As more celebrities hit the soil this week, we can at least rejoice in that the passing of Paul O’Grady has raised fuckloads for Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, because lets face it, we all hate people and love animals. And I’ll tell you now, trying to find a usable picture of Max Hardcore has probably put my name on a list somewhere! 

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• Max Hardcore, 66, American pornographic actor, pneumonia. 
• Paul O’Grady, 67, English comedian, drag queen, and television presenter (Blankety Blank, The Paul O’Grady Show, Paul O’Grady: For the Love of Dogs).  
• Bernadette Hunt, 59, British television personality (Gladiators), cancer.  
• Ken Buchanan, 77, Scottish boxer, dementia. 

In Other News

Linda Nolan has given fans a sad update on her health as she revealed her cancer has spread to her brain. The singer, who celebrated her 64^th birthday last month, appeared on Good Morning Britain on Monday morning to speak about her treatment. Nolan was first diagnosed with stage three breast cancer in 2005 and went into remission the following year. But she was diagnosed with a secondary cancer in her hip in 2017, which spread to her liver in 2020. Speaking to hosts Susanna Reid and Richard Madeley, Nolan said she is remaining “positive” despite the news and will be undergoing chemotherapy again. “I’ve always been hopeful with my treatment and what’s going on in my life,” she said. “I just want to tell you unfortunately for me, my cancer has spread to my brain and that’s obviously frightening because there isn’t much treatment for brain cancer except for chemotherapy. I’m not giving up. I’m positive. I’m going to lose my hair again for the fourth time.” Nolan also revealed that she has moved into her sister’s home due to the cancer affecting her balance and leading to “three quite nasty falls”. “So, as usual, my amazing family – I’m back living with my sister Denise and her partner. Maureen has been looking after me for the past few weeks,” she continued. “I’ve bought a wheelchair, we’re getting stuff ready for the inevitable really. It’s a scary trip to be on.” Nolan reflected on not knowing how much time she had left, adding: “That’s not me being morbid or anything, but I don’t know. None of us know, really. So for me, it’s about making the most of every day and spending it with people I love. Just being positive… I’ve been fighting it since 2005 originally and then I’ve beaten it before, so hopefully I can do the same again. Obviously, with the great help I’ve always had from the NHS.” Nolan shared that she was hopeful a “new drug for brain cancer” that has been in use for around a year could help her in chemotherapy. Nolan rose to fame as part of girl group The Nolans alongside her sisters Anne, Denise, Maureen, Bernie and Coleen.   

Paul Burrell has opened up about undergoing radiotherapy to treat his prostate cancer, after receiving the diagnosis last year. The former butler to Princess Diana and former footman to Queen Elizabeth II told Lorraine on Monday morning that he was “very tired” and “emotional”. Asked how he has been feeling, Burrell told the TV presenter: “I’m tired, Lorraine, I’m very tired. I’ve got five more sessions of radiotherapy to go. I’m very emotional, as you can see. But I’m looking forward to getting to the end of it and then I can go on a little break with my husband Graham, and we can just be thankful that it’s been found. In a few months’ time, I’ll find out whether it’s clear or not, and then I get on with the rest of my life. There’s a lot to live for.” Burrell, 64, first shared his diagnosis in January and explained he had gone for a full medical examination for a ITV programme last summer. “Out of that came a surprisingly high PSA test [a chemical released by the prostate gland],” he told Lorraine at the time. “I had no idea what a PSA test.” His GP sent him for an MRI scan and they found a shadow on his prostate. A biopsy revealed that Burrell had cancer. He has since gone on to raise awareness of prostate cancer and urged all men to get checked. “You realise that there are thousands of men like me that had no symptoms, I didn’t realise what was happening and it could be too late,” he said.  

Pope Francis joked “I’m still alive” moments after being discharged from hospital following a three-day stay for treatment for a respiratory infection. “I wasn’t frightened, I’m still alive,” he told reporters in a light-hearted remark before being driven away. The 86-year-old was discharged from Rome’s Gemelli Hospital on Saturday morning after being admitted on Wednesday for treatment for bronchitis. The pontiff embraced a couple whose daughter had died on Friday night at the hospital and signed a boy’s cast before leaving the site. The Vatican seemed keen to quickly dispel any worries about the pope’s physical fitness to carry on fully with his duties. Spokesman Matteo Bruni said the Pope will be in St Peter’s Square for Palm Sunday Mass at the start of Holy Week, although he did not say if he would deliver the homily. It was also announced he will meet the prime minister of Bosnia-Herzegovina on Monday in a private audience at the Apostolic Palace. Francis had already largely stopped celebrating Mass at major Catholic Church holy days because of a chronic knee problem. During Wednesday’s hour-long public audience, Francis at times appeared visibly in pain when he moved about and was helped by aides. In July 2021, Francis underwent surgery at Gemelli Polyclinic after suffering from a narrowing of his colon. As a young man in Argentina, Francis had part of a lung removed. 

On This Day

• 1982 – Falklands War: Argentina invades the Falkland Islands.
• 1992 – New York Mafia boss John Gotti is convicted of murder and racketeering and is later sentenced to life in prison.
• 2015 – Four men steal items worth up to £200 million from an underground safe deposit facility in London’s Hatton Garden area in what has been called the “largest burglary in English legal history.”
• 2020 – COVID-19 pandemic: The total number of confirmed cases reach one million.

Deaths

• 1872 – Samuel Morse, American painter and academic, invented the Morse code (b. 1791)
• 1974 – Georges Pompidou, French banker & politician, 19th President of France (b. 1911)
• 2005 – Pope John Paul II (b. 1920)

Curses & Conspiracies in Celebrity Deaths 

I was at a house party when I found out that Amy Winehouse had died. Somebody announced it, and someone else turned the music down low. I remember sitting and reading the news on my phone, incredulous. She was so young. It was all so tragic. But then someone tutted. “She was 27,” they said, as if an explanation had just dawned on them. “She’s joined the 27 Club.” Oh, we all nodded in unison, as if now it all made sense.

But does it? The 27 Club is just one symptom of a rather bizarre malaise we have when it comes to celebrity deaths. We like to affix some cosmic reasoning to them, as if Winehouse had been “chosen” to join a morbid hall of fame alongside Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain – rock stars who all died at the same, cruelly early age. As sad as it was that a woman not yet 30 had died so tragically, it was as if we were arguing that it had a silver lining of sorts – she made the cut for an elite club. At times of collective grief for a famous person, we seem to fixate on patterns like these. Think the “Rule of Three”; a quasi-supernatural configuration that claims stars always meet their makers in threes – it’s believed to have started when Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper died together in a plane crash in 1959. The “pattern” has borne out many times since. In 2016, for instance, we lost George Michael, Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds within days of each other.

One of the more recent examples of this morose mathematics is the “Glee Curse”, a phenomenon dissected in the Discovery Plus documentary The Price of Glee. The three-part series focused its lens on the untimely and tragic deaths of three – see, three! – stars from the Noughties teen musical series. Cory Monteith, who played jock Finn, died of a drug overdose at the age of 31 in 2013, while the show was still on the air. Mark Salling, who played school bully Puck, died by suicide at the age of 35 in 2018, just before his scheduled sentencing in a child pornography case. Naya Rivera, who stole scenes as cheerleader Santana, accidentally drowned in 2020 at the age of 33. Three young, creatively linked people dying in relatively quick succession led many to insist the cast of the show was cursed. Is the resulting documentary sensationalist, alarmist and odd? Absolutely. Is it captivating viewing? Err, also yes. We must know that a TV show can’t curse a bunch of actors, so why are we so fixated? However far-fetched an idea, there’s clearly a pronounced willingness to believe it might be possible.

Belief in curses fulfils a need “to make sense of an otherwise senseless tragedy,” says psychologist Natasha Tiwari. “The narrative of curses can be quite compelling; they can offer a coping mechanism in uncertain times, or in scenarios which otherwise are sources of sadness and anxiety.” Uncertainty, she says, is a not uncommon byproduct of a public death, but in particular the deaths of young people – these patterns far more commonly deployed to explain losses that occur too early. We don’t, after all, have anything called the “87 Club”. “Something like this is really about premature death,” adds clinical psychologist Dr Roberta Babb. “This is a way of trying to grieve for people who’ve died way before their time. People who we think have so much more to give.”

Our focus on patterns like this owes a lot to the fact that we don’t typically have the right vocabulary to discuss death. This is particularly true in the white, Western and increasingly secular world, which tends to lack the collective rituals around grief which exist in other cultures – think sitting Shiva or Diá de Muertos. “I think because we don’t have these existing rituals, and we also live in a world where death is not as pervasive as it would have been even 100 years ago, we feel like we can avoid thinking about it,” says Relate counsellor Josh Smith. “As with any avoidance, it will catch up with us. Celebrities can provide a way of talking about death and loss that allows us to be more observer than participant, giving us a bit of a safe distance.” 

It can also be a way of developing our own rituals of collective mourning. Dr Babb points to the communal grief around Princess Diana and, more recently, The Queen, as examples of a need to grieve as a community. “What we’ve lost is this idea of collectivism,” she says. “I think grief, unfortunately, will bring people together. Look at how people queued for The Queen, she meant so many different things to so many different people. Yet it is important to note that some people will be grieving for the loss of the individual and other people might be grieving through the loss of that individual.”

Dr Babb’s point is that we frequently use celebrities as avatars for our own feelings. They provide a means to understand and work through our grief, while also being distant enough that we don’t feel it too personally. Think of it as a dummy run for when we experience real tragedy. “Princess Diana is a great example of how we use famous deaths to grapple with our feelings about death,” Babb explains. “It will happen to us all, but death is also one of the experiences we can’t talk about from a place of knowing. So to try and access it, we obsess over the meanings of a famous person’s death. It’s all to understand death, but it’s also a way, strangely, to immortalise them – to prolong our grief and keep them alive longer.”  

Music biographer James Court, author of The 27 Club, says he feels as if the “inductees” are kept alive by their very inclusion. “Think of the main six: Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Jim Morrison and Brian Jones. They were at their absolute peak when they died, and I think that is a significant thing,” he says. “They never get to retire, or decline. Instead they’re legends frozen in time. It makes it all seem weirdly glamorous and makes the club more fascinating for people to look into.”

In writing his book, Court waded through many of the “mad” online conspiracies surrounding the 27 Club – including the theory that one of the earliest “members”, 1930s bluesman Robert Johnson, had made a deal with the devil. Did bartering his soul for great musical talent kickstart the club? It sounds similar to the speculation that snakes through The Price of Glee. What caused Cory Monteith to die at the peak of his success? How did Naya Rivera drown so shockingly? Surely there must be an explanation? Some kind of cosmic or earthbound conspiracy behind it all rather than something crushingly mundane? But what the docuseries and Court’s book both appear to confirm is that these people’s deaths weren’t the product of a mystical, malevolent force at play. Merely they died due to the cruelties of fame and pressure.

“What all the main six members of the 27 Club have in common is immense fame really early in life, a crazy amount of pressure, people around them making bad choices and all of them having unhealthy coping mechanisms,” Court says, sadly. “The Club is not so much a conspiracy theory or a curse, as it is a real-life cautionary tale.” 

We cling, though, to these strange theories as a coping mechanism. And perhaps there’s no real harm in that when it’s done in small doses. Because when we lose young, talented people who still have so much more to give, it’ll always feel inherently senseless.

Last Week’s Birthdays

Pedro Pascal (48), Emma Myers (21), Michael Fassbender (46), Christopher Meloni (62), Linda Hunt (78), Penelope Keith (83), John Thomson (54), Mackenzie Davis (36), Asa Butterfield (26), Annette O’Toole (71), Ali MacGraw (84), Michael Praed (63), Ewan McGregor (52), Christopher Walken (80), Rhea Perlman (75), Richard Chamberlain (89), William Daniels (96), Daniel Mays (45), Donna D’Errico (55), Warren Beatty (86), Céline Dion (55), Eric Clapton (78), Brendan Gleeson (68), Lucy Lawless (55), Marina Sirtis (68), Ed Skrein (40), Christopher Lambert (66), Elle Macpherson (59), Eric Idle (80), Vince Vaughn (53), Julia Stiles (42), Dianne Wiest (77), Lady Gaga (37), Nick Frost (51), Chris Barrie (63), Quentin Tarantino (60), Nathan Fillion (52), Julian Glover (88), Mariah Carey (54), Fergie (48), Jessie J (35), and Romesh Ranganathan (45).

Yet another week passes and a handful of ‘celebrities’ depart this plane of existence. Unfortunately, no points this week… again… 

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• Paul Grant, 56, British actor (Return of the Jedi, Labyrinth, The Dead) and stuntman.  
• Terry Norris, 92, Australian actor (Homicide, Cop Shop) and politician.  
• Dafydd Hywel, 77, Welsh actor (Coming Up Roses, Off to Philadelphia in the Morning, The Crown). 
• Gordon Moore, 94, American businessman, engineer (Moore’s law), and philanthropist, co-founder of Intel and Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.  
• Nick Lloyd Webber, 43, English composer (Love, Lies and Records, Fat Friends The Musical, The Last Bus) and record producer, gastric cancer. 

In Other News

Dick Van Dyke crashed his car into a gate in Malibu after it skidded in wet weather conditions, according to reports. The Chitty Chitty Bang Bang actor, 97, lost control of the car before smashing into a gate, leaving him with a bloody nose and possible concussion. It is understood that he did not need hospital treatment. The accident occurred on Wednesday morning and police officers arrived at the scene to find the star behind the wheel of his Lexus LS 500. This is not the first time Van Dyke has been involved in an incident involving a car. In 2013, the actor escaped unhurt after his car burst into flames on a motorway. Van Dyke was pulled from the vehicle, having not realised the Jaguar was on fire on a Los Angeles highway. He told the Flying Monkeys at the time: “It just started making a noise, and I thought I had a flat at first, then it started to smoke, then it burned to a crisp.” He said he escaped unscathed and “there was a fireman, a nurse and a cop just happened to be passing by. Somebody’s looking after me”. While the actor has mostly taken a step back from acting in recent years, he has continued to appear in occasional projects across film and TV. In 2018, he made a cameo in the Disney musical Mary Poppins Returns, a follow-up to the popular 1964 musical starring himself and Julie Andrews. He is set to appear in a new comedy film, Capture the Flag, about a group of elderly veterans who play a spirited game of “capture the flag” for the privilege of raising Old Glory every morning in their community. 

Former tennis great Martina Navratilova says she is “cancer-free” after fearing she “would not see next Christmas”. The 18-time Grand Slam singles champion, who previously had breast cancer in 2010, was diagnosed with throat and breast cancer late last year. In January, she said both cancers had been caught at an early stage. “As far as they know I’m cancer-free,” the 66-year-old said on Piers Morgan’s TalkTV show on Tuesday. “I still need to deal with the right breast, probably need to have radiation but that’s a couple of weeks and that doesn’t even count. That’s more preventative than anything else. I should be good to go. It’s 99% solvable.” Navratilova noticed an enlarged lymph node in her neck during November’s WTA Finals in Fort Worth, Texas. A subsequent biopsy revealed stage one throat cancer. During the tests, a lump was also discovered in her breast, which was later diagnosed as an unrelated cancer. “I was in a total panic for three days thinking I may not see next Christmas,” she told Morgan. “The bucket list came into my mind of all the things I wanted to do. And this may sound really shallow, but I was like, ‘OK, which kick-ass car do I really want to drive if I live like a year’?'” Navratilova said her friend and former rival Chris Evert, who was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in December 2021, supported her “so much” through her treatment. The pair, who dominated women’s tennis during the 1970s and 80s, received cancer treatment in the same New York clinic. “Our careers are always intertwined and then we follow each other this way,” Navratilova said. “You can’t just make it up. The parallels are unbelievable. Same place. Some of the same nurses. Chris has been just a star. She has supported me so much through this as I supported her a year ago.” 

A council has apologised to a recent widower after sending him a letter telling him he was dead. South Norfolk Council told Stuart Dobson, 77, it was “sorry to hear” he had died and informed him he could get a council tax exemption. It came just one month after his wife of 54 years, Ann, had died. Replying to the letter to convince them he was alive had caused him “distress”, he said, for which the council apologised. Mr Dobson said the letter had added to his stress at a time when he was already grieving. Mr Dobson responded to the council, calling officials “ill-informed”. “I have been up there to give them a letter, I’ve hand-delivered it to the council, telling them, ‘Do I look dead to you?’ “It’s an utter shambles, they’re asking me to fill in forms when they think I’m dead, it doesn’t make sense. I don’t need this at all,” he said. In his letter to the council, Mr Dobson (deceased), wrote: “I have today received an ill-informed letter from you telling me that I have passed away. It occurs to me that only the [council] would write to a deceased person and ask them to fill in a council tax form. One doubts their sanity and rational thinking when taking such an action.” A council spokesman said: “The council has apologised to Mr Dobson for the mistake made when updating our records following the death of Mrs Dobson, and we regret that our mistake has caused Mr Dobson upset at this difficult time. “We have reviewed what happened and unfortunately this was a case of human error for which we are deeply sorry.”

On This Day

• 1934 – The United Kingdom driving test is introduced.
• 1981 – Social Democratic Party (SDP) is founded as a party.
• 1997 – Thirty-nine bodies are found in the Heaven’s Gate mass suicides.

Deaths

• 1827 – Ludwig van Beethoven, German pianist and composer (b. 1770).
• 1945 – David Lloyd George, English-Welsh lawyer and politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1863).
• 1973 – Noël Coward, English playwright, actor, and composer (b. 1899).
• 2005 – James Callaghan, English lieutenant and politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1912)
• 2011 – Diana Wynne Jones, English author (b. 1934).

Celebrities Who’ve Survived Murder Attempts

Celebrities who have survived murder attempts range from rappers embroiled in deadly beefs to stars who were in the wrong place at the wrong time to A-listers with vicious stalkers. In some cases, the celebrities knew their attackers. In others, unknown assailants plotted to commit murder for financial gain. There are also accounts of mentally unstable individuals with celebrity fixations conducting murder attempts. While many celebrities – like John Lennon and Marvin Gaye – died from attacks, the celebrities in this list reflect those who either survived an actual attempt on their life or happened to avert one.  

George Harrison: On December 30th 1999, Liverpool native Michael Abram jumped the fence at George Harrison’s Oxfordshire estate, carrying a large knife. He smashed a window and made his way inside, where Harrison and his wife, Olivia, confronted him. Abram began screaming at the ex-Beatle, who charged at him and tried to knock the knife out of his hand. Abram stabbed Harrison several times in the chest, then went after Olivia and tried to strangle her with a lamp cord. Police arrived and took Abram into custody. In court, Abram revealed he believed the Beatles were witches and he was on a mission from God to kill Harrison, whom he believed to be the Devil. The courts found Abram not guilty by reason of insanity and committed him. Harrison died less than two years later of cancer. The institution released Abram in 2002!!! 

Björk: In 1996, obsessive stalker Ricardo Lopez sent a letter bomb to Icelandic pop singer Björk. Lopez, 21, had been infatuated with Björk for several years, writing a diary of over 800 pages devoted to her – which included dozens of references to suicide and murder. Upon learning she was in a relationship, Lopez reportedly snapped.  He filmed over 20 hours of footage that consisted mostly of him ranting, then sent the singer a hollowed-out book with a bomb in the middle. Afterward, he shot himself on camera – while a Björk song played in the background. The police intercepted the bomb, which never reached the singer.

Gordon Ramsay: The chef and TV star Gordon Ramsay is also a crusader against illegal shark fishing. As part of a BBC documentary – Gordon’s Shark Bait – he went to Costa Rica to uncover illicit shark fin trade. A gang, which authorities believe have ties to an illegal drug network, confronted Ramsay and poured gasoline on him and his film crew. The “thugs” then held the group at gunpoint and told Ramsay to stop filming the shark fishing crews – or else they’d be shot. Reportedly, local police recommended Ramsay and his crew leave Costa Rica.

50 Cent: In 2000, an unknown assailant shot rapper Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson – shortly before his ascent to fame – nine times outside his grandmother’s house in Queens. Jackson spent 13 days in a hospital and the next five months recovering with wounds in his hand, arm, hip, both legs, chest, and left cheek. Neither Jackson nor police ever positively identified the shooter. Initially, police suspected Darryl “Hommo” Baum – Mike Tyson’s former bodyguard – as the shooter. The theory was local drug lord “Supreme” hired Baum to kill Jackson over a drug dispute. Three weeks after the attempted murder, an unknown assailant shot and killed Baum. Allegedly, Tyson offered someone $50,000 to take care of the parties responsible for Baum’s death. In 2005, rival rappers of Murder Inc. reportedly testified against Supreme for his involvement in the attempt on Jackson’s life.  

Madonna: Madonna had multiple encounters with stalker Robert Dewey Hoskins, but in 1996, he jumped the fence of her Hollywood Hills compound. Hoskins declared he would “either marry her or slash her throat.” One of her bodyguards shot him, and police took him into custody. Madonna wasn’t home at the time but testified against him later. In 2012, Dewey escaped from a mental hospital in Los Angeles – where the courts sent him after an unrelated 2011 conviction – but authorities quickly captured and returned him.

Theresa Saldana: Saldana was an on-the-rise actress who’d appeared in Raging Bull and the Beatles movie I Wanna Hold Your Hand. Arthur Richard Jackson, a 47-year-old drifter from Aberdeen, Scotland, flew across the world and illegally entered the US with a plan to find Saldana and kill her. Reportedly, he intended to join her in the afterlife – after the state executed him for her murder. In 1982, Jackson hired a private investigator to obtain Saldana’s mother’s phone number, then called her pretending to be Martin Scorsese, looking for Saldana herself. After Saldana’s mother unwittingly provided her daughter’s West Hollywood address, Jackson drove there and stabbed her 10 times with a hunting knife. Saldana survived, thanks to a deliveryman rushing to her rescue and pulling Jackson off her. She made a full recovery, and the courts committed Jackson to a mental institution, where he died in 2004. After her recovery, Saldana became a prominent advocate for victim’s rights and founded Victims for Victims. She also played herself in a TV movie about her attack. 

Ryan Seacrest: In 2009, police arrested Chidi Uzomah Jr. – an ex-soldier turned stalker – when witnesses reported him for walking the halls of the E! studio. Reportedly, Uzomah was carrying a knife and looking for Ryan Seacrest – host of E! News and later American Idol. Police had apprehended him once prior for trying to get to Seacrest in Orange County and attacking one of his bodyguards. The courts sentenced 26-year-old Uzomah to two years in prison and ordered him to stay away from Seacrest for at least a decade.  

Pauley Perrette: Allegedly, a 45-year-old transient named David Merck attacked NCIS actress Pauley Perrette in November 2015. According to police, Perrette was walking in her L.A. neighbourhood when Merck grabbed her by the arm and attempted to drag her away. She persuaded him to let her go, then called the police, who found Merck at a nearby 7-11. Merck – who had a preexisting criminal record – pleaded “not guilty” to felony assault charges. The courts found Merck unfit to stand trial and sent him to a mental facility. In 2018, the state facility released him.  

Larry Flynt: In 1978, a sniper shot and paralysed Hustler publisher and free speech crusader Larry Flynt. At the time of the shooting, Flynt was leaving a courthouse in Georgia, where he was on trial for obscenity. The shooter, white supremacist Joseph Paul Franklin, later admitted to the attack, claiming an interracial sex photo shoot in an issue of Hustler outraged him. Missouri law enforcement eventually arrested Franklin for shooting up a St. Louis synagogue. Franklin – a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic – claimed to have killed over two dozen people. The courts found him guilty and executed him in 2013. Reportedly, Flynt opposed the execution.

Bob Marley: In 1976, unknown shooters attacked Bob Marley, his wife, and his manager two days before a concert Marley had helped organise to unite opposing political factions in Jamaica. The singer sustained minor wounds and played at the concert despite the shooting. Authorities never identified the assailants. Marley died in 1981, of cancer – which conspiracy theorists believe was a successful attempt on his life.  

Tupac Shakur: Shakur survived the first attempt on his life, a 1994 shooting in the lobby of a recording studio in Manhattan. Shakur believed the attack was a set-up, as opposed to a robbery since the three shooters didn’t take his Rolex. He accused rappers Notorious BIG and Puff Daddy of orchestrating the attack – which took place just before Shakur was due to receive a verdict for a sexual assault case he was facing. Later, in 1996, an unknown shooter killed Shakur in a Las Vegas drive-by. In 2011, shooter Dexter Isaac admitted to authorities former talent agent James Rosemond – AKA Jimmy Henchman – hired him to attack Shakur in 1994. He alleged no connection to the fatal shooting in 1996. Shakur’s murder still remains unsolved. 

Andy Warhol: On December 3rd 1968, activist Valeria Solanas shot artist and filmmaker Andy Warhol. Reportedly, Solanas – who was the sole member of an organisation she founded called Cutting Up Men – wanted Warhol to produce her play. Earlier on the day of the shooting, security removed Solanas from the Factory after allegedly trying to get her script back. She shot Warhol and art critic Mary Amaya when she saw Warhol on the street. Warhol sustained major physical and psychological injuries from the attack. As a result, he developed an intense fear of hospitals, which subsequently factored into his 1987 death. Although psychiatrists later diagnosed Solanas as schizophrenic, she pled guilty to the attack on Warhol and served three years in prison.   

Mick Jagger: In 1969, following the alleged Hell’s Angels stabbing of a man at the Altamont Free Concert, Jagger and the other Rolling Stones publicly pilloried the biker gang’s behaviour and refused to ever hire them again. The Angels responded with a plan to storm Jagger’s Long Island mansion – from the sea – and murder him. Armed, the gang allegedly got in a boat and sailed toward Jagger’s home. A storm sank the boat before they could reach the estate. The wreck didn’t injure any gang members, but they decided to call off the attack. The Angels denied culpability in the Altamont stabbing. 

Jackie Chan: Jackie Chan was involved in a long-running feud with the Hong Kong Triads that had infested the local film industry and routinely shook down producers for money. Reportedly, when Chan first came to America from Hong Kong, a triad sniper shot at him on the airport tarmac. In 2012, Chan said triad men armed with machetes later surrounded him when he was out to dinner. In response to the attacks, Chan armed himself with guns and grenades and hired muscle from mainland China. Eventually, he paid them off, and they left him alone.

Joss Stone: In 2011, Junior Bradshaw and Kevin Liverpool scouted British soul singer Joss Stone’s house. Reportedly, they were armed with a sword, hammers, knives, gloves, rope, and masks with the intention to rob and behead her. Neighbours spotted their banged-up vehicle idling in her wealthy neighbourhood and called the police, who searched the car’s trunk and arrested the two men. British courts sentenced Liverpool – who organised the plan – to 10 years in prison. The courts sentenced Bradshaw, a diagnosed schizophrenic, to a psychiatric facility. 

Last Week’s Birthdays

Keira Knightley (38), Jennifer Grey (63), Amy Smart (47), Martin Short (73), Diana Ross (79), Steven Tyler (75), Roisin Conaty (44), Lee Pace (44), Sarah Jessica Parker (58), Paul Michael Glaser (80), Richard O’Brien (81), Elton John (76), Jessica Chastain (46), Tig Notaro (52), Jim Parsons (50), Alyson Hannigan (49), Lara Flynn Boyle (53), Kelly LeBrock (63), Amanda Plummer (66), Joanna Page (46), Reese Witherspoon (47), William Shatner (92), Carter Wong (76), Gary Oldman (65), Timothy Dalton (77), Matthew Broderick (61), Sonequa Martin-Green (38), Jaye Davidson (55), Ruby Rose (37), Holly Hunter (65), David Thewlis (60), Freema Agyeman (44), Spike Lee (66), John de Lancie (75), and Theresa Russell (66).

This week sees the shocking death of Lance Reddick at too young an age, I really should keep those Flying Monkeys caged up… 

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• Dick Fosbury, 76, American high jumper (Fosbury Flop), Olympic champion, lymphoma.  
• Jim Gordon, 77, American musician (Derek and the Dominos, Traffic), songwriter (“Layla“) and convicted murderer. 
• Vera Selby, 93, English snooker and billiards player. 
• Jacqueline Gold, 62, British businesswoman (Ann Summers), breast cancer. 
• Lance Reddick, 60, American actor (The Wire, Fringe, John Wick).  
• Gloria Dea, 100, American actress (King of the Congo, Plan 9 from Outer Space) and magician, coronary artery disease. 

In Other News

Sam Neill has revealed he has had “a ferocious type of aggressive” non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The Jurassic Park star, 75, was diagnosed with Stage three cancer in March 2022 and thought: “I’m crook, I’m dying.” Unable to work, he started writing as a distraction and to “give me a reason to get through the day,” he told the Flying Monkeys. In his new memoir, Did I Ever Tell you This?, he discusses his illness and his near 50-year career on screen. Neill first noticed he had lumpy glands in his neck on a publicity tour for Jurassic World: Dominion last year. When doctors told him what was wrong, he said his reaction was “pretty phlegmatic”, but it made him “take stock of things.” “I thought I need to do something, and I thought, ‘Shall I start writing?'” he says. “I didn’t think I had a book in me, I just thought I’d write some stories. And I found it increasingly engrossing. A year later, not only have I written the book – I didn’t have a ghost writer – but it’s come out in record time. I suspect my publishers, they’re delightful people, but I think they wanted to get it out in a hurry just in case I kicked the bucket before it was time to release the thing.” Indeed at one point he thinks the subtitle for the book might have been Notes from a Dying Man. There are, he says, “dark days.” He lost his hair after the first round of chemotherapy and writes in the memoir that when he looks in the mirror, “there’s a bald, wizened old man there.” “More than anything I want my beard back. I don’t like the look of my face one bit.” Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma is a less common cancer that develops in the lymphatic system – the vast network of vessels and glands in the body. But the star is now in remission and remains positive. “I’m not afraid of dying,” he says. “What I don’t want to do is to stop living, because I really enjoy living.” He continues: “I’ve regarded it as an adventure, quite a dark adventure, but an adventure nevertheless. And the good days are just fantastic and when you get some good news it’s absolutely exhilarating.” The book, he is at pains to stress, is not about cancer. “I can’t stand cancer books.” Instead it is mostly about what he calls his “fun” and “unlikely” life and long career.  

Nicholas Lloyd Webber, the eldest son of Andrew Lloyd Webber, is critically ill with gastric cancer, the Phantom of the Opera composer has announced. Nicholas’ hospitalisation will necessitate Sir Andrew’s absence from this week’s Broadway opening of the composer’s Bad Cinderella. “I am absolutely devastated to say that my eldest son Nick is critically ill,” Andrew Lloyd Webber said in a statement released tonight. “As my friends and family know, he has been fighting gastric cancer for the last 18 months and Nick is now hospitalised.” The composer went on to say, “I therefore have not been able to attend the recent previews of Bad Cinderella and as things stand, I will not be able to cheer on its wonderful cast, crew and orchestra on Opening Night this Thursday. “We are all praying that Nick will turn the corner,” he continued. “He is bravely fighting with his indomitable humour, but at the moment my place is with him and the family.” Andrew Lloyd Webber had also been scheduled to attend a Bad Cinderella New York press event this Wednesday, coinciding with the composer’s 75th birthday. Bad Cinderella opens Thursday, March 23rd, at the Imperial Theatre. The 43-year-old Nicholas is a Grammy nominated composer and record producer, known for scoring the BBC 1 drama Love, Lies and Records and the 2021 film The Last Bus, among other projects. He co-produced and mixed the 2021 original London cast album Bad Cinderella. 

Jim Gordon, the drummer who played on the Beach Boys’ iconic album Pet Sounds and for Eric Clapton in Derek & The Dominos, has died in prison aged 77. The session musician was serving a life sentence when he died of natural causes on Monday. Gordon was convicted of killing his mother in 1983 before being diagnosed with schizophrenia. The musician is credited as a songwriter on Derek & The Dominos’ hit song “Layla”, alongside Eric Clapton. As a session musician, Gordon featured on tracks by numerous artists. His music can be heard on songs by Tom Waits, George Harrison, John Lennon, Cher and more. He also played music on the classic track “You’re So Vain” by Carly Simon. Gordon died in a state-run medical facility in California, while still serving his 16 year sentence. During his life, he struggled with addiction to alcohol and drugs, according to Rolling Stone, who interviewed him in 1985. His mother urged him to seek psychiatric help in the Seventies, and he was admitted to hospital, telling the staff there that she was his only friend. He went on to murder her in 1983 with a hammer and knife. He told Rolling Stone two years later that he “had no interest in killing his mother.” “I wanted to stay away from her. I had no choice. It was so matter-of-fact, like I was being guided like a zombie. She wanted me to kill her, and good riddance to her,” he said at the time. He was sentenced in 1984 where the judge ruled that his insanity would not find him innocent under laws in place at the time. 

On This Day

• 1649 – The House of Commons of England passes an act abolishing the House of Lords, declaring it “useless and dangerous to the people of England”. 
• 1831 – First documented bank heist in U.S. history, when burglars stole $245,000 from the City Bank  on Wall Street. Most of the money was recovered.  
• 1895 – Auguste and Louis Lumière record their first footage using their newly patented cinematograph.  
• 1982 – Falklands War: Argentinian forces land on South Georgia Island, precipitating war with the United Kingdom. 

Deaths

• 1950 – Edgar Rice Burroughs, American soldier and author (b. 1875). 
• 2008 – Arthur C. Clarke, English science fiction writer (b. 1917). 
• 2008 – Paul Scofield, English actor (b. 1922). 

The Smoked Corpses of Aseki

The Anga people live in Papua New Guinea’s Aseki District, a fringe highland region so detached from the modern world that even the regular passing of mist is still considered an omen from the spirits. They’re also heirs to one of most bizarre rituals of the ancient world: the smoking of their ancestors’ corpses.

An extraordinary – and from an outsider’s point-of-view, grotesque – form of enshrinement, the smoked corpses of Aseki have captured the imagination of anthropologists, writers and filmmakers for more than 100 years. But few have been able to tell fact from fiction. 

To find out when the practice began – and why the Anga began mummifying their dead in a land where cannibalism used to be the norm – The Flying Monkeys travelled to Lae, the second largest city in Papua New Guinea. There they met up with Malcolm Gauthier, a guide with off-road motorbike company Niugini Dirt.

The journey took two days, with an overnight stopover at the former 1930s gold rush town of Bulolo. The further inland we rode, the worse the road got: a bone-jarring juxtaposition of washouts, muddy ruts and river crossings, some of which required dugout canoes to navigate.

When we reached Angapenga, a large village some 250km southwest of Lae, a group of children directed us to a strip of grass overlooking a saw-toothed valley. It’s one of dozens of sites in the Aseki District where smoked corpses can be found, though the exact location of most have been forgotten over time. The mummies of Angapenga are also the most accessible, located a short hike from the road. 

After we parked, we were approached by a man named Dickson, who said he was custodian of the site. Speaking in Tok Pisin – a colourful creole of German, English and indigenous Melanesian dialects – he demanded a princely access fee. Gauthier bargained him down to a figure both parties could live with, and we set off with dozens of children in tow on the final stage of our journey: a laborious half-hour climb through jungle riddled with stinging nettles and spider webs. The track was so steep and overgrown in parts that we found ourselves crawling on all fours. It then disappeared under the canopy and rounded a ridge where a clay wall rose steeply into the air. There, under a small indentation on the cliff, were the smoked corpses of Aseki. 

The mummies were more macabre than anything that can be imagined. Smeared with red clay, they were in various stages of decomposition, with parched sections of skin and muscle clinging to their skeletons. Some still had clumps of hair and full sets of nails curled in pensive positions. Their facial expressions were cut straight out of a Hollywood scream-fest, with full rows of teeth and eyeballs popping out of their skulls. One of the corpses, a female, had the smoked body of an infant pressed against her chest. 

There were 14 corpses in total, arranged on bamboo scaffolding in life-like positions or curled up like foetuses inside large baskets. Four of the corpses had disintegrated into piles of bones, their skulls peeking out through broken bits of bamboo amid the dirt.

Getting close to the mummies proved to be difficult. There was no flat ground to stand on and even the Flying Monkeys repeatedly lost their footing. When Gauthier came close to where the bodies lay, he slipped and grabbed hold of the scaffolding, nearly pulling the entire shrine into the jungle below. 

We know from a National Geographic documentary filmed at Koke, another village in Aseki, that the mummies are infrequently carried to villages for restorative work. In fact, Gauthier said he’d seen these mummies on display at the Morobe Show in Lae a decade ago. But I was dumbstruck at the idea of these delicate and priceless artefacts being put in the back of a flatbed truck and driven over 250km of broken roads. Even just sitting here, they were at risk of damage by clumsy tourists, tomb raiders and the elements. One big storm or landslide and they could easily wash away. 

Most of what’s known about the mummies is based on hearsay, exaggeration or flights of the imagination. Even the locals we spoke to – Dickson, a pastor named Loland and a schoolteacher named Nimas – seemed to offer different stories about the ritual’s past.

The first documented report on the smoked corpses was by British explorer Charles Higginson in 1907 – seven years prior to the start of WWI. Yet according to Dickson, the mummifying practice began during WWI, when the Anga attacked the first group of missionaries to arrive in Aseki. His great-grandfather, one of the corpses we saw under the cliff, was shot dead by the missionaries in self-defence. 

Dickson said the event sparked a series of payback killings that came to an end when the missionaries gifted the natives salt, with which they began embalming their dead. The practice only lasted for a generation, he added, since a second round of missionaries successfully converted the Anga to Christianity.

Loland and Nimas confirmed that the smoke corpse ritual ended in 1949, when missionaries took firm root in Aseki. But unlike Dickson, Loland and Nimas said mummification had been practiced by the Anga for centuries. The bodies were not cured using salt, they explained, but smoked over months in a “spirit haus”. They were then covered in red clay to maintain their structural integrity and placed in shrines in the jungle. 

Nimas also said that cannibalism was never practiced in this part of Papua New Guinea – a statement that contradicts Higginson’s 1907 description of the Anga as bloodthirsty savages who greedily lapped up the entrails of their own kin during the smoking process. But if that was the case, of course, then why didn’t the Anga didn’t make a meal of Higginson, a lone and defenceless foreigner living in their midst? 

Before departing, we asked Dickson one more question: was it true that embalmers drained the corpses’ body fat and used it as cooking oil during the embalming process, as is claimed by Higginson and nearly every report written on the mummies in the century that has elapsed?

Dickson’s face showed instant incredulity. “Tok giaman blo wait man (white man’s lie),” he replied. Some secrets, perhaps, are best kept with the dead.

Last Week’s Birthdays

Bruce Willis (68), Glenn Close (76), Ursula Andress (87), Harvey Weinstein (71), Brad Dourif (73), Luc Besson (64), Queen Latifah (53), Abigail Cowen (25), Kurt Russell (72), Rob Lowe (59), Morfydd Clark (34), John Boyega (31), Gary Sinise (68), Lesley-Anne Down (69), Patrick Duffy (74), Alexandra Daddario (37), Alan Tudyk (52), Jerome Flynn (60), Caitlin Bassett (33), Victor Garber (74), Aisling Bea (39), Erik Estrada (74), Jimmy Nail (69), David Cronenberg (80), Judd Hirsch (88), Eva Longoria (48), Corey Stoll (47), Michael Caine (90), Jamie Bell (37), Billy Crystal (75), Betsy Brandt (50), Quincy Jones (90), Harry Melling (34), Annabeth Gish (52), William H. Macy (73), and Danny Masterson (47).

Again, no points to award this week. I’m reluctantly releasing the flying monkeys on  Thursday, watch this space! 

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• Gary Rossington, 71, American Hall of Fame guitarist (Lynyrd Skynyrd, Rossington Collins Band).  
• Bert I. Gordon, 100, American film director and screenwriter (Village of the Giants, Empire of the Ants, The Amazing Colossal Man).  
• Chaim Topol, 87, Israeli actor (Fiddler on the Roof, Flash Gordon, For Your Eyes Only), complications from Alzheimer’s disease.  
• Robert Blake, 89, American actor (Baretta, In Cold Blood, Lost Highway), heart disease.  
• Mystic Meg, 80, British astrologer, influenza.  
• Napoleon XIV, 84, American singer (“They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!“). 

In Other News

Jeremy Renner has been spotted out in LA for the first time since his snowplough accident. The Jason Bourne and Avengers actor was rushed to hospital on New Year’s Day after being run over by snowplough outside his home in Nevada. The 52-year-old had suffered blunt chest trauma from the accident as well as breaking over 30 bones in his body. Renner had been crushed after he’d attempted to re-enter the snowplough after worrying it was headed for his nephew, while the actor was helping to clear snow. Renner who has been documenting his long recovery from the accident across his social media accounts had not been seen in public until Monday since the near-fatal accident. According to the Flying Monkeys, Renner was seen in a car in LA, before going into an office building. The actor was wearing a t-shirt and glasses, and stayed in the office building for around 30 minutes. In an Instagram story in February, Renner shared a video of himself on an exercise bike using a handheld pole to help push his left leg. “Whatever it takes,” the actor wrote in a caption over the video. He then posted a photo of himself reading The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo alongside the caption, “Mental Recovery Too”. Sounds like nobody will be listing him next year!  

Minou, the cat known for appearing in the opening credits of Antiques Roadshow, has died. At the start of each episode of the popular BBC series, the animal could be seen walking across the screen, brushing against a vase. Minou, in fact, belonged to antique expert Marc Allum, who has appeared as a specialist on Antiques Roadshow since 1998. Allum revealed that Minou had been euthanised by a vet on 2nd March amid a series of health problems. In a social media post announcing the news, he shared a heartfelt tribute to the pet. Alongside a photograph of Minou, he wrote: “ For almost 17 years this beautiful creature has been a central part of our lives. Today we had to say goodbye to Minou. The pleasure he gave us is beyond measure. We will miss him soooo much but he will still pop up on your screens on the titles of @BBC_ARoadshow. Such a star!” In a later tweet, the Antiques Roadshow specialist wrote: “He was a extremely bright. He did what he liked really and we smiled as he did it… but he was always there butting his head against my chin.”  

Gene Hackman has been seen out in public for the first time in years and continues to sport a healthy look. The reclusive actor, 93, hasn’t starred in a film in almost two decades and is rarely spotted out and about. However, the Hollywood icon seemed in good health and spirits after being snapped near his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at the weekend. Gene is a legend in the film industry with over 100 credits to the name, including huge hits such as Enemy of the State, Crimson Tide, No Way Out and The French Connection. It appeared as thought he is still very much fit and active as he got to grips with the yard work on Sunday. He was photographed getting stuck into his chores with a shovel in hand. He was also seen enjoying a bite to eat in his car after taking a trip to a Wendy’s drive-thru, before his busy day saw him take to the petrol station to fill up his vehicle and grab an instant coffee. The last time Gene was seen in front of the camera was in the 2004 comedy Welcome To Mooseport. In a chat with Larry King in July of the same year he confirmed he had no other projects lined up and didn’t plan on changing that fact. His retirement was confirmed four years later during the promotion of his third novel titled Escape From Andersonville. It brought an end to his career which spanned over six decades, beginning in 1956 when he joined the Pasadena Playhouse and befriended Dustin Hoffman.  

On This Day

• 1950 – The Llandow air disaster kills 80 people when the aircraft they are travelling in crashes near Sigingstone, Wales. At the time this was the world’s deadliest air disaster.
• 1989 – Sir Tim Berners-Lee submits his proposal to CERN for an information management system, which subsequently develops into the World Wide Web.
• 2011 – A reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant explodes and releases radioactivity into the atmosphere a day after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.

Deaths

• 1999 – Yehudi Menuhin, American-Swiss violinist and conductor (b. 1916).
• 2001 – Robert Ludlum, American author (b. 1927).
• 2015 – Terry Pratchett, English journalist, author, and screenwriter (b. 1948).

Last of the Vegans

Police have arrested a suspected cannibal killer and are investigating whether ‘suspicious meat’ found in his suitcase are the human remains of his alleged victim.

Begolea Mendes Fernandes, 25, was detained at Lisbon Airport after arriving on a flight from Amsterdam.

He is suspected of killing a 21-year-old called Alan Lopes in the Dutch capital in February.

The contents of his luggage, said to include meat detectives fear could be human, are now being analysed at a specialist lab. 

Dutch police have confirmed Lopez was the victim of a ‘serious violent crime.’

Portuguese press have said investigators suspect the killer committed cannibalism.

The suspect held at Lisbon Airport was on a stopover and going to board a flight to Belo Horizonte in his homeland of Brazil.

He is now under police arrest at Santa Maria Hospital in the Portuguese capital and is expected to face extradition to Holland.

A spokesman for the Portuguese Borders and Immigration Service said: ‘A 26-year-old man suspected of murder in the Netherlands was arrested at Lisbon Airport on Monday.

‘He was wearing clothes with blood on them and had a package containing pieces of meat. He was held at the airport’s border control after the authorities became suspicious about the legality of the Italian ID card he presented. He was initially detained over suspicions he was travelling on falsified documents before it was subsequently discovered he was suspected of committing a homicide in the Netherlands the day before.’ 

The murder victim was found dead at the house he shared with relatives including his mother and two sisters.

Respected Portuguese daily Jornal de Noticias reported he may have the victim of cannibalism. 

A spokesman for Dutch police said: ‘On Monday afternoon a 25-year-old man was arrested at the airport in Lisbon in collaboration with the Portuguese authorities and the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee. The man is suspected of having been involved in the death of a 21-year-old man who was found in a home on Vegasstraat in North Amsterdam on the evening of Sunday February 26th.’ The investigation continues.

Last Week’s Birthdays

Jaimie Alexander (39), Titus Welliver (61), Aaron Eckhart (55), Liza Minnelli (77), Jodie Comer (30), Thora Birch (41), Johnny Knoxville (52), John Barrowman (56), Olivia Wilde (39), Jon Hamm (52), Sharon Stone (65), Chuck Norris (83), Oscar Isaac (44), Katherine Parkinson (45), Freddie Prinze Jr. (47), Aidan Quinn (64), Cynthia Rothrock (66), Micky Dolenz (78), Bryan Cranston (67), Rachel Weisz (53), Rob Reiner (76), Alan Davies (57), Shaquille O’Neal (51), and Amy Okuda (34).

Another week flies by, also the week I found out that Boybits is a real name. Yep…  

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• Betty Boothroyd, Baroness Boothroyd, 93, British politician, member (1973–2000) and speaker (1992–2000) of the House of Commons and member of the House of Lords (since 2001).  
• Ricou Browning, 93, American actor (Creature from the Black Lagoon, Revenge of the Creature) and television director (Flipper). 
• Geneviève Lhermitte, 56, Belgian convicted murderer, assisted suicide. 
• Boybits Victoria, 50, Filipino basketball player (Pop Cola Panthers, San Miguel Beermen), heart attack.  
• Steve Mackey, 56, English bassist (Pulp) and record producer.  
• Tom Sizemore, 61, American actor (Black Hawk Down, Saving Private Ryan, Heat), complications from a brain aneurysm. 

In Other News

Dame Julie Walters has been forced to leave the cast of the forthcoming Channel 4 drama Truelove, due to ill health. The veteran star of stage and screen, 73, was diagnosed with advanced bowel cancer in 2018. In 2020, she gave an interview in which she revealed that she had got the all-clear and said that she felt like a “different person” after having cancer. Walters’ role as Phil in the drama Truelove was set to be her return to TV after a seven-year hiatus (she was last seen in the acclaimed 2016 Channel 4 drama National Treasure). Walters will be replaced on the show by Lindsay Duncan. Filming on Truelove was initially last year after Walters began suffering from severe back pain. A spokeswoman for Clerkenwell Films, which is producing the show, told the Flying Monkeys: “We wholeheartedly support her decision, and the entire cast, crew and production team wish her the very best and a speedy recovery. We are delighted that Lindsay Duncan will be stepping into the role of Phil. We’re excited to see what she brings to this complex and captivating character when we restart filming later this year.” Speaking about her decision to return to screens, Walters said last year: “I had basically withdrawn from acting and wasn’t sure that anything could tempt me back but then I read Truelove. I was completely bowled over by the writing – the dark humour, the love story and thriller element set against a backdrop of what happens to us all as we approach our later years. How often does one have the chance at my tender age to play a leading lady in a TV drama?” Walters, who was made a Dame in 2017 for services to drama, has been married to her husband Grant Roffey since 1997, and the couple share one child, Maisie Mae.  

I know it’s now March, but finding time to meet up with an old friend in-between childcare, parties, hospitalisations, and general life getting in the way, I’ve finally been able to present last years trophy to Mr Lee. Seconds after this photo was taken he dropped it and broke Mr Deaths wanking hand, however, nothing a little bit of superglue wont fix. Twat! So, as you see, living proof that the trophy is real, and you do get to keep it forever, unless you find it hideous and decide to bin it! Lee seemed over the moon to receive it, now his lovely wife needs to win this year so they can have a nice looking pair on the shelf. So now you can see, there’s loads to fight for, you cold have your very own trophy on your very own shelf, you just need to work harder on those lists! 

On This Day

• 1836 – Samuel Colt patents the first production-model revolver, the .34-caliber.
• 1940 – Six high-ranking members of the Soviet politburo, including Joseph Stalin, sign an order for the execution of 25,700 Polish intelligentsia, including 14,700 Polish POWs, in what will become known as the Katyn massacre.
• 1953 – Joseph Stalin, the longest serving leader of the Soviet Union, dies at his Volynskoe dacha in Moscow after suffering a cerebral haemorrhage four days earlier.
• 1963 – In what would have been an amazing Dead Pool day, American country music stars Patsy Cline, Hawkshaw Hawkins, Cowboy Copas and their pilot Randy Hughes are killed in a plane crash in Camden, Tennessee.
• 1981 – The ZX81, a pioneering British home computer, is launched by Sinclair Research and would go on to sell over 11⁄2 million units around the world.

Deaths

• 1829 – John Adams, English sailor and mutineer (b. 1766).
• 1953 – Joseph Stalin, Soviet dictator, 2nd leader of the Soviet Union (b. 1878).
• 1963 – Patsy Cline, American singer-songwriter (b. 1932).
• 1982 – John Belushi, American actor (b. 1949).
• 2000 – Lolo Ferrari, French dancer, actress and singer (b. 1963). 

The Killer Mother 

To the world, she looked like a doting mother smiling as she put her arms around her five young children as they opened presents.

But, months after this family photograph was taken, Genevieve Lhermitte went on to slit the throats of her children, aged three to 14, with a kitchen knife at their home in Nivelles, Belgium, in a case that shocked the country.

And exactly 16 years after Lhermitte, 56, slaughtered her children  – three-year-old Mehdi, Mina, seven, Myriam, ten, Nora, 12, Yasmine, 14 – on 28 February 2007, she was euthanised at her own request on Tuesday.

Her ex-husband Bouchaib Moqadem, who was visiting his parents in Morocco when Lhermitte launched her attack, revealed he still struggles to cope following his children’s ‘massacre’.

‘I keep my feelings to myself, I can’t share them. It’s a massacre 16 years ago, I have nothing more to say,’ the grieving father told the Flying Monkeys, adding that the murders of his children remains a ‘difficult ordeal’ for him to deal with. 

On 28th February 2007, Lhermitte stole two knives from a supermarket before cooking what would be a final meal for her five children. She locked the door and began slitting each child’s throat.

Lhermitte, who was 40 at the time of the murders, told her trial in 2008 that her eldest daughter, Yasmine, 14, was too big for her to handle so she tricked her into putting a blindfold on for a ‘surprise’.

When when the teenager was unable to see, her mother hit her over the head with a heavy marble tabletop, knocking her out before also killing her with a knife.

Lhermitte then tried to end her own life by stabbing herself, but the attempt failed and she ended up calling the emergency services.

Police found her body spread-eagled in the hall. Lhermitte later told police she felt ‘desperate and trapped’ at having to be at home with the children while her husband was away, the court heard.

Lhermitte was sentenced to life in prison in 2008, before being moved to a psychiatric hospital in 2019.

Her lawyer Nicolas Cohen said his client had died through euthanasia on the sixteenth anniversary of the killings on Tuesday. 

Belgian law allows for people to choose to be euthanised if they are deemed to be suffering from ‘unbearable’ psychological, and not just physical, suffering that cannot be healed. 

The person must be conscious of their decision and be able to express their wish in a reasoned and consistent manner.

Her funeral took place on Wednesday.

Her trial was told that Lhermitte’s role as wife and mother was disturbed by the presence in the family home of a middle-aged Belgium doctor, Michel Schaar who paid most of the family’s bills.

‘He lived with us he even went on our honeymoon and slept in our room. We had to wait until he fell asleep before we could make love,’ Lhermitte said in court. She began to resent Schaar for this and the fact that they depended financially on him.

It was revealed during her trial that Lhermitte laid the dead body of her 13-year-old daughter Nora in the bathroom used by Dr Schaar.  

When Lhermitte was asked why she said this, she said: ‘I wanted to hurt him. Nora was his favourite.’

Lhermitte, previously described as a ‘perfect’ mother, and Moqadem have since divorced. She said: ‘I gave him a son and killed him. I’ve lost all children through my own fault. They never deserved it.

‘I shall suffer to the end of my days – that is my punishment.’

Lhermitte’s lawyers argued that their client, who had regularly seen a psychiatrist, was mentally disturbed and should not be sent to prison.

But the jury found her guilty of premeditated murder and sentenced her to life in jail after hearing conflicting medical expertise. 

Lhermitte died at the Léonard de Vinci hospital in Montigny-le-Tilleul. In 2021, she reportedly attempted to end her life herself.

Last year 2,966 people died via euthanasia in Belgium, an increase of 10 percent compared to 2021, according to the authorities. Cancer remains the number one reason cited, but officials said for nearly three out of four requests the patient presented ‘several types of suffering, both physical and psychological’.

Last Week’s Birthdays

Jolene Blalock (48), Eva Mendes (49), Jake Lloyd (34), Matt Lucas (49), Paul Blackthorne (54), Fred Williamson (85), Patsy Kensit (55), Catherine O’Hara (69), Dominique Pinon (68), Julie Bowen (53), Jessica Biel (41), Miranda Richardson (65), Charlie Brooker (52), Bryce Dallas Howard (42), Gates McFadden (74), Nathalie Emmanuel (34), Daniel Craig (55), Rebel Wilson (43), Jon Bon Jovi (61), Chris Martin (46), Lupita Nyong’o (40), Jensen Ackles (45), Javier Bardem (54), Ron Howard (69), Zack Snyder (57), Dirk Benedict (78), Harry Belafonte (96), Justin Bieber (29), Roger Daltrey (79), John Turturro (66), Rae Dawn Chong (62), Stephanie Beacham (76), Kate Mara (40), Adam Baldwin (61), and Timothy Spall (66).