Here are a few more Premiership footballers moonlighting in The Wire:

Sgt Ellis Carver – Florent Malouda
Det Vernon Holley – Alex
Chris Partlow – Emmanuel Adebayor
Kenard – Shaun Wright-Phillips

O Death by Ralph Stanley. If it doesn't sound familiar, it's from the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack. Just one guy singing, gave me chills the first time I heard it in the film and never fails to raise the hair on the back of my neck when it comes on the iPod. A plaintive wail as a guy tries to negotiate with Death, no music and it is almost guaranteed to put the frighteners on you if you play it while driving at night.

Effect slightly ruined by the fact it's available as a ringtone to download.

Oh, and a famous person of which there is no known image: Christopher Marlowe. The only picture of him was found in a Cambridge college years ago, and was only identified as Marlowe by deduction and is not confirmed; it's just a convenient assumption.

for the slipped ident in this week's podcast - late night rushing to get it up as quickly as possible...

Won't happen again, crave your indulgence, taken outside and pelted with rocks, etc, etc, etc...

hope i get one for The ashley young/marlo one.

I'm thinking these days that, both in drama and in real life, it is the anticipation of death rather than the act itself that carries more frightening weight. The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas, which I took my daughter to see the other week, is built on this sense of dread and anticipation. I was more shaken by the moment that I realised my mother could die imminently than by her actual death a few weeks later. Anyway, my point is this: I think that one of the greatest songs about dying is not about dying, but about the creeping dusk of one's later years. The anticipation that death, for all of us, is coming.

They don't get much better than this......

"When automatic sinks in airports,
No longer see your hands,
and elevator doors close on you, and buses drive right past,
When the only voice that answers,
is the whir of a ceiling fan,
Your great journey has begun.

I'm not really saying this is a lookalike, but Crooks has that prim, overly serious, awkward outsider manner about him that would surely bag him the role of Brother Mouzone in any Football/Wire tribute production.

...if you go to a crossroads at midnight and get the devil to sub your copy you get to write the thought piece in Word. Or cut and paste it from your blog, whichever you prefer.

None more deadly...

Officer Mike Santangalo - Alan Pardew
Cedric Daniels - Jap Staam (obviously, a little colour required but you know its true)
Bubbles - John Obi Mikel
Jay Landsman - Jan Molby
Frank Sobotka - Archie Gemmill

An important subject that needed an airing. I had to register especially to thank you.

I'm saying D'Angelo is actually Leroy Lita. Not Prem anymore but he might get there again yet.

http://www.readingfcpics.co.uk/pics_1846/Leroy-Lita.html?pn=2&so=1&sci=1...

..surely RT's "1952 Vincent Black Lightning".
Whereas most death anthems feel obliged to tack on a suitably morbid tune, Thommo casts his tale of a doomed love-struck ton up boy to a jaunty finger-picked confection that brings nothing less than a particularly complex musical box.
Of couse RT has more than his fair share of death ditties. Let's face it, he makes Nick Cave look like the 1910 Fruitgum Co.

I give you Mr Jethro and Mr Tull with their deliciously upbeat death song 'Lick Your Fingers Clean', from Aqualung.

I only wish I could find a YouTube clip, but you'll just have to do with a small preview from here:

I'll see you at the weighing in when your life's sum-total's made.
And you set your wealth in godly deeds against the sins you've laid.
So place your final burden on your hard-pressed next of kin:
Send the chamber pot back down the line to be filled up again.
Take your mind off your election and try to get it straight.
And don't pretend perfection: you'll be crucified too late.
And he'll say you really should make the deal as he offers round the hat.
Well, you'd better lick your fingers clean, I thank you all for that.
And as you join the good ship earth and you mingle with the dust
be sure to leave your underpants with someone you can trust.
And the hard-headed social worker who bathes his hands in blood
will welcome you with arms held high and cover you with mud.
And he'll say you really should make the deal as he offers round the hat.
Well, you'd better lick your fingers clean, well. I'll thank you all for that.

..and we're accepting Alan Pardew as Officer Mike Santangalo, Sean Wright-Phillips and Kenard and Chris Kamara as mayoral aide Norman Wilson. Keep them coming.

Went to see a stand-up comedy show many years ago in Glasgow's trendy west end and the compere came up with this game for getting everyone involved.

He asked an audience member their name - aptly enough in this case he was called 'Dave' - and then suggested that we all think of songs with the word 'love' in the title but replace 'love' with 'Dave's Arse'.

So: Dave's Arse in an Elevator, I Would Do Anything For Dave's Arse But I Won't do That, Dave's Arse Is All Around, Tainted Dave's Arse, You Give Dave's Arse a Bad Name, etc.

DEATH SONG: The old folk song "Floyd Collins", about a coalminer trapped in a mineshaft. It's one of those old "moral" songs that tells poor Floyd's story but then concludes by admonishing listeners to stop their sinful ways, lest they end up like him and go to their doom.

who used to doodle on the back of cheques to ensure they were never cashed. I can't be arsed to google it, though.

a band called Nebraska Thunderfuck, I'm going to start one. Can't play an instrument, but that means I can nominate myself as my own band's Bez.

Two birds with one stone...hurrah!

Managing Editor Thomas Klebanow

Trevor Francis

Former Mayor Clarence V. Royce

Darren Bent

You all put your Wire posts into this thread and then promise never to mention it ever again.

Seasons In The Sun. Now there's a death song if ever there was one. I used to love that song when I was a kid. Of course, I had no idea what it was about, back then.

...concerning the violent death of William "Billy" Lyons on Christmas Eve, 1895, St Louis, Missouri.
"Stagger Lee" is the dark lord of death songs; a shifting folk tale with which to terrify your children; a mythologised amoral anti-hero who survives in music, literature, academic studies, and nightmares.

"Stag O'Lee" - Mississippi John Hurt (1928)
(Ignore the misleading visuals...)

"Stagger Lee" - The Collins Kids (1959)
(The most disturbing version of all? Keep it clean, Junior!)

"Stagger Lee" - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (1995)

More info + links here: http://tinyurl.com/4mvcby and a whopping great list of versions here (416 and counting, many with their own twists to the tale):
http://www.staggerlee.com/pgs/the-list.php

"When I Was Dead" by Robyn Hitchcock, from the album "Respect." Why? Because it pokes fun at the whole shuffling off this mortal coil thing which, in my middling years, occasionally scares the crap out of me.

Here's a verse:

"And the Devil asked me to supper,
He said: careful with the spoons,
God said: Oh ignore him,
I've got all your albums,
I said: Yes, but he's got all the tunes."

If not this, then "Life'll Kill Ya" or "My Ride's Here" by Warren Zevon. Both songs do an equally good job of facing up to the finite nature of our existence by cocking an irreverent snook.

And it strikes me that Stringer Bell is currently filling Jermaine Johnson's boots for Wednesday.

Gresford Disaster: a cheery trad arr by the Albion Band, with Mr Jolly himself, John Tams, aided and abetted by Martin Carthy. You even get a funereal hymn tune as well.

Murder Ballads! A whole album of marvellous death songs.

But my favourite death song, is a Humphrey Lyttelton tune, from the Sad Sweet Songs and Crazy Rhythms albums. It's called Jail Break, and is a beautiful and perfect funeral march.

They've made a career out of such songs but a laugh-out-loud track is So Long... their ode to all the various pets they've accidently offed over the years....
Sample...

So long to my dog Snickers who ate Christmas tinsel. So long to Mr Whiskers who jumped out of a window and to the family of gerbils who chewed out of their cage and the little brown rabbit I ran over by mistake.... So Long So Long I'll see you on the other side.

The daddy (or mummy)of them all:

The Queen Is Dead

I think the best death song ever is "on some faraway beach" by Eno. It has eveything.
It has a brillent instrumental start which builds up to the vocals intoning about dying on a beach at sunset and fades to a sparse piano suggesting that it will never actually happen like that. Supurb.

was watching Sunderland v Newcastle on Saturday and was surprised to see Omar Little playing midfield for Sunderland under the pseudonym of Dwight Yorke.

jermaine jenas is brodie while we are on the subject of lookalikes there is a German Officer in Escape to Victory whop is the stamp of Dimatar Bergatov [my spelling is rubbish] Check him out .He comes into the room when Micheal Caine is organising the match with the camp commandant.