Pogrom Of The Seventies Icons

These last few days have seen a slew of deaths.

First, on 17 May, we had reports of the death of Donna Summer. Over the weekend proper, we then heard news that Colin McIntyre, the founding editor of Ceefax, the BBC's TV teletext service - the world's first - had also passed away. He was 85.

Disaster struck Italy this weekend, too, in the form of an earthquake which has left at least seven people dead and more than 50 injured, and which has left thousands of Italians suddenly homeless. According to the BBC news report -

"The original earthquake struck at a relatively shallow depth of 10km just after 04:00 local time (02:00 GMT) on Sunday.

"Its epicentre was between the towns of Finale Emilia, San Felice sul Panaro and Sermide, about 35km (20 miles) north of the city of Bologna.

"It was felt across a large swathe of northern Italy, as far away as the cities of Milan and Venice."

Not long after hearing of the death of one of the unnamed influences responsible for creating a Seventies icon came news of the death of the designer of the Raleigh Chopper bike, Alan Oakley, also aged 85.

And finally, just when we thought we'd seen the back of all these news reports of the deaths of Seventies icons, we received the saddest news of all - that Robin Gibb, of the legendary Bee Gees, passed away last night.

Not a good time to have been a Seventies icon, this weekend just gone.

Oh, and the only man ever convicted of the Lockerbie bombing has died. Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was released from prison on compassionate grounds, and the non-compassionate majority of grumbling bumpkins complained that he'd fooled everybody and that he was healthy after all.

Not really, fools. He died of the cancer that was killing him, you've been deprived of the convenient scapegoat to lump your Two Minute Hate upon and the real murderer may not have been caught - because the CIA would never allow their agents to come to trial, in case they point the finger at them and the President.

Still, allow yourselves some small crumb of solace - he not only outlived Colonel Gaddafi; he suffered a worse death, too.