Comedian Sean Lock – best known for panel shows ‘8 Out Of 10 Cats’ and ‘8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown’ as well as sitcom ’15 Storeys High’ – has died from cancer at the age of 58.
He also appeared on QI, The Last Leg, Have I Got News for You, and The Big Fat Quiz of the Year.
A statement from his agent Off The Kerb Productions said: “It is with great sadness that we have to announce the death of Sean Lock. He died at home from cancer, surrounded by his family.
Sean was first diagnosed with skin cancer in 1990 when he found a mark on his back, attributing the condition to overexposure to the sun while working as a builder in the early 1980s.
#Breaking Comedian Sean Lock, best known for panel shows 8 Out Of 10 Cats and 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, as well as sitcom 15 Storeys High, has died from cancer at the age of 58, his agent told the PA news agency pic.twitter.com/BB6hIa8atp
After seeing a GP, he was referred to a dermatologist at Guy’s Hospital, London. The piece of skin was removed and, after a biopsy, he found out he had malignant melanoma, more commonly referred to as skin cancer.
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“Sean was one of Britain’s finest comedians, his boundless creativity, lightning wit and the absurdist brilliance of his work, marked him out as a unique voice in British comedy.
“Sean was also a cherished husband and father to three children. Sean will be sorely missed by all that knew him. We kindly request that the privacy of his family and children is respected at this difficult time.”
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Sean often filmed 8 Out Of 10 Cats and 8 Out Of 10 Cars Does Countdown at MediaCity here in Greater Manchester and had a huge comedy following in the region, playing some of our best comedy venues.
He will be sadly missed.
UK News
Peter Kay wants to do a Phoenix Nights film and has already written multiple Max and Paddy Christmas specials
Danny Jones
Comedy legend Peter Kay has revealed that he wants to revive Phoenix Nights in the form of a feature film and has been writing down ideas for years.
Writing in his upcoming memoir, TV: Big Adventures on the Small Screen — which releases on Thursday, 28 September this week — Kay has confirmed that he’s been workshopping possible ways to do it ever since the hit show ended in 2003.
As per multiple outlets who got their hands on extracts from the follow-up to his best-selling autobiography from 2007, The Sound of Laughter, the Bolton-born comic, actor and writer says: “I still write down ideas.
“I had an idea only today of Brian getting Young Kenny [played by fellow Manc funnyman, Justin Moorhouse] to paint an enormous letter ‘H’ on the roof of the club so he can advertise they’ve got a helicopter pad. The chance of a helicopter ever landing is, of course, zero.” Kay also returned stand-up at the AO Arena this weekend.
The 50-year-old goes on to write that, “As the years pass, I’m becoming more like Brian, but if Phoenix Nights rose again it’d have to be for something very special, maybe a film? Perhaps Brian could get visited by three ghosts. Now, wouldn’t that be an idea?”
It’s worth noting that this isn’t the first time Kay has floated the possibility of a feature-length Phoenix Nights comeback, having told producers that a script was ‘ready to go’ back in 2011 around the same time and success of The Inbetweeners Movie.
In fact, a few years later in 2017, he told BBC Radio Manchester that he’d “love to go back” to the series and said, “There’s a whole series three been written for about 15 years” but insisted that other projects and real-life simply gets in the way. As for whether this was turned into a film script, who knows?
Furthermore, the sell-out standup (whose return to the stage broke records and the internet late last year) shed even further light on the show’s spin-off, Max & Paddy’s Road to Nowhere and its potential return for a Christmas special or two. In fact, co-star Paddy McGuinness talked it up earlier this year too.
He detailed how a script he’d written revolved around the two bouncers as “overly aggressive” elves working in Santa’s grotto.
Like his lifelong friend Peter, McGuinness insisted he’s always been keen to bring the equally popular comedy duo back and has said in the past that there’s “always talk about doing another one”, but that the issue is simply “time” and “getting everyone together”.
We’re keeping everything crossed that the time is just around the corner.
This is what AI thinks Manchester will look like in future — and Piccadilly Gardens is stunning
Danny Jones
Technology never fails to amaze us and if you’ve been paying attention to AI and what people are doing with it for fun at the moment, you might have seen people asking it what cities will look like in the future — naturally, Manchester is one of them.
While there are obviously endless different uses for artifical intelligence, not to mention multiple different automated programmes that can create these kind of automated impressions of the future, the People’s Postcode Lottery chose the ‘Midjourney’ AI tool to create theirs.
The lottery company and UK charity asked the AI system to re-imagine the city centre in 100 years time and, we’ll tell you now, the Manchester of the future is looking pretty cool.
Here’s what it reckons Oxford Road and what we can only guess is a generic street in town will look like in the year 2123:
This one has a hint of Albert Square about it.The uni’s ‘Tin Can’ is looking more ‘Chrome Dome’The Manchester of the future — according to AI, at least. (Credit: Midjourney)
Like any of these programmes, Midjourney harvests existing data and images surrounding Manchester and what the city centre looks like at present when calculating how it could be transformed in the years to come — it certainly looks like it got the rain-soaked streets right in the left image, anyway.
Commenting on the AI images and the potential the city already has, Chris Lawson — Managing Director and Senior Designer at CK Architectural — said: “With a good vertical emphasis, [Manchester] can add retail space, a great outlook for the future, and not rely on larger floor areas.
“Introducing a section of greenery could give a level of decarbonisation and biodiversity too. This is something that I am a firm believer will have to lead future architecture in cityscapes just like this one, so I do understand the AI inspiration here. Within the Oxford Road image, the elongated glass and mirrored structures do feel like a step into the future.
“The curved mirrors would help bring sunlight and energy to typically shaded places in cities… This is of course not to forget reflecting and enhancing the exciting historic buildings that make the fabric of this city. Creating a solid harmony of modern and traditional architecture will be the future of most major UK cities.” All that being said, Piccadilly Gardens seems like a bit of a stretch.
It’s fair to say Piccadilly Gardens is quite a ways off looking like this…
Obviously, it goes without saying that there isn’t much substance to these images beyond how much stock you put in AI and it’s creative capacities, but you have to admit the architectural imagery it has come up with seems fairly plausible.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen technology and art come together to give us an idea of the what our city might look like in years to come, of course, with a digital artist doing something similar with Adobe earlier this year.
In fact, even looking at how the Manchester skyline has developed over the years is something we find mind-blowing enough, and if there ever-growing sea of cranes and soon-to-be-skyscrapers is anything to go by, some parts of town could look unrecognisable in the next few years.
The Manc -
18th August 2021 
