This week: a former British Olympic high jumper, the composer of the test card music and a great of Bollywood
THE high jumper Germaine Mason, who has died aged 34 in a motorcycle crash in Jamaica, won a silver medal with Team GB at the Beijing Olympics in 2008. He is also still the holder of the Jamaican national record in the high-jump.
He was born in Jamaica to a British father and a Jamaican mother and at junior level was a Jamaican team-mate of his friend, the 100 metre and 200 metre world record holder Usain Bolt. However, in 2006 he switched allegiance to represent Great Britain, which was allowed under international rules because his father was born in London.
His peak came two years later when he claimed silver at the Beijing Olympics, jumping 2.34 metres to finish behind Russian Andrey Silnov. However, later that year he seriously injured his knee and missed two months of his training after surgery.
Jamaican police reported that Mason died after being involved in an accident in Kingston. Reports said Mason was riding in a convoy with a number of athletes.
Senior high jump coach at British Athletics, Fuzz Caan, who worked closely with Mason at the time of his Olympic success, described him as an outstanding athlete and a lovely man. "He had a wry sense of humour and was a pleasure to be around," said Caan. "He was a great ambassador of British high jumping. It is an honour for us to have him as part of our sporting history.”
THE musician Gordon Langford, who has died aged 86, was a composer, arranger, pianist and trombonist who was known for his work with The King's Singers, his music for brass bands and for arranging the scores for films such as Superman II and Raiders of the Lost Ark.
However, Langford probably attracted his biggest cult following for his work for the test card, the image that was broadcast on television when programmes shut down. The most famous was a girl playing noughts and crosses with a toy clown and it was Langford who wrote some of the familiar music that was played with it. The pieces had colourful names such as Hebridean Hoedown and Royal Daffodil.
Born in Edgware, Middlesex, Langford learned to play the piano from a very young age and was composing his own pieces by the age of nine. After national service, he played in a jazz band and worked for the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. Later in his career, he also worked with the percussionist Evelyn Glennie and won an Ivor Novello award for his March from the Colour Suite.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here