Dead Pool 11th March 2018

No points to award this week, in fact, the deaths are somewhat lacklustre to be sure. Luckily Trevor Baylis thought he’d help us out by being the only pictured death this week, as I doubt very much you could pick out the others in a line up. However, there’s plenty to read and discuss, so without further ado…

Look Who You Could Have Had:

In Other News

After performing the first of two scheduled live stand-up shows last Sunday night, ‘filmmaker’, comic book writer, and actor Kevin Smith suffered a near-fatal heart attack. A week later, in his first Facebook post after breaking the news of the heart attack, Smith revealed that he was recovering at home from the hospital, and also that he was in his second day as a vegetarian. The fat cunt said he was feeling well, and that his heart was actually getting more oxygen than it had in a long time. He thanked his friends and fans for the support and kind words they’d sent, and then he signed the message, “from Vegetarian Kev, Day 2.” Smith said he’d had a 100-percent blockage of his LAD artery, which is also called “the Widow-Maker.” He was lucky to survive, and wrote, “This is all a part of my mythology now and I’m sure I’ll be facing some lifestyle changes.”

Former BBC Breakfast presenter Bill Turnbull has revealed he has been diagnosed with prostate cancer. The 62-year-old said it was found in November and  cancer has spread to his legs, hips, pelvis and ribs. Turnbull told the Dead Pool media team that he wanted to encourage people to get tested, saying: “Maybe if I’d got it earlier and stopped it at the prostate, I’d be in a much better state.” He said he had put long-term aches and pains down to “old age”. Turnbull said in his interview he had had prostate tests when he was aged 40 and 50. But he said he was “cross” for having prided himself on not visiting a GP in four years and only sought help when his pains could no longer be alleviated with pills. Turnbull said it “saddens me that I’m not going to be around as much as I thought with my wife and family… I realised if things progress as they do on average, I can’t plan beyond 12 years”. So he’ll be dead at the age of 74, I bet Michael Jackson would trade places with him in a heartbeat.

Remember Poo Watch? Well, the man suspected of swallowing a stash of drugs has won his freedom – and a stand-off with police – after refusing to go to the toilet for 47 days. Lamarr Chambers was arrested in Harlow, Essex on 17th January and charged with two counts of possessing class A drugs with intent to supply. The 24-year-old refused to take laxatives or be X-rayed during his time in custody, but continued to eat and drink. Essex Police tweeted daily updates of what they described as “poo watch”. But officers decided to release Mr Chambers from custody on Monday “following medical and legal advice”, and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) dropped the charge. Although Mr Chambers was rearrested on a separate charge of being concerned in the supply of a Class A drug, he was released on bail and taken by police car to hospital for medical treatment.

A top South African triathlete is battling to save his legs after assailants cut into them with a blunt saw, causing severe injuries, while he cycled to training. Mhlengi Gwala, 27, successfully underwent surgery after the attack which occurred in the early hours of Tuesday morning in the coastal city of Durban, confirmed Dennis Jackson, director of the elite athlete program in KwaZulu-Natal province. Multiple attackers pulled Gwala from his bicycle as he cycled up a steep hill and sawed into his right calf, damaging muscle, nerves and bone, according to Jackson, who spoke by phone to the triathlete about the ordeal. The assailants missed a main artery and surgeons are confident they can save the leg, Jackson said. The attackers also started sawing into Gwala’s left leg before fleeing, enabling the athlete to crawl to a road and flag down a passing car to take him to a hospital. The grisly attack has alarmed athletes in Durban who routinely get up in the early morning darkness to train when few people are on the roads, and there was no immediate explanation for why Gwala was targeted. The athlete had offered his cell phone, wallet and bicycle to the assailants, who still went for his legs and were speaking in a language that Gwala could not understand.

And finally, Martin Shkreli, the former drug firm executive found guilty of defrauding investors, has been sentenced to seven years in prison. The 34-year-old wept at a hearing as a federal court judge in Brooklyn, New York, handed down the prison term. Shkreli was convicted last year of sending fake account statements to investors while concealing huge losses from two hedge funds he ran. He first became notorious in 2015 for hiking the price of a lifesaving drug. His lawyers had asked the judge to impose a sentence of 12 to 18 months, while prosecutors were seeking at least 15 years. “I’ve got my begging voice on,” Shkreli’s lawyer Benjamin Brafman told the judge on Friday, while acknowledging his client could be annoying. “There are times when I want to hug him and hold him and comfort him and there are times when I want to punch him in the face,” said Mr Brafman. After a jury found him guilty in August last year, Shkreli was allowed to remain free pending sentencing. But a month later he offered social media followers $5,000 if they could bring him hair from former US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who repeatedly criticised him during her campaign. A judge revoked bail and Shkreli was jailed. Prosecutors moved to seize $7.4m of his assets, including a single copy of an album by American hip hop group the Wu-Tang Clan that the disgraced executive is said to have paid $2m for at auction in 2015. Lets hope Big Brenda in cell 13 gets hold of him.

On This Day

  • 1702 – The Daily Courant, England’s first national daily newspaper is published for the first time.
  • 1864 – The Great Sheffield Flood kills 238 people in Sheffield, England.
  • 2004 – Madrid train bombings: Simultaneous explosions on rush hour trains in Madrid, Spain, kill 192 people.
  • 2011 – An earthquake measuring 9.0 in magnitude strikes 130 km (81 mi) east of Sendai, Japan, triggering a tsunami killing thousands of people. This event also triggered the second largest nuclear accident in history, and one of only two events to be classified as a Level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale.

Deaths

  • 1955 – Alexander Fleming, Scottish biologist, pharmacologist, and botanist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1881)
  • 2006 – Slobodan Milošević, Serbian lawyer and politician, 3rd President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (b. 1941)

Last Week’s Birthdays

Sharon Stone (60), Jon Hamm (47), Chuck Norris (78), Robert Llewellyn (62), Juliette Binoche (54), Aidan Quinn (59), Cynthia Rothrock (61), Micky Dolenz (73), Rachel Weisz (48), Bryan Cranston (62), T.J. Thyne (43), E.L. James (55), Rob Reiner (71), Shaquille O’Neal (46), Amy Okuda (29), Alan Davies (52), Jolene Blalock (43), Eva Mendes (44), Matt Lucas (44), Paul Blackthorne (49), Fred Williamson (80), Penn Jillette (63), Patsy Kensit (50) and Dominique Pinon (63).

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