Dead Pool 20th August 2017

Welcome all to a points bonanza! With the tragic demise of everyones favourite bumbling entertainer, Bruce Forsyth, almost everyone scored! 26 of us managed to list him in one way or another, so the leaderboard has changed dramatically. I wont list everyone, but well done all. Sadly we only have two people who have yet to score this year, but fear not, with four months to go, anything can happen!

Look Who You Could Have Had:

  • Sonny Landham, 76, American actor (Predator, 48 Hrs., Lock Up), heart failure.
  • Sir Bruce Forsyth, 89, English television presenter (The Generation Game, Play Your Cards Right, Strictly Come Dancing) and entertainer.
  • Robin Griffith, 78, Welsh actor. (Llais Blodyn Tatws, Y Barwn Coch o’r gyfres Siop Siafins).
  • Liz MacKean, 52, British broadcast journalist (Newsnight), stroke.
  • Dick Gregory, 84, American comedian and civil rights activist, heart failure.
  • Sir Colin Meads, 81, New Zealand rugby union player, coach and manager, cancer.

In Other News

The former Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, is seriously ill in hospital. The church said the 84-year-old’s health had taken a “defining turn”. Cardinal Cormac became the tenth Archbishop of Westminster in March 2000, was made Cardinal in 2001 by Pope John Paul II, before retiring from his role as archbishop in 2009. As archbishop, he was the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales. For whatever good it will do, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the current Archbishop of Westminster, has asked for prayers. In a statement on the diocese of Arundel and Brighton website, where Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor used to be bishop, Cardinal Nichols said “these loving prayers are a source of great strength and comfort as he calmly ponders on all that lies ahead”, which most likely will be oblivion.

Earlier this week, Tom Cruise injured himself doing a stunt for the upcoming Mission: Impossible 6. Production will be shut down for around two months as a result. Variety first broke the news of the delay, which was then confirmed by the other Hollywood trades. Cruise was reportedly performing a stunt for the Christopher McQuarrie film where he had to jump between two buildings. He missed, which was the point, but on one of the takes, he landed wrong and broke his ankle. TMZ posted a video that’s likely the stunt in question. The director spoke to Empire about the whole situation and confirmed that, yes, Cruise broke his ankle. Yes, he’s okay. But no, he’s not sure how long the hiatus will be. The trades all have different estimations, from six weeks to three months. Cruise is well-known for doing his own stunts, especially in the Mission: Impossible movies. He famously hung off the side of the Burj Khalifa for the fourth film and hung off a flying plane for the fifth one. If there’s a seventh, you’d have to think that would be cut back significantly after this.

Willie Nelson was forced to cut his Salt Lake City concert short due to breathing problems, according to various reports from the scene. The 84-year-old singer was reportedly taken to a local hospital after exiting the stage during the early section of his performance at the USANA Amphitheatre. Nelson has battled multiple health complaints in recent years, but took to Twitter to calm fans by stating that he was “feeling better”, while blaming altitude sickness for his woes. “This is Willie,” he wrote. “I am sorry to have to cut the SLC show short tonight. The altitude got to me I am feeling better now & headed for lower ground.” A part of fans’ alarm comes from the various rumours Nelson has recently been plagued with; his publicist Elaine Shock was forced to release a statement that the musician was “perfectly fine”, after Radar Online quoted an anonymous source stating he was “deathly ill”. Several of his shows were cancelled at the start of the year due to a “bad cold”, but Nelson has since returned to the road. He’s also no stranger to online death hoaxes, even addressing the matter in his song ‘Still Not Dead’, off his latest album God’s Problem Child.

Silent Witness actress Liz Carr has said being attacked by a man with scissors was “very frightening” but that she was “relatively unscathed”. Carr, who plays forensic examiner Clarissa Mullery, was with her personal assistant when the assault happened near London’s Euston station. A man has been detained under the Mental Health Act, police said. “Thanks to everyone who has sent their love and good wishes following  last week’s stabbing,” Carr said. “Just to reassure you that whilst it was very frightening at the time, I came out of it relatively unscathed and was even back home later that night. “Looking forward to returning to filming on Silent Witness next week where thankfully all the violence is fake!” The 45-year-old, who uses a wheelchair, suffered minor cuts. Both women were taken to hospital and later discharged.

And finally, the grandmother who infamously tried to claim a £33million lottery jackpot by alleging she had put the ticket in the washing machine has died aged 49. ‘Lotto gran’ Susanne Hinte is believed to have had a heart attack at her home in Worcester yesterday afternoon. The grandmother-of-four contacted Camelot last year after claiming she found the winning ticket in her jeans which had been damaged in the wash. But when German-born Ms Hinte sent in the crumpled ticket, investigators from Camelot’s security team soon determined the ticket was not correct. Ms Hinte provoked a storm of criticism by the false lottery claim and later revealed she regretted the whole incident and felt suicidal. Last year she said: ‘I wanted to be dead. I couldn’t understand why all of a sudden I was hated by so many people. I didn’t do anything wrong.’ Although not famous enough for our needs, she would have scored quite nicely.

On This Day

  • 1858 – Charles Darwin first publishes his theory of evolution through natural selection in The Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, alongside Alfred Russel Wallace’s same theory.
  • 1940 – In Mexico City, Mexico exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky is fatally wounded with an ice axe by Ramón Mercader. He dies the next day.
  • 1940 – World War II: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill makes the fourth of his famous wartime speeches, containing the line “Never was so much owed by so many to so few”.
  • 1975 – Viking program: NASA launches the Viking 1 planetary probe toward Mars.
  • 1977 – Voyager program: NASA launches the Voyager 2 spacecraft.
  • 1989 – The pleasure boat Marchioness sinks on the River Thames following a collision. Fifty-one people are killed.

Deaths

  • 1825 – William Waldegrave, 1st Baron Radstock, English admiral and politician, Governor of Newfoundland (b. 1753)
  • 1912 – William Booth, English preacher, co-founded The Salvation Army (b. 1829)
  • 2013 – Elmore Leonard, American novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter (b. 1925)

Last Week’s Birthdays

Matthew Perry (48), Jonathan Frakes (65), Kevin Dillon (52), Diana Muldaur (79), Jim Carter (69), Edward Norton (48), Robert Redford (81), Christian Slater (48), Madeleine Stowe (59), Roman Polanski (84), Denis Leary (60), Robert De Niro (74), Sean Penn (57), Steve Carell (55), James Cameron (63), Julie Newmar (84), Madonna (59), Jennifer Lawrence (27), Ben Affleck (45), Natasha Henstridge (43), Debra Messing (49), Jim Dale (82), Mila Kunis (34), Halle Berry (51) and Steve Martin (72).

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