Dead Pool 5th January 2020

Welcome all to the first newsletter of 2020. Nice to see confidence trickster and fake ‘medium’ Derek Acorah proving there’s no afterlife by failing to reappear after his own death. Personally I couldn’t stand him, I found him and people like him despicable to say the least; to take advantage and monetise people’s grief is rather beyond me… 

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• Lexii Alijai, 21, American rapper.  
• Derek Acorah, 69, English self-styled spiritual medium and television personality (Most Haunted, Derek Acorah’s Ghost Towns), sepsis.  
• Qasem Soleimani, 62, Iranian major general, commander of the Quds Force (since 1998).

In Other News

Alex Trebek received a huge outpouring of support since revealing he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in March. The longtime Jeopardy! host, 79, opened up about facing his battle with stage IV cancer. Trebek first announced his diagnosis to the world in a YouTube video in March, when he vowed that he would continue working while he fought and received treatment. Shortly after giving the emotional update on his health, the pop culture icon thanked the “hundreds of thousands” of fans who sent their love and prayers to him and his family. Fans aren’t the only ones supporting Trebek as he continues his battle with pancreatic cancer. Fellow game show mainstay Vanna White commended the Jeopardy! host for his bravery and gave a promising update on her friend’s health. “He looks good. I talked to him recently and he’s got a very positive attitude, He’s still working, he’s obviously doing chemotherapy but working through it, and has that strong will to, as we say, the show must go on.” 

Actress Pam Grier has shot down rumours that she’s battling stage four cancer. A rep for the 70-year-old screen legend told TMZ that she’s “as healthy as ever,” and is slated to return to the set of Bless This Mess for its third season. The comment came in response so some (unfounded) speculation on social media that suggested otherwise. Back in 1988, Grier had been diagnosed with stage four cervical cancer. Though she was only given 18 months to live at the time, she managed to pull through, and her cancer’s been in remission ever since. Grier made her first big splash in showbiz in the early 1970s starring in schlock films like The Big Doll House and The Big Bird Cage. Throughout the rest of the decade, she became a staple of blaxploitation cinema, a movement that featured an anti-establishment with mostly black casts that were aimed at black audiences. While she maintained regular work in front of the camera in film and TV in the years that followed, it was her role as the title character in Quentin Tarantino’s blaxploitation homage Jackie Brown that gave her something of a career resurgence. 

Former England footballer Paul Merson has revealed how close he came to taking his own life last year during a battle with depression. The 51-year-old is best known for his professional career with Arsenal, Aston Villa and Portsmouth among many other clubs, as well as winning 21 caps for the international team between 1991 and 1998. But he has also been blighted by alcohol and gambling addictions in the past, and with this weekend’s FA Cup third-round fixtures kicking off a minute later than normal as part of the Football Association’s mental health campaign, Merson has opened up on his own illness that nearly ended with him killing himself at the start of 2019. “On Monday I’ll have been sober for a year. But this time last year, I wanted to kill myself,” Merson wrote in a revealing column for the Daily Star. “I couldn’t go on any more. I just couldn’t see a way out. I had the tablets in my hand. I didn’t take enough to do anything but I had them there. With vodka. It was scary.” I think we all know how he feels, I also own 20 paracetamol and a litre of vodka, although I don’t find it that scary. He continued, “It was only because of the kids really, and my wife, and a little bit of consciousness, that I didn’t. Fear probably as well. I was scared to do it. When you’re in that place, you don’t see how it’s ever going to pass. But I have the tools now. If I get into a real down situation, I know it will pass.

On This Day

• 1757 – Louis XV of France survives an assassination attempt by Robert-François Damiens, the last person to be executed in France by drawing and quartering, the traditional and gruesome form of capital punishment used for regicides.
• 1919 – The German Workers’ Party, which would become the Nazi Party, is founded in Munich. We all know how well that went.
• 1941 – 37-year-old pilot Amy Johnson, the first woman to fly solo from London to Australia, disappears after bailing out of her plane over the River Thames, and is presumed dead.

Deaths

• •1066 – Edward the Confessor, English king (b. 1004)
• •1922 – Ernest Shackleton, Anglo-Irish sailor and explorer (b. 1874)
• •1933 – Calvin Coolidge, American lawyer and politician, 30th President of the United States (b. 1872)
• •1998 – Sonny Bono, American singer-songwriter, producer, actor, and politician (b. 1935)

Last Moments

When amazing aviator Amy Johnson bailed out of her plane and vanished beneath the icy waves Britain lost an icon. The fisherman’s daughter had become a global superstar by being the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia. The intrepid adventurer followed up her astounding 1930 feat in a biplane by setting records for the fastest flights from Britain to Japan, South Africa, and India. She also became the first person to fly from London to Moscow in a single day. Amy was beacon to generations of girls who dreamed of breaking free from domestic drudgery for a life of romance and adventure. And her legacy lives on, even 75 years after death. Budget airline easyJet has named a plane after her and doubled the number of female pilots this year at its Amy Johnson Flying Initiative.

Using little more than makeshift maps and a compass, daring Amy had completed incredible journeys. But she ran out of records to set and decided to serve Britain in the Second World War by delivering planes around the country for the RAF. It was a decision that cost Amy her life, sparking a mystery that still persists today. Her body was never found and historian Dr Alec Gill believes the evidence points to a grisly end for Amy, chopped up by the propeller blades of the ship sent to rescue her from perishing cold Thames Estuary. Amy was 37 when, on January 5, 1941, she flew through snow and freezing fog, with a broken compass, to deliver a new Airspeed Oxford plane from Blackpool to Oxfordshire. She had defied orders to stay put. The flight should have taken 90 minutes but four hours later she crashed off the Kent coast near Herne Bay. Most historians believe she got lost in the thick cloud and was blown badly off-course. When her plane ran critically short of fuel she spotted the Royal Navy convoy in the Thames and bailed out, for the first and last time in her glittering career, hoping to be rescued. It was presumed she had drowned but fresh evidence may finally explain why her body was never found. It is claimed she was accidentally killed by her rescue ship. The revelation comes  from Harry Gould, 84, whose father, also called Harry, was a Naval reservist on HMS Haslemere. Harry says the ship had hit a sandbank and was put in reverse to break free. He says: “So many of the crew were trying to help Amy, but with the ship moving they couldn’t reach her. “My father saw she was getting too close to the stern and shouted up to the bridge, telling them to cut the engines because they were going the wrong way. But they didn’t listen. “One of the officers shouted back, ‘Don’t you tell me what to do!’ If they had listened to him Amy might have survived. “A few seconds later she was dragged under the boat. Everyone thought she had been cut to pieces by the propellers. It’s an awful way for such a special person to die.”

Harry and his crew mates were not called to give evidence at the 1943 inquiry into Amy’s death. But hidden in the official report there is support for his story, from RAF clerk Derek Roberts, whose friend Cpl Bill Hall was also on HMS Haslemere. It reveals how Amy drifted near the ship, identified herself and complained the water was “bitterly cold”, urging the crew to “get her out as soon as possible”. “They threw her a rope but she couldn’t get hold if it. Then someone dashed up to the bridge and reversed the ship’s engines. As a result, she was drawn into the propeller and chopped into pieces.” The ship’s captain Lt Cdr Walter Fletcher dived into the water, with a rope tied around his waist, to search for her. He had to be pulled from the river and died of hypothermia later  that day. He was awarded the Albert Medal for his courage. Dr Gill says a sailor “was within five feet of reaching Amy’s hand. They must have looked into each other’s eyes. It’s tragic. “This ship should have gone down in history as the ship that saved Amy’s life. Instead, historians are beginning to conclude that the propellers of the ­Haslemere killed her and that’s why her body was never found. That wasn’t even mentioned when her parents were still alive.” “This is still speculation as without a body there is no evidence. But it seems possible the Royal Navy would cover up what happened as they didn’t want to admit they had killed the most popular female pilot in the world.”

Last Week’s Birthdays

Clancy Brown (60), January Jones (41), Bradley Cooper (44), Diane Keaton (73), Robert Duvall (88), Hayao Miyazaki (78), Vinnie Jones (54), Marilyn Manson (50), Julia Ormond (54), Matt Frewer (61), Julian Sands (61), Mel Gibson (64), Victoria Principal (70), Sarah Alexander (49), Greta Thunberg (17), Kate Bosworth (37), Tia Carrere (53), Cuba Gooding Jr. (52), and Frank Langella (82).