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July 24, 2025 • 15 mins
Dave Griffiths and Harley Woods take a look at the celebrity deaths that shocked them.
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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Now, as we mentioned earlier in the show, of course,
this week, we were saddened by the death of Ozzy
Osbourne and that sparked one of our listeners to write
a question to us. And the person was Barbara from
a Broom, and she wanted to know what deaths have
affected us celebrity deaths, Which celebrity deaths have affected us

(00:24):
the most over the years, because she said the Ossy
Osbourne one was really hitting her. She said in her
message to us that she'd been crying for a couple
of hours ever since she'd heard the news, and she
just wondered if there'd been any celebrity deaths out there
that hit us hard. Harley, have there been any celebrity
deaths that hits you particularly hot?

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Yeah? There were a few. Actually, two of the first
ones that really took me. I remember, I think I
was still in school at the time Lisa left Eye
Lopez when the news hit that she had died in
a car accident. That, yeah, just totally chilled me. It

(01:10):
was like, what the hell? And like I even like
I was listening to their music a lot at that time,
so it was really hard for me to kind of
put their music on without kind of feeling something. So
I had to have a bit of a chill out
for a little while there. But one that's really affected

(01:32):
me and I hated receiving the news of that one
was Michael Jackson. That's one I'd grown up with my
whole life, and I got to go to one of
the concerts and it was amazing. Just the work he
did was amazing, and you know still now you discover
things that never got released or I don't know, you

(01:56):
just never heard of before, and it's just like, ah,
such a waste there. Yeah, those are like a couple
of the biggest ones that hit me. But I have
to say, now that all the cast of the Golden
Girls have gone, I'm really really sad. I was lucky

(02:18):
enough to see b Arthur when she came out to
Australia with a friend of ours, Phil, who used to
be part of the Subculture team. So yeah, she was
my date for the night and we both enjoyed that
concert immensely. It's just like a one woman show and yeah,
it was just bread. She did some numbers from throughout

(02:38):
her career and told her story. So when she finally passed,
it was like that was a real hit for me.
I think Rue McClanahan, who played Blanche, was maybe the
first to go because she had cancer or something. Or
before her was a stelle Getty who was suffering from

(02:59):
the mentor as well, So you know, it was a
bit of a struggles. But I'd secretly always been hoping
for decades that there was going to be some kind
of reunion with them. More, Benny White held on for
a long time, and it's only recently that she's passed.
So yeah, and I guess one more I've got to
mention is Adam West of Batman Fame. I keep getting

(03:25):
these ideas of, you know, if I could do a
movie or something, here's some actors I want to work with,
and now on I list them, they start to drop dead.
So I'm worried if I'm jinxing people's lives here. Actually
there's there are a couple more. As a longtime doctor

(03:46):
who fan, we had Elizabeth Slayton, who played Sarah Jane Smith,
one of the most popular companions of all time. She
even got her own spin off show, which was going
strong in the sort of early mid two thousands, and yeah,
unfortunately she had a cancer issue as well, and didn't

(04:12):
complete her final series of her show, and also Caroline John,
who was one of her predecessors as a companion, also
died of cancer shortly after. I think, so, yeah, those
are a few that really kind of hit me, especially
when they're so unexpected. That's the big, the big shocker.

(04:35):
What about you, Dave?

Speaker 1 (04:36):
Yeah, I was going to say that the unexpected ones
are the ones that get you the most. I think.
I'm a huge car racing fan, and I was actually
watching the race when it and Senna died, and of course,
and Senna was everybody's favorite driver that didn't like Michael
Schumacher basically, so I think to be actually watching the
race and to see it happen when I was a

(04:58):
teenager was was shocking, like in a sense like you
literally watched your hero die on television, which was pretty horrific.
The other two that really got me when I was
a teenager was was Kurt Cobain. I parents will still
say that because I was kind of an emo, gothy
kind of kid. I locked myself in my room for

(05:20):
three days when Kurt Cobain died because he was he
was my idol. Like it was, there was no two
way about it. It was ever since I listened to
that first the first album of Theirs, and heard him
singing about what it was like at school and stuff
like that. There was just something about his music that
that really made me feel like someone else had been

(05:42):
through what I'd been through. And to hear that he
had died, it was an absolute shock. The other one
that got me when I was at high school as
well was Jeff Buckley. I kind of just kind of
just got over the Kurt Cobain thing and started to
get into Jeff Buckley's music. And that was a real shock,
of course, because Jeff Buckley really only had one album

(06:04):
before he died. He did this absolute brilliant album, and
then he was working on his second album, which of
course we've had released now, Sketches of My Sweetheart the Drunk.
But yeah, his was another shock because he was so young.
You just didn't expect that you were going to wake
up to hear that Jeff Buckley had passed away. I'm

(06:27):
trying to think Brian Wilson a couple of weeks ago.
It was a bit of a shock to me because
not because we didn't expect it, but the Beach Boys
have always had a bit in my life because I
was one of the first bands that my dad got
me interested in, and my dad and I went and
saw them the last time they toured in Australia, and

(06:48):
I think we've been expecting Brian Wilson to pass away
for a while, but it was still a bit of
a shock when it happened, because you realize that that
was it, the music of the Beach Boys was gone forever,
that we were never going to get anything new from
them after that happened. But the other one too, I
think for film actors, there's probably two actors that really

(07:11):
got me really badly a layer when she passed away
because through luck, I'd been on the set of Queen
of the dand in Melbourne when it was being filmed.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
Right, I was supposed to be in that as well,
and yeah, to learn that like soon after, it was like,
oh my god, I was really getting into her as well,
Like yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:34):
To see to see her on set and what a
passionate person she was. And then a couple of weeks
later she wasn't there anymore. Like they she didn't even
get to finish the film. I think that was a
huge shock. The other one to me. That was a
big shot was Paul Walker. I loved the well, I
still do. I love the franchise The Fast and the Furious,

(07:55):
and yeah, to have him again and someone's so young,
but to die in such a kind of unique way
like this is a guy who had made the art
of driving fast as something cinematic and he was in
a celebrity kind of driverthon thing and died like it was.

(08:19):
And he died on my birthday, which was even more
kind of shocking as well. But yeah, I think you're right.
It's those ones where you don't expect them, like with
Brian Wilson, like I said, we've kind of been expecting
for years, and even with Ozzy Osborne, we've kind of
been expecting that news to come through at some stage.
But when you've got people like a Layer and Paul

(08:40):
Walker and and Senna and Jeff Buckley, where it just
comes out of.

Speaker 2 (08:44):
Nowhere, especially when like, yeah, when you're naming all the musicians,
I was thinking, oh, you know what it's like those
people you listen to so much and you get so
when you like Aretha Franklin, I mean it wasn't all
that long ago. I guess she passed, but you know,
she's someone I constantly listened to and still do. And

(09:07):
it took me a while to watch the biographical movie
of her as well, just because it's like it almost
feels too soon sometimes when something like that happens. Oh
and when you mentioned Paul Walker reminded me I grew
up loving Bruce Lee. I always watch those movies with
my father, And then discovering Brandonly was like amazing. And

(09:30):
then he does the Crew film and unfortunately Die is
on set during that just as I'm discovering him, Like,
I thought, that was so awful, especially in that family,
to have so much tragedy, it really gets to you.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
Yeah, it does. And like even some of them, like
other sports stars too, Shane Warren, I don't think any
of us saw that happen like that saw that it
was going to happen. He was literally calling a cricket
match a few days and then went on a holiday
and died while he was on holiday. I think that
was one that a lot of people certainly didn't expect.

(10:05):
So yeah, I think it's the unexpected ones that they
get you the most. The of course, the older, the
older actors and the older musicians when they pass away,
it's always tragic and it's always sad because you have
that realization that you're not going to hear their music anymore.
It was kind of I think I told the story

(10:25):
a few weeks ago on the show my first day
working in commercial radio, Michael Hutchins passed away just as
I was about to go on air, and that was
a bit of a shock as well, because you were
kind of like trying to find out if it was real,
because it was like, he's relatively a young guy. And
then like years and years later, just as I was

(10:45):
about to go on air, I found out that lou
Reid had died. But with lou Reid it was kind
of like, well, he's an older musician. But with Michael Hutchins,
it was just a complete shock because, of course, for
those that don't know, he died in a asphyxiation accident,
so it wasn't expected. It wasn't like he was sick
with cancer or anything like that. It just came completely

(11:08):
out of the blue.

Speaker 2 (11:09):
And we didn't mention Prince as well. Yeah, it was
just like suddenly found in an elevator in his estate.
I think it was. It was just like wait, what.

Speaker 1 (11:19):
Well he was? He was He did an interview with
Nie maguire live on Triple M. I think it was
only two or three days before he passed away. Like again,
that was another one that you just didn't expect because
it was he did just toured Australia.

Speaker 2 (11:32):
So yeah, and you know you and I both watch
or used to watch Riverdale and Luke Perry just suddenly
yeah gone, like sure, like some of these guys weren't young, young,
but it still seems way too soon for this stuff
to happen.

Speaker 1 (11:53):
Yeah, and you just reminded me of another one there
as well. I'm trying to think give his name now.
He was in a television show that I used to
watch when I was a I want to say John Goodman,
but I know it's not John Goodman because he's very
very much alive. I'm just trying to look it up
right now. The show was called Eight Simple Rules to

(12:16):
Dating My Teenage Daughter and John Ritta. That's right, it
was John Riddle that point. He literally was the dad
in that show and then passed away between seasons. Now.
Coss Kaylee Kokie Oh, who was in Big Bang Theory.
She was in it as his daughter, and Katie Segal

(12:37):
played his wife in that show, and I remember that
it caused such a problem on set that it affected
them so badly that they all agreed to come back
and do one more season of the show with dealing
with the death of their father and their husband on
the show. So they did one more season where David's

(13:00):
Spade played a character who had to come in and
pick up the pieces as a family and dealt with
the losing of their husband and father, And a lot
of people said that that actually helped the fans of
the show as well, because so many people were shocked
by the death of John Ritter with how popular that

(13:20):
show had become so quickly, that watching a show deal
with grief for the second season helped a lot of
people through what had happened as well.

Speaker 2 (13:32):
I didn't know about the David Spade bit. I think
that's a weird call, but.

Speaker 1 (13:38):
Look, he did it really well because it was kind
of it was weird because it was a comedy, and
as I think I've heard Katie Segal talk about since then,
how do you make a comedy funny when the whole
entire cast is suffering from what had just happened, and
David Spade apparently was a great friend of John Ritter's,
and he actually asked, can I be the person that

(13:59):
comes onto the show to try and help men things?
And I think I think he played the uncle. He
was either an uncle or a cousin, but he came in.
And I know, I'm not a big David Spade fan
except for him just shoot me. But I thought he
did a really good job on that. He became a
straight laced kind of character with just the odd laugh

(14:21):
and did it really really well. And yeah, I know,
both Kaylee Kuko and Katie Segal talk about the fact
that that really did help them or recover from what
was a really deeply shocking thing, especially when three of
the cast members were really really young as well, so
they just lost their on screen dad. So yeah, a

(14:42):
bit of a weird one to finish on, but yeah,
the death of John Ritter was a big shock as well.

Speaker 2 (14:50):
Ah. Yeah, it never gets easy because you kind of
sometimes you grow up with these people too, and you
just almost feel like they're immortal because they're always there
and you can see there, you know, past work, and
then suddenly you see them now. It's like, oh, hang on,
that was a long time ago, wasn't it. So it

(15:10):
can surprise you in some ways, especially you know when
it's someone with a long history like that. But yeah,
I guess it it's gonna teach us something at some point.

Speaker 1 (15:24):
Yeah, but uh yeah, look, I guess we should pay
tribute now to some of the artists that we've just
talked about. But yeah, if there has been somebody, a
celebrity that's death has really affected you, let us know online.
Maybe we can attribute to a tribute to that person
by doing a list or or a best of or
something like that. So yeah, let us know online which

(15:48):
celebrity deaths have affected you the most. But to sit
back and enjoy now as we play some of the
music from the artists that we've lost over the years.
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