As the seventeenth-century English poet Andrew Marvell wrote,

But at my back I always hear
Time’s winged chariot hurrying near.
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.

Which is not exactly cheerful, but old Andy did have a point: with the Grim Reaper sharpening his scythe, it’s not a bad idea to take a look at what you might conceivably do in the few years left to you. After all, wouldn’t you like to leave some mark on the world before you pop your clogs? When you’re finally pushing up the daisies, wouldn’t you like someone to say “Well [your name here] was a total waste of space as a human being but he/she did invent [your choice of invention here].

Of course, finding something really worthwhile to do with your remaining time is no easy matter, so to make the choice a bit easier for you, I’ve come up with ten suggestions of things to do before you die. I’ll admit that ten is a fairly arbitrary number – it could just as well have been a hundred or even a thousand – but you can always look at it as a starting point. So here goes.

1. CLIMB MOUNT EVEREST. Yes, I know it’s a classic but it’s still worth doing anyway. Apparently climbing the highest mountain in the world is now so popular that there’s a waiting list and traffic jams at base camp so all the more reason to get cracking before they install a lift. Naturally, it helps enormously if you have some sort of physical defect or are prepared to do it backwards, barefoot or waving an inflatable banana.

Mount Everest - vastly overrated.

2. FIND OUT WHO INVENTED MAYONNAISE. The Majorcans say it was them, the French, as always, claim that they did it. The Germans have been quiet on the subject, which is unusual, while the Italians couldn’t care less as long as it’s made with extra virgin olive oil. Find out who did it, acquire the copyright and sue Heinz for millions.

3. LIVE. All right! I know! It sounds easy but there are very few people who have mastered the art. What it really boils down to is that whatever you choose to do before you die should actually have been done much earlier.

4. DISCOVER A CURE FOR SOMETHING. It doesn’t matter what – there are plenty of useful diseases out there so you can more or less take your pick. It doesn’t even have to be an effective cure as long as it will fool people for a few hundred years (the placebo effect is a great ally in this). Personally I’d play safe and go for something that is not life-threatening, such as athlete’s foot, for example.

Python Foot - also worth a try.

5. INVENT A NON-ESSENTIAL GADGET. Let’s be honest – most of the essential things have already been invented so that only leaves the non-essential ones. As they’re non-essential, the field is fairly open here. But whatever you choose to invent, be sure that when it comes to naming it you stick an ‘i’ in front, as in the iAutomaticHamsterBacksideWasher. You’ll probably get sued by Apple but that can be another claim to fame and will use up all the dosh you made after copyrighting mayonnaise (that will teach you).

6. BECOME AN OLYMPIC ATHLETE. Tricky at first glance but it’s really dead easy. All you have to do is choose a sport that your country is useless at and register yourself as the only competitor. Examples that spring to mind are the Ethiopian cross-country skiing team or the Vatican City marathon team. After all, who’s the Winter Olympics athlete that everyone remembers? Yep, Eddy “The Eagle” Edwards!

But the Vatican synchronised luge team is not to be messed with.

7. WIN THE NOBEL PRIZE. Now some might argue that you actually have to be good at something to do this but nothing could be further from the truth. Finding out who discovered mayonnaise might help but the smart money is on the Peace Prize. If Jimmy Carter and Al Gore can win it, you must be in with a chance. Failing that, you could do worse than the Nobel Prize for Literature. Just write something incomprehensible and mention ‘peace’ a few times and you’ve got it.

8. WRITE A MILLION-SELLING ALBUM. Easy-peasy! If Alanis Morrissette (who’s as wet a Canadian as ever drank a litre of Perrier) can do it, so can you! 33 million copies of Jagged little pill? You must be joking! It takes 33 million jagged little pills to listen to it! So buy a guitar and learn a few chords. And you can use the earnings to discover who invented mayonnaise and then give all the profits to Apple.

Alanis Morrissette disguised as a rubbish bin (extreme right).

9. SOLVE THE PROBLEM OF WORLD POVERTY. This is not quite as easy as it sounds as it calls for a bit of investment. Namely in plane tickets and a gun. Make a list of all the offshore tax havens, go to each one and go into each bank. Hold the gun to the head of the manager (don’t worry, he’s used to this – he gets it all the time from his customers) and ask him to empty out all the safe deposit boxes, etc. and send the proceeds to the Third World. The only catch is that it will probably end up back in the offshore tax haven. But the Third World is not a perfect world.

10. HAVE THE LAST WORD. Ever been frustrated because that snappy comeback occurred to you 3 hours after the confrontation with the rude sales assistant? This is for you. It is perhaps your greatest challenge and one that cannot be left to chance. Clearly the whole thing will have to be carefully engineered and stage-managed. Invite a select group of friends around to your place, work to a script and make sure that no one opens his or her mouth after you have spoken. And make sure you have that snappy, off-the-cuff comeback prepared days in advance. Canned laughter is a nice touch.

The history of Hollywood – and a few other places – is strewn with forgotten heroes, but none have been quite as thoroughly strewn, or forgotten, as Igor.

This is strange indeed because if you so much as mention the name Igor to most people, they will immediately think of a goggle-eyed hunchback who opens large, iron-bound doors with an ominous creak and says something like “The master was expecting you” in a vaguely East European accent. Yes, everyone seems to remember Igor the character, yet few remember Igor the actor.

What makes this truly sad is that, in the course of a career that started way back in the 1920s, Igor portrayed a huge variety of leading and supporting actors ranging from an anonymous bit-part player in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) to Bela Lugosi, to Marty Feldman and even, in a spectacular bit of type-casting, to Charles Bronson. And that is to name but the obvious few.

Charles Bronson

In fact, Igor has played a huge variety of roles including Bette Davis, Loretta Young, Orson Welles, Sylvester Stallone and, more recently, Keira Knightly and Hugh Grant. And yet no one even knows his last name.

I think you’ll agree that to play so many very different parts, calls for acting ability of the highest calibre. But who, in fact, was Igor? Who was this master of accent, idiom and - let’s be frank – disguise? Who was this man who was never honoured in his own right by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts or even the National Transylvanian Academy of Retired Igor Players?

Igor was born in obscurity to a family of low-paid goggle-eyed hunchbacks in the town of Weissenberg in 1907. His parents, Mr and Mrs Igor, worked as mouse-stuffers for the local taxidermist. It was hard, grinding work – particularly the legs – and there was rarely meat on the Igor’s table. Well, no meat that wasn’t ground mouse anyway. To relieve the burden on the family, little Igor ran away to join a company of travelling insurance brokers.

Summer in Transylvania

It was while selling third-party, fire and theft car insurance in the villages of Transylvania that Igor discovered a talent for acting. Light comedy appealed to him in particular and he joined a succession of local drama groups. It was while playing in a production of Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan (he played the fan) that he was spotted by the roving impresario and theatrical agent Leonid Brezhnev.

Broadway was soon to follow. Igor shone as a door-stop in Slapsie Maxie Comes to Town but finally got his big break playing a piano in The Rise of Rosie O’Reilly. In a review of the production, the New York Times said: “Ruby Keeler was a stand-out as the third chorus girl from the left but the true star of the production was Igor the piano. I particularly loved the moustache”.

Igor as a door-stop in Slapsie Maxie Comes to Town

The lure of Hollywood proved irresistible but playing a door-stop and a piano on Broadway was no immediate guarantee of success. Igor joined the thousands of wannabes queuing at Central Casting and kept hunch to back by checking that the users of public lavatory cubicles were still alive. Finally, in 1925, he got his first big break in a Mack Sennett comedy called Sneezing Beezers in which he played a goggle-eyed hunchback. After years of playing inanimate objects, this was a true breakthrough. Unfortunately these were still the years of silent movies so Igor’s one line, “The master was expecting you”, appeared in text with a scroll border and a few major chords from the pianist.

Small though his part was, Igor had caught the eye of directors and producers. Sneezing Beezers was followed by a number of Mack Sennett one-reelers. Soon his popularity was such that audiences would virtually ignore stars like Ben Turpin and Billy Bevan, waiting in anticipation for the goggle-eyed hunchback.

It was time for a makeover

By 1928, the days of the silent movies were over. Talkies became all the rage. Not that Igor noticed very much of this as he never went to the cinema. This was not because he feared the adulation of the public but more that he could never get into a position that allowed him to see the screen.

1931 saw the first real high-spot of his film career: Frankenstein. Unfortunately, these were definitely the days of type-casting and Igor was cast as a mad hunchback called Fritz. Determined to show the studios what he could do, he subsequently made Son of Frankenstein and The Ghost of Frankenstein, in which he expanded his repertoire by playing Bela Lugosi.

This gave Igor an idea. He set to work reinventing himself. While many stars of the 1930s were indulging in wild parties fuelled by alcohol and cocaine, Igor could usually be found working out at the local gym and hammering his hunch with a wooden mallet. He solved the problem of his goggle eyes by simply sucking his cheeks in, which was so successful that he landed the part of Katherine Hepburn in Morning Glory, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actress.

Katherine Hepburn

We can fast-forward over the years that follow. Suffice to say that many of our favourite actors were, in fact, Igor. His versatility was astounding. Here are just a few examples: Humphrey Bogart and a reprise of Katherine Hepburn in The African Queen, Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire, Marilyn Monroe in Some Like it Hot, Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia, R2D2 in Star Wars, Hugh Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral, Gollum in Lord of the Rings, Johnny Depp and Keira Knightly in Pirates of the Caribbean…

Sadly, Igor passed away on September 17th 1840. In spite of winning an enormous number of awards for his work, his oeuvre has never been appreciated in its own right. It is time to redress this balance.

Mind you, a lot of actors will be out of work.

Igor and his mother relaxing in the sauna