Dead Pool 5th October 2025

Let’s begin by issuing the points! 82 points to Paula H for correctly predicting that Patrick Murray would succumb to cancer this year. 59 points go to Sarai for guessing that Jane Goodall would die; and 54 points to Nicki H, Nicki O’H, Laura, Fiona, Julia and Abigail for the passing of Patricia Routledge. Well done everyone, quite a lot of point scoring there!

Look Who You Could Have Had:

Sir Terry Farrell, 87, British architect and urban designer.
Patrick Murray, 68, English actor (Only Fools and Horses, Scum, Quadrophenia), lung cancer.
Joshua Allen, 36, American dancer (So You Think You Can Dance) and actor, hit by train.
Renato Casaro, 89, Italian film poster artist (My Name Is Nobody, Conan the Barbarian, Octopussy), bronchopneumonia.
Dame Jane Goodall, 91, English zoologist and primatologist, founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and Roots & Shoots.
Dame Patricia Routledge, 96, English actress (Keeping Up Appearances, Hetty Wainthropp Investigates, Darling of the Day).

In Other News

Dolly Parton is pressing pause on working 9 to 5. The “Jolene” singer announced earlier in the week that she needs to postpone her upcoming Las Vegas concerts due to medical concerns. “As many of you know, I have been dealing with some health challenges, and my doctors tell me that I must have a few procedures,” she shared on Instagram. “As I joked with them, it must be time for my 100,000-mile check-up, although it’s not the usual trip to see my plastic surgeon!” As she prepares to undergo the unspecified operations, the 79-year-old said she’s pushing the dates of her performances from December 2025 to September 2026. “In all seriousness, given this, I am not going to be able to rehearse and put together the show that I want you to see, and the show that you deserve to see,” Parton continued. “You pay good money to see me perform, and I want to be at my best for you. While I’ll still be able to work on all of my projects from here in Nashville, I just need a little time to get show ready, as they say.” But for those concerned she may be retiring soon, Parton went on to set the record straight. “Don’t worry about me quittin’ the business because God hasn’t said anything about stopping yet,” she added. “But, I believe He is telling me to slow down right now so l can be ready for more big adventures with all of you. I love you and thank you for understanding.” While the country icon didn’t give further details on her health scare, she was recently forced to pull out of a Dollywood event after being diagnosed with a kidney stone that she said was causing “a lot of problems.” “Turned out it’d given me an infection,” she told fans, “and the doctor said, ‘You don’t need to be traveling right this minute, so you need a few days to get better.’” On top of her own medical concerns, Parton has been going through a difficult period following the death of her longtime husband Carl Dean in March. “Thank you for all the messages, cards and flowers that you’ve sent to pay your respects for the loss of my beloved husband Carl,” she wrote on social media at the time. “He is in God’s arms now and I am okay with that. I will always love you.”

Lola Young has said she will be cancelling her forthcoming shows “for the foreseeable future”, days after she collapsed on stage during a performance in New York. In a statement posted on social media on Tuesday, the 24-year-old singer said she was “going away for a while” and apologised to fans who had bought tickets for her tour. During a performance at the All Things Go music festival on Saturday, Young appeared to drop her microphone and fall backwards, sparking concern among fans and fellow performers. The following day she cancelled her Sunday slot at the festival held at Forest Hills Stadium in Washington DC. “I’m going away for a while. It pains me to say I have to cancel everything for the foreseeable future,” she wrote in an Instagram post on Tuesday. “Thank you for all the love and support. I’m so sorry to let anyone down who has bought a ticket to see me, it hurts me more than you know. Obviously you will be entitled to a full refund. I really hope you’ll give me a second chance once I’ve had some time to work on myself and come back stronger. Love you all, Lola x.” The south London singer had been due to embark on a UK tour in October, followed by tour dates in the US, Mexico and Canada in November and December. In videos posted on social media of Young performing her song Conceited at the All Things Go Festival, she looks uncomfortable before collapsing backwards onto the stage. Earlier in the set, she had described having “a tricky couple of days” due to a “sensitive matter”, but added: “Today I woke up and I made the decision to come here… sometimes life can throw you lemons and you just gotta make lemonade”. Young later reassured fans that she was “doing okay” and thanked them for their support. A day prior on Friday her team had cancelled a performance at New Jersey’s Prudential Centre.

Paul Danan’s will has been revealed after the star died aged 46 – along with the amount he left his ten-year-old son. The Hollyoaks actor, who played bad boy Sol Patrick from 1997 to 2001 on the Channel 4 soap, was found dead on a sofa with the TV on at his home in the Brislington area of Bristol, on January 15th. Mr Danan, who was later known for his reality TV appearances, including on Celebrity Big Brother and Celebrity Love Island, died from a cocktail of drugs including cocaine and heroin. And it has now emerged the reality TV star left over £400,000 in his will – mostly to his beloved young son DeNiro, who was born in 2015. Documents show his estate was worth £438,237 at the time of his death, with a net value of £421,737 after any debts and expenses were paid. He left £30,000 to each of his two brothers, Jamie and Joshua Danan, and £20,000 to Emma Devries, described as the guardian of his only child. The star left the rest of the estate in trust to his son, stipulating he will inherit the cash when he reaches 21. It is believed he co-parented him alongside a former partner. The troubled star had been open about his struggles with addiction, previously telling of how he experimented with ecstasy from the age of 14 and survived a heroin overdose in 2007. Danan said by 2022, he had been to rehab 17 times and had spent ‘about £1million on rehab and recovery’. His girlfriend Melissa Crooks raised the alarm about him earlier this year when she had not heard from him after they had been out together for a ‘couple of drinks’ in the early hours of January 14th. A neighbour then used a ladder to gain entry to his first-floor flat where Danan was found dead. He was found slumped at the edge of the sofa with the TV still on, the inquest at Avon Coroner’s Court in Flax Bourton, near Bristol, heard. Emergency services attended the scene and he was pronounced dead at 5.20pm on January 15th. His body was identified at the property by Ms Crooks. A postmortem examination concluded his death was due to combined toxicity of heroin, methadone, codeine, pregabalin, cocaine and zopiclone, contributed to by benzodiazepine use.

A British teenager who was jailed in Dubai after having sex with a UK tourist has been killed in a car crash – just months after being set free following a royal pardon. Marcus Fakana, 19, died in Tottenham, north London, at around 1am on Friday after a car he was a passenger in failed to stop when being blue-lighted by the Metropolitan Police. Officers say they ‘temporarily lost sight of the vehicle’ after tailing it for around 60 seconds, before discovering its involvement in a huge smash with another car at The Roundway. Marcus was left seriously injured as a result of the crash and received first aid treatment at the scene, but he died shortly after being rushed to hospital. The driver, a man also aged 19, was arrested after the crash on suspicion of failure to stop and dangerous driving. He remains in police custody. Marcus’s death came exactly three months after he was released from prison in the Gulf state, thanks to a pardon from Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. He was arrested and sentenced to one year in a maximum-security prison last year over a consensual holiday relationship with another British tourist who was just a few months younger than himself – a fact he was not aware of at the time. The girl was one month away from turning 18, but sex with anyone under the age of 18 is an offence in Dubai. They met when both their families were staying at a luxury hotel.

On This Day

1887 – A fire at the Theatre Royal, Exeter kills 186, making it the UK’s deadliest ever building fire.
1972 – Munich massacre: A Palestinian terrorist group called “Black September” attacks and takes hostage 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games. Two die in the attack and nine are murdered the following day.
1975 – Lynette Fromme attempts to assassinate U.S. President Gerald Ford.
1977 – Voyager Program: NASA launches the Voyager 1 spacecraft. As of September 2025 it has reached a distance of 15.6 billion miles which is still a year away from a distance of one light day.
1981 – The first women arrive at what becomes Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp in the UK.
2022 – Liz Truss is declared the winner of the UK Conservative Party leadership election, beating Rishi Sunak. It doesn’t go well for her.

Deaths