Dead Pool 11th January 2015

A very busy week for deaths, rather helped along by a couple of nutters in France. Also we saw the daughter of Zsa Zsa Gabor kick the bucket before her mother, much to the disappointment of many of you! There’s a long list of notables below, none of which we managed to score with.

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• Roger Kitter, 64, British actor (‘Allo ‘Allo!).
• Bernice Madigan, 115, American supercentenarian, world’s fifth-oldest person.
• Khan Bonfils, 42, English actor (Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Batman Begins, Skyfall).
• Francesca Hilton, 67, American actress and media personality, daughter of Zsa Zsa Gabor, heart attack and stroke.
• Lance Percival, 81, British actor (The Beatles) and singer (“Shame and Scandal in the Family”).
• Vlastimila Češková, 109, Czech centenarian, nation’s oldest living person.
• Tim Roberts, 38, American professional wrestler (WWE, ECW).
• Rod Taylor, 84, Australian actor (The Time Machine, The Birds, One Hundred and One Dalmatians, Inglourious Basterds), heart attack.
• Notable French people killed in the Charlie Hebdo shooting:
  • Cabu, 76, cartoonist
  • Elsa Cayat, 54, psychoanalyst and columnist
  • Charb, 47, caricaturist and journalist
  • Philippe Honoré, 73, cartoonist
  • Bernard Maris, 68, economist and journalist
  • Tignous, 57, cartoonist
  • Georges Wolinski, 80, cartoonist
• Curtis Lee, 75, American singer (“Pretty Little Angel Eyes“), cancer.
• Ray McFall, 88, British nightclub owner (The Cavern Club).
• Richard Meade, 76, British equestrian, three-time Olympic champion, cancer.
• Samuel Goldwyn, Jr., 88, American film producer (The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World), heart failure.

In Other News

Boxing legend Muhammad Ali has been discharged from a hospital after being admitted last month with a severe urinary tract infection. The three-time world heavyweight champion and cultural icon, is now back home after being discharged on Tuesday night, much to the disappointment of most of you! At 72, Ali’s health has been declining of late, it’s only a matter of time before you get a few points from him!

Richie Benaud is unlikely to make a hoped-for return to the commentary box for the Sydney Cricket Ground Test. The former Australian captain has not returned to the commentary box since a car crash left him with two crushed vertebrae 15 months ago and after he revealed that he was also undergoing treatment for skin cancer in early December. The 84 year old commentator has not been in touch with the Nine Network in Australia and they have now accepted he wouldn’t be turning up. Sounds a bit serious!

A Belgian man serving a life sentence for rape and murder will not be allowed to have doctors end his life as he has requested, the justice minister says. Van den Bleeken will be moved to a new psychiatric treatment centre instead. Van den Bleeken, 52, was convicted in the 1980s of multiple sexual assaults and murder. He had argued that he preferred to die rather than spend the rest of his life in prison. “I’m in my cell 24 hours a day. That’s my life. I don’t feel human here. What do I have to do? Do I have to sit here and waste away? What’s the point in that?” The point sir, is that you are a fucking danger to society and you deserve to rot in jail, so stop trying to get out of it!

On This Day

• 1569 – First recorded lottery in England.
• 1787 – William Herschel discovers Titania and Oberon, two moons of Uranus.
• 1879 – The Anglo-Zulu War begins.
• 1922 – First use of insulin to treat diabetes in a human patient.
• 1927 – Louis B. Mayer, head of film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), announces the creation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, at a banquet in Los Angeles, California.
• 1960 – Henry Lee Lucas, once listed as America’s most prolific serial killer, commits his first known murder.

Deaths

• 1928 – Thomas Hardy, English author and poet (b. 1840)
• 2008 – Edmund Hillary, New Zealand mountaineer and explorer (b. 1919)
• 2009 – David Vine, English sportscaster (b. 1935)
• 2013 – Tom Parry Jones, Welsh scientist, invented the breathalyzer (b. 1935)
• 2013 – Aaron Swartz, American computer programmer and activist (b. 1986)
• 2014 – Ariel Sharon, Israeli general and politician, 11th Prime Minister of Israel (b. 1928)

Last Week’s Birthdays

Kate Middleton (33), Nicolas Cage (51), Bradley Cooper (40), Robert Duvall (84), Diane Keaton (69), Stephen Hawking (73), Jimmy Page (71), David Bowie (68), Jeremy Renner (44), Julia Ormond (50), Pat Benetar (62), Marilyn Manson (46), Kenny Loggins (67), Rod Stewart (70), George Foreman (66), Lewis Hamilton (30), Michael Stipe (55) and Rowan Atkinson (60).

2015 League Table

[confidential]

Next week peeps!