Dead Pool 5th March 2017

The evil flying monkeys didn’t disappoint us last week, they caught a few famous names for us, alas no points though. Maybe we should send them out again, just to keep them in tip top condition. But one thing is for certain “It’s game over man, game over!” for Bill Paxton, one of two men who was killed by an Alien, a Predator and a Terminator, the other being Lance Henriksen, who at 76 years old is looking like he should have beaten Paxton to the grave.

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• Bill Paxton, 61, American actor (Apollo 13, Aliens, Big Love), complications following heart surgery.
• Sir Gerald Kaufman, 86, British politician, MP for Manchester Ardwick (1970–1983) and Manchester Gorton (since 1983), Father of the House (since 2015).
• Joseph Wapner, 97, American judge and television personality (The People’s Court, Judge Wapner’s Animal Court).
• Tommy Page, 46, American singer and songwriter (“I’ll Be Your Everything“).

In Other News

Sir Bruce Forsyth has returned home after spending five nights in intensive care following a severe chest infection. The 89-year-old’s manager said he had been in St Peter’s Hospital in Surrey since Sunday. “Sir Bruce Forsyth is scheduled to return home from hospital later today and would like to thank everyone for their good wishes,” Ian Wilson said. He added the entertainer thanked hospital staff for their care. In 2015, the presenter underwent keyhole surgery after suffering two aneurysms, which were discovered when tests were carried out following a fall at his Surrey home. Sir Bruce left Strictly Come Dancing in 2014, having presented it since the first series, but his manager denied reports last October that he had retired from the entertainment industry. At the time, Mr Wilson said Sir Bruce was “recuperating from various health issues”, adding: “His sole focus at the moment is to continue getting better and he has made no formal or informal decision about retiring from show business.” Sir Bruce has not been seen in public recently, and was too frail to attend the funerals of close friends Ronnie Corbett and Sir Terry Wogan last year. In an interview last October, his wife said he was still having “a bit of a problem moving”. “He’s in incredible shape mentally but he gets very tired,” she said, adding: “With a little bit of luck he should be back.”

Geological time – that’s what French artist Abraham Poincheval is hoping to experience over the next week, as he is entombed inside a limestone rock. He will become the “beating heart” of the 12-tonne boulder, he says – discovering how that perspective warps time and space. Poincheval is conducting his experiment at Paris’s Palais de Tokyo gallery. A space the shape of his body – and air holes – have been carved into the rock. There is also a place for supplies of water, soup and dried meat. Cables will monitor his heart and provide an emergency video link. Journalists looked on as workmen pressed together the two halves of the rock at the gallery on Wednesday. “The purpose is to feel the ageing stone inside the rock,” Poincheval said during his weeks of preparation for the ordeal. At the time, he was coy about how he would go to the toilet, but in the moments running up to his entombment he came clean to AFP news agency, admitting he would urinate into empty water bottles and sit on a small container to excrete. And the smell? “The stone will absorb some of the smell,” he said. “I think I can take it.” If he emerges intact from the boulder, Poincheval plans to sit on a dozen eggs for the three or four weeks they take to hatch.

Former England batsman James Taylor has said that he was “shot a few yards across the room” by his defibrillator. Taylor was forced to retire from cricket aged 26 after being diagnosed with a heart condition in 2016. He was fitted with an internal defibrillator in June for his irregular heartbeat, and he said it has since gone off on one occasion. “I can’t trust my heart. It’s keeping me alive, just about, but it’s being very temperamental,” he said. Addressing new members of the Professional Cricketers’ Association in Birmingham, Taylor, now 27, said: “The defibrillator has kicked in with real force. “It shot me a few yards across the room, probably because I’m small. “That’s probably why I’ve got the anxieties I have now and I’m a little bit scared of exerting myself or pushing myself in some way. “I know the feeling when it does go off, when things aren’t quite right. It’s a scary feeling and it hurts. It does its job, that’s the most important thing.”

On This Day

• 1616 – Nicolaus Copernicus‘s book On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres is added to the Index of Forbidden Books 73 years after it was first published.
• 1836 – Samuel Colt patents the first production-model revolver, the .34-caliber.
• 1936 – First flight of Supermarine Spitfire advanced monoplane fighter aircraft in the United Kingdom.
• 1963 – American country music stars Patsy Cline, Hawkshaw Hawkins, Cowboy Copas and their pilot Randy Hughes are killed in a plane crash in Camden, Tennessee.
• 1981 – The ZX81, a pioneering British home computer, is launched by Sinclair Research and would go on to sell over 1.5 million units around the world.
• 1984 – Six thousand miners in the United Kingdom begin their strike at Cortonwood Colliery.

Deaths

• 1770 – Crispus Attucks, American slave (b. 1723)
• 1827 – Alessandro Volta, Italian physicist and academic (b. 1745)
• 1829 – John Adams, English sailor and mutineer (b. 1766)
• 1953 – Joseph Stalin, Soviet dictator and politician of Georgian descent, 2nd leader of the Soviet Union (b. 1878)
• 1963 – Patsy Cline, American singer-songwriter (b. 1932)
• 1982 – John Belushi, American actor (b. 1949)

Last Week’s Birthdays

Chase Masterson (54), Adam Baldwin (55), Kate Mara (34), Timothy Spall (60), Richard Coyle (45), John Turturro (60), Rae Dawn Chong (56), Mercedes Ruehl (69), Stephanie Beacham (70), Javier Bardem (48), Ron Howard (63), Jensen Ackles (39), Zack Snyder (51), Dirk Benedict (72), Roger Daltrey (73), Harry Belafonte (90), Bryce Dallas Howard (36), Daniel Craig (49), Nathalie Emmanuel (28), Rebel Wilson (37), Gates McFadden (68), Jon Bon Jovi (55), Chris Martin (40), Alexander Armstrong (47), Julie Bowen (47), Miranda Richardson (59), Charlie Brooker (46) and Dominique Pinon (62).

Next week peeps!