Dead Pool 5th June 2016

With the tragic demise off The Greatest boxer of all time, Muhammad Ali, we have some points to dispense. Well done to Sarai, Paula, Nick, Mark, Dave, Shan, Wendy, Julia and Nicola, 76 points each. Even more kudos for those of you who have managed to score for the first time. We’re more or less at the half-way point and all but ten of us have scored, which is rather unusual in itself, but the way things are going I strongly suspect that everyone will score something this year, which will be a first for us!

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• Harambe, 17, American gorilla, shot.
• Alan Devereux, 75, British actor (The Archers).
• Carla Lane, 87, English television writer (The Liver Birds, Butterflies, Bread).
• Muhammad Ali, 74, American boxer, three-time WBC world heavyweight champion (1964, 1974, 1978), Olympic gold medalist (1960), respiratory issues.
• Dave Swarbrick, 75, British folk musician and singer-songwriter (Fairport Convention), emphysema.

In Other News 

Richard Simmons has been hospitalised after acting strangely at his Hollywood Hills mansion, it has been reported. The reclusive fitness guru was behaving bizarrely at his home on Friday night, leading someone to call 911. Paramedics took Simmons, 67, to a Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. It is not clear if he has been discharged yet. The workout star’s Twitter and Facebook pages continued to be updated with links to news articles through Friday and Saturday, however it is not known whether someone else was in charge of the posts. All the pictures he has posted of himself recently appear to be old. Simmons has been a recluse for the last three years and in March his friends feared he had been ‘kidnapped’ by his housekeeper. Teresa Reveles, 64, was accused of of controlling Simmons using black magic, something the star was forced to deny in phone calls to two chat shows. ‘I am not kidnapped. I am just in my house right now,’ he insisted. ‘No one should be worried about me. The people that surround me are wonderful people who take great care of me.’ Of Reveles, he added: ‘She’s been with me for 30 years. It’s almost like we’re a married couple.’

Nawaz Sharif, the Pakistani prime minister, has travelled to the UK with family to have a second cardiac procedure in five years, his daughter has said. Sharif was in high spirits when he went into the operating theatre at about 8am, according to Maryam Sharif. Posting the information on Twitter, she did not say how long the surgery was expected to take. The operation was for a perforation of the heart, a complication from an earlier cardiac procedure in 2011, Maryam said in another tweet last week. Nawaz Sharif, 66, was prime minister for two terms in the 1990s before being overthrown in a 1999 military coup. After years in exile, he returned to Pakistan in 2007 and led his party to a victory in a 2013 election.

Prince Philip missed a commemoration of the largest naval battle of the First World War following advice from his doctor. The Queen’s husband was told to miss the Battle of Jutland commemoration which saw the Royal Navy fight the Imperial German Navy off the coast of Denmark from 31st May to 1st June in 1916. The 94-year-old, who celebrates his 95th birthday on 10th June, has not been to hospital and is not expected to need an appointment any time soon. “The background is that this is on the doctor’s order, but there are no plans for him to go to hospital,” a spokesperson for Buckingham Palace told the media. “This is a temporary health thing.”

On This Day

• 1883 – The first regularly scheduled Orient Express departs Paris.
• 1917 – World War I: Conscription begins in the United States as “Army registration day”.
• 1956 – Elvis Presley introduces his new single, “Hound Dog“, on The Milton Berle Show, scandalising the audience with his suggestive hip movements.
• 1963 – The British Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, resigns in a sex scandal known as the “Profumo affair”.
• 1968 – Robert F. Kennedy, a U.S. presidential candidate, is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian. Kennedy dies the next day.
• 1975 – The United Kingdom holds its first country-wide referendum on remaining in the European Economic Community (EEC).
• 1981 – The “Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report” of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that five people in Los Angeles, California, have a rare form of pneumonia seen only in patients with weakened immune systems, in what turns out to be the first recognised cases of AIDS.
• 1989 – The Tank Man halts the progress of a column of advancing tanks for over half an hour after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.
• 2004 – Ronald Reagan, the 40th president of the United States, dies at 93.

Deaths

• 2004 – Ronald Reagan, American actor and politician, 40th President of the United States (b. 1911)
• 2012 – Ray Bradbury, American author and screenwriter (b. 1920)
• 2015 – Tariq Aziz, Iraqi journalist and politician, Iraqi Minister of Foreign Affairs (b. 1936)

Last Week’s Birthdays

LaToya Jackson (60), Noel Gallagher (49), Mel B (41), Colm Meany (63), Steven Gerrard (36), Clint Eastwood (86), Tom Berenger (67), Lea Thompson (55), Brooke Shields (51), Colin Farrell (40), Morgan Freeman (79), Ronny Wood (69), Jonathan Pryce (69), Heidi Klum (43), Alanis Morissette (42), Dana Carvey (61), Zachary Quinto (39), Justin Long (38), Rafael Nadal (30), Noah Wyle (45), Russell Brand (41) and Angelina Jolie (41).

The Last Word

Donald Campbell – (1921–1967) – Hallo, the bow is up… I’m going… I’m on my back… I’ve gone. Oh.

Next week peeps!