Dead Pool 4th October 2020

Welcome poolers! Another week passes, sadly Trump is still alive as we speak, but who knows what will happen… I thought I’d let you know that if you had the prescience to have listed Archie Lyndhurst as a Maverick you could have scored 231 points. 

Look Who You Could Have Had:

In Other News

Trump entered his third day in the hospital today after contracting the coronavirus and falling ill last week, even as confusing and contradictory accounts about his medical condition added to the general lack of concern for the 74-year-old president’s well-being. Seeking to project an optimistic image to the world, President Trump released a four-minute video on Saturday evening from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., to say that he is “starting to feel good” and would “be back soon.”  Even  though he looked like he’d been bitch slapped by Dolly Parton’s untethered tits. Wearing a blue jacket, cuff links and an American flag pin but no necktie, the president looked much paler than he did during his debate in Cleveland on Tuesday with former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Thanking the staff at Walter Reed, Mr. Trump said that he “wasn’t feeling so well.” But that optimism was not shared by everyone close to the president and just a few hours earlier, Mark Meadows, the president’s chief of staff, had offered a darker picture. “The president’s vitals over the last 24 hours were very concerning,” Mr. Meadows said. “And the next 48 hours will be critical in terms of his care.” Many doctors stressed the critical period of time — about seven to 10 days after infection — when a patient’s condition can take a turn for the worse. Some people respond to an infection with an overly exuberant immune response that can worsen their illness and in this case hopefully prove fatal.  

The first person cured of HIV – Timothy Ray Brown – has died from cancer. Mr Brown, who was also known as “the Berlin patient”, was given a bone marrow transplant from a donor who was naturally resistant to HIV. It meant he no longer needed anti-viral drugs and he remained free of the virus, which can lead to Aids, for the rest of his life. The International Aids Society said Mr Brown gave the world hope that an HIV cure was possible. Mr Brown, 54, who was born in the US, was diagnosed with HIV while he lived in Berlin in 1995. Then in 2007 he developed a type of blood cancer called acute myeloid leukaemia. His treatment involved destroying his bone marrow, which was producing the cancerous cells, and then having a bone marrow transplant. The transfer came from a donor that had a rare mutation in part of their DNA called the CCR5 gene. CCR5 is a set of genetic instructions that build the doorway that human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) walks through to infect cells. Mutations to CCR5 essentially lock the door and give people resistance to HIV. After the treatment, levels of HIV in Mr Brown’s blood fell to undetectable levels and he no longer needed anti-retroviral therapy. He was in effect “cured”. But the leukaemia, that led to his HIV cure, returned earlier this year and spread to his brain and spinal cord. “It is with great sadness that I announce that Timothy passed away… surrounded by myself and friends, after a five-month battle with leukaemia,” his partner Tim Hoeffgen posted on Facebook. He added: “Tim committed his life’s work to telling his story about his HIV cure and became an ambassador of hope.” Mr Brown’s cure was too risky and aggressive to be used routinely – it remains principally a cancer treatment. The approach is also too expensive for the 38 million people, many in sub-Saharan Africa, thought to be living with an HIV infection.    

Brian May has described recovery as a “long climb back” after suffering a heart attack earlier this year. The Queen guitarist previously said that he was “very near death” after being admitted to hospital in May. Doctors discovered that three of his arteries to be blocked and in danger of stopping the blood supply to his heart. “It is a long climb back,” May, 73, told The Dead Pool of his health. “I’ve had complications due to the drugs I’m on, one of which was a stomach explosion that nearly killed me.” May, who still performs with Queen + Adam Lambert, admitted that he had been baffled by the heart attack, which was a symptom of an arterial disease. “I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t have high cholesterol and I was exercising through the tour, so why did it happen?”, he questioned. “At least I now have a heart that is working far better than it was.” May initially told fans about the incident after admitting to ripping his buttock muscles while gardening. “In the middle of the whole saga of the painful backside, I had a small heart attack,” he said. “I say small – it’s not something that did me any harm. It was about 40 minutes of pain in the chest and tightness and that feeling in the arms and sweating.” May said he turned down open heart surgery and instead opted to have three stents put in.  

Elvington Airfield has struck again! The former RAF base near York, famously the scene of Richard Hammond scraping his head into the concrete whilst driving a jet powered car upside down. He suffered serious brain injuries when he crashed at almost 300mph, some might say he made a full recovery. Back to this week though, Zef Eisenberg, a millionaire fitness firm founder was killed attempting a British land speed record. Motorsport UK said the 47-year-old’s Porsche 911 Turbo S “went out of control at high speed at the end of a run” on Thursday. Guernsey-based Mr Eisenberg was involved in a “near-death” 230mph crash at the same airfield in 2016. Mr Eisenberg has now left behind his partner Mirella D’Antonio and two children. Sports nutrition firm Maximuscle said it was “devastated” at the news of the Mr Eisenberg’s death, who had “worked tirelessly” on his “brain child” during his ownership of the company before it was sold to pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline in 2011 for  £162m. Mr Eisenberg ran the Madmax Race Team, which attempts speed records with motorbikes and cars. Before his previous crash, in which he suffered 11 broken bones including his pelvis, he had set other speed records at the airfield. He returned to racing in 2017, despite concerns he would never walk again, now he’ll never se his wife and children again.  

On This Day

  • 1883 – First run of the Orient Express.  
  • 1927 – Gutzon Borglum begins sculpting Mount Rushmore. 
  • 1957 – Sputnik 1 becomes the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth.

Deaths

  • 1226 – Francis of Assisi (b. 1182)  
  • 1669 – Rembrandt, Dutch painter and illustrator (b. 1606)  
  • 1947 – Max Planck, German physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1858)  
  • 1970 – Janis Joplin, American singer-songwriter (b. 1943) 
  • 1989 – Graham Chapman, English actor and screenwriter (b. 1941)

Of Funerals and Pythons

Graham Chapman was an English comedian, writer, actor, author, and one of the six members of the British surreal comedy group Monty Python. In his personal life, Chapman was openly homosexual and a strong supporter of gay rights, and was in a long-term partnership with David Sherlock. He was an alcoholic during his time at Cambridge and the Python years, but quit drinking shortly before working on Life of Brian and remained sober for the rest of his life. 

In 1988, Chapman made a routine visit to a dentist, who found a small but malignant tumour on one of his tonsils, leading to both being removed via a tonsillectomy. The following year, the cancer had spread into Chapman’s spinal cord, where another tumour was surgically removed. Chapman had several chemotherapy treatments and surgeries during the final months of his life, but ultimately the cancer was declared inoperable. According to his brother, Chapman was visibly upset by the death of his mother that July, by which time he was terminally ill. Shortly afterwards, Chapman filmed scenes for the 20th anniversary of the first broadcast of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, the final time he appeared on television. 

Chapman died on 4th October 1989 in Maidstone Hospital. At the time of his death, he was being visited by Sherlock, brother John and his sister-in-law, and fellow Pythons Palin and Cleese, the latter of whom had to be led out of the room to deal with his grief. Peter Cook had intended to visit, but arrived too late and was visibly shaken by the news. 

The five surviving Python members had decided to stay away from Chapman’s private funeral to prevent it from becoming a media circus and to give his family some privacy. They sent a wreath in the shape of the Python foot, with the message: “To Graham from the other Pythons with all our love. PS: Stop us if we’re getting too silly”. The Rolling Stones also sent a floral arrangement, saying “Thanks for all the laughs.”  

A public memorial service was held at St. Bartholomew’s on 3 December, two months after his death. The service began with a chorus of the hymn “Jerusalem” sung in Engrish with a mock Chinese accent. Cleese delivered a eulogy to Chapman with shock humour that he believed Chapman would have appreciated, and later became the first person at a televised British memorial service to say “fuck”. Palin also delivered a eulogy to Chapman, as did Idle, quipping that Chapman had decided to die rather than listen to Palin once again. Idle led the other surviving Pythons and Chapman’s close friends and family in a rendition of the song “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life“, from Life of Brian, and later closed his remarks by saying: “I’d just like to be the last person at this meeting to say ‘fuck’.” 

Ten years after Chapman’s death, his ashes were first rumoured to have been “blasted into the skies in a rocket” with assistance from the Dangerous Sports Club. In a second rumour, Chapman’s ashes had been scattered on the mountains of Snowdonia, Wales, where he had visited regularly as a climber.

Week’s Birthdays

Melissa Benoist (32), Dakota Johnson (31), Alicia Silverstone (44), Christoph Waltz (64), Susan Sarandon (74), Liev Schreiber (53), Sarah Lancashire (56), Nick Mohammed (40), Alicia Vikander (32), Denis Villeneuve (53), Lena Headey (47), Neve Campbell (47), Clive Owen (56), Seann William Scott (44), Gwen Stefani (51), Tommy Lee (58), Greg Proops (61), Avery Brooks (72), Sting (69), Ian McNeice (70), Brie Larson (31), Julie Andrews (85), Zach Galifianakis (51), Randy Quaid (70), Monica Bellucci (56), Kieran Culkin (38), Omid Djalili (55), Ian Ogilvy (77), Erika Eleniak (51), Ian McShane (78), Mackenzie Crook (49), Luke Goss (52), Naomi Watts (52), Hilary Duff (33), Hana Mae Lee (32), Jeffrey Jones (74), Brigitte Bardot (86), and Dita Von Teese (48).

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