Dead Pool 22nd October 2017

Afternoon everyone! Another edition hits the stands, alas no points to award this week. We are now on the 10-week countdown and things are still pretty tight at the top of the leader board, one death of a Cert/Woman/Maverick is all that is needed to clinch the top spot for many of you. If you haven’t already, now is a good time to start researching your list for 2018 and also tell your friends, as the more people who take part, the more fun it can be.

Look Who You Could Have Had:

  • Roy Dotrice, 94, British actor (Amadeus, A Moon for the Misbegotten, Game of Thrones), Tony winner (2000).
  • Sean Hughes, 51, Irish comedian (Never Mind the Buzzcocks, Sean’s Show) and actor (The Last Detective).
  • Gord Downie, 53, Canadian musician (The Tragically Hip) and activist (Lake Ontario Waterkeeper, residential school reconciliation), glioblastoma.
  • Brent Briscoe, 56, American actor (Twin Peaks, A Simple Plan, Sling Blade) and screenwriter.
  • Umberto Lenzi, 86, Italian film director (Cannibal Ferox, Nightmare City, Ghosthouse).
  • Honorine Rondello, 114, French supercentenarian, nation’s oldest living person.
  • Rosemary Leach, 81, English actress (A Room with a View, The Roads to Freedom, The Plague Dogs).
  • Judith McGrath, 70, Australian actress (Prisoner, A Country Practice, All Saints).

In Other News

Ginger pop star Ed Sheeran has broken his right arm, putting his upcoming tour dates in jeopardy. “I’ve had a bit of a bicycle accident,” wrote the star on his Instagram page, posting a picture of his arm in a cast. “I’m currently waiting on some medical advice, which may affect some of my upcoming shows. Please stay tuned for further news.” The 26-year-old was on a break from his world tour, but was due to resume with a gig in Taipei next week. He has a further 14 dates scheduled this year, including concerts in Japan, South Korea and Thailand, before kicking off the Australian leg of his tour in March 2018.    Sheeran famously plays his concerts solo – using just a guitar and a loop pedal to layer up songs. Losing the use of his right arm would make such a set-up impractical – but, speaking to BBC News earlier this year, Sheeran said he would never consider playing with a backing band because he’s a wanker who wants all the glory for himself. “I don’t feel like there’s anything interesting or new about seeing a singer-songwriter with a band behind them,” he said, sure The Beatles had nothing going for them… “I don’t feel like if I suddenly got a band, everyone would go, ‘Wow!’. I actually feel it’d take away from me.” Yeah, more talented musicians on the stage….

In another bike related event, but a bit more hardcore than falling off your bloody bycycle, Gerard Butler was rushed to hospital after he got run off the road on his motorbike. The Hollywood actor was riding his motorbike on the streets of LA when he got cut up by a woman trying to park her car.  She reversed into his bike and he “did a somersault about 30ft in the air”. The 47-year-old actor revealed he has five fractures in his right foot and a fracture in his left foot, along with a painful knee injury. “The more I think about it I got quite lucky because I went through the air. I did like 30 feet and did a somersault and smashed right down. “I guess I could have landed a lot of ways that it could have gone went worse. I got a few fractures on my feet and I messed up my knee.” Not only this, he actually put himself into anaphylactic shock after injecting himself with the venom of 23 bee stings.  Butler told the ITV chat show Lorraine: “I had heard of this guy injecting bee venom, because apparently it has many anti-inflammatory compounds. So, I’m like: ‘Come, come to New Orleans where we’re filming.’ So, he gives me a shot, and I go: ‘Oh, that’s interesting’ – because it stings. “Then he gives me 10 shots, and then I have the worst reaction. I kind of enter this anaphylactic shock. It’s awful, creepy crawlies all over me, swelled up, heart’s going to explode. But I go through it, and then I find out he gave me 10 times too much.” Butler was immediately taken to hospital, but admitted that four days later he decided to give the remedy another go. “I decide to do it again because, I think: ‘Maybe I just took too much.’ So, he’s on the phone, and this time I have to go to the hospital [again].” Bee stings have been used as a remedy, known as apitherapy, for centuries, initially by placing live bees on inflamed areas and in more modern times by extracting the venom from the living bees and injecting it. Jeff Goldblum, a guest with Butler on BBC1’s The Graham Norton Show, gently mocked the Scot’s use of the remedy. “I’ve done some cockamamie things in my time but that is crazy,” he said.

Wildlife TV presenter and comedian Bill Oddie has been struck with a health condition that makes him hear music in his left ear. The acclaimed conservationist keeps hearing jumbled brass band tunes and bagpipe solos. The phenomenon, a form of tinnitus, is rarely reported because people fear the symptoms are a sign of a psychiatric illness or dementia. Other people with the condition have heard rock music or HMS Pinafore, the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta. The 76-year-old former Goodie and presenter of the BBC’s Springwatch said: “It has been going on for about four months and there is no pattern to when or why it starts. It’s a military-style band of the 1940s but not as nice as a Glenn Miller swing sound. “It varies quite a bit and it is difficult to distinguish a tune but nearly every day it involves a bagpipe solo. “At the moment I can live with it but I’d rather not. I’m intrigued and wonder how many other people have experienced something similar.” Bill first noticed the sounds earlier this year while working in the office at his London home. He added: “I thought someone had left the radio on so I followed the noise but it wascoming with me,  which was weird.”Dr Will Sedley, a lecturer in neurology at Newcastle University, said: “It is more common than you might think although we believe it goes unreported because people are worried that they will be thought of as going mad. But this is a stand-alone condition and not normally a feature of any wider disorder such as dementia.” The true horror of what is actually happening to him is pictured to the right.

On This Day

  • 1917 – Lenin calls for the October Revolution.
  • 1929 – Wall Street Crash of 1929. After a steady decline in stock market prices since a peak in September, the New York Stock Exchange begins to crash.
  • 1958 – The Smurfs, a fictional race of blue dwarves, later popularised in a Hanna-Barbera animated cartoon series, appear for the first time in the story La flute à six schtroumpfs.  
  • 2002 – Moscow theater hostage crisis: Chechen terrorists seize the House of Culture theatre in Moscow and take approximately 700 theatre-goers hostage.
  • 2012 – After 38 years, the world’s first teletext service (BBC’s Ceefax) ceases broadcast due to Northern Ireland completing the digital switchover.

Deaths

  • 1915 – W. G. Grace, English cricketer and physician (b. 1848)
  • 1950 – Al Jolson, Lithuanian-American actor and singer (b. 1886)
  • 1957 – Christian Dior, French fashion designer, founded Christian Dior S.A. (b. 1905)
  • 2001 – Josh Kirby, English illustrator (b. 1928)
  • 2014 – Alvin Stardust, English singer and actor (b. 1942)
  • 2016 – Pete Burns, English singer-songwriter (b. 1959)

Last Week’s Birthdays

Christopher Lloyd (78), Jeff Goldblum (64), Bob Odenkirk (54), Catherine Deneuve (73), Derek Jacobi (78), Jesse Tyler Ferguson (41), Everett McGill (72), Ken Watanabe (58), Kim Kardashian West (37), Viggo Mortensen (59), Danny Boyle (61), Snoop Dogg (46), Michael Gambon (77), John Lithgow (72), John le Carré (86), Zac Efron (30), Jean-Claude Van Damme (57), Pam Dawber (66), Eminem (45), Margot Kidder (69), Mark Gatiss (51), George Wendt (69), Angela Lansbury (92), Tim Robbins (59), Suzanne Somers (71), Peter Bowles (81) and Gary Kemp (58).

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