Dead Pool 24th December 2017

Welcome to the penultimate edition of the 2017 Dead Pool. With one week left to go, things are really tight at the top of the league table, one death could swing the result. Those of you at the top echelon of the table should start wishing for an errant turkey bone if you want to win or perhaps we should unleash the evil flying monkeys once more, just out of spite.

Again, thank you all who have donated towards the running costs, it’s most appreciated and keep working on those lists for 2018!

Look Who You Could Have Had:

  • Sharon Laws, 43, British racing cyclist, cervical cancer.
  • Keely Smith, 89, American singer (“That Old Black Magic”, “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”, “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen”), Grammy winner (1959), heart failure.
  • Terence Beesley, 60, British actor (EastEnders, The Phantom of the Opera, War & Peace).
  • Bruce McCandless II, 80, American astronaut (STS-41-B).
  • Leon Bernicoff, 83, British reality show participant (Gogglebox).
  • Bob Givens, 99, American animator (Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry, Garfield and Friends).
  • Heather North, 71, American actress (Scooby-Doo, Days of Our Lives, The Barefoot Executive), cardiac arrest.

In Other News

Peru’s former President Alberto Fujimori has been taken from prison to a hospital because of low blood pressure and abnormal heart rhythm. His doctor was quoted by local media as saying cardiologists had advised the 79-year-old needed urgent treatment. Fujimori – who was in power from 1990 to 2000 – is serving a 25-year sentence for human rights abuses. He is admired by some Peruvians for combating Maoist rebels. His critics consider him a corrupt dictator. In 2007, Fujimori was sentenced to six years in jail for bribery and abuse of power. In 2009, he was sentenced to another 25 years in prison for human rights abuses committed during his time in office, including authorising killings carried out by death squads. He has been in and out of hospital for a variety of health problems in recent years.

After years of speculation that Val Kilmer had been dealing with health issues, the actor decided to finally open up about what exactly he’s been going through. Kilmer’s two-year fight with throat cancer has “taken its toll,” he told our Dead Pool reporter, the procedure on his trachea has made his voice raspy and left him short of breath. Confusion has surrounded the state of the actor’s health since he denied Michael Douglas’s claim that he had cancer in a November 2016. Kilmer elaborated on his denial. “(Douglas) was probably trying to help me ’cause press probably asked where I was these days and I did have a healing of cancer, but my tongue is still swollen altho (sic) healing all the time,” he wrote. “Because I don’t sound my normal self yet people think I may still be under the weather.”

John McCain has been hospitalised yet again as he continues to undergo cancer treatment. “As ever, he remains grateful to his physicians for their excellent care, and his friends and supporters for their encouragement and good wishes,” McCain’s staff said in a statement on Wednesday, via The Hill. “Senator McCain looks forward to returning to work as soon as possible.” McCain, 81, is looking increasingly frail and it’s said he has not spoken up in recent GOP meetings the way he had before. One source said that McCain always used to speak up in these meetings, and that he hasn’t at all recently. The source was not commenting on McCain’s mental acuity, but on his energy level, and pointing out that his lack of participation was not normal. One well known side effect of cancer treatments is fatigue. McCain is five months into treatment for brain cancer. He was diagnosed in July with a primary glioblastoma, a type of brain tumour. He underwent surgery to remove a blood clot associated with the tumour at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, and lab results from that surgery confirmed the presence of brain cancer associated with the blood clot.

On This Day

  • -01 – A cheating wife and her carpenter husband fail to book accommodation in Bethlehem. Both end up in a stable and she pushes out a baby that became the cause of most wars in history and gave the clergy and excuse to molest children on an epic scale which was only rivalled by Gary Glitter visiting Vietnam and Jimmy Savile being employed at the BBC.
  • 1818 – The first performance of “Silent Night” takes place in the church of St. Nikolaus in Oberndorf, Austria.
  • 1865 – The Ku Klux Klan is formed.
  • 1913 – The Italian Hall disaster in Calumet, Michigan results in the deaths of 73 Christmas party participants (including 59 children) when someone falsely yells “fire”.
  • 1914 – World War I: The “Christmas truce” begins.
  • 1980 – Witnesses report the first of several sightings of unexplained lights near RAF Woodbridge, in Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, England, United Kingdom, an incident called “Britain’s Roswell”.

Deaths

Last Week’s Birthdays

Harry Shearer (74), Carla Bruni (50), Ralph Fiennes (55), Vanessa Paradis (45), Samuel L. Jackson (69), Jane Fonda (80), Kiefer Sutherland (51), Julie Delpy (48), Phil Donahue (82), Jonah Hill (34), Jenny Agutter (65), Nicole de Boer (47), Lucy Pinder (34), Jake Gyllenhaal (37), Alyssa Milano (45), Kristy Swanson (48), Jennifer Beals (54), Richard Hammond (48), Steven Spielberg (71), Brad Pitt (54), Katie Holmes (39), Ray Liotta (63), Christina Aguilera (37), Sia (42), Robson Green (53), Keith Richards (74), Bill Pullman (64), Milla Jovovich (42), Laurie Holden (48), Ernie Hudson (72), Eugene Levy (71) and Bernard Hill (73).

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