Dead Pool 6th July 2014

Here we are minions, well over the halfway point and more than half of us have yet to score, including myself! These celebrities are simply refusing to cross over to the ethereal plane! We must do something! I’m reluctant to let fly the monkeys this time, as previously they found Rik Mayall after his ill-advised bout of exercise, but something must be done! So on your behalf I’m sending out the Tremor worms, so be warned, don’t stand on the ground when you hear a rumble from below, unless you need a fart that is…

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• Doug Lehmann, 62, Australian vintner (Peter Lehmann Wines), heart attack.
• Bob Hastings, 89, American actor (McHale’s Navy, All in the Family) and voice actor (Batman: The Animated Series), prostate cancer.
• Paul Mazursky, 84, American film director and screenwriter (An Unmarried Woman, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, Down and Out in Beverly Hills), pulmonary cardiac arrest.
• Errie Ball, 103, Welsh-born American golfer, oldest PGA member, last living player from inaugural Masters Tournament, natural causes.
• Chad Brown, 52, American professional poker player and actor, liposarcoma.
• Louis Zamperini, 97, American Olympic long distance runner (1936), military officer, prisoner of war, book (Unbroken) and film (Unbroken) subject, pneumonia.

In Other News

The Who are embarking on a farewell tour, so grab your tickets whilst you can as someone in the band feels one of them is going to croak! Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend have decided, at 70 and 69 respectively, that they they are getting too old for life on the road. Fifty years after the band formed, and with two members lost, they are to play a final series of concerts that Daltrey described as “the beginning of the long goodbye”. Townshend joked that the pair could no longer handle “the prostitutes, the heroin, the cocaine”, Nor the underage girls eh Pete? 

Terry Pratchett, who announced his diagnosis with early onset Alzheimer’s seven years ago, has pulled out of a Discworld convention later this summer, saying “the Embuggerance is finally catching up with me”. Pratchett made the announcement with what he described as “great reluctance” on the website of the International Discworld Convention, where he had been set to appear as guest of honour in Manchester in August. The convention’s chair, John Hicks, said that Pratchett would still be answering some questions from fans on video, that his business manager Rob Wilkins would be “bringing The Black Hat” – Pratchett’s trademark – “to the Convention to represent Terry in absentia and we will, of course, welcome it with all due honours”. 

Robbie Williams took a slight tumble during his Swings Both Ways show in Newcastle last week as he fell off the stage and squashed a fan in the process. Williams, 40, spectacularly missed his footing and fell off the stage but quickly recovered and high-fived fans in the crowd, joking “that went well” as he rolled his fat self back onto the stage. However, during the fall Williams broke a fan’s arm. Margaret Nash, 52, got in the way of Robbie’s fall and had her arm broken, serves her right for going to a Robbie Williams concert.  The Mirror reported that Nash’s daughter Katie sent a tweet to the singer, which said: “You fell on my mam and she’s been in hospital with a broken arm. You never even said sorry.” But the story ends well, Nash has her arm in plaster and is now chatting with Robbie, which I’m sure is dampening her long dry granny panties to no end. 

Real Madrid great Alfredo Di Stefano is in intensive care after suffering a heart attack. Di Stefano, who turned 88 this week, was taken to the Gregorio Maranon hospital in Madrid after falling ill close to Real’s Bernabeu stadium. He has had several health problems in recent years and in 2005 was fitted with a pacemaker after heart surgery. Di Stefano’s achievements helped turn Real, the club he joined in 1953, into one of the world’s leading sides. Di Stefano, who played at international level for Colombia, Argentina and Spain, helped Madrid to five straight European Cup triumphs, scoring in each of the winning finals between 1956 and 1960. Looks like someone forgot to charge his battery! 

And we can’t finish off the news without mentioning good old Rolf Harris! Yup, anyone who experienced their childhood from the 70’s onwards now feels like they have been raped by the 84 year old entertainer as well. Rolf, has been charged and found guilty of 12 indecent assaults against four women, the youngest of which was aged seven at the time. But, don’t fret dear people, the judge has seen fit to give him a 69 month jail term, who said the justice system didn’t have a sense of humour! The once ‘great’ entertainer has lost all honours bestowed upon him, his ‘art’ is being burnt on various bonfires and even your illustrious Dead Pool Master has shaved off his beard in disgust. So, will he die in jail? Will he try to commit suicide inside? Place your bets ladies and gentlemen! 

On This Day

• 1189 – Richard I “the Lionheart” accedes to the English throne.
• 1483 – Richard III is crowned King of England.
• 1535 – Sir Thomas More is executed for treason against King Henry VIII of England.
• 1785 – The dollar is unanimously chosen as the monetary unit for the United States.
• 1854 – In Jackson, Michigan, the first convention of the United States Republican Party is held.
• 1885 – Louis Pasteur successfully tests his vaccine against rabies on Joseph Meister, a boy who was bitten by a rabid dog.
• 1942 – Anne Frank and her family go into hiding in the “Secret Annexe” above her father’s office in an Amsterdam warehouse.
• 1947 – The AK-47 goes into production in the Soviet Union.
• 1957 – John Lennon and Paul McCartney meet for the first time, as teenagers at Woolton Fete, three years before forming the Beatles.
• 1988 – The Piper Alpha drilling platform in the North Sea is destroyed by explosions and fires. One hundred sixty-seven oil workers are killed, making it the world’s worst offshore oil disaster in terms of direct loss of life.

Deaths

• 1932 – Kenneth Grahame, Scottish author (b. 1859)
• 1960 – Aneurin Bevan, Welsh politician (b. 1897)
• 1971 – Louis Armstrong, American singer and trumpet player (b. 1901)
• 1998 – Roy Rogers, American actor and singer (b. 1911)
• 2002 – John Frankenheimer, American director, producer, & screenwriter (b. 1930)

Bizarre Victorian Deaths, Part 2 by KoA

3. Killed by a Coffin

Henry Taylor died an ironic death. He was a pall bearer in London’s Kensal Green Cemetery, and was midway through a funeral when he caught his foot on a stone and stumbled. As he fell to the ground, the other bearers let go of the coffin, which fell on poor, prone Henry. “The greatest confusion was created amongst the mourners who witnessed the accident,” said the Illustrated Police News in November 1872, “and the widow of the person about to be buried nearly went into hysterics.”

4. Killed by Eating Her Own Hair

The doctors were baffled. The patient was seriously ill, that much was clear, but they couldn’t fathom the cause. So when the 30-year-old died, in a village in the English county of Lincolnshire, they asked her grieving relatives for permission to carry out a post-mortem. Whatever they imagined they might find, it can’t possibly have been what they actually discovered – a solid lump, made up of human hair, weighing two pounds and looking for all the world like a black duck with a very long neck. “This remarkable concretion had caused great thickening and ulceration of the stomach, and was the remote cause of her death,” said the Liverpool Daily Post in 1869. “On inquiry, a sister stated that during the last twelve years she had known the deceased to be in the habit of eating her own hair.”

5. Killed by a Zombie

The funeral was in full swing when the lid of the coffin lifted, and the corpse began to climb out. This was, needless to say, an unexpected turn of events. White-faced with fear, the priest and the mourners alike ran from the church of their Russian village and scattered to their homes, bolting their doors. The ghoul lurched after them, bursting into the house of an old woman who had not been quite so nimble with her lock. As the priest collected his senses, he realised the rampaging corpse was actually a coma patient who’d regained consciousness. Too late. The peasants in his parish had plucked up their nerve, armed themselves with guns and stakes and set off for an exorcism. By the time the priest arrived on the scene, the zombie had been successfully returned to the other side, and the body thrown into a marsh.

Last Week’s Birthdays

Michael Phelps (29), Cheryl Cole (31), Mike Tyson (48), Rupert Graves (51), Vincent D’Onofrio (55), Liv Tyler (37), Missy Elliott (43), Pamela Anderson (47), Carl Lewis (53), Dan Aykroyd (62), Debbie Harry (69), Lindsey Lohan (28), Ashley Tisdale (29), Larry David (67), Richard Petty (77), Julian Assange (43), Tom Cruise (52), Montel Williams (58), Edie Falco (51), Huey Lewis (64), 50 Cent (39), Sylvester Stallone (68), George W. Bush (68), Burt Ward (69), Dalai Lama (79) and Nancy Reagan (93).

2013 League Table

[confidential]

Next week peeps!