Another pointless week, and apologies for the long read, but you might find it all very fascinating! Thanks as always to everyone who sends stories in, much appreciated.
Look Who You Could Have Had:
- Kipyegon Bett, 26, Kenyan middle-distance runner, renal and hepatic failure.
- Christopher Ciccone, 63, American dancer and interior designer, pancreatic cancer.
- Johnny Neel, 70, American musician (The Allman Brothers Band), heart failure.
- Johan Neeskens, 73, Dutch football player (Ajax, Barcelona, national team) and manager, heart attack.
- Nell Smith, 17, Canadian singer (The Flaming Lips), traffic collision.
- Nicholas Pryor, 89, American actor (Beverly Hills, 90210, Port Charles, Risky Business), cancer.
- Lily Ebert, 100, Hungarian-born British Holocaust survivor and writer.
- Ratan Tata, 86, Indian conglomerate industry executive, chairman of Tata Group.
- Ethel Kennedy, 96, American human rights advocate, founder of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, complications from a stroke.
- Jackmaster, 38, Scottish DJ, complications from a head injury.
- Alex Salmond, 69, Scottish politician, first minister (2007–2014).
In Other News
Terminally ill BBC DJ Johnnie Walker has shared “a very sad announcement” with his listeners. Walker, who has worked at the BBC since 1969, began his career at Radio 1 before moving to Radio 2 in 1998, where he currently hosts Sounds of the 70s and The Radio 2 Rock Show. However, the DJ, who was previously told he should “prepare to die at any moment”, is officially retiring at the end of October due to his declining health. Walker, 79, shared a message live on air on Sunday during the latest episode of Sounds of the 70s, in which he told his listeners: “The struggles I’ve had with doing the show and trying to sort of keep up a professional standard suitable for Radio 2 has been getting more and more difficult. “So I’ve had to make the decision that I need to bring my career to an end after 58 years. And so I’ll be doing my last Sounds of the 70s on 27th October.” Walker said he will “make the last three shows as good as I possibly can”. Back in June, the DJ suggested his popular radio show was keeping him alive, stating: “As long as I can keep doing the show I will. It gives me a purpose. If I stopped doing it I’d probably die a lot sooner. Since Walker was diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, an inflation of the lungs, he has been presenting his radio shows from his home in Dorset. Walker needs round-the-clock care and is being looked after, full-time, by his wife, Tiggy. The couple opened up about Walker’s terminal illness on BBC Sounds podcast, Walker and Walker: Johnnie and Tiggy, in honour of Carers Week back in June. In the special, the DJ opened up about having “only a finite amount of time left here in the physical before I pass over”, calling it “a very reflective time for us”. Walker, who was previously cared for by Tiggy when he was diagnosed with cancer shortly after their marriage in 2006, told his wife: “Here we are at the end of my life when you’re having to care for me all over again.”
Celebrity hairdresser Trevor Sorbie MBE has bravely announced he has terminal bowel cancer and that he ‘might not make it to Christmas’. The 75-year-old shared his heartbreaking news on This Morning last week, joined by his wife Carole in the studio. Trevor, who found out about his devastating diagnosis in June, revealed to hosts Cat Deeley and Ben Shephard that he had been given six months to live. The businessman said, “I lost a lot of blood one night and was unusually disturbed about that. I went to the hospital, and they told me I had bowel cancer.” Trevor shared the emotional turmoil that followed the diagnosis, including a panic attack that left him and Carole speechless. He explained, “I had a little panic attack and Carole and I looked at each other and we were just both speechless walking down the road… I didn’t know what to say.” Despite the initial shock, Trevor found temporary relief in a gin and tonic, confessing, “I went and had a big gin and tonic and that helped!” However, his challenges were far from over as the cancer soon spread to his liver. He said, “I had a six-hour operation, but it came back to my liver, had another operation, and now the major growth they won’t cut it out because it’s too close to a major blood vessel.” Despite the severity of his condition, Trevor’s resolve remains unshaken. He remarked, “The thing is with me, I never wake up thinking, ‘Oh poor me, I’ve got cancer,’ or feel sorry for myself.” Pointing to his stomach, Trevor continued: “I know I’ve got it here but I haven’t got it here,” and to his head, adding, “I’ve been going to work two days a week, up until two weeks ago. “I go there because that’s my medicine, that is my life. Sixty years I’ve worked passionately to achieve beyond my wildest dreams and when I go in, it’s my staff. I’ve had them for up to 30 years, they are like family, I’m just one of the team.”
On This Day
- 54 – Roman emperor Claudius dies from poisoning under mysterious circumstances. He is succeeded by his adoptive son Nero.
- 1792 – In Washington, D.C., the cornerstone of the United States Executive Mansion (known as the White House since 1818) is laid.
- 1908 – Margaret Travers Symons bursts into the UK parliament and becomes the first woman to speak there.
Deaths
The Best Way to Go
After languishing on Death Row for almost 25 years, convicted murderer Richard Moore now faces an agonising decision – choosing how he will be executed.
The 59-year-old American has less than a week to pick his fate for fatally shooting a shop assistant in Spartanburg County, South Carolina, during a botched robbery in September 1999.
Jail officials have told him he has three options: death by firing squad, electric chair or lethal injection. If he can’t make up his mind, he will be electrocuted by default on November 1st.
And as Moore mulls over how he will ultimately end his life, his Death Row dilemma has once again thrust the debate over state-sanctioned executions back into the spotlight.
Although deemed ‘humane’ methods of death, each of his options come with their own nightmarish risks, which could see Moore facing a tortuous and excruciatingly painful end.
Prisoners strapped to the electric chair have previously burst into flames, as their flesh melted away, blood ‘boiled’ and eyes ‘exploded in their skulls’. While those put to death by lethal injection were seen writhing in agony, taking an hour or more to die as the chemicals ravaged their insides.
And although death by firing squad is touted as perhaps one of the quickest ways of the three to die, with hearts stopping in some in around 15 seconds, it is messy – and poor shooting can lead to inmates slowly bleeding to death.
Now we delve into the brutal world of capital punishments – and which methods of execution are still being used today.
Lethal injection – First developed in the US in 1977, but now used in China and parts of Africa and Asia, the lethal injection is one of the most common methods of execution used today.
Condemned people are restrained before being injected with a series of drugs which will put them to sleep, stop their breathing and cause a fatal heart attack
First, the inmate is secured, strip-searched and monitored in the execution room. They are then usually plied with Midazolam, an anaesthetic intended to render them unconscious. Another has saline to flush it back out of the IV line. A dose is expected to take up to two minutes to kick in.
After five, officials check the patient is unconscious before applying bromide or equivalent. An anaesthesiologist told the Flying Monkeys if the inmate is not unconscious at this stage, the injection will ‘feel like they’re drowning’.
The condemned then receives a shot intended to paralyse them, followed by more saline. This stops them from moving – but also means they cannot communicate distress. Bromide would likely stop breathing.
After another couple of minutes, potassium chloride is usually injected to stop the heart. Conscious, an inmate might feel like their arm is on fire, an expert told us. Within a minute, this causes cardiac arrest and death.
The method is supposed to be a more ‘humane’ means of execution but has flaws. Miscalculations can leave patients conscious for an excruciating death. It took Joseph Lewis Clark nearly 90 minutes to die in 2006, and Joseph Wood required a two-hour procedure and as many as 15 shots before he died.
The nature of the procedure has caused some difficulty, requiring medical professionals, who are sworn to protect human life, to administer the drugs, creating a conflict of interest. Nonetheless, firms have looked to get around the issues of a three-part injection with a simplified single shot.
Between 1976 and 2023, 1,392 executions in the US were carried out by lethal injection. This makes it by far the most common means of capital punishment, with 163 electrocutions, 11 killed in gas chambers, three hanged and three executed by firing squad.
Electrocution – It was a method of death dreamt up by a drunken dentist more than 140 years ago as a more humane alternative to other forms of capital punishment, such as hanging.
The electric chair has been used in America for more than century but has garnered a reputation as one of the most gruesome execution methods.
Strapped down to a chair, with high-voltage electrodes attached to the head and legs, prisoners are blasted with up to three jolts of electricity, starting at 2,000 volts for 4.5 seconds, then – if death hasn’t occurred – 1,000 volts for eight seconds and 120 volts for two minutes.
But the procedure has led to hellish scenes of inmates bursting into flames as their skin melts and eyes exploding.
The first person executed by electric chair was William Kemmler, on August 6, 1890, in New York state. Afterwards, a reporter witnessing the death said: ‘Probably no convicted murderer of modern times has been made to suffer as Kemmler suffered.’
Firing squad – ‘It’s an almost instantaneous death, it’s the cheapest, it’s the simplest, it has the lowest “botch” rate,’ declared Corinna Lain, a law professor at the University of Richmond.
But death by firing squad has only recently come back into use in America after falling out of favour for being too grisly and messy.
Earlier this year South Carolina revealed plans to restart executions by firing squad after state prosecutors said deaths don’t need to be quick and painless. The push shocked many – but the state is not alone in using firing squads to execute its prisoners.
The last firing squad execution in the US was surprisingly recent, with Ronnie Lee Gardner executed at Utah State Prison on June 18, 2010 for killing an attorney during a dramatic courthouse escape attempt. Five prison staff shot Gardner from 25ft with .30 calibre rifles. He was pronounced dead two minutes later.
While the practice was meant to have been discontinued in China in 2010, the use of firing squads have been recorded since.
In one case, a man who stabbed nine school children – Zhao Zewei – was shot dead by a firing squad in 2018 in front of a crowd of villagers.
In Somalia, too, the practice is still used to punish criminals. In 2015, Hassan Hanafi, a former media officer for the Somali Islamist group al Shabaab, was tied up at a police academy square in the capital Mogadishu before being shot following a conviction for murdering five journalists.
And in Yemen, still, Houthi authorities reserve the punishment of death by firing squad for serious crimes. In 2021, nine men found guilty of spying for the opposing Saudi-led coalition forces were put to death, executed publicly in Tahrir Square in the rebel-held capital of Sanaa.
South Carolina’s firing squad consists of three volunteers from the prison guards who, after meeting ‘certain qualifications’ that officials haven’t specified, have been trained to fire a single round at a target placed on the heart from 15 feet (4.6 metres) away. Unlike in other states which put a blank round in one of the guns, each of the three is issued with live ammunition.
The state has spent more than £40,000 adapting its death chamber at a prison in its capital city of Columbia to cater for death by bullet. A metal chair has been installed in a corner of the chamber which sits within a large metal tray – to catch the blood. A rectangular box directly behind the chair is designed to absorb the bullets.
After being allowed to make a final statement, the prisoner is strapped into the chair and a hood placed over their head.
The firing squad point their rifles through a hole cut in a brick wall, allowing them to remain out of view of official witnesses, who are behind bulletproof glass.
An execution team member will place a ‘small aim point’ over the inmate’s heart, and after the prison warden reads the execution order, they will open fire. A doctor will then examine the body to confirm death. Two years ago, a court hearing revealed the state wanted to use ‘fragmentation’ bullets which break up inside their target, causing greater damage but providing a more ‘instantaneous’ death than conventional solid rounds.
Beheading – The majority of state executions in Saudi Arabia are still carried out by sword decapitation. It is a particularly bloody and violent means of capital punishment only carried out by Saudi Arabia – and can be used for a variety of crimes including murder, apostasy (abandoning Islam), homosexuality, witchcraft or sorcery, and ‘waging war on God’.
On March 12, 2022, 81 people were beheaded – the largest mass execution in recent years, despite promises to limit use of such measures.
Human Rights Watch slammed the Saudi authorities for a ‘brutal show of autocratic rule’, noting many families found out about the deaths of their loved ones ‘just like the rest of us, after the fact and through the media’. They also questioned the ‘fairness of their trials and sentencing’.
Reprieve has said the tenure of Mohammed bin Salman since 2015 saw a 82 per cent rise in the number of yearly beheadings over the period 2015 – 2021.
In 2003, state executioner Muhammad Saad al-Beshi detailed exactly how these brutal killings take place, sometimes with a gun, others a sword. He said of his first execution in 1998: ‘The criminal was tied and blindfolded. With one stroke of the sword I severed his head. It rolled metres away. There are many people who faint when they witness an execution. I don’t know why they come and watch if they don’t have the stomach for it,’ said the father of seven, who has been known to let his children clean the sword after a killing.
‘No one is afraid of me. I have a lot of relatives, and many friends at the mosque, and I live a normal life like everyone else. There are no drawbacks for my social life.’
Gas chambers – In Europe, gas chambers invoke the horrific memory of the Holocaust, which saw some six million Jewish men, women and children systematically killed by the Nazis between 1941 and 1945. The programme began with trials on people with physical and intellectual disabilities deemed ‘unworthy of life’ – and was extended to the Roma people and other victims of the Holocaust.
Since then, the practice has almost completely died out as a means of capital punishment. But the United States remains a notable exception. ‘Lethal gas’ remains a legal means of execution in seven states – Alabama, Arizona, California, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma and Wyoming – though all have lethal injection listed as their primary method.
The means of execution is not quick. The 1999 execution of German national Walter LaGrand in Arizona was described as ‘barbaric’ by German Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin, lasting 18 minutes. It was the last time the means was used.
The 1992 execution of Robert Alton Harris in California was likewise described as a ‘macabre and surreal scene’, dying 14 minutes after the execution order was given.
Harris died after requesting a mammoth order for his last meals: 21 pieces of KFC, two large Domino’s pizzas, a bag of jelly beans, a six-pack of Pepsi and a packet of cigarettes.
In 1994, David Lawson was put to death by gas chamber in North Carolina for the murder of Wayne Shinn during a burglary. Cyanide pellets were dropped into a bowl of sulfuric acid in the chamber, splashing Lawson with acid. He struggled so hard as to break the restraints around his leg and screamed ‘I am human’ several times as mucus poured out of his nose onto his blindfold. Lawson took about ten minutes to die, left alone screaming in the chamber.
In 2021, The Flying Monkeys revealed that Arizona had ‘refurbished’ its gas chamber to prepare for executions, according to documents seen by the outlet. They reported the state was ‘preparing to kill death row inmates using hydrogen cyanide, the same lethal gas that was deployed at Auschwitz’.
Mobile death vans – While China does not release its official figures, rights groups believe many thousands of people are executed each year by the state with horrifying means including mobile death vans, firing squads and lethal injections.
Death sentences are frequently handed down for crimes ranging from drug trafficking to murder, but also white collar crimes such as corruption.
According to a report published in 2021, China’s Penal Code of 1997 – which is still in force today – has 46 crimes punishable by death, including 24 violent crimes and 22 non-violent crimes. The country’s justice system is also notorious for favouring prosecutors, with Chinese courts having a 99.9 percent conviction rate.
To expedite killings, China is claimed to use mobile death vans in some cases, allowing roaming death squads to carry out the state-sanctioned killings of civilians without the need to move the prisoner to an execution ground.
On the outside, they appear as normal police vehicles, with no external markings to indicate what it is used for. On the inside, however, is an execution chamber. According to reports, the rear of the vehicle houses a windowless chamber where the execution itself takes place.
Several CCTV cameras are also present in the van, meaning the execution can be recorded or watched if officials desire to monitor it.
A bed slides out from the wall of the van, to which the convicted criminal is strapped. A syringe is then put into their arm by a technician, before a police official administers a lethal injection by pressing a button.
The concept of the vans, which reports suggest were first used in the late 1990s, have drawn comparisons to larger models developed by the Nazis in the Second World War to gas Jewish prisoners during the Holocaust.
Minghui, a volunteer operation reporting on the Falun Gong community, said the buses had been in use in China since 2004 for their expediency in killing political dissidents.
‘In the eyes of CCP officials, the biggest advantage of the execution vehicle is the convenience of taking organs from criminals for profit: their eyes, kidneys, livers, pancreas, lung and all other useful body parts, are harvested,’ they concluded, referencing China’s alleged organ harvesting trade.
Nitrogen gas – Kenneth Eugene Smith stopped breathing at eight minutes past eight in the evening of January 25, 2024. He had spent more than 35 years serving a jury-decided life sentence for the paid assassination of Elizabeth Sennett in Alabama in 1988, but it was his dramatic last moments that would immortalise his name.
It took Smith 22 minutes to die under the effects of nitrogen hypoxia, an American first that state officials had assured the public would be a quick and painless death after a judge overrode the ruling and imposed the death penalty. Smith writhed around in pain for nearly ten minutes before his breathing appeared to stop.
Strapped to a gurney, he struggled as his lungs filled with nitrogen. His final words were recorded as: ‘Tonight, Alabama causes humanity to take a step backwards. I’m leaving with love, peace, and light. Thank you for supporting me. Love all of you.’
The state execution and its harshness immediately prompted outcry from rights groups, condemning the state for going ahead with the experimental means of execution a year after failing to end his life with a botched lethal injection.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, said at the time the method could ‘amount to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment under international human rights law.’ The Alabama Attorney General dismissed the complaints, judging it ‘textbook’.
The means of execution has proven controversial, dividing voters on whether it is an effective and humane means of capital punishment. But on February 22, not even a month since Smith’s horrifying death in Alabama, the state said it was looking to execute a second inmate using nitrogen gas.
Alan Eugene Miller, 59, could become the second person to be executed by nitrogen hypoxia in the US if the plan goes ahead. Miller has been on death row since 2000 after he was convicted of killing three people in two 1999 workplace shootings. Miller pleaded innocent, citing mental disease or defect. His attorneys said he was ‘at best, very slow’ and should be in a mental health facility rather than a prison.
Stoning – The brutal execution method of stoning a person to death is documented in the Torah, written centuries before the common era – and remains in use in several countries including Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen and the UAE.
Earlier this month, Houthi rebels in Yemen sentenced 13 people to be stoned to death for homosexuality – a charge typical in the region, according to human rights groups. A 2022 report by the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said the Houthis have sentenced 350 people to death since seizing the capital in 2014, and have executed 11 of them.
In 2020, horrifying footage showed an Afghan woman being stoned to death by an angry mob as she cowered and screamed in a hole. The Afghan president blamed the Taliban, who claimed the footage was from 2015. Activists were unconvinced ‘The intensity of their violence and what they can do against women in the absence of law and order is clearly visible,’ said prominent activist Laila Haidari at the time. In the video, the woman can be heard crying and screaming while the crowd shouts ‘Allahu Akbar’ and ‘hit her’. The victim, named only as Rokhshana, was accused of adultery because she was engaged to a man she did not want to marry, Afghan authorities said at the time.
ISIS (and Al-Qaeda) also used sickening stoning practices at the height of its claim to parts of Iraq and Syria. Footage from 2015 in the stronghold of Mosul showed crowds gathering to watch jihadis murder a defenceless couple accused of having sex before marriage.
Young boys clamber onto their fathers’ shoulders to get a better view of the man and woman being charged with ‘fornication’, before Mosul-based executioner-in-chief Abu Ansar al-Ansari orders their stoning to death.
A militant with a yellow scarf covering his face is then seen using a microphone and PA system to read out the charge of ‘fornication’ against the couple, suggesting they had not been charged of adultery.
In a sudden act of brutality, militants are then seen taking large stones from a pile heaped in the middle of the road and throwing them at the blindfolded couple, who have their hands bound to prevent them from getting away. Large pools of blood appear in the road before the couple succumb to their injuries.
Even today, stoning remains a fairly common punishment in Iran. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said last year the government was executing people at ‘an alarming rate.’ He said at least 419 people received capital punishment in the first seven months of 2023, an increase of 30% from the same period last year. Crimes punishable by the death penalty in Iran include adultery, sodomy, murder, rape, armed robbery, kidnapping and drug trafficking.
Anti-aircraft guns – North Korea has deliberately separated itself from the norms and customs of its neighbours. While South Korea retains the death penalty for the most violent crimes, it has avoided using it since 1997. North Korean despot Kim Jong Un has proven less apprehensive, according to civilians fleeing his murky regime.
In 2015, reports surfaced from South Korean intelligence that its neighbour had publicly executed its Defence Minister Hyong Yong Chol with an anti-aircraft gun for falling asleep during an event and not carrying out instructions.
A rights group in North Korea later shared shocking satellite footage appearing to show a group of people lined up in a military training area opposite six ZPU-4 AA-guns near a viewing area.
A year later, a former agriculture minister and a senior education official were reportedly killed in a similar manner, ‘executed by anti-aircraft gun at a military academy in Pyongyang’ – the latter also alleged to have dozed off during a meeting.
In another case, defector Hee Yeon Lim reportedly claimed she was one of 10,000 made to watch the AA-gun execution of 11 musicians accused of making a pornographic film.
‘What I saw that day made me sick in my stomach,’ she said. ‘They were lashed to the end of anti-aircraft guns,’ she said. ‘A gun was fired, the noise was deafening, absolutely terrifying. And the guns were fired one after the other. The musicians just disappeared each time the guns were fired into them. Their bodies were blown to bits, totally destroyed, blood and bits flying everywhere… and then, after that, military tanks moved in and they ran over the bits on the ground where the remains lay.’
A year prior, it was reported Kim Jong Un had purged a number of senior officials including deputy public security minister, who was ‘executed by flamethrower’. Others were allegedly executed there or sent to a North Korean concentration camp.
Hanging – Hanging as a means of capital punishment was mentioned in Homer’s Odyssey, but became a common method of execution by the Middle Ages. In the US, it remained the primary means until the 1890s – and still today the practice is mostly unchanged where it is legal in countries including Japan and Singapore.
Prisoners sentenced to be hanged are often weighed before the execution and rehearsals performed to work out how much ‘drop’ will be needed to kill them quickly. Too much rope can lead to decapitation after the condemned person falls through the air, and too little can result in strangulation lasting as long as 45 minutes.
The most recent recorded example of this was the execution of Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, one of three half-brothers of Saddam Hussein. He was hanged on January 15, 2007 for crimes against humanity (along with Hussein) – but was decapitated by the rope due to a mistaken calculation about his weight and the length of the drop.
Before an execution by hanging, a prisoner’s limbs are secured, they are blindfolded and a noose is placed around the neck. In traditional executions, a trap door falls open for the prisoner to drop through. Their weight should cause a rapid fracture-dislocation of the neck – but it is rare the prisoner dies immediately.
Iran still uses cranes to hang its prisoners, tying them to a noose and then lifting them high in the air to be seen for miles. In 2022, protestor Majidreza Rahnavard made headlines when he was charged with ‘waging war against God’, ran through a ‘sham trial’ and put to death.
Executions conducted in public with a crane have been more rare in recent years, though Iran used the same manner of hanging to put down unrest following the disputed 2009 presidential election and the Green Movement protests that followed.
Typically, those condemned are alive as the crane lifts them off their feet, hanging by a rope and struggling to breathe before they asphyxiate or their neck breaks.
Public hangings are nothing new. In England in the 1800s, events could attract thousands, or tens of thousands, of viewers with a perverse fascination in watching the brutal death. In a scathing criticism of capital punishment, French philosopher Albert Camus noted that the spectacle of brutal killings did not seem to deter criminals; hangings often attracted many pickpockets, drawn to the large crowds of people. Of 167 condemned inmates at Bristol prison in 1886, 164 had themselves watched the horrific means of execution already.
Still, it took more horror stories before Britain abolished the penalty formally in 1998. In 1953, British man Derek Bentley was hanged for the murder of a policeman during a burglary attempt. Aged 19, the man was hanged at Wandsworth Prison. The case provoked debates, and Bentley was later pardoned and proven innocent. The complexities of the case, including views on Bentley’s learning difficulties, created public outrage at the time.
Even today, with advances in forensic evidence gathering and justice, for every eight people executed, one person has been exonerated – leaving countless potentially wrongfully sent to their deaths.
Last Week’s Birthdays
Hugh Jackman (56), Hiroyuki Sanada (64), Josh Hutcherson (32), Robin Askwith (74), Michelle Trachtenberg (39), Emily Deschanel (48), Claudia Black (52), Joan Cusack (62), Jane Krakowski (56), Stephen Moyer (55), John Nettles (81), Dawn French (67), Dan Stevens (42), Manu Bennett (55), Rose McIver (36), Charles Dance (78), Sarah Lancashire (60), Guillermo del Toro (60), Tony Shalhoub (71), Scott Bakula (70), Brandon Routh (45), Chris O’Dowd (45), Brian Blessed (88), Matt Damon (54), Bella Thorne (27), Sigourney Weaver (75), Chevy Chase (81), Paul Hogan (85), Ardal O’Hanlon (59), Bruno Mars (39), Shawn Ashmore (45), and Simon Cowell (65).
With a couple of months left to go, anyone scoring a Big Three could clinch the top spot! So all to play for! Sounds like some of you are already working on your lists for 2025 too! 
Strictly Come Dancing professional Amy Dowden was rushed to hospital after collapsing backstage following Saturday night’s live show. The Welsh dancer, 34, who recently battled breast cancer, fell ill at the show’s Hertfordshire studios shortly after performing with celebrity partner JB Gill. Paramedics were called to Elstree Studios after 9pm following reports of a medical emergency. A spokesperson for the East of England Ambulance Service said: “We were called just after 9pm on Saturday to attend a medical emergency at Elstree Studios in Borehamwood. An ambulance was sent to the scene. One patient, an adult female, was transported to Barnet Hospital for further care.” The health scare came moments after Dowden and former JLS star Gill performed the Foxtrot to Toploader’s Dancing In The Moonlight, scoring 32 points and placing fifth on the leaderboard. A spokesperson for Dowden said: “Amy was feeling unwell and so an ambulance was called as a precaution. She is feeling much better and would like to thank the Strictly family for their love and concern. We request Amy’s privacy in matters of health is kindly respected.” The dancer, who returned to Strictly in September after a two-year break, has endured a challenging year. She was diagnosed with cancer just one day after returning from her honeymoon with dancer husband Ben Jones in 2023. Despite initial hopes that surgery would be sufficient treatment, doctors discovered a second type of cancer in June. Dowden subsequently underwent a mastectomy and chemotherapy, while also battling a life-threatening case of sepsis during her treatment. 
The Toronto Zoo says its 52-year-old western lowland silverback gorilla, Charles, died Tuesday after the sudden onset of “significant health issues.” Charles had been a fixture at the zoo since its opening day in 1974. In a statement, the zoo described him as the “protective and wise leader” of its gorilla troop. “He will be dearly missed, and his memory will continue to inspire those who knew him to continue the fight against the extinction of this incredible, critically endangered species,” the zoo said. Charles was brought to Canada as an orphan from Gabon. Over his five decades at the zoo, he grew to weigh nearly 430 pounds and sired 10 offspring. He was also a grandfather to six gorillas. “His days were filled with moments of joy, quiet reflection, and family bonds — a testament to the complex social lives gorillas share,” the statement said. The zoo noted that despite his large size, Charles was afraid of toads. He also “despised” tall men because he saw them as rivals. Charles didn’t like when the donkeys or alpacas would walk past the gorilla enclosure, but never seemed to have a problem with dogs, the zoo added. Late last week, zoo staff noticed Charles was “not his usual self,” the statement explained. He was moving more slowly and seemed to be breathing “a little quicker and harder.” Staff made a presumptive diagnosis of heart failure and, in consultation with subject matter experts, Charles was put on cardiac medication, the zoo said. He seemed to rally over the weekend and appeared to be doing well as of Tuesday morning. But in the afternoon, his health “deteriorated suddenly and quickly,” according to the zoo. The entire gorilla troop was able to see Charles before he passed to “say their goodbyes,” the zoo said. He died surrounded by his keepers. 
South Carolina death row inmate Richard Moore’s last words were ones of contrition after he was executed by lethal injection on Friday for the 1999 fatal shooting of a convenience store clerk.
His final meal was steak cooked medium, fried catfish and shrimp, scalloped potatoes, green peas, broccoli with cheese, sweet potato pie, German chocolate cake and grape juice.
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