Entertainment For Lively Minds
Danny Baker interviewed in yesterday's Guardian
Posted by fortuneight on 12 June 2011 - 10:59am.
Don't think I've seen anyone else post this
Given Danny's usual reticence to talk about himself and his illness, this unusually frank. And how about that Chris Evans eh?
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V Good
Read this yesterday, very interesting and a little bit moving. DB seems very level-headed and having had a serious illness myself it's often worse for friends and family than the person themselves.
And Evans does act like a knob sometimes (and who here hasn't!)but top marks for sticking by his mates.
V Good
Read the article and it was a good read. Listening to his show on Listen Again from Wednesday. Great line from the start of the show about his check up at the hospital, DB asked if (after having taken what I assumed to be laxative type substances)
'Will I be able to make it into work this afternoon?'
The hospital replied
'Yes, but you'll not make it home again!'
"He started Sniffin' Glue, with a friend"
Bit harsh on Mark Perry, that...
Indeed.
DB himself has admitted that he only came on board after he'd lent Mark Perry his typewriter.
Very revealing
How surprising to read such a revealing interview with DB. It's great to be able to listen to his podcasts again every week and I just love the fact that he seems to know something about almost everything.
Respect indeed to Chris Evans, too. He's seen as a bit of an insufferable prick, but I actually have a lot of time for him.
I also think
Highly of Chris Evans as a result of this.
Sorry to fart in church but
Sorry to fart in church but I thought he came over not too well. He was rather to eager to discuss his profligate spending and rather huge earnings. I wish him a full recovery though and like him on the radio.
I thought the same
I love Danny on radio but this was the first time that it occurred to me that we might not get on if we met.
Why's talking about money a problem?
I was surprised to read that he was struggling financially during his illness but, to me, he adequately justifed his spending pattern.
"He says it's a working-class thing; if you've got it, enjoy it. "It's not ostentatious. I'm not like Loadsamoney, but there's a James Taylor lyric, 'As we're only here for a while/Why not show some style?""
I'm sorry but it is not a
I'm sorry but it is not a working class thing, everyone is different. My dad is working class yet is insured to the hilt, always has been very careful with money but rarley talks about it.
*shrug*
Baker seems to think it is... I'm not personally qualified to comment.
Fair point, my heckles do
Fair point, my heckles do become raised when the WCs are portrayed in certain ways.
Self-employed people, read and learn.
If you don't work, you don't earn. I am in this boat. Which is why I, and every other dentist I know, from day one, takes out PHI - Permanent Health Insurance which pays your wages if you can't work for health reasons. I also have a critical illness policy which pays a lump sum on dignosis of nasty diseases. Danny has been poorly advised by someone in the past. Or regards Chris as his back-up. For the rest of us who don't have generous multi-millionaire mates on tap, get insured. It isn't unthinkable and it does happen. I have two friends whose careers have been ended by eye problems and another who suffered a long layoff following renal failure. All would have been up a very shitty financial creek indeed if it were not for their policies.
Yes
It's one of those annual statements that I receive and think 'why the chuff am I paying that every month?'. DB's situation reminds me why (although I always have nagging doubts that there is something in the small print that'll invalidate any claim).
I've tired of him
But does anyone know if there exists film of his rant about Elvis? I think it was at a Clash gig when news of Elvi Parsley's demise was announced on stage. Baker must have been about 17.
The rant that Dan made
Was at the vortex club, berating the crowd for celebrating the death of Elvis, I would doubt it was filmed and if it was it would have surfaced by now.
I have been a big fan of Dans since watching 20th Century Box as a kid on Sunday lunchtime when he and Janet Street Porter would explore in depth various youth cults, great tv from LWT but I am always a bit unnerved by the footage of Dan in his 6 o'clock show days giving it large to a hapless station employee (do you know who I am?)
He's just tweeted that he's been given the all-clear...
...which is good news, I'm sure we'll all agree.
Indeed.
But the after-effects of intense radiotherapy of the head and neck are bastardly, as DB alludes to in the interview. The salivary glands are fried, as he says, and they recover their function only rarely. Permanently dry mouth. Radiation mucositis is a long-term problem. Permanently sore mouth. He may well also have been relieved of a lot of teeth prior to the procedure to avoid the possibility of extractions later which are fraught with difficulty and danger in irradiated bone. Permanent difficulty eating. Please don't let anyone think that Dan's all better and rosy - the treatment may have worked but it's still a hard road he's travelling and he'll need some hands to hold but I'm sure that many will be willingly and sympathetically proffered.
A sobering, but welcome analysis
indeed, Lenny.
My father died of cancer of the soft palate
and, initially they thought the radiotherapy had sorted it. For the few months he hung on in there he had to squirt his mouth with some sort of artificial saliva from a bottle every miniute or so; he fed himself through a tube with a squeezy pouch of glop; and he struggled to talk for more than a few sentences.
Not nice.