and on the second night Walter Cronkite famously opened his CBS Evening News with the words “Good evening. And welcome back.”