Poly Styrene

Punk singer Poly Styrene, former singer with the X-Ray Spex, has died at the age of 53 after suffering from cancer.Poly Styrene formed a band after going to a Sex Pistols concert

She was one of the first female punk icons, whose unorthodox yet infectious style was highly influential.

Real name Marianne Elliot-Said, she had cancer of the spine and breast.

A statement on her official Twitter feed said: "We can confirm that the beautiful Poly Styrene, who has been a true fighter, won her battle on Monday evening to go to higher places."

Singer Billy Bragg was among those who paid tribute, saying: "Punk without Poly Styrene and the X-Ray Spex wouldn't have been the same."

Poly Styrene formed her band after watching the Sex Pistols perform on Hastings Pier on her 18th birthday and became known for her unpolished vocals and energetic rallying cries against consumerism and environmental destruction.

Poly Styrene released her third solo album last month

X-Ray Spex's signature tune was Oh Bondage Up Yours!, a riotous rejection of social and gender norms that began with Poly Styrene's spoken line: "Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard."

The band released just one album, Germ Free Adolescents, in 1978, before splitting up.

The singer went on to record a more subtle and subdued solo album, Translucence, in 1980, before retreating from the music industry to join the Hare Krishnas.

She moved into a Krishna temple in Hertfordshire with her daughter, and struggled with bipolar disorder.

Boy George - who once tried to break her out of the temple - wrote on Twitter: "I was a fan of Poly before I got to know her, she was a Krishna follower too, oh bless you Polly you will be missed! Legend!"

Former Sex Pistols bassist Glen Matlock praised the "general joie de vivre nuttiness" shown in songs like Oh Bondage Up Yours!

X-Ray Spex, with Poly Styrene, right, recorded just one album before splitting up

"She wouldn't kow-tow to even what the punk fashions should be, I think that's what that song is about," he told BBC 6 Music.

"I did see her not that long ago so it's sad. Again, somebody from the punk rock scene has died far too young and it's a loss."

Billy Bragg told the radio station that Oh Bondage Up Yours! was a "slap in the face" to male punk bands and rock journalists.

"It's always hard for women in rock music but it was particularly hard in the 70s," he said. "I think she cut right through that. The work that she did and the things that she produced always stayed true to that original spirit of punk."

TV presenter Jonathan Ross said his first concert was an X-Ray Spex gig, adding that the singer had "changed lives".

Poly Styrene occasionally re-emerged into the limelight, and released her third solo album, Generation Indigo, last month.

"I know I'll probably be remembered for Oh Bondage Up Yours!" she told 6 Music last month. "I'd like to remembered for something a bit more spiritual."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-13193968

Norio Ohga

Norio Ohga, who died on Saturday aged 81, drew upon his love of music to drive the Japanese electronics firm Sony through technological barriers; most famously he insisted that the Compact Disc store 74 minutes of sound so that he could listen to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony without interruption.

Photo: AP

 

His intuition that CD sales would outstrip vinyl was proved correct within a few years of the digital format's introduction in 1982 – the year that he became Sony's president and chairman. But consumers were not always ready for his other electronic leaps forward. Ohga poured resources into high-definition televisions 20 years ago; only now are they becoming standard.

His boldest move, however, was to transform Sony from a producer of music and video players into a global media brand with the capacity to deliver its own content for these machines. This was effected by hugely expensive acquisitions of a Hollywood studio, Columbia Pictures, and by promotion deals with music stars from Herbert von Karajan to Michael Jackson.

At Sony the talk was of a new synergy between "hardware" and "software". But while Ohga's vision of the multimedia age seemed prescient, Apple was to prove more adept at satisfying the demands of the new era. At the time of his death, many customers looking for ease of use and aesthetic appeal – the areas where Ohga had made his name at Sony – were turning elsewhere.

Norio Ohga was born on January 29 1930 and raised at his affluent family's summer villa on the coastal resort of Numazu, about 75 miles southwest of Tokyo. As a child he suffered from pleurisy and was spared war work, studying music instead. But he did not escape the conflict entirely unscathed, suffering a burn to his arm after a firebomb fell near his house in 1945.

After the war he pursued his singing at the National University of Fine Arts and Music in Tokyo. There his forthright attitude began to attract the attention of powerful figures. These included Genichi Kawakami, chairman of Yamaha, who offered Ohga a job after the young student delivered a pointed critique of Yamaha pianos. Ohga turned him down, instead issuing another blast, this time to Sony, about the newly-formed company's reel-to-reel tape recorder. This time Akio Morita, one of Sony's two founders, offered Ohga a position.

Ohga worked as a consultant for Sony until 1954, when he left to complete his musical training in Berlin. Though he was determined to make a career as a baritone, Sony continued to pay him a wage. The company's determination to hire him paid off in 1959, when Morita persuaded Ohga to join a sales tour which involved a sea journey to America. At the end of it, Ohga had agreed to join Sony as head of tape recorders and design.
Initially he tried to mix his corporate and musical careers. But after falling asleep during a production of The Marriage of Figaro, he retired from professional music.
Meanwhile his career at Sony blossomed. In 1961 he became head of its design centre, introducing the look and style of a generation of Sony products. At 42 he was named corporate managing director; at 46 deputy president. He and Morita were considered a perfect team – the charismatic chief leading Sony's business moves abroad while Ohga, a demanding details-man, kept the production line of must-have gadgets moving back at base.
Once at Sony's helm, he quickly looked to implement his multimedia strategy. In 1988 Sony bought CBS Records; Columbia followed the next year for $3.4 billion. The latter acquisition came freighted with other costs, including the disaffection of some in the American market who feared a "Japanese invasion of Hollywood". Though these takeovers dramatically expanded business, critics maintain that today, 11 years after Ohga left Sony, the company has still to cash in being both an electronics and entertainment giant.
While running Sony, Norio Ohga pursued his love of music, conducting celebrated orchestras in concerts organised by the company. He was also an accomplished pilot and frequently took the controls of the Sony jet. He is survived by his wife, Midori

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/technology-obituaries/8471343/Norio-Ohga.html 

 

John Sullivan OBE

John Sullivan created TV hits Only Fools and Horses and Citizen Smith

John Sullivan, who wrote one of the best-loved British sitcoms, Only Fools and Horses, has died at the age of 64.

He had been in intensive care for six weeks at a hospital in Surrey, battling viral pneumonia.
He also wrote Citizen Smith, and his latest work Rock & Chips is due to be shown on BBC One on Thursday.
Sir David Jason, who played Del Boy Trotter in Only Fools and Horses, said he was "totally devastated" and would "miss him dreadfully as a friend".
He said: "We have lost our country's greatest comedy writer but he leaves us a great legacy, the gift of laughter. My thoughts at this time are with his lovely family."
BBC director general Mark Thompson said: "John had a unique gift for turning everyday life and characters we all know into unforgettable comedy."
The son of a plumber, he is survived by his wife Shirley and two sons, a daughter and two grandchildren.
Gareth Gwenlan, a producer of Only Fools and Horses, said Shirley was "obviously devastated" and had her family around her.
The Corporation's head of comedy Mark Freeland added: "No-one understood what made us laugh and cry better than John Sullivan.
'Heartfelt comedy' "He was the Dickens of our generation. Simply the best, most natural, most heartfelt comedy writer of our time."
Stephen Fry said he was "terribly saddened" by the news and described him on Twitter as "one of the great comedy writers of our time".
Only Fools and Horses - starring David Jason and Nicholas Lyndhurst as south London brothers Del and Rodney Trotter forever trying to make a quick fortune - was regularly voted Britain's favourite sitcom.
It ran for 10 years between 1981 and 1991, with several Christmas specials in the years that followed.

Only Fools and Horses was regularly voted the greatest British sitcom

The 1996 special Time On Our Hands, which was billed as the final episode and saw Del Boy come good on his ambition to make himself and Rodney millionaires, was watched by more than 24 million people, a record for a sitcom in the UK.
The demand for follow-ups saw Sullivan eventually relent and return to the story of the Trotters from 2001 for occasional Christmas specials.
He also wrote a spin-off - The Green Green Grass, featuring Only Fools characters Boycie and Marlene - and a prequel, Rock & Chips, which documented Del Boy's early life.
John Sullivan, who was born in Balham, south London, in 1946, and always said his secret was that he wrote about what he knew, got his first job at the BBC as a scenery hand aged 16.
During his spare time he wrote sketches and got his first break when he submitted a script to well-known comedy producer Dennis Main Wilson, who loved it.
He was commissioned to write more episodes, given three months' paid leave, and ended up with Citizen Smith - a comedy starring Robert Lindsay as the young communist "Wolfie" Smith.
He once described Rodney from Only Fools and Horses as a "teeny bit me" because he was also a bit of a "naive dreamer" as a teenager.
And he said Del Boy was an amalgam of many characters he came across while working in the second-hand car trade in the 1970s.
He was appointed an OBE in 2005 for services to drama.

Continue reading the main story

Celia Lipton

Celia Lipton, who died on March 11 aged 87, was a child star, known as the “British Judy Garland”, who went on to become a Forces sweetheart in the Second World War; later she gave up a successful stage career to marry the American inventor and industrialist Victor Farris and became the acknowledged 'Queen of Palm Beach society’.

Like any society hostess and former actress Celia Lipton was always vague about her age and was furious when a magazine obtained a copy of her birth certificate, showing that Celia May Lipton was born on Christmas Day 1923, at 73 Leamington Terrace, Edinburgh. Her father was an English violinist, Sidney John Lipton — as Sydney Lipton he would become one of Britain’s top bandleaders; her mother was May Johnston Parker, a dancer, singer and noted Scottish beauty.

When Celia was eight, her father formed his own band and took it to the Grosvenor House Hotel in Park Lane, where he was to remain for 35 years. Enthralled by watching the singers and chorus girls at the hotel putting on their make-up and diamonds to go on stage, Celia determined to go into showbusiness. Her chance came when, aged about 10, she spotted an advertisement asking for a Judy Garland sound-alike to play the lead in a BBC radio production of Babes In the Wood. Determined to get the part, she perfected Garland’s lisp and breathy singing style. When her parents refused to let her audition, she set off on her own and secured the part.

She went on to record more radio plays and albums and, aged only 15, appeared at the London Palladium. “My father was leading the orchestra,” she recalled. “He didn’t tell the audience who I was, he just said: 'There’s a little girl coming out, her name is Celia.’ I sang I’m Just In Between. It didn’t faze me. Everyone cheered, and then my father said: 'That was my daughter.’ It was thrilling.”

When the Second World War broke out, her father joined up as a private and was away from the family for seven years. As a result Celia became the family breadwinner. She sang to 2,000 troops at the Albert Hall, to severely disfigured men at the burns unit in East Grinstead, to the forces on the European front and at RAF hangars across the country, becoming known for Maybe It’s Because I’m A Londoner and You’ve Got Your Own Life To Live. With her mother as chaperone she toured Britain.

Her greatest triumphs, though, were her appearances as Peter Pan at the Scala Theatre, Tottenham Court Road, in 1943 and 1944 (the “best ever seen in a London theatre” according to one critic), and in Lionel Monckton’s 1944 revival of the light opera, The Quaker Girl, when she stepped in for Jessie Matthews at the last moment and received a dozen curtain calls on opening night at the Coliseum.

After the war Celia Lipton travelled to Paris and then the French Riviera where, on one occasion, she met the young Prince Philip of Greece, who offered to escort her to the casino in Cannes. “I asked him how we were going to get there and he said he’d borrowed a man’s bike and he put me on the back of it,” she recalled in 2004. “My dress kept catching in the back of the bike. I was lucky since I got to dance with him. He was an exceptionally good dancer.”
She also launched herself on a film career. After making her debut supporting John Bentley and Dinah Sheridan in Calling Paul Temple (1948), she appeared opposite Sonia Dresdel and Walter Fitzgerald in the adaptation of Joan Morgan’s novel, This Was A Woman (1948) and played Sandra in Terrence Young’s melodrama The Frightened Bride (1952).
In 1952 Celia Lipton moved to New York, where she joined the all-star revue, John Murray Anderson’s Almanac (1953-54) at the Imperial Theatre, Broadway, and appeared as Esmeralda to Robert Ellenstein’s Quasimodo in a television version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1954).
While in New York, she met Victor Farris. “I was returning some books to a friend and there was a man up on a ladder fixing a fan – my future husband,” she recalled. At first she thought he was a plumber and then, maybe, a member of the Mafia. In fact he owned 17 companies, was the inventor of the paper milk carton, the paper clip and the Farris Safety and Relief Valve, still used in shipping, oil and chemical industries. He was also a millionaire many times over. The couple wed in 1956, with Celia giving up showbusiness to devote herself to married life in New Jersey and, later, Florida.
Although the marriage was not without its difficulties — her relationship with her husband was sometimes volatile and Celia suffered ten miscarriages and gave birth prematurely to two babies who both died within a week — it was a happy one. At their sumptuous mansion in Palm Beach, once owned by the Vanderbilts, Celia became a leading society hostess.
When Victor Farris died of a heart attack in 1985, closely followed by her parents, Celia’s life altered dramatically again. Her husband had left her his £100 million fortune (an amount she more than doubled through shrewd investments over subsequent years), and she embarked on a new phase of her life as a philanthropist and charity fundraiser. “There are a lot of silly, socially competitive, frivolous women in this town who gossip, go out to lunch every day and dinner every night and that’s it,” she observed. “I’m delighted that I know what hard work is and proud of my Scottish mother and the good Scottish common sense she taught me.”
A convert to Catholicism, she raised large sums for the Salvation Army, the American Heart Association and cancer research charities. At a time when the disease was taboo she was one of the first big private benefactors of Aids research. Other beneficiaries included the National Trust for Scotland, the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital, the American Red Cross, the Prince’s Trust and the Duke of Edinburgh Trust.
In addition she became Executive Producer of the American Cinema Awards in Hollywood (which raises funds for actors who have fallen on hard times); sang before the Queen at the 50th anniversary of VE Day in Hyde Park, made a brief screen comeback with Burt Reynolds in BL Stryker (1989-1990), and released a series of her own, self-financed, CDs. In 2008, she published her autobiography My Three Lives.
With her big stack of silvery-blonde hair, pillar-box red lipstick and tailored white suits, Celia Lipton retained the looks of a 1940s star. She lived surrounded by framed — often signed — thank you letters and photographs featuring Elizabeth Taylor, Sophia Loren, Bob Hope, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Frank Sinatra, Whitney Houston, Pope John Paul II, Diana, Princess of Wales, and even John Major.
In her autobiography Celia Lipton related that she was “honoured to receive a letter informing me that Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth had appointed me a Dame”, conveying the impression that she had been created DBE. In fact, in 2004 she was named a Dame of Grace of the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem, entitling her to place the letters D St J after her name. Nonetheless she headed her personal notepaper, Dame Celia Lipton Farris, and, in America, was announced by that style on social occasions.
She is survived by two adopted daughters

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8468953/Celia-Lipton.html

Ray Smith

Ray Smith, who died on April 17 aged 76, was the proprietor of Ray’s Jazz Shop, a gathering place for the London jazz world during the 1980s and 1990s. 

To stroll through Soho in those years, sporting the shop’s carrier bag with its distinctive black cat logo, was to feel like one of the elect. Georgie Fame wrote and recorded a song, Vinyl, in celebration of the place, and it was the first port of call for Slim Gaillard, the granddaddy of hip, when he landed in England.

Raymond Smith was born in Ealing on September 9 1934. From the mid-1950s he was a fixture of what would nowadays be called the “alternative” arts scene. He worked at Collett’s International Bookshop, which had outgrown various premises in Charing Cross Road before settling in New Oxford Street, selling books, jazz and folk records (the latter, Ray recalled, being “mainly Russian 78s”).

In 1976 the jazz and folk shops were hived off into curious, back-to-back premises where Shaftesbury Avenue and Monmouth Street converge, jazz facing the former and folk the latter. Collett’s gave up selling records in 1983 and Ray Smith bought the jazz business.

Among them, Smith and his managers (Matthew Wright, followed by Glyn Callingham) possessed a formidable store of expertise in an art notorious for the pedantry of its followers; but they managed to avoid the condescending attitude which marked some of their competitors. One product of their combined know-how was a special box, labelled Hens’ Teeth, containing rarities of great price, which sat on the counter under close surveillance.

Away from the shop, Ray Smith was a very respectable, semi-professional drummer. In the Fifties and Sixties he was a member of the band led by Humphrey Lyttelton’s former clarinettist, Wally Fawkes, although his own tastes tended towards more modern styles of jazz.

He enjoyed a long friendship with the Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts. “Charlie used to come in the shop when he was 16 or 17 and buy records,” he recalled in an interview. “Then he’d trade them back again to buy bits for his drum kit.” Smith even lent Watts his own kit on occasion. There is a brief clip on You Tube of them in the shop celebrating Ray’s 40 years in the jazz business.
Ray Smith’s other passion was for cricket. He was a member of The Ravers, a side originally composed entirely of jazz people, although it now embraces showbusiness in general. He was a good enough spin bowler to be asked on several occasions to show some tricks of the trade to budding cricketers at Lord’s.
In 2002 an enormous increase in the rent at 180 Shaftesbury Avenue, together with a loss of trade to internet sales, forced him to close the shop. He sold the business to Foyle’s, the bookshop, where “Ray’s Jazz at Foyle’s” now occupies space on the third floor. It is no criticism of Foyle’s to note that it is not the same thing at all.
There are now no specialist jazz shops in central London, where there were once half a dozen. At their height they served as informal colleges of jazz appreciation, where lifelong friendships were formed, based on a love of the music. For some reason, they all had the same smell, redolent of dust, stale tobacco, and the interior of a very old and well-used trumpet case.
Ray Smith is survived by his wife, Wendy. There were no children.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8467378/Ray-Smith.html

Michael Sarrazin

Michael Sarrazin, who died on April 17 aged 70, enjoyed a spasm of fame as Jane Fonda’s co-star in Sydney Pollack’s 1969 film They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? 

Michael Sarrazin Photo: Alamy

 

Nominated for nine Academy Awards, the film is a grim parable of American life set during the Depression. Jane Fonda — already an international star thanks to her performances in Cat Ballou (1965) and Barbarella (1968) — plays the ageing, cynical, damaged Gloria, who makes her way to Hollywood to try to make it as an actress; there she meets Robert Syverton (Sarrazin), whose fantasy has always been to be a successful director. They enter a gruelling dance marathon on Santa Monica Pier, with tragic consequences.

In an interview with the Toronto Star in 1994 Sarrazin recalled of the days on set: “We stayed up around the clock for three or four days .... We stayed in character. Pollack said we should work until signs of exhaustion. Fights would break out among the men; women started crying.”

Jacques Michel André Sarrazin was born on May 22 1940 in Quebec City and grew up in Montreal, first treading the boards at Loyola High School. According to his brother, Pierre, who later became a film producer: “He wasn’t a particularly good student, but he was a great actor, and the Jesuits and fellow students loved him. His first high school role was in The Bishop’s Candlestick, and he was very upset when he came offstage and everyone in the crowd was laughing. He thought they were laughing at him. They were laughing with him.”

Among the last actors to come up through the old studio system, Sarrazin was offered a contract by Universal in the mid-1960s after studying at the Actors’ Studio in New York. “None of us was surprised when Hollywood called for Michael because he was such a star in our family,” his brother said. “People from the next block were coming over saying 'I hear there’s a very funny guy, funny kid on the street’.”

After securing a role in the television series The Virginian, in 1967 Sarrazin appeared in Gunfight in Abilene, alongside the singer Bobby Darin, and in The Flim-Flam Man, starring George C Scott. In the following year he played a Confederate soldier in Journey to Shiloh (in the company of another aspiring actor, Harrison Ford) and was nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance as a surfer in The Sweet Ride opposite Jacqueline Bisset — she and Sarrazin began a relationship that was to last for 14 years.

Those who thought that Sarrazin’s role in They Shoot Horses presaged a career as one of Hollywood’s major stars were to be disappointed. He was perhaps unlucky in failing to secure the role of Joe Buck in John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy (1969) — the part went to Jon Voight after the film’s producers failed to come to an agreement with Universal for Sarrazin’s services.
But his subsequent work was steady rather than spectacular, with parts in Sometimes a Great Notion (1970), based on Ken Kesey’s novel; The Pursuit of Happiness (1971); The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972); Harry in Your Pocket (1973); For Pete’s Sake (1974); The Gumball Rally (1976); Joshua Then and Now (1985); and Bullet to Beijing (1995).
There were many solid television roles, in series such as Street Legal, Murder, She Wrote and Alfred Hitchcock Presents; and he won particular praise for his performance in the made-for-TV film Frankenstein: The True Story (1973). His last appearance on television was in 2008, in the film The Christmas Choir.
In recent years Michael Sarrazin had returned to Montreal to be near his two daughters, both of whom survive him.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8467353/Michael-Sarrazin.html

Gerry Alexander

This put him in an invidious position, as critics complained that first his place as wicket keeper in the West Indian team, and then his appointment as skipper, had been governed by racist considerations. Nevertheless, through determination, character and sheer decency Alexander eventually proved an inspired selection both as cricketer and as captain.

Tom Graveney batting for England, with Alexander behind the stumps and Walcott at slip

Franz Copeland Murray Alexander, always known as Gerry, was born on November 2 1928 in Kingston, Jamaica. He attended Wolmer’s Boys School, a foundation which, dating back to 1729, is one of the oldest educational institutions in the English-speaking Caribbean. He then went up to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he soon proved his sporting prowess. A soccer Blue, he went on to win an England amateur cap and an FA Amateur Cup winner’s medal.

In cricket Alexander was for two seasons (1952 and 1953) the university’s wicket keeper; in both years he averaged over 30 with the bat. In 1952 the Cambridge side contained four Test players — David Sheppard, Peter May, John Warr and the South African Cuan McCarthy — but were unable to force a win at Lord’s.

In 1953, with a theoretically weaker side, the Light Blues triumphed over Oxford by two wickets. Alexander played a key role, top-scoring with 31 in the first innings, and — notwithstanding an injured hand — taking a catch to dismiss Colin Cowdrey for a duck in the second innings.

In 1954 and 1955 Alexander turned out for Cambridgeshire. Back in the West Indies, in 1957 he was picked for the team to tour England on the strength of his performance in a trial match, in which he shared a ninth wicket stand of 134 with the young Wes Hall.

He had, though, played only twice for Jamaica, against the Duke of Norfolk’s XI. His detractors reckoned that there were better wicket keepers on the island, such as Alfred Binns and Jackie Hendriks, not to mention Andy Ganteaume in Trinidad, Clifford McWatt in British Guiana, and Clairmonte Depeiza in Barbados.
In England, Alexander at first seemed out of his depth when keeping to the spinners, having especial trouble in “reading” Sonny Ramadhin. For the first three Tests Rohan Kanhai was preferred behind the stumps. Alexander, however, made his international debut in the fourth game at Headingley.
By that time the morale of the West Indies team had collapsed, and both the Headingley and the Oval Tests were lost inside three days. With the retirement of John Goddard, there was a desperate need for a new skipper to restore the team’s fortunes.
For the first time the selectors seemed prepared to consider a black captain. Frank Worrell, however, declined the job on account of his studies in Economics at Manchester University. Somehow Everton Weekes and Clyde Walcott, both great senior players, were considered unsuitable. Instead the selectors turned to Gerry Alexander, whose wicket keeping seemed unreliable, and whose Test scores had been 0 not out, 11, 0 and 0.
Yet through patience, skill and encouragement, Alexander succeeded in forging the array of talent in the West Indies side into a coherent and successful team.
In 1958, in the home series against Pakistan, he led them to victory by three Tests to one. Moreover, he seemed far more competent behind the stumps when keeping to fast bowlers on hard wickets, than he had appeared when faced with the puzzle of Ramadhin and Valentine in England. Alexander also performed better with the bat against Pakistan, not least with a critical 57 in the second innings of the second Test in Trinidad.
On the tour of India in 1958-59 the West Indies were for the first time since the war without all of the “three Ws”: Worrell, Weekes and Walcott. Nevertheless, Alexander’s team succeeded in winning three Tests and drawing the other two. On the one occasion that the West Indies seemed in trouble, against the leg-spin of Subhash Gupte in the second Test at Kanpur, the captain saved the situation with a fighting innings of 70.
Crucial to the West Indies’ success was the performance of two new fast bowlers, Roy Gilchrist and Wes Hall. Gilchrist, however, was a loose cannon, who seemed to bear special animus against the captain, a fellow Jamaican, albeit vastly more privileged.
On the other side, Alexander deprecated Gilchrist’s tendency, when angry or frustrated, to bowl highly dangerous beamers. During the Test series these antipathies were with some difficulty kept in check.
Against North Zone in the last match of the tour of India, however, Gilchrist unleashed murderous beamers against a batsman called Swaranjit Singh, whom Alexander had known at Cambridge. The captain’s order that Gilchrist should immediately cease this vicious form of attack was ignored.
At the lunch interval Alexander substituted Gilchrist. Later, after a meeting of the selectors, Gilchrist was sent home, while the rest of the party proceeded to the next part of the tour, in Pakistan. Alexander broke this news unceremoniously to the malefactor: “You will leave by the next flight. Good afternoon.” Gilchrist never again played for the West Indies. There was lurid gossip that he had pulled a knife on Alexander.
In Pakistan, without Gilchrist, the West Indies lost the first two Tests, before achieving a crushing victory, Pakistan’s first home defeat, in Lahore.
In 1960 Alexander was disappointed to lose at home to England, though he claimed 23 victims behind the stumps in the series, equalling John Waite’s world record for South Africa.
There had been angry riots when the West Indies capitulated in the second Test in Trinidad. The white Jamaican Alexander was not easily forgiven by the crowd, despite holding off the West Indian collapse with a fighting 28, the top score of the innings.
The return of Frank Worrell to the West Indies side — he made 197 not out in the first Test — led CLR James, the editor of Nation, to campaign for Alexander’s replacement as captain. In the upshot, Worrell was chosen to lead the forthcoming tour to Australia.
Alexander accepted the decision in good part, proving a loyal lieutenant to Worrell, a close friend. The dismissed captain had taken over a side in total disarray and laid the foundations for future triumphs. The West Indies had acquired a strong team spirit, while players such as Garry Sobers, Rohan Kanhai, Wes Hall, Lance Gibbs, Conrad Hunte, Joe Solomon and Basil Butcher all blossomed.
Relieved of the cares of leadership, Alexander surprised everyone by becoming extraordinarily prolific with the bat during the tour of Australia in 1960-61. In the Tests his scores were 60, 5, 5, 72, 0, 108, 63, 87 not out, 11 and 73. His century at Sydney, which set up a West Indies win, was the only one of his first-class career. (He had made 99 for Cambridge University against Nottinghamshire in 1953, before hitting a full toss into the hands of mid-on.)
In Australia, Alexander again performed well behind the stumps. Richie Benaud, the Australian captain and a great admirer, remembers how, in the celebrated tied Test in Brisbane, Alexander, facing into the sun, collected Hunte’s throw and hurled himself at the stumps to run out Wally Grout, who was trying to sneak a third and winning run off the penultimate ball.
After that series Alexander retired from cricket, and returned to the West Indies to concentrate on his career as a veterinary surgeon, eventually becoming Chief Veterinary Officer. In his 25 Tests he had scored 961 runs at an average of 30.03, while as wicket keeper he had claimed 85 catches and five stumpings. In his 92 first-class games he made 3,239 runs and averaged 29.18; he held 217 catches and pulled off 39 stumpings.
Gerry Alexander, as the great Australian bowler Alan Davidson has remarked, “upheld all the virtues of cricket”. In 1982 he received Jamaica’s Order of Distinction for his outstanding contribution to sport.
His wife Barbara predeceased him by four weeks; they had two children

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/sport-obituaries/8461627/Gerry-Alexander.html