Tributes.com, from Monster.com founder Jeff Taylor, and Footnote.com are two new social networks dedicated to dead people. They offer obituaries/memorials and could be used aas repositories for images and information about those who've passed on. Writer David Foster Wallace and musician Richard Wright are today's cover stories.
Yes. This is the case of Bob Monkhouse, who died from prostate cancer.
Now, thanks to computer wizardry, he can be seen in an ad for Prostate Cancer Research's Give A Few Bob campaign. The commercial was awarded of a Gold last week in London at Midsummer Awards for Best Post Production.
The ad-makers took archive footage of Monkhouse and blended it with shots of a body double taken in a graveyard in Surrey. The script is spoken by a soundalike and begins with Monkhouse saying: "Just when you thought it was safe to turn on your TV again, here I am. Gosh, four years already, doesn't time fly."
He goes on to tell one of his favourite gags: "I wanted to die like my father, quietly, in his sleep - not screaming and terrified like his passengers." And he says: "What killed me kills one man per hour in Britain. That's even more than my wife's cooking. Let's face it, as a comedian, I died many deaths. Prostate cancer, I don't recommend."
Monkhouse's widow Jackie, 70, told The Sun: "When I was approached about the Give A Few Bob campaign I felt it would be a great honour for my husband. The ad-makers took archive footage of Monkhouse and blended it with shots of a body double taken in a graveyard in Surrey
"Bob would love this ad. It's funny but has a serious message about the threat of prostate cancer. "They've done a fabulous job bringing my Bob back - although there's a bulge in the lapel of his jacket he wouldn't have stood for. I have the original upstairs and it fitted him like a glove."
The campaign aims to raise donations for research into the disease.
