Dead Pool 12th January 2020

Afternoon Poolers, unsurprisingly, a week after his death, Derek Acorah has still to make an appearance on This Morning with Schofield and Willoughby…. I believe we might be waiting for some time for his apparition to talk to us since we no longer have a psychic of his calibre available to us, or perhaps he was talking bollocks since he was a knee high to a grasshopper.

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• Christopher Beeny, 78, English actor (Upstairs, Downstairs, In Loving Memory, Last of the Summer Wine). 
• Martin Griffin, English rock drummer (Hawkwind, Hawklords). 
• Neil Peart, 67, Canadian Hall of Fame drummer (Rush) and lyricist (“The Spirit of Radio“, “Tom Sawyer“), glioblastoma. 
• Mike Resnick, 77, American science fiction writer (The Goddess of Ganymede, Stalking the Unicorn, Kirinyaga), cancer.

In Other News

Fans have worried about Justin Bieber’s wellbeing for a long time. The first half of the 2010s were raucous for the Beebs, in the worst ways. Remember the DUI charges and assault conviction? And that “parody” video that surfaced in 2014, of 14-year-old Bieber changing the lyrics of “One Less Lonely Girl” to include the “N-word”? And when he said he hoped Anne Frank would’ve been a Belieber? And the time his pet capuchin monkey was confiscated by German officials? Seems like a truly dark time. In the latter part of the decade, the singer opened up about his struggles. In 2016, he told GQ he’d been diagnosed with ADHD and was taking Adderall — but got a ton of blowback for his honesty, even from some of his biggest fans. He largely went quiet about his health after that. The singer embraced religion and got married to Hailey Bieber. But things weren’t all gravy: The couple were photographed crying together all over Los Angeles in 2018 and 2019. Last March, Bieber announced he was taking a break from music (YAY!) to focus on his mental health. And in September, he stoked speculation that he was seriously ill, after being photographed with an IV-drip in his arm. He also came clean about his heavy drug use in his younger days in an Instagram post that month. On Wednesday, TMZ revealed what’s really been going on: Bieber was diagnosed with Lyme disease in late 2019, after doctors spent most of the last year struggling to figure out what was wrong with him, other than the obvious. So some good news for those of you who have listed Bieber as a Maverick, with any luck this stain on humanity will score you some points!  

On This Day

• 1908 – A long-distance radio message is sent from the Eiffel Tower for the first time.
• 1967 – Dr. James Bedford becomes the first person to be cryonically preserved with intent of future resuscitation.
• 1998 – Nineteen European nations agree to forbid human cloning. Luckily, after Brexit we can!
• 2006 – A stampede during the Stoning of the Devil ritual on the last day at the Hajj in Mina, Saudi Arabia, kills at least 362 Muslim pilgrims.
• 2010 – An earthquake in Haiti occurs, killing over 100,000 people and destroying much of the capital Port-au-Prince.

Deaths

• 1665 – Pierre de Fermat, French mathematician and lawyer (b. 1601)
• 1976 – Agatha Christie, English crime novelist, short story writer, and playwright (b. 1890)
• 2003 – Maurice Gibb, Manx-Australian singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (b. 1949)
• 2017 – William Peter Blatty, American writer and filmmaker (b. 1928)
• 2017 – Graham Taylor, former Grimsby Town player and former manager of the England football team. (b. 1944)

Last Moments

John Belushi was an American comedian, actor, singer, and one of the seven original cast members of the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live. Throughout his career, Belushi had a close personal and artistic partnership with his fellow SNL star Dan Aykroyd, whom he met while they were both working at Chicago’s The Second City comedy club. 

Belushi spent his final week in the environs of Hollywood’s  Sunset Strip. By the time he checked in at the front desk of the Chateau Marmont on the night of February 28th, 1982, Belushi was ‘a time bomb, a waste site, a mess. Sweaty, flabby, edgy, pale, dishevelled, worn to a stump at 33,’ author Shawn Levy writes in The Castle on Sunset: Life, Death, Love, Art and Scandal at Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont. Struggling to get his movie career back on track following lacklustre critical and box office reception to recent roles in Continental Divide and Neighbours, Belushi had ensconced himself in bungalow number three in order to work on the script for, and take meetings about Noble Rot, a romantic comedy set in the early years of the California wine industry. But the work was not going well, according to Levy’s book, and Paramount was keen for him to do a film based on The Joy of Sex before Noble Rot. Belushi’s attention span was limited and his speech often incoherent, his clothes were dirty and he appeared unbathed, his bungalow was in a constant state of disarray. At approximately noon Pacific Standard Time on Friday, March 5th, 1982, Belushi’s fitness trainer and occasional bodyguard Bill Wallace arrived at bungalow number three of the Chateau Marmont to deliver a typewriter and audiocassette recorder to Belushi. Wallace found him dead, with no one else present in the bungalow. The cause of death was combined drug intoxication involving cocaine and heroin, a drug combination known as a speedball. 

In the early morning hours on the day of his death, he was visited separately by friends Robin Williams and Robert De Niro, as well as Catherine Evelyn Smith. She was kind enough to take him to L.A.’s Rainbow Bar and forced him to eat a bowl of the restaurant’s famous lentil soup, hoping it would calm him down. However he was found dead the following day.

His death was investigated by forensic pathologist Michael Baden, among others, and, while the findings were disputed, it was officially ruled a drug-related accident. In an interview with the National Enquirer two months later, Smith admitted that she had been with Belushi the night of his death and had given him the fatal speedball shot. After the appearance of the article “I Killed Belushi” in the National Enquirer edition of June 29th, 1982, the case was reopened. Smith was arrested, extradited from Ontario, Canada, and charged with first-degree murder. A plea bargain reduced the charge to involuntary manslaughter, and she served 15 months in prison.

Last Week’s Birthdays

Rachael Harris (51), Kirstie Alley (68), Rob Zombie (54), Howard Stern (65), Melanie C (45), Zayn Malik (26), Pixie Lott (28), Jeff pay your taxes Bezos (55), Amanda Peet (47), Jason Connery (56), Mary J. Blige (48), Rachel Riley (33), John Sessions (66), Jemaine Clement (45), Evan Handler (58), Rod Stewart (74), Joely Richardson (54), Imelda Staunton (63), Catherine Duchess of Cambridge (37), Michelle Forbes (54), Nicolas Cage (56), Jeremy Renner (49), Erin Gray (70), Helen Worth (69), Eddie Redmayne (38), Kate McKinnon (36), Norman Reedus (51), Rowan Atkinson (65), and Angus Deayton (64).