Celebrate(or commiserate) the anniversaries of the dearly departed…

Best-remembered as the 'hunk' from wholesome unit-shifters The New Seekers, pop singer/songwriter Peter Doyle passed away from throat cancer on 13 October 2001. The Melbourne-born star was a product of Australia's talent-show boom of the sixties, but enjoyed his greatest successes in the UK - most notably with the million-selling Coke ditty 'I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing' (1971) and glorious Eurovision failure 'Beg, Steal or Borrow' (1972).

One of the most unexpected tragedies in British music during 1996 was the apparent suicide of Lush drummer Chris Acland on 17 October 1996. The band had been enjoying their most successful period with a Top Ten album Lovelife, but Acland was reportedly struggling on £100 a week when found hanged at his parents' Cumbria home. Lush inevitably split following the percussionist's death.

Still a few years away from their (brief) 'chartbusting' period of 1990-91, Scouse indie stalwarts The Farm endured the death of drummer Andy McVann on 1 October 1986. In a painfully predictable scenario, the Liverpool percussionist died at the wheel of his car as he tried to outrun a police vehicle near his home… A more dramatic accident still was to occur in New York three weeks later, when former Tubes and Leila & The Snakes singer Jane Dornacker was killed in a helicopter crash in New Jersey's Hackensack River on 22 October 1986. Dornacker had been working as an airborne traffic reporter for the city's WNBC radio network: the incident was heard live on air by thousands of listeners.

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