The west beach of Selsey was unusually void of bathers this week-end.
On Wednesday a shoal of over 50 sharks came into the RSPB Medmerry Nature Reserve with the high tide for a feast of crabs before escaping out to sea as the tide ebbed.
One unfortunate chap missed the outgoing tide!
Nature wardens say they were
"astonished" to come across a group of up to 50 sharks swimming in
rising tidal waters in West Sussex.
Video footage shows dozens of
fins circling in the knee-deep water at RSPB's Medmerry wildlife site near
Selsey.
The society says it was an
"unprecedented" group and identified them as smooth-hounds, a type of
shark usually found offshore in coastal waters.
RSPB warden Peter Hughes captured
the footage.
He said: "It was
astonishing. There were just these huge fish everywhere in knee-deep water.
"We assume they were coming
in to feed on the crabs and other marine life that have made their home at
Medmerry.
"We knew in time that (this)
was going to be a great place for wildlife, but I don’t think anyone expected
this!"
A smooth-hound can grow up to 159
cm (5 ft 3 ins) long and weigh more than 13 kg (29 lb).
They are a shallow water shark
species and regularly come close enough to land to be targeted by the shore
angler.
This report courtesy of Sky News
Many
people were concerned that the sharks were swimming in the same shallow waters
as bathers but smooth-hound sharks. also known as gummy sharks, don’t have
razor sharp teeth like other larger species of sharks. Instead their teeth are
flattened plates which they use to crunch up crabs along the bottom of the
seabed.
They are
commonly known as dogfish, and are what is served as Huss, Rock Eel or Rock Salmon
at your local fish and chippie and regularly caught by anglers of the beaches
of the South of England.
Here’s a selection of dogfish that the family have
caught over the last 2 years.
So why not pop down to your local chippie for good old fish and chips –
you never know who you might meet!
Whether you
call them pubs, taverns, inns or alehouses they are renowned all over the
world. The great British pub is not just a place to drink beer, wine, cider or
even something a little bit stronger, it is a unique social centre and the
focus of community life in villages, towns and cities throughout the length and
breadth of the country.
The
Beerhouse Act 1830 made it easy for anyone to obtain a licence to brew and sell
beer on payment a licence fee of two guineas. The intention was to increase
competition between brewers and to encourage the drinking of beer and cider
instead of gin which was still the cheapest and most common drink of the
working classes. In addition, the industrial revolution could only function if
the workforce was sober. Beer was not only viewed as the lesser evil in terms
of controlling labour and production but in many areas still safer to drink
than water. This resulted in the opening of hundreds of new beer houses, public
houses and breweries throughout the country. Many of these beer houses
eventually evolved into fully licensed public houses including my local, The
Fox, which remained a beer house until the early 1930’s.
But sadly
great British pubs are becoming harder to find as they are closed down and
replaced by large characterless, uninteresting restaurants that also serve
beer.
Not so Oxford,
however, which still has more than its fair share of traditional watering holes and it was Oxford,
three weeks ago, that was once again the scene of the quarterly OAP’s Behaving
Badly outing.
We arrived
early and loitered on the river tow path until midday when The Punter flung
open its doors to the thirsty "Punterites".
With all the
toilets out of action at Oxford railway station I proceeded straight to the
men's room and was confronted with this "work of art" hanging on the wall in the cubicle.
Talk about
getting the day off to a start with a bang!
I won’t say
that this was the highlight of our day out but, predictably, it has been the subject of
several odes.
I will use this one, not because it’s the best but because it
is a rare excursion into the world of rhyme by yours truly.
There was a young man from Bombay
Who couldn’t stop having his way.
He went on the hunt
In Oxford, the runt,
And stopped for “the one” in the Punt.
He ordered a pint and a pie
While giving the barmaid the eye
With a twist and a shunt
And a groan and a grunt
Staged a daring and royal cunning stunt.
So in Oxford when taking the throne
Make sure that you take in your phone
To record the events
However intense
That the natives perform in the gents!
The Werewolf of Hampshire
Oxford is a
remarkable city, not just for its interesting mix of ancient and modern
architecture but also for the sheer number of pubs within walking distance of the railway station. This is borne out by the fact that on this, our 13th visit, we were able to grace four public houses with our presence for the first time -
The Punter, The Kite, The Crown and The Wheatsheaf, taking the tally of pubs
visited since we started our quest in December 2011 to 34 – and there are still
more to tick off!
As widely predicted, Sepp Blatter has at last resigned - the day after my blog entry and I'd like to think that it was the Werewolf of Hampshire that gave him the final shove! So no more mention of FIFA for the time being. It’s now over a month since we returned from our latest visit to
Fuseta. As always, we had a most relaxing, laid back three weeks in a stunning
front-line penthouse apartment. There are only three main apartment blocks in
Fuseta but the quality of the apartments that are available for rental is first
class.
Our apartment was no exception. It was far too big for just
two people but having walked past and admired it so many times we just had to
try it out. The falling euro rate helped soften the financial implications!
The owner, a charming Dutch lady named Elly van Hulst, provided
the transport from and to the airport and told us all about her amazing career
as a world class middle distance athlete.
Her achievements (reproduced here from Wikipedia) are
impressive:
Elisa
("Elly") Maria van Hulst is a former middle
distance runner from the Netherlands. During her career she set one world
record, on 4 March 1989 at the European Indoor Championships in the 3000 m
event, a record that she held for 12 years, as well as three national records.
In 1989 she was named
Dutch Sportswoman of the Year.
Elly van Hulst's
career would last for almost twenty years and bring her 65 national, three
European and two world titles. She participated in the 1984 Summer Olympics in
Los Angeles and the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul.
At the end of the
1980s Van Hulst showed that she was among the best athletes in the world and in
1988 she defeated Mary Decker, favourite for the 3000 m victory in Zurich.
During her successful
years, Van Hulst trained in the Algarve in Portugal. She loved this place and
later, when her career had ended, moved there. Nowadays she and her husband run
a real estate business, Elly van Hulst Real Estate Lda.
Since our return we have been alternating our time between
maintaining the allotment & garden and relaxing in Selsey. The caravan is planted up and the verandah re-painted - bring on the sun!
Last week my plan for a morning’s beach fishing was
scuppered by this story:
Fortunately the bomb was found to be safe and transported
back to Aldershot to be dismantled.
Back at Prospect Road, "the plot" is looking really good this year, much more
advanced than 2014 when we were in Sri Lanka for most of June.
All the hard work is
beginning to reap rewards and the first potatoes plus strawberries, beetroot
and salad were all picked yesterday and the first broad beans will be ready this
week.
I’ll leave you with this tribute to B.B. King, “The King of
the Blues”, who sadly passed away on May 14th .
Last week world football was once again plunged into total
farce.
No doubt spurred on by their unsuccessful bid to host the
2022 World Cup, it has taken a nation where football is ranked fifth in
popularity behind basketball, baseball, American football and hockey to
instigate proceedings to attempt to bring down what is clearly the most corrupt
and powerful sporting body of all time.
Armed with evidence from former FIFA executive Chuck Blazer and
the two sons of arrested former FIFA regional director Jack Warner, backed up
with a mass of evidence collected over a ten year period by Scottish investigative
journalist Andrew Jennings, plain clothed Swiss police acting on behalf of the
FBI burst into the Baur au Lac hotel in Zurich at dawn to arrest seven Fifa
officials and reveal charges against seven further defendants.
Three days later Sepp Blatter was re-elected as the Godfather
of World Footballs governing body FIFA.
But, “Slow down Mr Blatter, this is may be your fifth, but
will it be your unfinished”!
Blatter has been nicknamed the ‘Teflon Man’ (nothing sticks and
he gets away with everything) by the European sports media but US Attorney
General Loretta Lynch is not known for “letting go”.
Whilst any possible further charges by U.S. officials will
depend on prosecutors finding evidence of criminal conduct which, however
slightly, involves the U.S. legal or financial/banking system hopefully successful
prosecution will encourage other countries to expose the widespread corruption
that has taken place in all of the world cup bids for decades. Switzerland is supposedly
investigating FIFA to see if any bribes were paid by Russia and Qatar to get
the 2018 and 2022 World Cup competitions – that shouldn’t take long!
England wasted 19 million pounds of FA and tax payers’ money
that would have been much better invested in grass roots non-league football, on
a bid that was doomed from the start.
All infrastructure in place =
No new stadiums needed =
No tenders for construction work =
No back handers
Investigative journalist Andrew Jennings has spent over 10
years hounding Sepp Blatter and amassing evidence of widespread corruption at
FIFA. His accusations are clear, naming dates, amounts and names, yet strangely
no one has dared prosecute and he has never been sued, but at last someone, the
FBI, is taking him seriously.
Here’s part of a documentary he did for Panarama in 2010:
This article by Simon Jenkins for the Guardian sums up this unbelievable
situation:
Institutional
corruption at Fifa has been public knowledge for a decade.
Much of the credit in
this saga should go to the dogged obsession of a single reporter, Andrew
Jennings, 71, who has traced Sepp Blatter’s footsteps for more than a decade.
Jennings worked for the Sunday Times and BBC’s Panorama. His BBC film about
Fifa corruption, The Beautiful Bung, appeared as long ago as 2006.
Since then he, and
subsequently the Sunday Times, have been merciless in pursuit of the story.
Yet such is the
potency of football money that Blatter’s cronies have been able to pocket
millions over the years, shielded from accountability by Fifa’s arcane
constitution. Occasional frowns from big sponsors, such as Visa and Coca-Cola,
have triggered spasmodic “ethics inquiries”. Grandees such as Henry Kissinger,
Lord Coe and Lord Goldsmith have been summoned to provide a veneer of
respectability to Blatter’s regime. They joined the ranks of his patsies.
Sports journalists, high on the Fifa hog, would just laugh when Fifa excused
stories about $40,000 in envelopes to voting members as “intended for
distribution to the poor”.
Serious trouble for
Fifa began only with Sunday Times revelations of a whistleblower in 2011, after
the dubious awarding of the 2018 and 2020 World Cups to Russia and Qatar. So
frantic were David Cameron and his team to “win the cup for Britain” that they
ignored all warnings of what was to come and were duly humiliated. Sport sends
politicians mad.
In 2012 the Sunday
Times revelations sparked a genuinely independent inquiry by a former US
attorney general, Michael Garcia. This report was delivered to Blatter, but he
has refused to publish it in full. It contains criticisms of dealings between
England’s Football Association and the ex-Fifa personality Jack Warner.
International sports bodies play on the celebrity, spurious patriotism, and
vast revenues from media and sponsorship rights to terrorise governments into
silence. That one of these governments should be Britain’s is a disgrace. The
FA should now have nothing to do with Fifa as long as Blatter is in charge. If
the European football union, Uefa, continues to cringe before that man, the FA
should withdraw from it, too.
How much longer can Blatter and FIFA remain unaccountable and
above the law?
A Welsh Bard, who prefers to remain anonymous for fear of
having the front door of his Cardiff residence kicked in by the Bluebird Mafia,
has this take on it all:
There’s nothing the matter with
Blatter,
It’s silly to criticise Sepp;
Though everything’s starting to
shatter,
As long as his wallet is fatter,
He’s unlikely to take a false
step!
Though FIFA’s finances are funny,
And have been for many a year,
For Blatter the future is sunny –
The Feds, who have followed the
money,
Have kept the old fraud in the
clear!
Though madder than hundreds of
hatters,
I’m glad he’s in charge, cos I
know
That his fraudulent management
matters,
As footy would soon be in tatters
If someone like Tan ran the show!
Here’s Andrew Jennings comments following the arrests:
Hopefully all this is just the start and Sepp Blatter will disappear down
a black hole forever:
And finally, a puzzle for you - what is the next name in this sequence:
If not, click on the little “x” in the top right corner of
your screen.
As you probably realise I like music.
My tastes in music are diverse including jazz, classical,
rock, R & B, Motown, Funk, Fusion, Folk, C & W and all things in
between.
What I really don’t like is covers of successful music that
try to sound the same as the original adding absolutely nothing new. They are
never as good. Bryan Hyland’s “Sealed with a Kiss” by Jason Donovan being a
prime example.
However, I have nothing against an artist recording other
peoples music in their own style – just think of how many good covers of Bob
Dylan or Lennon & McCartney songs there have been.
In fact one of my favourite popular Cd’s in the last couple
of years is “Long Wave” in which Jeff Lynne fondly pays tribute to the songs
that shaped his love of music as a child.
Enter Post Modern Jukebox, the brain child of Scott Bradlee,
a struggling New York pianist.
In 2013 he began forming
Postmodern Jukebox, a rotating group of 20 to 30 musicians producing covers of
pop songs in the styles of jazz, ragtime, motown and swing, using live instruments and one-take recording.
He posted the videos of his productions
on a youtube channel called ScotBradleeLovesYa,
and to his amazement found that people really enjoyed his ideas.
It now has over 1 million subscribers with
150 million views and Post Modern Jukebox are performing live to audiences across
the US and Europe.
For
me, the idea and the performances are excellent. See what you think.
I have just dug up the last of my parsnip crop – two rows
grown from small plants that I acquired last spring and transplanted. I was
fully aware that this is not a recommended way to grow root vegetables as they
will not grow straight and true if their roots are disturbed but the plants
cost didn’t cost much, I had the space, so I thought I would give it a try.
True to form the resulting parsnip crop is not a pretty site
and would not get through the gates of a supermarket let alone on the shelf.
However there is absolutely nothing wrong with them and although they might
take a little longer to prepare they are as if not more delicious than their
uniform supermarket namesakes.
This is of course true of any vegetable or fruit and something
that you soon realise when growing your own produce where survival against the
constant attack from pests and diseases is the only concern leaving nature to
run its course to the final product.
Remember this handsome looking carrot from last year?
One of the joys for me while at the allotment is listening
to the Radio 4 while I am working. It not only stops me talking to myself but
provides me with interesting information and entertainment that helps takes my
mind of the fact that my arms, legs and back are aching!
All of this leads me to the subject of this blog, Food Waste.
Food waste is a major issue. We throw away 7 million tonnes
of food and drink from our homes every year, the majority of which could have
been eaten. It's costing us £12.5bn a year and is bad for the environment too. Supermarkets demand beautiful fruit and vegetables of perfect shape and colour. It is estimated that 20 to 40 per cent of fruit and vegetables
grown in the UK are rejected on cosmetic grounds before they even get to the
shops. With potatoes this percentage can be even higher. Most of what we grow ourselves would be rejected by every supermarket in the country but there is absolutely nothing wrong with it.
Supermarkets are notoriously secretive about the amount of
food that is wasted. However Tesco did reveal that it generated almost 30,000
tonnes of food waste in the first six months of 2013. The largest proportion of
that - about 11,700 tonnes - was classified as "bakery", and the
second largest category, making up around a fifth of the total, was fruit and
vegetables.
While planting some broad beans two weeks ago I listened to an
episode of BBC Radio4’s Food Program – “Food
Pioneers”.
It is the story of how three very different individuals are
re imagining food waste - solving problems, discovering flavours, and changing
lives.
Chido Govera is a young Zimbabwean woman. Chido is a Shona
name that means passion. She grew up as an orphan, and turned into a parent at
the age of 7, mothering her brother and caring for her nearly blind
grandmother. At the age of 8, she had already experienced the worst possible
abuse, inflicted by close family. She promised herself then that when she was
older, she would save and protect other orphans from experiencing what she, and
so many others, had suffered. At age 11, she had the unique opportunity to
learn about food and mushrooms. Mushroom farming enabled her to feed those
dearest to her. Mushrooms gave her the chance to help other orphans who lived
closed by. She was fortunate to have good mentors who helped her perfect the
art and science of farming mushrooms. Over the years, as a young professional,
she reached out to over 1,000 women in communities in Zimbabwe, Congo, Ghana,
Cameroon, Tanzania and South Africa. Her work has reached schools and
communities in India, aboriginals in Australia, and entrepreneurs in the US and
all around Europe. Hers is a truly inspiring story and now at the age of 28 she
is a successful farmer, campaigner and educator with her own foundation, The
Future of Hope, travelling the world to help others change their lives.
Isabel Soares, an engineer from Portugal, set up Fruta Feia
(or ugly fruit) to deliver perfectly good fruit and veg that were being
discarded by the big retailers, to a willing community. So far, Fruta Feia has
a staff of only three people, including Ms. Soares, as well as a handful of
volunteers, some of whom are foreigners living in Lisbon. It has 420 registered
customers and has built a waiting list of 1,000 customers. It has sold 21 tons
of food at two distribution centres in Lisbon which provide cheap fruit and vegetables to people who cannot afford the supermarket prices. Its community co-operative model
is now wildly successful in Lisbon and has been replicated in the US and UK.
John Greany Sørensen is a scientist by day, chef by night,
who in his lab at the University of Copenhagen stumbled accidentally on a way
of creating something truly extraordinary from rejected vegetables - veg
crystals.
These stories are inspirational and I strongly recommend you
to listen to their stories at this link:
Chido Govera’s pioneering work on growing mushrooms on waste
coffee beans and grounds is now used all over the world including West Sussex.
The Espresso Mushroom Company is a group of coffee-drinking
food lovers who produce Oyster Mushrooms grown on used coffee grounds. Recognised
by The Grocer as “one of the five most innovative enterprises using food
waste”, the Espresso Mushroom Company is based in Brighton where they collect
coffee grounds from local cafes then grow and supply mushrooms to some of
Brighton's finest restaurants. They even sell kits to grow mushrooms in your home:
It has been two months since my last entry, not because of any
form of “writers block”, laziness or apathy but simply because I haven’t had the
time.
Since returning from our six week spell in Tenerife I have
been fully employed tidying up the allotment, repairing the raised beds and
getting the early crops sown and planted.
Now with onions & garlic shooting and broad beans &
early potatoes planted I am pretty much on top of things.
We have also been busy at Selsey getting the caravan back up
and running and ready for the new season. Although still early in the year we
have had a couple of really nice weekends especially the weekend of the spring tides.
Last weekend was our 47th wedding anniversary and to celebrate we returned to Hastings and Rye for a long weekend.
We were booked to see “Blood Brothers” at the White Rock
theatre and staying for 2 nights in the White Rock hotel, next door to the
theatre.
Our hotel room overlooked the site of Hastings Pier where I
have spent many hours fishing with friends from Ipswich.
There has always been a great tradition of fishing from
seaside piers and Hasting Pier was no exception.
But sadly as piers close or fishing is prohibited on so
called Health and Safety grounds it is becoming less and less available.
So it was great to see that work on restoring the Victorian
pier was well underway and scheduled for reopening in the summer.
Designed by Eugenius Birch, who also designed the West Pier,
Brighton and Eastbourne Pier, Hastings pier was opened in 1872.
The original 2,000 seater pavilion was destroyed by fire in
1917. This was eventually replaced in 1922 and during the 1930s the pavilion
extension buildings received an art deco facelift and a theatre rebuild.
In the 1960s and the 1970s the theatre played host to
notable artists such as The Rolling Stones, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Genesis, Tom
Jones, Ten Years After, and Pink Floyd.
Most famously, Pink Floyd founder Syd Barrett played his
last ever show with the band here on 20 January 1968.
In 1990 the pier suffered considerable storm damage, requiring a
£1 million refurbishment. In 1996 it was put up for sale, but the future of the
pier was put in grave doubt as interested buyers were reluctant to invest due
to the serious amount of capital needed to improve the unstable structural
supports and in 1999 the pier was closed.
The pier was eventually sold in 2000 and reopened under new
ownership in 2002. However in July 2006, upon discovering that part of the
pier's structure was unsafe, Hastings Borough Council promptly closed the pier
to the general public.
On 5 October 2010 95% of the superstructure was destroyed by
fire thought to be the work of arson attack although subsequently this was not
proven.
Thanks to tireless work by The Hastings Pier & White
Rock Trust combined with The Hastings Observer Save the Pier Campaign and
funding from Heritage Lottery Fund, the £14 million restoration work commenced in
March 2014.
Let’s hope the next 25 years proves less turbulent for
Hastings Pier and it again becomes the tourist attraction that it once was - the focal point of entertainment for all ages with fisherman restored to the
“End of the Pier”.
For those of you who have not encountered the term, a selfie
is a self-portrait photograph, typically taken with a hand-held digital camera
or camera phone. Selfies are frequently shared on social networking services
such as Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. Selfies can be taken with a camera
held at arm's length, pointed at a mirror or by using a selfie stick.
But soon they will be a thing of the past!
A new craze, initiated by The Werewolf of Hampshire himself, is set
to take the social media scene by storm.
It is, of course:
The Footsie!
So get your feet and cameras or phones out and start snapping those:
Let's face it a lot of peoples feet are more interesting that their faces!
It seems a long time ago that I wrote: "Well here we are in January 2010, and the start of a new allotment year" and The Werewolf of Hampshire was born. Since January 1st 2010 this site has had over 15,000 hits and has been viewed all over the world: United Kingdom 8495
United States 2383
Germany 465
Portugal 317
Russia 300
Latvia 247
Cyprus 243
France 197
Indonesia 187 Spain 127
Goodness knows why? So here we are in 2015 following a
hectic but most enjoyable 2014.
We have visited
Tenerife, Cyprus (3 times), Sri Lanka, Corfu and Sharm el Sheikh amassing in
excess of 36000 air miles in the process!
We also managed to
spend most of July, August and September in the caravan at Selsey as well as
enjoying two long weekends in Ipswich and Hastings.
I laugh when people
tell me they would be bored if they were retired!
The start of 2015
sees us back in Tenerife, this time for six weeks of sunshine (and wind!).
And talking about wind
leads me nicely on to the theme of this blog.
With the news from around the world continuing
to be all “doom and gloom” it was refreshing to end 2014 with a story that surely
stole the mantle of the “News Story of the Year”:
It’s a god-awful smelly affair
To the girl with the mousy hair
But her mummy is yelling "No"
And her daddy has told her to go
But her friend is nowhere to be seen
Now she walks through her sunken dream
To the seat with the clearest view
And she's hooked to the silver screen
But the film is a saddening bore
For she's lived it ten times or more
She could spit in the eyes of fools
As they ask her to focus on
Sailors fighting in the dance hall
Oh man!
Look at those cavemen go
It's the freakiest show
Take a look at the Lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man! Wonder if he'll ever know
He's in the best selling show
Is there life
on Mars?
NASA rover
finds methane gas on Mars
Martian ‘farts’
exciting NASA scientists
NASA’s
Mars rover Curiosity has found carbon-containing compounds in samples drilled
out of an ancient rock, the first definitive detection of organics on the
surface of Mars, scientists said. The
rover also found spurts of methane gas in the atmosphere, a chemical that on
Earth is strongly tied to life. Additional studies, which may be beyond the
rover’s capabilities, are needed to determine if the organic compounds and/or
the methane gas were produced by past or present life on Mars or if they stem
from geochemical processes.
Lionel Blair was not
impressed:
Nor was Tiger Woods:
And as for Whoopi
Goldberg!:
Sandi Toksvig summed
it up nicely on the BBC’s “The News Quiz”
"I thought methane was only found around
Uranus".
Personally I think the story
stinks!
Sounds to me like NASA are trying to justify the multi-billion
dollars that have been spent on the Mars Exploration Programme since 2003.
I make no excuses for dedicating this entry to one of the best British rock and blues singers who, sadly, passed away yesterday.
John Robert "Joe" Cocker OBE was born on 20 May 1944 in Sheffield.
On leaving school he became become an apprentice gasfitter while simultaneously pursuing a career in music.
Under the name of Vance Arnold and the Avengers he began his singing career in the pubs and clubs of Sheffield in the 1960s performing mainly covers of Chuck Berry and Ray Charles songs.
He was propelled to fame when his version of With A Little Help From My Friends reached number one in 1968.
The musician performed the song at the famous Woodstock Festival in New York state a year later and was also well-known for his Mad Dogs and Englishmen Tour of 1970, which visited 48 cities across the US.
In 1982 Cocker recorded the duet "Up Where We Belong" with Jennifer Warnes for the soundtrack of the 1982 film An Officer and a Gentleman. The song was an international hit, reaching number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and winning a Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo. The duet also won an Academy Award for Best Original Song, and Cocker and Warnes performed the song at the awards ceremony.
In 1992, Joe Cocker teamed with Canadian rocker Sass Jordan to sing "Trust in Me", which was featured on The Bodyguard soundtrack.
On 3 June 2002, Cocker performed "With A Little Help from My Friends" accompanied by Phil Collins on drums and Queen guitarist Brian May at the Party at the Palace concert in the grounds of Buckingham Palace.
Cocker was awarded an OBE in the Queen's 2007 Birthday Honours list for services to music.
Last year, his arena tour across Europe saw him achieve a number one album in Germany and give what was to be his final concert in Hammersmith, London, in June.
Cocker, who recorded 23 studio albums and some 90 or so singles, lived on The Mad Dog Ranch in Colorado, in the US.
With his unique voice and style, whether in the studio or live, he was consistently able to produce cover versions of classic hits, including those written and performed by Lennon & McCartney, John Sebastian and Bob Dylan, that were equally as good as, if not better than the original recording.
Unfortunately I never had the pleasure to see him live in concert but will leave you with a selection of my favourite Joe Cocker songs.
Finally, if any of you are as big a fan as me and have 2 hours to spare, do yourself a favour and connect your laptop to your big screen TV and surround sound system and “get some of this” from Cologne in 2013:
Absolutely wonderful Joe - you will be sorely missed but your music will live on.
So why not pop down to your local chippie for good old fish and chips –
you never know who you might meet!
