Dead Pool 16th June 2019

A controversial week, as Trump and Macron’s symbolic friendship tree dies; we have bad news for Trish, although her pick for a Woman, Grace Jones passed away, she’s not been listed on the Wiki obituaries so I am unable to dish out the points until there’s an entry! Again, the list of deaths is rather bereft, oh how we hark back to the days of David Bowie and Robin Williams! Let’s set the flying monkeys free, carrying their suicide enabling kits and gremlin luck infusers! 

Also as a side note, Tony Berry of the Houghton Weavers has died. Nickie thought I’d instantly know who he was, but sadly I had no idea of his earthy existence, nor the band, or ever heard any of their songs. So here’s the question to you Poolers, who has heard of this chap? 

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• Sylvia Miles, 94, American actress (Midnight Cowboy, Farewell, My Lovely, She-Devil).
• Gary Burrell, 81, American electronics executive and philanthropist, chairman and co-founder of Garmin. 
• Franco Zeffirelli, 96, Italian film director (Romeo and Juliet, Jesus of Nazareth, The Taming of the Shrew).  
• Grace Jones, 112, Britain’s oldest living person, supercentenarian.

In Other News

Veteran broadcaster Bob Harris is to take a break from presenting his BBC Radio 2 country show after suffering an aortic dissection. The condition occurs when there is a tear in the wall of the major artery carrying blood out of the heart. “The aorta is basically the M1 of the body and any damage is regarded as extremely serious,” said Harris. “I am not exactly sure when I will be on air again but I am on the road to recovery now,” he continued. Harris, known to fans as “Whispering Bob”, said he suffered a tear to his aorta while out walking 10 days ago. “It was an incredibly scary moment and I am massively indebted to the ambulance crew who attended so promptly,” he said. Harris, 73, also paid tribute to the Intensive Care team and consultants at Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital, his wife Trudie and his “wonderful” family. Paul Sexton will host the next two editions of Harris’s hour-long show, which airs on Thursdays at 21:00. Harris, who was made an OBE in 2011 for services to music broadcasting, was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2007.  

Chris Froome has admitted he is lucky to be alive after speaking for the first time since his horror cycling accident. The four-time Tour de France winner crashed at nearly 35mph during his fourth-stage reconnaissance of the Criterium du Dauphine on Wednesday. Lying in his hospital bed, Froome also paid tribute to cycling fans following his life-threatening crash. “I know how lucky I am to be here today and how much I owe to all the paramedics and medical staff on the race, whilst this is a setback and a major one at that, I am focusing on looking forward. There is a long road to recovery ahead, but that recovery starts now and I am fully focused on returning back to my best.” The post was issued with a picture of Froome giving the thumbs up from his bed at the University Hospital of St Etienne where he underwent a six-hour operation. It has been reported that the 34-year-old suffered a fractured neck and faces six weeks in hospital. He also has a fractured right femur, a broken hip, a fractured elbow and fractured ribs and was in intensive care following the surgery. Froome is not expected to compete again this year. Froome took his hand off his handlebars to blow his nose before a gust of wind destabilised his bike. He crashed into a wall and lost consciousness. The Briton was airlifted to hospital where he has since been joined by his wife Michelle and Team Ineos doctor Richard Usher.   

Paul Sinha, one of the professional quizzers on ITV’s The Chase, has revealed he has Parkinson’s disease. “I will fight this with every breath I have,” tweeted the 49-year-old comic, going on to share further details of his diagnosis in a blog post. Sinha, a former GP, said he was told he had Parkinson’s – a degenerative brain condition – last month. He said it had been “a really, really tough two weeks” but said he did not “consider himself unlucky”. “Whatever the next stage of my life holds for me, many others have it far worse,” he continued. Sinha said he intended to “keep Chasing, keep writing and performing comedy [and] keep quizzing” while joking that appearing on Dancing on Ice was probably “out of the question”. “A lot of people have asked ‘What can I do to help?'” he concluded. “The answer is to treat me exactly the same as before.” Last month the BBC’s technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones revealed he has Parkinson’s, whose symptoms include involuntary tremors. Sir Billy Connolly and actor Alan Alda have also spoken about how they deal with the illness since being diagnosed in 2013 and 2015 respectively.   

And just as you thought life wasn’t harrowing enough, a glass ledge on the 103rd floor of the tallest skyscraper in Chicago cracked under visitors’ feet on Monday night. The all-glass area of the Willis Tower, in which sightseers can view the city of Chicago from a high point, is called the Skydeck. Its protective top layer is made of laminated glass, which is built to maintain its integrity even while it cracks. On Monday, it cracked into “thousands of pieces,” according to WBBM. In a video shared on Facebook, visitors appear nervous and scared, and immediately huddle away from the glass area. The Willis Tower, which was called the Sears Tower until 2009, said no one was ever in danger. The layer is known as the “Ledge,” and was constructed in 2009, after Tower officials noticed “the hundreds of forehead prints visitors left behind on Skydeck windows every week.” Build to hold five tons, the attraction give tourists and residents an immersive view of the midwestern city. Still, tourists appeared frightened, as the incident was, of course, not supposed to happen. “There was a woman with two kids and they looked really pale and scared because the floor just cracked,” witness Jesus Pintado told WBBM. “I’m scared of heights in general so when I saw that happen, I was like nope, not going on,” Karly Pintado, who was also on the 103rd floor that day, said.  

And finally, it’s the contest Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) fans never knew they wanted. On Sunday, Justin Bieber challenged Tom Cruise to join him in the octagon to solve a problem so fiendishly difficult no-one had previously bothered to think of it. Why does a 25-year-old pop star randomly decide to try to goad a 56-year-old movie star into fighting him? Needless to say, a calculation so onerous quickly won the attention of the very best minds the social media platform had to offer. Former UFC champion Conor McGregor was quick to talk up the bout’s prospects. “Does Cruise have the sprouts to fight?” he inquired, simultaneously offering his own company’s services in hosting the clash and then offering to fight actor Mark Wahlberg on the undercard. Sprouts or no sprouts, many took the view that in this match-up it’s Bieber who’s the turkey. Cruise famously performs his own stunts and the physicality exhibited in action films like the Mission Impossible series would give him the edge, many social media users argued. Others were just left confused by the whole thing. “At some point tonight Tom Cruise’s agent will have to call Tom Cruise and tell him Justin Bieber has challenged him to a fight,” another user tweeted. Tom Cruise is yet to respond. UPDATE: Justin Bieber doesn’t want to actually take on Top Gun star Tom Cruise in a fight as the pop star admitted that he wasn’t really serious about fighting the actor. Speaking recently with TMZ, Justin Bieber admitted he was only joking about the fight. Bieber also admitted that he said it almost randomly and didn’t realise the traction his challenge to Tom Crusie would get: “I don’t know him. He’s tight. The story is I saw an interview with him, and he was just on my mind. It was just a random tweet. I do that stuff sometimes.” “I think he’d probably whoop my ass in a fight.” It seems we won’t get to see a match between Tom Cruise and Justin Bieber after all. 

On This Day

• 1883 – The Victoria Hall theatre panic in Sunderland, England kills 183 children.
• 1884 – The first purpose-built roller coaster, LaMarcus Adna Thompson’s “Switchback Railway”, opens in New York’s Coney Island amusement park.
• 1911 – IBM founded as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company in Endicott, New York.
• 1944 – At age 14, George Junius Stinney, Jr. becomes the youngest person executed in the United States in the 20th century.
• 1961 – Rudolf Nureyev defects from the Soviet Union.
• 1963 – Soviet Space Program: Vostok 6 Mission: Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman in space.

Deaths

• 1977 – Wernher von Braun, German-American physicist and engineer (b. 1912)
• 1999 – Screaming Lord Sutch, English singer and activist (b. 1940)
• 2016 – Jo Cox, English political activist and MP (b. 1974)

Last Week’s Birthdays

Courteney Cox (55), Helen Hunt (56), Neil Patrick Harris (46), Ice Cube (50), Jim Belushi (65), Yasmine Bleeth (51), Donald Trump (73), Boy George (58), Alan Carr (43), Stellan Skarsgård (68), Chris Evans (38), Ally Sheedy (57), Tim Allen (66), Malcolm McDowell (76), Richard Thomas (68), Simon Callow (70), Kathy Burke (55), Richard Ayoade (42), Joshua Jackson (41), Peter Dinklage (50), Shia LaBeouf (33), Adrienne Barbeau (74), Hugh Laurie (60), Jane Goldman (49), Elizabeth Hurley (54), Jürgen Prochnow (78), Johnny Depp (56), Natalie Portman (38), Michael J. Fox (58), Eddie Marsan (51), Griffin Dunne (64), and Nancy Sinatra (79).