Dead Pool 31st January 2016

We awoke this morning to hear on the radio that Terry Wogan has died. A great loss to the BBC and those who loved him, however two of us thought that his death would be worth listing, well done to Nick M and Ceri J, both get 73 points!! No only this, but Shân E stuck to her guns and kept Abe Vigoda on her list and managed to score 156 points as a Cert. So now we have a new points leader and if the celebrity deaths keep on coming as they are, I think we’ll all be scoring something pretty soon!

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• Henry Worsley, 55, British adventurer, multiple organ failure.
• Colin Vearncombe, aka Black, 53, British singer-songwriter (“Wonderful Life“), head injuries sustained in a traffic collision.
• Abe Vigoda, 94, American actor (The Godfather, Barney Miller, Late Night with Conan O’Brien).
• Paul Kantner, 74, American musician (Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship) and songwriter (“Wooden Ships“), multiple organ failure.
• Gordon Goody, 86, British criminal (Great Train Robbery), heart attack.
• Cecil Parkinson, 84, British politician, cabinet minister, cancer.
• Frank Finlay, 89, British actor (Othello, The Pianist, The Three Musketeers).
• Sir Terry Wogan, 77, Anglo-Irish broadcaster (BBC), cancer.

In Other News

Israel’s former president Shimon Peres has been rushed to hospital after experiencing chest pains, 10 days after he had a small heart attack. A spokeswoman has said medics treated him at his home on Sunday night and detected a “light irregular heart rate”. She said the doctors decided he should spend the night in hospital for observation. Mr Peres, 92, underwent minor surgery last week for a constricted artery. Despite his age, Mr Peres has maintained an active public schedule, mostly through his non-governmental Peres Centre for Peace, which promotes closer ties between Israel and the Palestinians.

Lord Lucan’s body was fed to a tiger after he shot himself, a member of the missing peer’s gambling set has claimed, the latest twist in the decades-old mystery surrounding the fate of the aristocrat. The account comes days before a procedural hearing at the High Court to determine whether a death certificate should finally be issued for Lucan. The Eton-educated 7th Earl of Lucan vanished after Sandra Rivett, nanny to his three children, was found murdered at his family home in Belgravia on November 7, 1974. He is said to have mistaken her for his wife Veronica and bludgeoned her to death. Three days later, the peer’s blood-soaked car was found abandoned in Newhaven, East Sussex, and an inquest jury declared him to be Miss Rivett’s killer a year later. Now, more than four decades later, a member of the set of wealthy gamblers to which Lord ‘Lucky’ Lucan belonged has given a grisly account of what is said to have happened to the peer. In an interview, Philippe Marcq says he was told by Stephen Raphael, another regular at the Clermont Club in Mayfair, shortly after Lucan’s disappearance that the peer travelled to a private zoo in Kent owned by his close friend John Aspinall. According to 73-year-old Mr Marcq, Raphael claimed he was among a group of friends at Howletts zoo who discussed with Lucan about what he should do next. The peer was said to be concerned that he would never see his children again and his wife would get both them and the family trust. In order to  make sure his estranged wife didn’t get a penny from his trust, he was advised the only way to avoid this was for him to vanish without a trace. His friends allegedly told him that, without proof of death, probate could not be granted on his estate for at least seven years – by which time his children would be old enough to look after their own affairs. They allegedly dismissed the idea that he flee abroad, saying he was not cut out for a life on the run and he would be returned to the UK. Instead, Mr Marcq said a pistol was placed in front of Lucan, who picked it up, went into the next room, and shot himself. The body was then fed to a tiger named Zorra. Police reportedly investigated the tiger theory at the time after Aspinall’s mother, Lady Osborne (the grandmother of Chancellor George Osborne) told them: “The last I heard of him (Lucan), he was being fed to the tigers at my son’s zoo.” When police visited Howletts, Aspinall is said to have responded: “My tigers are only fed the choicest cuts – do you really think they’re going to eat stringy old Lucky?”

I don’t know how I missed this last week, but Nickie  pointed out that Mustafa Koç, 55, Turkish businessman (Koç Holding), died of a heart attack. There’s a whole family of very successful Koç’s if you care to take a look on their Wiki. What I like most is that this Turkish family have made their fortune from hard work and graft and have since shared their wealth with their country by donating towards a Koç Museum, a Koç School and a Koç University. Who knows, maybe we will see his kind arise again.

A grieving family and funeral congregation were left horrified when a pornographic video was accidentally played during the service. Hundreds of people gathered at Thornhill Crematorium in Cardiff to pay their respects to Simon Lewis, 33, and his baby boy, Simon Lewis Jnr, who were killed in a head-on collision. Mourners at Wednesday’s funeral described their shock after a crematorium blunder saw pornographic footage played by accident, instead of a tribute made in remembrance of Mr Lewis. Cardiff council, which runs the crematorium, has launched an urgent investigation. “It was absolutely disgusting, the priest turned around to play the video of Simon, but instead a hard-core pornography video was played on the big screen,” said a funeral-goer, who wished to remain anonymous. “Everyone was in shock, Simon’s father-in-law was furious, he shouted at the staff present and told them to turn it off. “It took them nearly four minutes to turn it off, people couldn’t believe what they were seeing. “To the priest’s credit he handled it extremely well. He apologised on behalf of Cardiff Council and said that in 30 years of doing the job, he had never seen such filth.” Reverend Lionel Fanthorpe, who led the funeral service, said: “I remember looking up at the screen and seeing some type of video came on and a very loud noise. “I look at my congregations instead of the TV screen, but when I heard this noise and members of the congregation moving towards the screen, I realised something was wrong. “Members of the family were very distressed, and Simon’s father-in-law was desperately upset. “Thankfully an engineer came to fix it and turn it off. It seems to be some kind of electronic accident. A Cardiff council spokesman said: “We are carrying out an urgent investigation. There were four television screens used. “We are trying to establish whether the smart TV could have picked up a broadcast by accident from Bluetooth or a Wifi connection. The other TVs were not affected. “We are clear that it is not possible for any member of staff to play or download anything onto the computer to be shown on the screen.

On This Day

• 1606 – Gunpowder Plot: Guy Fawkes is executed for plotting against Parliament and King James.
• 1747 – The first venereal diseases clinic opens at London Lock Hospital.
• 1865 – The United States Congress passes the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, abolishing slavery and submits it to the states for ratification.
• 1930 – 3M begins marketing Scotch Tape.
• 1953 – A North Sea flood causes over 1,800 deaths in the Netherlands and over 300 in the United Kingdom.
• 1990 – The first McDonald’s in the Soviet Union opens in Moscow.
• 2010 – Avatar becomes the first film to gross over $2 billion worldwide.

Deaths

• 1606 – Guy Fawkes, English conspirator, leader of the Gunpowder Plot (b. 1570)
• 1956 – A. A. Milne, English author, poet, and playwright; wrote Winnie-the-Pooh (b. 1882)
• 1974 – Samuel Goldwyn, Polish-born American film producer; co-founded Goldwyn Pictures (b. 1882)

Ceri’s Grisly Corner

On our “how to die horribly list” this week is Necrotising Fasciitis, a rare Flesh Eating Bacterial Infection where the full thickness of whole areas of skin become infected, goes gross, black and dies in a short period of time and although the skin dies, the tissue beneath it is generally left untouched. The thing that marks it out as special is that it travels so fast, racing over your body like a flashover or backdraft or something leaving large areas of tissue beneath it either open to infection or dead.

NF can spread at the rate of 3cm per hour which, as I’m sure you can imagine is a right bugger when there’s only so much body to race around. Around 25% of people who get it die from it and many people lose loads of skin and require skin grafts, quite often large areas of tissue and or limbs need to be removed to try to stop this flesh eating menace’s spread.

Caused by relatively innocuous flora living on the surface of the skin, there’s no reliable way to avoid Necrotising Fasciitis other than practicing good hygiene and avoiding having a compromised immune system as most cases are in people who would be able to fight it off were their immune systems’ not taking a snooze or otherwise MIA. Very small scratches or wounds can start it off and then it’s holding a huge rave with only antibiotics or surgery as options for treatment and on top of all that lovely stuff it can also cause systemic shock and cause organ failure and ultimately death.

Many famous types have had their flesh metaphorically eaten by this infection such as Alan Coren (call my bluff), Jeff Hannerman (guitarist of Slayer) and there seems to be some confusion over whether Jim Henson (Muppets) died from it (or TSS). Either way it seems to me that it’s a safe bet for the monkeys of misfortune.

Last Week’s Birthdays

Aaron Neville (75), Neil Diamond (75), Nastassja Kinski (55), Kristen Schaal (38), Alecia Keys (35), Scott Glenn (75), Eddie Van Halen (61), Ellen DeGeneres (58), James Cromwell (76), Mimi Rogers (60), Bridget Fonda (52), Alan Cumming (51), Patton Oswalt (47), Alan Alda (80), Elijah Wood (35), Ariel Winter (18), Jessica Ennis-Hill (30), Tom Selleck (71), Heather Graham (46), Gene Hackman (86), Vanessa Redgrave (79), Phil Collins (65), Christian Bale (42) and Dick Chaney (75).

Next week peeps!