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Linda Nolan, singer and television personality, dies aged 65

The singer and TV personality Linda Nolan, who had chart success alongside her sisters in the pop vocal group the Nolans before her television career, has died aged 65. 

She had been diagnosed with cancer in 2017. Her agent, Dermot McNamara, said in a statement that she had died in Blackpool’s Victoria hospital “with her loving siblings by her bedside, ensuring she was embraced with love and comfort during her final moments”.

He heralded her as a “beacon of hope and resilience” and a “celebrated Irish pop legend, television personality, Guinness world record-holding West End star, Sunday Times bestselling author and Daily Mirror columnist”.

He also shared her family’s praise for the hospital care, saying it was “tireless and made it so much more bearable”.

Nolan had previously been diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005, receiving the all-clear in 2011.

She had three top 10 hits with the Nolans, including the enduring disco classic I’m in the Mood for Dancing, and was later a familiar face on ITV chatshow Loose Women. 

Nolan was born in Dublin in 1959 and raised in Blackpool, the sixth of eventually eight siblings. Seven of them formed a group with their parents, called the Singing Nolans, recording a debut album in 1972.

Linda, along with Anne, Denise, Maureen and Bernie, split off to form the Nolan Sisters in 1974, later changing their name to the Nolans. After Cliff Richard championed them on his TV show and they toured Europe with Frank Sinatra in 1975 – Linda later remembered him speaking to them “in a really bad Irish accent” – their stardom grew, and a 1978 covers album took them to the UK top five for the first time. 

They lost out to Black Lace in an attempt to become the UK’s 1979 Eurovision entry, but that year brought them their biggest hit: I’m in the Mood for Dancing, a hit across Europe and a No 1 in Japan, where they continued to foster a major fanbase. Gotta Pull Myself Together and Attention to Me were UK top 10 hits in the early 1980s.

Linda had a surprising guest spot alongside the Motörhead star Lemmy in 1981, singing with the blues rockers the Young & Moody Band. Lemmy had been impressed with the Nolans after meeting them on Top of the Pops – and Linda in particular, who made a jokily suggestive remark to Motörhead’s manager. “We didn’t expect that from a Nolan sister,” he later said. “We were in awe. You couldn’t mess with the Nolan sisters.” 

Linda left the Nolans in 1983, with their heyday behind them, though she reunited with Bernie, Coleen and Maureen in 2009 for a comeback album, I’m in the Mood Again.

After leaving the group for the first time, she segued into stage musicals, including a three-year West End stint in Blood Brothers. Her Guinness world record came for the most siblings performing the same role in a musical, with Bernie and Denise also playing the role of Mrs Johnstone.

Linda became a familiar face as reality TV blossomed in the 2000s, appearing on Come Dine With Me and Celebrity Big Brother, which led to appearances on Loose Women, where her sister Coleen had also found success.

She announced her cancer diagnosis on the show in 2017, supported by Coleen, saying: “I was devastated because I feel so bad for my family having to go through it all again. They’ve been amazing.”

Linda married her husband, Brian Hudson, in 1979. He later became her post-Nolans manager and died in 2007. Bernie died in 2013, also of cancer.

Linda alleged in 2014 that Rolf Harris had sexually assaulted her when she was 15, during a Nolans tour of South Africa.

She wrote a column in the Mirror until shortly before her death, including an entry last week. 

Story by Ben Beaumont-Thomas: The Guardian

Dangers of an overloaded car include:

Dangers of an overloaded car include:

• Throwing off your centre of gravity and reducing the stability of the vehicle
• Increasing the vehicle’s starting and stopping times – burning more fuel over time
• Impairing the vehicle’s handling and increasing its stopping distance
• Overloading will cost you more money on refuelling and upkeep because the car is being pushed beyond its limits

• Whether you're taking a student to university, visiting a DIY store or going on a  road trip, fitting a lot of things into your car is challenging.

  This is also how overloading happens. Every car comes with very specific weight limits that should not be exceeded.

  Overloading is when you pack more weight into your car than it’s designed to carry. This causes strain on the tyres and can lead to problems such as tyre blowouts.

   

• Overloading your car affects:

  • The car's handling
  • Braking
  • The suspension system
  • Overall stability
  • Occupant safety

  An overloaded car is difficult to control, especially in an emergency. Things sliding around or tipping when you brake, or turn can be dangerous. Before packing for your next trip, consult your car’s

• Overloading a car with passengers

  If you must fold seats to carry a large or awkward load, leave passengers and collect them later rather than take a chance by carrying them unrestrained.

  Cars are designed to transport passengers safely in a set number – typically one for every seat in the car. Most cars can accommodate the driver and up to 4 passengers, with 1 person in the front and 3 in the back. However, larger cars may have additional seats in the back and can carry up to 7 passengers.

  Overloading a car with passengers can put everyone at risk and increase the chances of accidents and injuries.

  manual to find the maximum weight that it can safely hold.

Reference: AA Motoring : overloading your car

Sly Stone, pioneering funk and soul musician, dies aged 82

ly Stone, the American musician who lit up generations of dancefloors with his gloriously funky and often socially conscious songwriting, has died aged 82.  

“After a prolonged battle with COPD and other underlying health issues, Sly passed away peacefully, surrounded by his three children, his closest friend and his extended family,” a family statement reads. “While we mourn his absence, we take solace in knowing that his extraordinary musical legacy will continue to resonate and inspire for generations to come.” 

With his group Sly and the Family Stone, Stone tied together soul, psychedelic rock and gospel into fervent, uplifting songs, and became one of the key progenitors of the 1970s funk sound alongside James Brown and others. 

The group’s hits include three US No 1 singles – Everyday People, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) and Family Affair – plus Dance to the Music, I Want to Take You Higher, Hot Fun in the Summertime and more. The 1971 album There’s a Riot Goin’ On, a moody reflection on civil rights and the corrupted idealism of the postwar era created predominantly by Stone apart from the rest of his band, is widely regarded as one of the greatest of the 20th century. 

Born Sylvester Stewart to a Pentecostal religious family in Texas in 1943, Stone grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. His first music came in a gospel quartet with three siblings, the Stewart Four, who put out a locally released single in 1952.

As a young man he became well known in the fertile musical scene of countercultural San Francisco: a multi-instrumentalist and radio DJ who had a series of local bands and worked as a producer for garage rock and psychedelia groups such as the Beau Brummels. 

In 1966, he fused his band Sly and the Stoners with his brother Freddie’s group Freddie and the Stone Souls, to form Sly and the Family Stone. Their breakthrough came the following year with Dance to the Music, and success was fully established by their fourth album in two years, Stand! (1969), which eventually sold more than three million copies. The band’s stylistic and racial diversity attracted a broad audience, and they played both of the defining music festivals of 1969, Woodstock and the Harlem cultural festival. 

Hits continued more fitfully during the early 1970s, and the group – notorious for no-shows at concerts – slowly fractured amid increasing drug use. Stone would record There’s a Riot Goin’ On predominantly on his own, applying one of the earliest uses of a drum machine; albums such as Fresh!, with its Richard Avedon portrait of Stone on the cover, were also primarily his work. The band split entirely in 1975, though Stone continued to use the band name for solo releases. 

Despite having laid the rhythmic groundwork for disco, Stone couldn’t sustain his career in the late 1970s, and his addiction to cocaine worsened. He continued to perform with peers such as Funkadelic and Bobby Womack, but album releases dried up after 1982’s Ain’t But the One Way.

He was arrested in 1983 for cocaine possession, and for driving under the influence of cocaine in 1987, prompting him to flee California for Connecticut. He was apprehended two years later, and sentenced to 55 days in prison, five years’ probation and a fine. His difficulties meant that he was little seen during the 1990s, and it wasn’t until 2006 that he performed in public again, at a tribute to Sly and the Family Stone at the Grammy awards. 

He performed with the Family Stone on a tour the following year, but often erratically, and made a lacklustre appearance at 2010’s Coachella festival. His final album, I’m Back! Family & Friends, featuring re-recordings of old songs alongside three new tracks, was released in 2011. 

In 2015 he was awarded $5m in a lawsuit against his former manager and attorney, successfully arguing that royalty payments had been diverted from him, though he ultimately wasn’t awarded the money due to the terms of a 1989 royalties agreement with a production company. Difficulties with royalties meant that Stone spent many of his latter years in poverty; in 2011 he was living in a campervan in a residential area of Los Angeles – voluntarily, he claimed – and relying on a retired couple for food.

“Sly was a monumental figure, a groundbreaking innovator, and a true pioneer who redefined the landscape of pop, funk, and rock music,” the family statement added. “His iconic songs have left an indelible mark on the world, and his influence remains undeniable. In a testament to his enduring creative spirit, Sly recently completed the screenplay for his life story, a project we are eager to share with the world in due course, which follows a memoir published in 2024.” 

That memoir, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin), was praised in a Guardian review: “The charm, playfulness, humour and personality of Stone’s songs come through in his on-page voice”.

In a 2023 interview with the Guardian accompanying its publication, he said: “I was always happy if someone took the things I was doing and they liked them enough to want to do them on their own. I’m proud that the music I made inspired people.” 

Among those paying tribute to Stone was musician Questlove, whose documentary about Stone, Sly Lives!, was release earliest this year. “From the moment his music reached me in the early 1970s, it became a part of my soul,” he wrote on Instagram. “Sly was a giant — not just for his groundbreaking work with the Family Stone, but for the radical inclusivity and deep human truths he poured into every note … His work looked straight at the brightest and darkest parts of life and demanded we do the same.”

Musician and actor Queen Latifah heralded Stone as an “innovator [and] funk aficionado”, while hip-hop icon DJ Premier wrote: “I thank you for bringing us diversity, funk, soul, rock and a unique band which is why I’m cut from the integrity cloth. I will remain great because of you.” Waterboys frontman Mike Scott wrote: “Thank you for all the inspiration, for breaking ground so others could follow and for being the sassiest, funkiest being on planet earth”. 

Stone was married from 1974 to 1976 to Kathy Silva, with whom he had a son, Sylvester Jr. He later had two further children: Sylvyette with Cynthia Robinson, and Novena Carmel.  

Natural Disaster today

Reference: YOUTUBE VIDEOS