2013 calendars - consigned to the recycling bin of history

It was John Fortune who was the last prominent person that 2013 claimed rather than the coma-induced Michael Schumacher.  74 in a modern, developed country is really no age at which to die, eighty years being a reasonable expectation for the middle-classes (the working classes have a greater tendency to indulge in unhealthy habits), though that makes 44 even more abhorrent (Schumacher is 45 years old tomorrow, if he makes it).  I remember fondly Bremner, Bird and Fortune's sketches from the late '90s and early 2000s and when I heard the news, I confused Fortune with the older Bird (77) as they were such a seamless double-act within the overall format of the show, while Bremner was more of a one-man impresario with his mimicry, all three welded together in the cause of political satire, being one of the few to 'survive' New Labour's early years (Spitting Image was so certain that New Labour would be so squeaky clean compared to the tired, old Tories, some of whom were very corrupt, that the comedy team wound themselves up before the 1997 election).
Another comedian contemporary of Fortune was Jasper Carrott.  I still recall vividly one iconoclastic line where he said that speed bumps used to be called sleeping policemen "but no-one slows down for a sleeping policeman in the road."  In that same show, he laid ferociously into the skiing set, with all their middle-class preening and priggishness.  It remains that to have a fatal skiing accident is a death peculiar to the rich or at least well-to-do.  Sonny Bono (ex of Cher) collided with a tree and died; Natasha Richardson (current at the the time with Liam Neeson) hit her head, got up and made her way to a hospital, apparently normal, before passing away suddenly from a massive brain haemorrhage, a condition known as 'walk and die' where the initial impact causes the brain to start bleeding until it becomes unstoppable.  What Carrott would have of Snow, Sex and Suspicious Parents (a spin-off from its stablemate Sun...) would have been exquisite were he still drawing in the crowds.  Even Harry Hill is no longer burping at such voyeuristic trash.  I once read that Schumacher was worth a billion dollars at one point, though that magazine hyperbole is intermingling with faulty memory.  Thankfully, Schumacher's condition has slightly improved but officially he is still fighting for his life.  The tributes to a man who was quite arrogant, if brilliant, when in his driving prime put Sebastian Vettel, his insufferable successor, in the shade.