Hair & Make-Up: The Greatest

Well, we're beginning at the end, it has to be said. Introducing outsideleft's new television and radio section with an obituary of sorts for a showbiz giant, the most prolific television producer  history, a man who'd been in the TV business longer than God has been in religion. That man, the legendary Aaron Spelling, this past weekend, succumbed to complications from a stroke he suffered earlier in the month. Spelling dead at 83.

Has anyone turned on a TV set in the past 50 years and not either loved or loathed the shows Aaron Spelling produced? Guilty pleasures? Try Starsky & Hutch, Fantasy Island, Charlie's Angels, Melrose Place, Beverly Hills, 90210 and Charmed to name but a few. None more loved and loathed  than the Reagan-era blockbuster, Dynasty. Choc full of beautiful people. Spelling knew we like to see the rich bitch. Really. Seeing the rich bitch about whatever somehow makes showing up for work at the water treatment plant seem far more palatable.

Add to those Spelling hits the plethora of Sad Spelling Rip-Offs, and you'd be forgiven for wondering when we ever had time to watch anything else on TV. He was that influential.  Go ask your mom.

There's a direct, contrasting correlation too, between Aaron's Spelling's best shows and Outsideleft. He entertained people at  home and we entertain people at work. Also, as an aside, wifey-w left me in part I am sure because I said once too often that she looked like his daughter, 90210 actress, Tori Spelling. If she'd had Tori's dad's money I'd have been more careful.

Aaron Spelling breathed life into the stars. I can't even begin to name the cavalcade of LA waiters and waitresses he turned into household names. And, he did more for the bottom lines of American Dentists than we'll ever know. Face it. At one point in the history of American pop culture Aaron was everywhere. Aaron did it all.

He leaves behind the biggest single family home in California, his 123 room Mapleton Drive mansion,  in Bel Air, known affectionately as 'The Manor'.  Oh why do the rich have to die, they have so much more to live for than the likes of me.