Dead Pool 11th February 2018

Not a good week to be a drummer it seems…. No points to be awarded this week, so the status quo remains. A quick mention to you all about contributing to the newsletter; if you feel like you would like to write something, please do so and email it in, theres always room for death related articles or any creepy/scary/murderous stories. Or if I have missed something you may have read during the week, please let me know, we can always sneak something in the following week.

Look Who You Could Have Had:

  • Leon “Ndugu” Chancler, 65, American jazz/pop drummer (“Billie Jean”), prostate cancer.
  • John Mahoney, 77, English-American actor (Frasier, In the Line of Fire, Say Anything…), complications from throat cancer.
  • Mickey Jones, 76, American drummer (Kenny Rogers and The First Edition) and actor (Home Improvement, National Lampoon’s Vacation).
  • Jill Messick, 50, American film producer (Mean Girls, Frida) and talent manager (Rose McGowan), suicide.
  • Pat Torpey, 64, American drummer (Mr. Big), complications from Parkinson’s disease.
  • Lovebug Starski, 57, American rapper and disc jockey, heart attack.
  • Reg E. Cathey, 59, American actor (The Wire, House of Cards, Fantastic Four), Emmy winner (2015), lung cancer.
  • John Gavin, 86, American actor (Psycho, Spartacus, Imitation of Life) and diplomat (Ambassador to Mexico 1981–1986), pneumonia.
  • Liam Miller, 36, Irish footballer (Manchester United, Sunderland, national team), pancreatic cancer.

In Other News

One of the £14m Hatton Garden jewellery raiders,  Terry Perkins, has died in prison aged 69. Sadly, he wasn’t famous enough for our purposes as he hasn’t made the wiki list, yet… Perkins from Enfield, north London, was serving a jail term for the “largest burglary in English legal history”. One of four ringleaders of the 2015 raid, he was last week ordered to pay back £6,526,571 or face a further seven-year jail term, I guess he’s having a little giggle at that ultimatum now. Perkins and his fellow raiders stole goods after drilling into a vault at London’s Hatton Garden Safe Deposit. He was serving his sentence in HMP Belmarsh and is believed to have been ill for some time. Last Tuesday, the gang members were ordered to pay back £27.5m between them or have their sentences increased. Judge Christopher Kinch QC said the men jointly benefitted from an estimated £13.69m worth of stolen cash, gold and gems. Peter Rowlands, Perkins’ barrister, said his client – who had been diagnosed with “severe heart failure” – would have to serve the extra time as there was “no prospect” of any further funds being recovered.

Melanie Griffiths has been pictured with a scar on her nose and is believed to to have undergone surgery to remove a skin cancer from her nose four months ago. And despite having neither confirmed nor denied the reports, she showed off her ‘scar’ when she walked the red carpet at The Vienna Opera Ball in Austria on Thursday. Dressed in a classy black gown, the 60-year-old actress showed off the mark which was apparently left when she had basal cell carcinoma removed. It would be the second time she’s undergone a procedure to remove skin cancer, with her rep confirming that she had malignant cells removed in 2009. However, it was caught early and no further treatment was required.

On This Day

  • 1812 – Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry is accused of “gerrymandering” for the first time.
  • 1858 – Bernadette Soubirous’s first vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Lourdes, France.
  • 1938 – BBC Television produces the world’s first ever science fiction television program, an adaptation of a section of the Karel Čapek play R.U.R., that coined the term “robot”.
  • 1990 – Nelson Mandela is released from Victor Verster Prison outside Cape Town, South Africa after 27 years as a political prisoner.

Deaths

Last Week’s Birthdays 

Chloë Grace Moretz (21), Robert Wagner (88), Elizabeth Banks (44), Laura Dern (51), Keeley Hawes (42), Vince Gilligan (51), Mia Khalifa (25), Philip Glenister (55), Holly Willoughby (37), Tom Hiddleston (37), Ciarán Hinds (65), Joe Pesci (75), Mia Farrow (73), Seth Green (44), Nick Nolte (77), John Williams (86), Ethan Phillips (63), James Spader (58), Deborah Ann Woll (33), Ashton Kutcher (40), Chris Rock (53), Eddie Izzard (56), Garth Brooks (56), Mike Farrell (79), Rip Torn (87), Kevin Whately (67), Axl Rose (56), Jennifer Jason Leigh (56), Michael Sheen (49), Charlotte Rampling (72), Christopher Guest (70), Cristiano Ronaldo (33), Gabrielle Anwar (48), Natalie Imbruglia (43), Alice Cooper (70) and Jim Jefferies (40).

Things More Likely To Kill You In 1970’s Britain Than Today

In the first of a series of articles, we will be looking at how safer our lives are nowadays compared to forty years ago. As you know, humans tend towards pessimism when it comes to observing the world around them. A recent Ipsos Mori survey suggests we frequently think things are worse than they are, from murder rates to the prevalence of diabetes. But very often our perceptions don’t align with reality.

Winter deaths: More people die in winter than in summer because of cold weather and higher rates of infectious illnesses such as flu. But the difference between the number of people dying in winter compared with summer has fallen since the 1970s, when it averaged more than 40,000 extra deaths. By 2015-16, there were fewer than 25,000 excess deaths a year in winter compared with in summer. Much of this is because of general improvements in health, but our homes are also better heated and insulated now. These days almost all homes have some form of double glazing but in the early 1970s fewer than 8% did, according to The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. Despite an overall downward trend in winter deaths, there are significant fluctuations year-on-year. That can be because of a particularly cold winter or bad flu strain. The highest number of excess winter deaths in recent times was in 1999-2000. “The main strain of flu that year affected older people more than the young, which likely contributed to the high number of winter deaths,” says Dr Annie Campbell, from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Similarly, in 2014-15 the flu jab turned out to be less effective than usual in protecting people against the strain in circulation that winter. To allow for some of these natural variations, the ONS also produces a five-year average each year. It’s too soon to say how this year is going, but if you look at the whole winter period so far, figures from Public Health England suggest that there have been fewer excess deaths among the over-65s than the year before, or in 2014-15 when the strain of flu used in vaccines turned out not to be as good a match as usual to the main strain circulating that winter.

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