Dead Pool 6th December 2015

With little over three weeks left, it looks like a two horse race at the top of the league table, but with this game, you never know. One well placed plane crash is all we need. Now, onto next year. Same rules and your lists need to be in by 31st December. I’ll try not to hassle you too much, I bet you hate it as much as I hate doing it. I’ve added a PDF of 2015’s lists in with the email to remind you all of who was listed, and please refer to the website if you need some more juicy names.

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• Wayne Bickerton, 74, British songwriter (“Nothing but a Heartache“, “Sugar Baby Love“), record producer, and music executive.
• Anthony Valentine, 76, British actor (Colditz, Coronation Street, Escape to Athena).
• Scott Weiland, 48, American musician (Stone Temple Pilots, Velvet Revolver, The Wondergirls).
• Robert Loggia, 85, American actor (Jagged Edge, Scarface, Big), Alzheimer’s disease.

In Other News

Sir Bruce Forsyth has pulled out of hosting the Strictly Come Dancing Christmas Special for health reasons. The veteran presenter underwent a procedure on an abdominal aortic aneurysm last month. The Christmas Day show is set to be recorded next week, but a BBC statement said it was too soon for Sir Bruce “to have made a full recovery”. “Due to the long studio hours, he is unable to host the show, but will still play a part in the production.” The presenter underwent extensive medical tests after suffering a fall at his home in October. He had keyhole surgery in November and was expected to make “a speedy recovery”. At the time, the BBC released a statement saying the 87-year-old “will still very much be a part of the Strictly Come Dancing Christmas Special”. Sir Bruce, who stepped down from the role in April 2014, was last seen taking the helm of the dancing competition for a Children In Need special on 13th November, recorded ahead of his operation.

British Sailing has announced that Elliot Willis has been diagnosed with bowel cancer. The 32-year-old partner of Luke Patience in the 470 class had already qualified for the Rio Olympics but is now set to have some time off the water. “Clearly it’s pretty shocking news to receive, as I’m sure anyone who’s been affected by a similar thing would understand,” Willis said. “It’s still my dream to win Olympic gold but right now my focus and energy needs to be on getting better. “My health is my No1 concern and I will take advice and recommendations of the medical professionals as they establish the right course of treatment for me.”  British Sailing has said it will find a new partner for Patience in the interim but hopes Willis will recover in time for Rio.

Psychiatrists believe Peter Sutcliffe, the man known as the Yorkshire Ripper, is no longer mentally ill and should be returned to jail, prison chiefs have confirmed. Michael Spurr, chief executive of the national offender management service, told MPs on Tuesday: “Clinicians outside make a determination about whether an individual still requires detention in a hospital. They have determined that this individual [Sutcliffe] does not. We will consider that and the decision will be made by the secretary of state on whether he should be moved back to prison.” Doctors have recommended that Sutcliffe, 69, is taken out of Broadmoor hospital, the high-security psychiatric unit, and moved into a specialist prison. Sutcliffe, who was given 20 life sentences for the murder of 13 women and the attempted murder of seven others, was moved to Broadmoor from Parkhurst jail in 1984 after he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Sutcliffe’s attacks provoked panic in the north of England between 1975 and 1980, and the police operation to catch him was the most extensive and controversial investigation of the 20th century. Let’s see how long he survives in general population…

Emma Morano, Europe’s oldest person and the second-oldest in the world, marked her 116th birthday by offering to sing her favourite song for visiting well-wishers, Italian media reported. Morano, one of only two women alive certified to have been born in the 19th century, reached the milestone on Sunday in her one-bedroom flat in Verbania, a small town in the Piedmont region of north-west Italy. Morano attributed her longevity to having left a violent husband in 1938, shortly after the death of her only child at seven months, and to eating three eggs a day – two of them raw. Susannah Mushatt Jones, the American who is the only other member of the 116 club, also attributes her longevity to many decades of living on her own, having been married for only five years between 1928-33. The Brooklyn resident is also a regular egg eater – although she prefers hers scrambled and served with four rashers of bacon.

On This Day

• 1768 – The first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica is published.
• 1865 – The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, banning slavery.
• 1884 – The Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., is completed.
• 1953 – Vladimir Nabokov completes his controversial novel Lolita.
• 1967 – Adrian Kantrowitz performs the first human heart transplant in the United States.
• 1969 – Meredith Hunter is killed by Hells Angels during a Rolling Stones concert at the Altamont Speedway in California.

Deaths

• 1972 – Janet Munro, English actress and singer (b. 1934)
• 1988 – Roy Orbison, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1936)
• 1993 – Don Ameche, American actor and singer (b. 1908)

Last Week’s Birthdays

Amanda Seyfried (30), Jay-Z (46), Jeff Bridges (66), Julianne Moore (55), Ozzy Osbourne (67), Britney Spears (34), Woody Allen (80), Bette Midler (70), Ben Stiller (50), Billy Idol (60), Don Cheadle (51), Sarah Silverman (45), Daryl Hannah (55), Lucy Liu (47), Frankie Muniz (30), Tyra Banks (42), Brendan Fraser (47), Nelly Furtado (37), Tom Sizemore (54), Diane Ladd (80), Joel Cohen (61), Geena Lee Nolin (44), Ridley Scott (78), Mandy Patinkin (63), John Densmore (71) and Nick Stahl (36).

Next week peeps!