Bill Ash escaping activities. He ended the war as a flight lieutenant. In August 2015, the BBC reported: "When Ash died aged 96 last year his obituaries noted that he was said to have been the model for Virgil Hilts, the lean, leather-jacketed airman played by Steve McQueen in the 1963 film "The Great Escape"". The character Hilts, nicknamed "The Cooler King" because of the time he spends in the prison camp's punishment block (which the prisoners call the "cooler") for his persistent escape attempts, steals a motorbike and tries to escape to Switzerland but is caught while using it to jump
The Great Escape (Blur album) "NME" reporter Johnny Cigarettes wrote: ""The Great Escape" is so rammed with tunes, ideas, emotions, humour, tragedy, farce, and edgy beauty that it's utterly beyond contemporary compare." "Melody Maker" awarded the album an unconventional 12/10 and deemed it superior to celebrated predecessor "Parklife", while noting that "Blur understand the geometry of the song, and the basic principles of pop, better than anyone today". Less enthused was "Spin" journalist Chuck Eddy, who felt the LP ranged from "wonderful" to "detached and emotionally stiff". "The Great Escape" was named as one of the 10 best records of 1995 in "Melody Maker", "NME",