Lives in Brief

German actress Karin Dor, who has died aged 79, appeared in dozens of TV productions, films and stage plays, including the role of an assassin sent to kill James Bond in You Only Live Twice.

Aside from playing the striking and seductive red-headed would-be Bond assassin Helga Brandt – who ended up being fed to piranhas in the 1967 film – Dor also appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1969 thriller Topaz, playing an anti-Castro resistance double-agent and she appeared in US TV crime series Ironside.

Most of her success was in her native Germany, however, where she appeared in dozens of escapist action movies and westerns throughout the 1960s.

Dor was married three times. Her first husband, was to Austrian director Harald Reinl. Some 30 years her senior he spotted the 18 year old Dor, who had trained in acting and ballet and the relationship resulted in her winning leading roles in several dramas and operettas – as well as the marriage.

She appeared in several notable horror movies, including several horror movies with Barker as the hero, including The Invisible Doctor Mabuse (1962), The Face of Fu Manchu (1965) and The Torture Chamber of Doctor Sadism (1967) with Christopher Lee.

Her last marriage was to American stuntman and actor George Robotham, who died in 2007.

American gossip columnist Liz Smith, who has died at the age of 94, became nearly as famous as the subjects of her widely syndicated columns.

Raised in Texas, she moved to New York in 1949, where her pieces about Liz Taylor and Richard Burton in Cosmopolitan helped earn her a column at the New York Daily News.

Detailing the lives and activies of celebrities she later worked at the New York Post and Newsday.

Her popularity was built on kindness, eschewing the focus on sleaze or cattiness which were a hallmark of her contemporary rivals.

She was discreet too about her own private life, but revealed in an autobiography in 2000 that she was bisexual, and though she had two short marriages, she also had a long-term relationship with archaeologist Iris Love.

Tim Gudgin, who has died aged 87 was the voice of the BBC’s classified football results for 16 years.

He started his 60 year career after three years of national service, with a job as a newsreader in 1952. He later worked for both Radio 2 and Radio 4 and presented a host of programmes, including Friday Night Is Music Night, Family Favourites, Top of the Form and Housewives Choice.

However it was after he joined Grandstand in 1976, reading out the horse racing and rugby results, that he became best known for sports coverage. This was particularly the case from 1995, when he took over the role of reading out the football results at the end of the Saturday programme with a distinctive rising and falling tone – after taking over the duties from Len Martin.

Commonwealth judo star Jamie MacDonald died prematurely from cancer at the age of just 26. The Welshman from Maesteg competed in Glasgow's Commonwealth Games in 2014, but was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour just a year later after suffering headaches.

He named the tumour Timmy, after the character in TV's South Park and compared his battle with the illness to bouts on the Judo mat, but after his diagnosis he put much of his effort into helping others affected by cancer.