Travis Penery, 1984-2013

This morning, social media passed through the very sad news that Travis Penery, one of the most passionate and knowledgeable members of the UK game show fandom, passed away far too young. We had heard a few days ago that he had suffered a stroke and was in intensive care; sadly he did not recover. A quick search suggests he had been a member of the fandom for over ten years, which feels about right; looking at the archives of the ukgameshows mailing list, back when it was really busy in 2002, Travis provided a great deal of the enthusiasm and excitement. You can see his love and desire to know all about the topic back even then, and you can see how spending a decade thinking hard and learning about the topic affected him in his more recent contributions to the respected buzzerblog, or his appearances on the wonderful fifty50 podcast. He was instrumental in keeping the records and drawing the connections that would require an expert's insight.

A few house moves ago, when it was clear I had to radically downsize my game show tape collection - because that's what we used to do back in those days, and I'm still not completely convinced it's not better than relying on the video sharing services of the world not to apply copyright restrictions - I was happy for a big chunk of it to end up with Travis, knowing there would be few who would enjoy it more.

There are a great many members of the UK game show fandom in mourning today. Even if you concentrated your fandom on just one show, you probably knew Travis. He will be widely missed. My condolences to his friends and family.