Dead Pool 17th November 2024

Another pointless week, but time is ticking onwards with only a few weeks left to go! I know a few of you are already working on your lists for 2025, but if you are struggling to find inspiration, running through a few older newsletters will help you out.  

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• Roy Haynes, 99, American jazz drummer.  
• Song Jae-rim, 39, South Korean actor (The Idle Mermaid, Our Gap-soon, Goodbye Mr. Black) and model. 
• Timothy West, 90, English actor (Hedda, EastEnders) and television presenter (Great Canal Journeys). 
• Shel Talmy, 87, American record producer (“You Really Got Me“, “My Generation“, “Friday on My Mind“), complications from a stroke. 
• Jon Kenny, 66, Irish comedian and actor (The Banshees of Inisherin, Les Misérables, Father Ted). 

In Other News

Davina McCall has announced she is undergoing surgery to remove a brain tumour. The TV presenter and Masked Singer judge is having the operation to remove a 14mm benign brain tumour, which she discovered during a recent health scan. She shared the news in an Instagram post on Friday, revealing she had a colloid cyst that affects only three in a million people. In a new video posted to her Instagram account, McCall explained: “A few months ago I did a menopause talk for a company and they offered me a health scan in return, which I thought I was going to ace, but it turned out I had a benign brain tumour called a colloid cyst, which is very rare.” McCall explained that upon learning about the tumour, she put her “head in the sand for a while” but then sought out advice from neurosurgeons and got different opinions. “I realised that I have to get it taken out,” she said. “It’s big for the space – it fills the space. It’s 14mm wide. And it needs to come out because if it grows it would be bad.” The presenter will undergo a craniotomy – a surgical procedure to remove part of the skull to access the brain – to take out the cyst. “Say a prayer for me,” she said. McCall’s partner Michael Douglas then arrived in the video to assure fans he was taking care of her, and that she would be “off the grid” until she recovers. She will be in hospital for nine days in total. “I’m just letting people know that I will have my eye on her throughout the procedure,” said Douglas, before joking, “In fact, I offered to do the operation to make sure it was done properly – but they won’t let me.” McCall remarked they had both “been through a lot” but they remained in good spirits. “I’m going to be off my phone for a while, so Michael might fill you in,” she added. She assured fans that she is in good hands, and that she has total faith in her surgeon and his team. “I’m handing the reins over to my surgeon, he knows what he’s doing and I’m going to do the getting better bit after,” McCall said. “I’ll see you on the other side.” According to the London Neurology Partnership, colloid cysts are small fluid-filled sacs located in or around the lateral and third ventricle of the brain.  

Full House star Dave Coulier has revealed that he has been diagnosed with a “very aggressive” form of stage 3 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The 65-year-old actor, who starred as Joey Gladstone on the hit ABC sitcom, shared the news during an appearance on the Today show on Wednesday. Coulier said he first discovered symptoms several months ago when he got a cold and then found a large lump on his groin. “It swelled up immediately,” he recalled. “I thought, ‘Wow, I’m either really sick, or my body’s really reacting to something.’” He visited the doctor, who shared the shocking diagnosis with him just five weeks ago. “The first thing I said to them was, ‘Wait a minute – cancer?’” he said. “I was feeling like I got punched in the stomach because it never happens to you. You always hear about it happening to someone else.” Non-Hodgkins lymphoma is a form of cancer that affects the white blood cells, causing them to grow abnormally and can form tumours throughout the body. Stage 3 typically means that the cancer is large and may have spread to surrounding tissues or lymph nodes. Coulier said he started undergoing rounds of chemotherapy two weeks ago. He shared that he has six rounds of chemo every three weeks and is expected to wrap up treatment by February. “You hear chemo, and it scares the daylights out of you,” he said. “The first round was pretty intense because you don’t know what to expect. You don’t know how you’re going to feel. Is this going to hit me immediately? Is it going to be devastating? Am I going to walk out of here?” Describing treatment as “a bit of a roller coaster,” he said: “There are days where I feel unbelievable. Then there’s other days where… I’m just going to lay down and let this be what it’s going to be. Some days are nauseous and dizzy, and then there’s other days where the steroids kick in, and I feel like I have a ton of energy,” he added. “I actually skated yesterday with some friends here in Detroit. We just went and skated around and shot pucks, and it was wonderful just to be out there doing something that I love and just trying to stay focused on all the great stuff that I have in my life.” Coulier praised his wife, Melissa Bring Coulier, for her support, sharing that she “organised his entire life, from nutrition to the doctor’s appointments to pills.” 

Dolly Parton’s brother, David, has died. Their sister, Stella Parton, paid tribute to him on social media. Stella announced the sad news via Twitter  on Friday, saying her wonderful brother had passed away, adding it’s never easy to lose a loved one, but she knows David is now at peace. The Farrar Funeral Home in White Pine, Tennessee posted his obituary to their website, confirming he passed away peacefully at home. No cause of death was included. While Dolly doesn’t often talk about her family, she has expressed gratitude for their continued support of her career through the years. David was the second-oldest sibling of the 11 Parton kids. His living brothers and sisters include Willadeene, 84, Coy, 81, Dolly, Robert Jr., 76, Stella, Cassie, 73, Freida, 67, and Rachel, 65. He had three other siblings, Randy, Larry and Floyd, who all died before him. It comes just under four years after the death of Randy, at the age of 67, from cancer. Dolly, aged 78, said on behalf of her family at the time: “My brother Randy has lost his battle with cancer. The family and I are grieving his loss but we know he is in a better place than we are at this time.”

On This Day

• 1894 – H. H. Holmes, one of the first modern serial killers, is arrested in Boston, Massachusetts. 
• 1947   – American scientists John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain observe the basic principles of the transistor, a key element for the electronics revolution of the 20th century.
• 2019 – The first known case of COVID-19 is traced to a 55-year-old man who had visited a market in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China.

Deaths

• 1917 – Auguste Rodin, French sculptor and illustrator (b. 1840).
• 1940 – Eric Gill, English sculptor and typeface designer (b. 1882).
• 1968 – Mervyn Peake, English poet, author, and illustrator (b. 1911).

Last Words

A war criminal had some chilling final words before he drank poison in court and died by suicide.

It’s not often that you can say that you actually heard someone’s last words, especially in such a setting. But those who were in the room with Slobodan Praljak will never be able to forget.

It was on 29th November 2017 in a United Nations courtroom for an appeal hearing for Praljak’s 20-year jail sentence that he ended his own life.

The ex-commander of Bosnian Croat forces had been sent down for war crimes after being convicted of crimes against humanity in 2013. However, the appeals judge was not going to be lenient on him.  Once the judge confirmed the 72-year-old’s long and hard sentence, he took his own life, right in front of those in attendance, and the cameras.

You can see how he looked moments before he uttered his last words, as he fiddled with a bottle in his hands. Praljak went on to claim that he was innocent and then drank from the small bottle containing potassium cyanide before collapsing.

According to the Flying Monkeys, the former commander of Bosnian Croat military forces shouted for all to hear: “Slobodan Praljak is not a war criminal. I am rejecting the court ruling.”  He then tipped his head back and quickly drank the liquid.

All of this was streamed live from the court’s website, and anyone could have witnessed him collapsing. Praljak died two hours later in a Dutch hospital, but one questioned remained: How did he manage to get the bottle inside of court?  Nobody actually knows.

In 2018, Dutch prosecutors ended their investigation into Praljak’s suicide after an investigation had been launched into how the war criminal was able get it into the UN courtroom. The Hague Public Prosecution Service concluded in a statement that they could not find out ‘in what way and at what point in time Mr Praljak had obtained the potassium cyanide he used’.

Surveillance footage from court also led to nothing after police and prosecutors reviewed it and interviewed witnesses. The also searched his UN cell and found that there were no criminal offences committed in his bid to die by suicide.

According to reports, Praljak left a handwritten ‘farewell letter’ to his family, which was left in his cell at the UN Detention Unit, where he resided for years while he waited for the outcome of his 1992-95 Bosnian war crimes. It is said to have been written two years before he killed himself. It told his wife and step-children that he didn’t want a funeral, but did want his ashes to be scattered over a cemetery in the Croatian capital of Zagreb.

Prosecutors shared that he wrote ‘that he had already decided to put an end to his life a long time ago, should he be found guilty’.

Last Week’s Birthdays

Martin Scorsese (82), Rachel McAdams (46), Tom Ellis (46), Danny DeVito (80), Sophie Marceau (58), Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (66), Kerry Godliman (51), RuPaul (64), Missi Pyle (52), Maggie Gyllenhaal (47), Pete Davidson (31), Martha Plimpton (54), Lisa Bonet (57), Gemma Atkinson (40), Jonny Lee Miller (52), Beverly D’Angelo (73), Olga Kurylenko (45), Sandahl Bergman (73), Paul McGann (65), Whoopi Goldberg (69), Gerard Butler (55), Neil Young (79), Max Grodénchik (72), Wallace Shawn (81), Ryan Gosling (44), Anne Hathaway (42), Calista Flockhart (60), Richard Dormer (55), Stanley Tucci (64), Leonardo DiCaprio (50), and Demi Moore (62).