Dead Pool 12th May 2024

Some very well known faces on our list this week, however nobody scored a point! This weeks edition is short and sweet, it’s lovely and sunny out there, so go outside! 

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• Jeannie Epper, 83, American stuntwoman (Romancing the Stone, Kill Bill: Volume 2, Wonder Woman). 
• Susan Buckner, 72, American actress (Grease, Deadly Blessing, The Brady Bunch Hour). 
• Bernard Hill, 79, English actor (The Lord of the Rings, Titanic, Boys from the Blackstuff). 
• Ian Gelder, 74, British actor (Game of Thrones, Torchwood, Little Dorrit), bile duct cancer. 
• Kristin Hallenga, 38, English breast cancer awareness activist (CoppaFeel!), breast cancer. 
• Dame Shirley Conran, 91, British writer. 
• Susan Backlinie, 77, American actress (Jaws, Day of the Animals, 1941). 
• Roger Corman, 98, American film director (The Little Shop of Horrors, Death Race 2000, The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre).

In Other News

BBC Antiques Roadshow’s Theo Burrell has been hospitalised again as she continues her fight against an incurable brain tumour. The beloved antiques expert shared her concerns over critical scan results after being admitted to the hospital on Wednesday, providing fans with an update on her ongoing health struggle. Theo has kept the public informed about her health since being given only months to live nearly two years ago. Diagnosed in 2022 with grade 4 glioblastoma – an aggressive form of cancer that originates in the brain or spinal cells – the 36-year-old was confronted with a dire prognosis. The BBC personality was initially crushed by the news and worried about the potential spread of the cancer. Despite this, she has received treatments that have successfully reduced the tumour to just 10 percent of its original size, although she still experiences significant side effects like headaches and nausea. Nevertheless, Theo is determined to make a difference by embarking on a daring fundraising challenge. She announced to her Instagram followers: “On Saturday 25th, I’m heading to Aberdeen and abseiling down the King’s Tower, all 131 feet of it! The last time I did anything similar I was 19 – not exactly yesterday! If you can help me raise some funds (all for @braintumourrsch ) I’d be very grateful – link in bio. Thank you.”  

Christopher Biggins has undergone open heart surgery and admitted: “It’s not easy getting old.” The 72-year-old pantomime veteran and TV star revealed he has recently had an operation to repair a valve in his heart and knee-replacement surgery. Biggins told the Flying Monkeys: “I’m like the bionic man. I’ve had a new knee put in and I’ve had a new valve put into my heart. It’s not easy getting old.” The actor, known for his appearance on reality shows including I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! and Celebrity Big Brother, was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in 2010 and admitted he is becoming increasingly aware of his health. He said: “I’ve always been aware of being a big boy – aware of my weight and looking at going on diets.” The theatre star admitted that losing his friends has brought home his own mortality. He said: “As you get older, the things you go to – apart from restaurants and theatres – are funerals and memorial services. It makes you aware that life is very shallow. It’s not easy. You never know when you’re going to go.” Speaking about Dame Barbara Widsors’s death last year he said: “I hope that, when we die, all of us, that we can see for the next 24 hours the reaction of everybody to our death. If she could have seen the reaction to her death she would have been so thrilled. The coverage was unbelievable.”   

Susan Backlinie, the American actress and stuntwoman who played the first shark attack victim in Steven Spielberg’s 1975 film Jaws, has died. Along with being a stuntwoman specialising in swimming work, she was also an animal trainer. In her later life she worked as a computer accountant. Backlinie’s appearance in Jaws took three days to shoot, with Backlinie strapped into a harness while the crew struggled to get the desired effects.Contrary to rumour, Backlinie’s startled reaction and screams of anguish were not due to her being injured by the harness that yanked her back and forth in the water. However, she was attached to a line that was anchored to the ocean floor beneath her, and she was intentionally not warned when she would be first pulled underwater; this helped provoke a more genuine expression of surprise from her initially – but the remainder of her performance was her own as an actress. When Jaws co-star Richard Dreyfuss saw a daily of her performance of being attacked by the shark, he told her it absolutely terrified him. Backlinie also appears in Spielberg’s film 1941 parodying her role in Jaws: instead of being attacked by a shark during a midnight swim, she’s “picked up” by the periscope of a Japanese submarine. The scene has been described as the best joke in what is otherwise widely considered one of Spielberg’s least successful films.

On This Day

• 1941 – Konrad Zuse presents the Z3, the world’s first working programmable, fully automatic computer, in Berlin.
• 2008 – An earthquake (measuring around 8.0 magnitude) occurs in Sichuan, China, killing over 69,000 people.
• 2010 – Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771 crashes on final approach to Tripoli International Airport in Tripoli, Libya, killing 103 out of the 104 people on board. The sole survivor was a 9-year-old Dutch boy.

Deaths

• 1957 – Erich von Stroheim, Austrian-American actor, director, and producer (b. 1885).
• 1994 – John Smith, Scottish-English politician, Labour Party leader (b. 1938).
• 2001 – Perry Como, American singer and television host (b. 1912).

Last Week’s Birthdays

Malin Akerman (46), Rami Malek (43), Domhnall Gleeson (41), Emilio Estevez (62), Rhea Seehorn (52), Ving Rhames (65), Gabriel Byrne (74), Jason Biggs (46), Richard Gadd (35), Tim Blake Nelson (60), Pam Ferris (76), Holly Valance (41), Jadyn Wong (39), Meg Foster 76), Sally Phillips (54), Bono (64), Rosario Dawson (45), Grace Gummer (38), Billy Joel (75), Stephen Amell (43), Vicky McClure (41), David Attenborough (98), Salome Jens (89), Alexander Ludwig (32), Richard O’Sullivan (80), George Clooney (63), Adrianne Palicki (41), and Pippa Haywood (63).