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what about the coolest woman?
What about her?
So we're all agreed on Jimi then?
Zaphod Beeblebrox
Ranulf Fiennes? Really? Got a few quid, mad as a hatter, lost a few fingers and toes due to frostbite.
Cool has to be Angus Young.
As James Hunt has already gone I propose his alter ego:
Barry Sheene
Saturday afternoons of my yoof were spent watching him on World of Sport or Grandstand.
Ferris Bueller!
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Ranulf Fiennes? Really? Got a few quid, mad as a hatter, lost a few fingers and toes due to frostbite
..and your point is..?!
Clint Eastwood
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I'll give a shout for ............ Jack Nicholson
Ranulf Fiennes? Really? Got a few quid, mad as a hatter, lost a few fingers and toes due to frostbite
Yeah, surely Fiennes comes under the admirable and interesting banner, but cool? I can't see that one.
If you doubt McQueen because he's an actor then stop right there.McQueen was an avid motorcycle and car racer off screen. He also flew regularly.
During the great escape they struggled to find MX riders with enough skill to get what they wanted so they filmed McQueen chasing himself at one point.
Yeah, I always saw McQueen as a motorcyclist, race driver who got into acting. As a kid it was McQueen in On Any Sunday that motivated me to take up motocross.
How about JPS?
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Invented existentialism (sort of), without which the notion of "cool" probably wouldn't have developed.
Or maybe Azaelia Banks in the video for 212, I can't decide.
No love for Richard Francis Burton then. Time for more wikipedia quotes:
While in the army, he kept a large menagerie of tame monkeys in the hopes of learning their language.[10] He also earned the name "Ruffian Dick" for his "demonic ferocity as a fighter and because he had fought in single combat more enemies than perhaps any other man of his time."
It was at this point that he began to work as an agent for Napier and, although details of exactly what this work entailed are not known, it is known that he participated in an undercover investigation of a brothel in Karachi said to be frequented by British soldiers where the prostitutes were young boys. His lifelong interest in sexual practices led him to produce a detailed report which was later to cause trouble for Burton when subsequent readers of the report (which Burton had been assured would be kept secret) came to believe that Burton had, himself, participated in some of the practices described in his writing.
Although Burton was certainly not the first non-Muslim European to make the Hajj (Ludovico di Varthema did this in 1503),[12] his pilgrimage is the most famous and the best documented of the time. He adopted various disguises including that of a Pashtun to account for any oddities in speech, but he still had to demonstrate an understanding of intricate Islamic traditions, and a familiarity with the minutiae of Eastern manners and etiquette.
However, before the expedition was able to leave camp, his party was attacked by a group of Somali waranle ("warriors"). The officers estimated the number of attackers at 200. In the ensuing fight, Stroyan was killed and Speke was captured and wounded in eleven places before he managed to escape. Burton was impaled with a javelin, the point entering one cheek and exiting the other. This wound left a notable scar that can be easily seen on portraits and photographs. He was forced to make his escape with the weapon still transfixing his head. It was no surprise then that he found the Somalis to be a "fierce and turbulent race".
In 1863 Burton co-founded the Anthropological Society of London with Dr. James Hunt. In Burton's own words, the main aim of the society (through the publication of the periodical Anthropologia) was "to supply travelers with an organ that would rescue their observations from the outer darkness of manuscript and print their curious information on social and sexual matters". On 5 February 1886 he was awarded a knighthood (KCMG) by Queen Victoria.
His best-known contributions to literature were those considered risqué or even pornographic at the time and which were published under the auspices of the Kama Shastra society. These books include The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana (1883) (popularly known as the Kama Sutra), The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (1885) (popularly known as The Arabian Nights), The Perfumed Garden of the Shaykh Nefzawi (1886) and The Supplemental Nights to the Thousand Nights and a Night (sixteen volumes 1886–98).
Hendrix, Paul Newman or Gene Kelly.
Jedi must be in with a shout 😉
Sean Connery
Daniel Craig
But really it has to be (yawn) - Steve McQueen
Kimi raikonen is pretty cool though!
You are all wrong...
Yeager
End of discussion
Is it bad that I don't know whom Steve McQueen is? I've heard his name, but wouldn't know him if I met him!
He'd really stick in the back of your throat if you met him Tom.
Give you a bit of a cough.
It is bad though, yes. 😉 I assume your only excuse is that you ever, ever watch TV.
Is it bad that I don't know whom Steve McQueen is? I've heard his name, but wouldn't know him if I met him!
Yes.
Out. Now. Go and have a stern word with yourself, watch the great escape, bullitt and on any sunday (or any film he's been in) then come back when you are ready to [s]Agree[/s] participate.
Bullitt ? average film with a good car chase where they overtake the same beetle at least twice !!
If you want to watch a great Steve McQueen film then watch Papillon.
Amazing film.
Papillon is one of his best films.a really moving story
Alan Shepard, how about golf on the moon!
Jimi or Bob for sure... Maybe Sonny Barger
+1 for Chuck Yeager and Sir Richard Burton. Yeager got half cut and went on a midnight horse ride a couple of nights before his first X1 test flight. Cracked a couple of ribs and had to rig up a broom attachment to close the cockpit.
Knowing McQueen's background explains his attitude to women, which was of the abusive variety: not cool.
Sherpa Tenzing. He made it to the top of Everest while carrying Edmund Hillary's stuff.
Illuminating that posturers (actors) are regarded as cool rather than people who actually do things.
what do you mean by illuminating?
I would bet money that actors have inspired more people to get out and do things than people who actually do them.
Bob Marley is only cool if you don't know anything about what a terrible human being he was in his personal life.
Bryan Ferry is pretty high up along with Sheene.
I'm afraid Ferry is out because he is a friend and business partner of Richard Branson.
You could wade through Bryan Ferry's deepest thoughts and not even get your ankles wet.
I suppose I have to say Steve McQueen really.
You can discount Ferry on the grounds of what he's spawned too. It takes some serious parenting skills to produce an obnoxious, pompous and profoundly stupid little bell end like his son!
Bert Bacharach (super cool)
"I would bet money that actors have inspired more people to get out and do things than people who actually do them."
I'll take your money now. I doubt many actors have actually inspired people to do things, possibly the characters they play maybe, but actors are just actors. You're in love with the myth, not the reality.
People like this are truly cool, cos they were't trying to be something they weren't:
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And they helped change the World. Nothing's 'cooler' than that.
So we're agreed on Jimi then.
Sir RF is out - Stockport car crash anyone?
Kevevs - Member
So we're agreed on Jimi then.
Is it really cool to overdose on sleeping pills and choke on your own vomit at the age of 27?
Poor guy.
Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes for the name alone. Don't really do heros. If I did, he'd be it.
I doubt many actors have actually inspired people to do things, possibly the characters they play maybe
what about Pele in Escape to Victory?
he inspired me to play football.
was it the actor or the character he was playing that inspired me?
doesn't matter.
Ryan Gosling in Drive.
Was it Ryan Gosling or the nameless Driver he portrayed that made me want to wear driving gloves and a satin Scorpion jacket and help gangsters rob banks?
both.
I say both.
actually, I'd throw Ryan Gosling into the bag of cool as a modern day Steve McQueen.
JFK
Ozwald Boateng
Grace Kelly
Jim Morrison
Bruce Lee
Jim Clark
Howlin Wolf
Cary Grant
who was that undercover agent woman who died recently, saying her only regret was not killing more Nazis ? Top.
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It seems to me the coolest people burn brightly for a short time, rather than fade away greyly. Terrible thought to think of jimi on a retirement circuit churning out old tunes for wealthy, mindless mddle aged ****s for cash. Oh yeah, that'll be Brian Wilson
If you want to watch a great Steve McQueen film then watch Papillon.
Amazing film.
[url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b007bw8d/Papillon/ ]on iplayer at the moment[/url]
Illuminating that posturers (actors) are regarded as cool rather than people who actually do things.
Is it really that illuminating? Cool is usually just a perception. Few are better than offering that than actors/performers.
Charlie Watts is up there.
jack Nicholson is cool as ****. He looks a bit like my dad. I think the defining factor of cool people is theit confidence in doing their own thing, and doing it well.
Lemmy in his prime.
Jesus Christ
for a Englishman Patrick Leigh Fermor
theres a truely fantastic clip of him on Greek TV translating Greek to German to Greek like he was dealing cards to play snap.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Leigh_Fermor
PLF is the one in the middle.
From the otherside of the pond Lee Marvin
Left school in 42 to enlist in the USMC wound in Siapan.
Did a bit a of acting inbetween drinking - John Boorman has some great tails about.
Out spoken as being Anti Vietnam and pro gay rights.
Sir i salute you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Marvin#Military_Service
+1 for Paddy Leigh Fermor - read about him during a holiday in Crete - truly amazing individual.
I flipping can't stand Lemmy. I can understand McQueen, and Hendrix, et al. being named, although I am more inclined toward the MLK suggestion myself. But Lemmy? He can't hold a candle up to most of those put forward so far.
As for women, it's got to be Rosa Parks.
Gorbachev.
+1 for James Hunt. I mean, check out the patch on his racing overalls.
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Leslie Nielsen
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Coolest person?
Don't be daft.. it's a three way tie
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Yuri Gagarin?
What about the pilot that landed on the Hudson River...that was cool
Seriously? All this, and no one has mentioned.........[b][i]HIM![/i][/b]
The one and only Elbry.
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[url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Henshaw ]Spitfire Test Pilot - Alex Henshaw[/url]
[url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._B._Fry ]Played Cricket for England, Football for England, World Record Long Jump and could jump backwards onto a mantelpiece at the age of 70...[/url]
[url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Villeneuve ]Gilles….[/url]
Still between James Hunt and Steve McQueen for me though...
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I reckon Michael Collins must be as cool as it gets. He floats around the moon when the other 2 are the 1st on it, & he doesn't even get mad.
Thats cool.
FFS, what could possibly be cooler than surfing on a stone tablet? 8)
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"Thou shalt be cool" 😆
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Gary Numan becuase he only did his day job to pay for aeroplanes. Or Jessie Owens for sticking it to Hitler in his own back yard.
seriously... has anyone mentioned... Lemmy?
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Or....[img] 
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Can't decide.
And they helped change the World. Nothing's 'cooler' than that.
I disagree. They're admirable, wise, empathetic etc people but they're not cool.
Gorbachev is not at all cool: not personally charismatic, not a great thinker, not a great strategist, not nothing. Perestroika and glasnost were total disasters: he had intended to preserve the Soviet Union, not destroy it - and yet he precipitated a destruction of the union that was violent, crooked and resulted in the transfer of power to kleptocrats and and extremists.
But Yuri Gagarin was pretty cool.
Is Che Guevera not going to get a mention? Surely a zillion 6th formers can't be wrong?
No shouts for Samuel L Jackson? Absolute legend.
#46
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I disagree. They're admirable, wise, empathetic etc people but they're not cool.
It totally depends on your own personal definition of 'cool', which isn't some fixed, immutable state, it's merely a quality which is bestowed upon you by others. I'd think that having the legacy of your work, philosophies and ideas continue long after your death is pretty bloody cool in my book!
In my mind, an abusive misogynist who pretended to be other people, is not at all 'cool'. I can see why the characters he played might appeal to the insecure and inadequate though.
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Edit - And his Mum
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/sep/03/phil-lynott-mitt-romney-thin-lizzy
Continuing with the legacy aspect of 'cool', Dieter Rams is surely as cool as ****:
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And more recently, Jonathan Ives:
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And not forgetting:
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Couple of mine:
Rollins -
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Del -
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