Dead Pool 19th February 2023

This week sees the passing of the great Raquel Welch, obviously well liked as nobody listed her. Nil points all round! Let’s get on with it! 

Look Who You Could Have Had:

In Other News

Former US president Jimmy Carter will “spend his remaining time at home” receiving hospice care, it has been announced. The 98-year-old, who was president for one term between 1977 and 1981, made the decision after a series of hospital stays, the Carter Center announced on Saturday. “After a series of short hospital stays, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter today decided to spend his remaining time at home with his family and receive hospice care instead of additional medical intervention,” the Carter Center said in a statement. “He has the full support of his family and his medical team. The Carter family asks for privacy during this time and is grateful for the concern shown by his many admirers.” Mr Carter, a Democrat, became the 39th US president when he defeated former president Gerald Ford in 1976. He served a single term and was defeated by Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980. He is the oldest living former president in US history and still lives in a modest home in rural Plains, Georgia, a two-and-a-half hour drive south of Atlanta. Mr Carter had a small cancerous mass removed from his liver in 2015. And in 2016, he announced that he would need no further treatment as his cancer had been eliminated by an experimental drug. The other living former presidents are Donald Trump, 76; Barack Obama, 61; George W Bush, 76; Bill Clinton, 76. Mr Carter’s grandson, former Georgia state senator Jason Carter, took to Twitter to say that his grandparents were “at peace.” “I saw both of my grandparents yesterday. They are at peace and—as always—their home is full of love. Thank you all for your kind words,” he tweeted. The former president, a lifelong Baptist, told a church Sunday school congregation in 2019 that he was “at ease with death” following his cancer diagnosis.  “I, obviously, prayed about it. I didn’t ask God to let me live, but I just asked God to give me a proper attitude toward death. And I found that I was absolutely and completely at ease with death, it didn’t really matter to me whether I died or lived. I have, since that time, been absolutely confident that my Christian faith includes complete confidence in life after death. So, I’m going to live again after I die — Don’t know what form I’ll take, or anything.” 

Comedian Rhod Gilbert said he is “coming back” to his former self after undergoing treatment for head and neck cancer. He announced in July that he had stage four cancer and was being treated at the Velindre Cancer Centre in Cardiff, where he has been a fundraising patron. The 54-year-old from Carmarthen said his big recovery goal was leading a fundraising trek to Morocco in October. But he admitted he was “a little way off that at the moment”. In a pre-recorded video message for Channel 4’s The National Comedy Awards for Stand Up To Cancer, he explained how the cancer centre had been a “big part” of his life as a patron for 10 years. “So imagine my surprise when I was diagnosed with cancer… because I thought I’d have lifelong immunity,” he joked. He said he was in Cuba on a fundraising trek when he noticed a lump in his neck. “I had a sore throat and I couldn’t speak and I couldn’t breathe and I was postponing and cancelling tour shows and I had terrible spasms in my face and a lot of tightness in the muscles,” he said. “It turns out after a biopsy of this lump in my neck that I have something called head and neck cancer. Cancer of the head sounded pretty serious. So before I knew it, I was having surgery. I was in daily sessions of radiotherapy and chemotherapy.” He described his treatment as “faultless” and said he was “coming back” to his former self as his facial hair was regrowing, his voice was back to normal and he was regaining weight. His recovery goal was to lead the cancer centre’s fundraising trek to Mount Toubkal, in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains, the highest point in North Africa, in October, Gilbert added. “I’m a little way off that at the moment, but I am feeling optimistic and weirdly feeling really happy and really positive,” he said. In December, Gilbert has postponed a string of live shows after being told he needed additional surgery due gallstones and recurring gallbladder infections that “kick like a donkey”. 

Jonnie Irwin has issued an update on his health after  announcing at the end of last year he had been diagnosed with lung cancer. The popular Channel 4 presenter has taken to Instagram to inform 155,000 followers and fans that he is receiving Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy. The treatment involves a hyperbaric chamber which is highly pressurised, giving patients pure oxygen to breathe. Jonnie, 49, shared an image of the zip up portable chamber he was using after walking to the treatment centre in Newcastle. He captioned the snap: “And at the end of this walk…is this…hyperbaric oxygen therapy.” The dad-of-three and Dead Pool favourite has been very open about his health since he went public with his terminal cancer diagnosis in November 2022. In a recent interview with the Flying Monkeys, Jonnie revealed that he is getting his financial ducks in a row so he can secure the futures of his sons three year-old Rex and two year-old twins Rafa and Cormac. Speaking to the head monkey on Thursday, he said: “My experience will hopefully help people with a life-threatening disease and people who are dealing with these people. When you get diagnosed with something so serious, all control is taken away. “I wanted to take control back, so I did the usual weird diets and I also knew I had to look after my family. The moment you have family, your have this massive responsibility to look after them.” 

On This Day

  • 1878 – Thomas Edison patents the phonograph.
  • 1985 – William J. Schroeder becomes the first recipient of an artificial heart to leave the hospital.
  • 2012 – Forty-four people are killed in a prison brawl in Apodaca, Nuevo León, Mexico.

Deaths

  • 1994 – Derek Jarman, English director and set designer (b. 1942).
  • 2016 – Umberto Eco, Italian novelist, literary critic, and philosopher (b. 1932).
  • 2016 – Harper Lee, American author (b. 1926).
  • 2019 – Karl Lagerfeld, German fashion designer (b. 1933).

Father killed by ‘Violent Chicken’

A man has died of ‘massive bleeding’ while whispering ‘rooster’ after being attacked by aggressive bird at home in Ireland! 

Cancer survivor Jasper Kraus, who was living near Ballinasloe at the time, was killed on April 28th last year after he was attacked by a Brahma chicken. The 67-year-old Dutchman, formerly from The Hague, Netherlands, suffered a heart attack after the bird drove its spur into his leg, causing him to lose litres of blood.

Police officers and his daughter Virginia Guinan found Mr Kraus lying in a pool of blood from the wound on the back of his leg. His lodger said he was able to whisper the word ‘rooster’ as he lost and regained consciousness.

Paramedics performed CPR on the victim but their efforts were unsuccessful. 

Ms Guinan, 33, told an inquest into her father’s death that she raced to the house to find ambulance crews already at the grim scene, the flying monkeys reported.

She had been contacted by her father’s lodger, Corey O’Keeffe, who had been living with Mr Kraus for two years and looked after the animals.

Mr O’Keeffe had just returned home from a night shift at 8am. Before heading to bed, he fed the animals and greeted Mr Kraus. Not long after, the inquest heard, the tenant was woken by the Dutchman shouting ‘come quick’.

The lodger performed CPR for 25 minutes on the victim before an ambulance arrived.

Giving evidence, he said blood was coming out of Mr Kraus’s leg and that he noticed a large wound in the man’s calf and scratches on his other leg.

As he was falling in and out of consciousness, Mr Kraus told his tenant ‘rooster’, the inquest heard. He eventually lost so much blood that he suffered a heart attack.

Dr Annette Jennings told the inquest in a deposition read out at the hearing that paramedics were attempting to resuscitate Mr Kraus when she arrived at the scene in Killahornia, County Roscommon. He was pronounced dead at 3.24pm.

She said the circumstances around the man’s death were unusual on account of the wound being inflicted by a chicken. 

Dr Ramadan Shatwan, who carried out an autopsy on Mr Kraus, said the victim’s face was covered in dried blood but that no cuts on his face were found. He also told the inquest that his lower limbs were covered in dried blood.

The cause of death was due to lethal cardiac arrhythmia in the context of severe coronary atheroma and cardiomegaly, Dr Shatwan said.

Ms Guinan said when she arrived at her father’s house, she found her father in a pool of blood, with paramedics performing CPR.

She told the inquest that she followed the trail of blood to the Brahma chicken, which she said had blood on its claws.

The bereaved daughter said she knew it was the culprit because it had previously ‘attacked my daughter’. She told the inquest that she had wanted to get rid of the chicken, but that her father, who was a big animal lover, wanted to keep it.

‘My dad protested – he had too big of a heart and didn’t want me to get rid of the rooster, so dad took it instead,’ the newspaper reported.

Mr Kraus – a father of two and grandfather of two – was suffering from other health issues at the time of his death. He was in remission from cancer and coroner said his heart was ‘severely calcified’.

He had been outside visiting his dog’s grave when he was attacked.

Ms Guinan said the family knew her father’s heart ‘was bad’. She said she had to clean up his blood in the house after the attack and called for more support to be given to families who suffer from similar tragedies.

She also used the inquest as an opportunity to warn others of the dangers of owning chickens – even breeds considered safe such as the Brahma.

Mr Kraus is thought to be one of the few people in the world to die in such a way.

‘People should be aware of the signs and get rid of any bird as soon as they show signs of aggression,’ she told the inquest.

Last Week’s Birthdays

Millie Bobby Brown (19), Benicio Del Toro (56), Sam Reid (36), Ray Winstone (66), Jeff Daniels (68), Ophelia Lovibond (37), Seal (60), Leslie Ash (63), John Travolta (69), Molly Ringwald (55), Matt Dillon (59), Cybill Shepherd (73), Greta Scacchi (63), Dr. Dre (58), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (42), Denise Richards (52), Bonnie Wright (32), Rene Russo (69), Rory Kinnear (47), Lou Diamond Phillips (61), Brenda Fricker (78), Dominic Purcell (53), Paris Hilton (42), Patricia Routledge (94), Alejandro Jodorowsky (94), Barry Humphries (89), Michael Jordan (60), Ed Sheeran (32), Elizabeth Olsen (34), Christopher Eccleston (59), LeVar Burton (66), Amanda Holden (52), The Weeknd (33), John McEnroe (64), Jane Seymour (72), Matt Groening (69), Danai Gurira (45), Simon Pegg (53), Andrew Robinson (81), Teller (75), Neal McDonough (57), Mena Suvari (44), Stockard Channing (79), Tony Dalton (48), and Hugh Dennis (61).

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