Dead Pool 7th January 2018

Welcome to the first official newsletter of the season. Attached to this weeks email is a list of each competitors email address, can you all please double check yours and update your outgoing list so we don’t annoy anyone who has dropped out. If you’re reading this on the website and didn’t get an email, please let me know.

Not much to report, nobody of relevance has died yet, but good news for those of you who have listed Dick Van Dyke, his younger brother has just died, so there is hope the almost-immortal Dick might soon follow his sibling. Oh, and don’t shit yourself when you see the dead Pfeiffer in the following list like I did…

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• Jon Paul Steuer, 33, American actor (Grace Under Fire, Little Giants, Star Trek: The Next Generation) and musician, fire.
• Michael Pfeiffer, 92, German football player (national team) and manager (Roda JC Kerkrade, Alemannia Aachen).
• Frank Buxton, 87, American actor (What’s Up, Tiger Lily?), screenwriter and director (The Odd Couple, Happy Days).
• John Young, 87, American astronaut whose was on (Apollo 16, STS-1).
• Jerry Van Dyke, 86, American actor and comedian on My Mother the Car, The Dick Van Dyke Show and Coach. He died due to declining health from injuries in an car accident.

In Other News

Singer Sam Bailey has said she is “determined” to get back on the pantomime stage after being knocked out by a loft ladder at her home. The 40-year-old had been trying to retrieve a suitcase when she was hurt in the bizarre accident on Tuesday. The X Factor star is playing the role of the Enchantress in Beauty and the Beast at De Montfort Hall in Leicester. While recovering at her Leicester home, she thanked emergency staff and tweeted to say she was “on the mend”. Bailey, who won X Factor in 2013, posted to say she was “gutted” not to be performing after the accident. Martin Ballard, a BBC Radio Leicester presenter and the dame in the pantomime, said the cast was “shocked” to hear the news. “Sam’s singing is irreplaceable and she drives the whole story,” he said.

After taking some time out from the spotlight, Robbie Williams has now revealed he spent seven days in intensive care after doctors discovered ‘abnormalities’ on his brain. The former Take That star was forced to cancel his Russian tour dates back in September due to a ‘mystery illness’ which left him in ICU, but so far hasn’t given specific details why. Now, Robbie has opened up about his health scare, revealing he was rushed to hospital after he became seriously ill while backstage at a gig in Zurich. ‘My left arm went numb and I couldn’t stop dribbling out of the side of my mouth’, he told our roving Dead Pool reporter. ‘I had a headache and I was also having trouble breathing. I couldn’t get a full breath.’ When a doctor examined the 43-year-old star, Robbie was told he could still perform the show as he doesn’t normally use his brain, but later flew to London for emergency tests where doctors found what looked like blood on his brain. ‘That was obviously very scary, but everyone kept telling me not to worry as I had nothing to lose’ he continued. ‘I was confused and scared, but I knew I was in the right place. And, maybe naively, I felt like I knew I was going to be OK,’ he added. Sadly, Robbie revealed that after seven days in intensive care, he was declared fit to leave and then spent two months recovering back at his home in LA.

‘Jeopardy!’ host Alex Trebek is on a leave of absence from the show after undergoing brain surgery for blood clots — medically known as subdural hematoma — that were “caused by a fall I endured two months ago.” Wearing a yellow sweater, jeans and a blue “Jeopardy!” hat, the 77-year-old wryly addressed our reporter, calling the procedure “a slight medical problem.” “Surgery was performed. After two days in the hospital, I came home to start recovery,” he said. “The prognosis is excellent, and I expect to be back in the studio taping more ‘Jeopardy!’ programs very, very soon.” Nothing quite like that American optimism.

On This Day

• 1782 – The first American commercial bank, the Bank of North America, opens.
• 1927 – The first transatlantic telephone service is established from New York City to London.
• 1928 – A disastrous flood of the River Thames kills 14 people and causes extensive damage to much of riverside London.
• 1948 – Kentucky Air National Guard pilot Thomas Mantell crashes while in pursuit of a supposed UFO.
• 2015 – Two gunmen commit mass murder at the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris, shooting twelve people execution style, and wounding eleven others.

Deaths

• 1536 – Catherine of Aragon (b. 1485)
• 1943 – Nikola Tesla, Serbian-American physicist and engineer (b. 1856)
• 1989 – Hirohito, Japanese emperor (b. 1901)
• 2007 – Magnus Magnusson, Icelandic journalist, author, and academic (b. 1929)

Last Week’s Birthdays

Eddie Redmayne (36), Rowan Atkinson (63), Norman Reedus (49), Nigella Lawson (58), January Jones (40), Bradley Cooper (43), Diane Keaton (72), Clancy Brown (59), Robert Duvall (87), Hayao Miyazaki (77), Marilyn Manson (49), Vinnie Jones (53), Julia Ormond (53), Matt Frewer (60), Julian Sands (60), Michael Stipe (58), Mel Gibson (62), Victoria Principal (68), Tia Carrere (51), Cuba Gooding Jr. (50), Verne Troyer (49) and Frank Langella (80).