Dead Pool 6th December 2020

A quiet week on the deaths front, plus a bad week if you co-founded a major chain of  restaurants. Apologies for the briefness of this weeks newsletter, I’ve been a bit busy and there’s been a lack of worthy deadly news. 

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• Betty Bobbitt, 81, American-born Australian actress (Prisoner, Crocodile Dundee II, Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles), stroke.  
• Ben Bova, 88, American science fiction writer (Grand Tour), complications from COVID-19.
• Hugh Keays-Byrne, 73, English-Australian actor (Mad Max: Fury Road, Stone, Farscape).  
• Warren Berlinger, 83, American actor (The Joey Bishop Show, The Cannonball Run, The World According to Garp).  
• Bill Palmer, 70, American restaurateur, co-founder of Applebee’s, pancreatic cancer.  
• Frank Carney, 82, American restaurateur, co-founder of Pizza Hut, pneumonia. 
• Peter Alliss, 89, English professional golfer, television presenter and commentator. 

In Other News

Everyone’s favourite tax dodger, Lewis Hamilton, is “not great”, according to Mercedes boss Toto Wolff, as the F1 world champion battles with ‘mild’ symptoms of coronavirus. Hamilton was ruled out of this weekend’s Sakhir Grand Prix earlier this week after testing positive for Covid-19 and has been self-isolating ever since. His Mercedes seat has been taken up by fellow Briton George Russell, the young Williams driver, who was the fastest man in Bahrain during Friday practice, which makes you wonder if it’s talent or machine that makes a winner. “He is not great,” Wolff said. Covid-19 is something you mustn’t take lightly and he is in safe hands. That is the most important. But it is those early days that are always not so nice.” He added: “Mild symptoms and then obviously, as you can imagine, a race driver out of his car and combine it with Covid, he would rather sit in there [the team garage].” I think the rest of us would rather he paid the £3.3m in tax he owes from buying his own private jet for £16.5m amongst other dodges he’s thought to have made.  

Staying in the world of F1, I’m sure most of you would have seen the amazing scenes as Romain Grosjean suffered a work related accident. Grosjean’s accident at Bahrain was horrific. His Haas car crashed at 137mph, with an impact force of 53G. It split in two and speared through the metal barriers. The halo cockpit protection device had been decisive in keeping him alive but he was swiftly engulfed in a huge fireball. Incredibly, he ultimately escaped with only burns to his hands. On Friday, Grosjean related how time appeared to slow down for him as the events, which lasted 28 seconds, unfolded. He had undone his seatbelt, and attempted to extricate himself from the wreckage but could not do so. “I sat back down and then thought about Niki Lauda, his accident, thought it couldn’t end like this, it couldn’t be my last race, couldn’t finish like this. No way,” he said. “I tried again and I’m stuck. So I go back and then there is the less pleasant moment where my body starts to relax. I am at peace with myself and I am going to die. I ask the question: ‘Is it going to burn my shoes or my hand? Is it going to be painful? Where is it going to start?’. To me, that felt like two, three, four seconds. I guess it was milliseconds at the time. Then I think about my kids and they cannot lose their dad today.” The 34-year-old tried again and, finally able to raise himself, had to push up and out of the twisted metal. As Grosjean climbed from the car he was helped by the occupants of the medical car. taken to hospital, he was examined and discharged on Wednesday. “What is the hardest is not what I went through but what I put people through: my family, my parents, my wife and kids, my friends,” he said. “For two minutes 43 seconds they thought their friend, their father and husband was dead and that is what makes me cry, that I made people suffer to that extent.” 

On This Day

• 1897 – London becomes the world’s first city to host licensed taxicabs.  
• 1917 – Halifax Explosion: A munitions explosion near Halifax, Nova Scotia kills more than 1,900 people in the largest artificial explosion up to that time.  
• 1953 – Vladimir Nabokov completes his controversial novel Lolita.  

Deaths

• 1988 – Roy Orbison, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1936)  
• 1993 – Don Ameche, American actor (b. 1908)  
• 2015 – Nicholas Smith, British actor (b. 1934) 
• 2016 – Peter Vaughan, British actor (b.1923)

Last Week’s Birthdays

Noel Clarke (45), Nick Park (62), Andrew Flintoff (43), Frankie Muniz (35), Jeff Bridges (71), Marisa Tomei (56), Tony Todd (66), Tyra Banks (47), Pamela Stephenson (71), Jay-Z (51), Amanda Seyfried (35), Brendan Fraser (52), Julianne Moore (60), Daryl Hannah (60), Holly Marie Combs (47), Jean-Luc Godard (90), Ozzy Osbourne (72), Lucy Liu (52), Britney Spears (39), Nelly Furtado (42), Bette Midler (75), Woody Allen (85), Emily Mortimer (49), Sarah Silverman (50), Riz Ahmed (38), Elisha Cuthbert (38), Ridley Scott (83), Ben Stiller (55), Richard Brake (56), and Mandy Patinkin (68).