DevonDeathTrip

There is a story in today's News of the World which says Alex Higgins is now down to six stone and has been hospitalised because he is so unwell. His sister says she fears his cancer may have returned.

Update on Borgnine's health. He's still as fit as a fiddle.

David Piper, The Lord of Warleigh has been in the headlines today as he's selling his title, his properties and most of his possessions on Ebay. He's selling up and moving to London to get treatement for his "rather advanced prostate cancer".

Obviously, I don't know Paul Newman, and I obviously will never know or meet him, but I said some very harsh things about him (inadvertently to be honest) on another thread (2009 Predictions) and I was called out for it (deservedly). I actually felt bad for those comments and wish I could somehow apologize to him. Yeah, I know it sounds pathetic even by Internet standards, but I do genuinely like him as an actor (even moreso than Charlton Heston). Part of me hates to see him go because he is a cinematic legend and one of the most talented movie stars ever. Yet, a part of me also believes that it is time for him to go (if what the report above says is true). Thank you for clarifying your point of view. I'm sure Paul will finally find peace when he hears of your contrition. When we last spoke, he did mention that your unkind comments have been a source of much torment to him...

Paul Newman has stopped his chemotherapy treatment and been given weeks to live.

Erick Darling, sixties folkie who replaced Pete Seeger in The Weavers, has died aged 74. Goodnight Darling

Play write (sic) Simon Gray has smoked his last cigarette.

Man dies in fairy cake eating competition.

Cheer up Dev, at least Phil Drabble won't have to witness the onrushing calamity. I am happy really, more importantly than anything Exeter are back in the league!! Sorry for the doom mongering everyone, maybe this thread should lie dormant for fifty years, then we can revive it and see how we're doing. That's if the floodwaters haven't got the DL servers by then...

Well, here's hoping you're right! I didn't really start this thread specifically to discuss global warming, there's as much of a chance to us all (apart from Clive) falling pray to plagues or nuclear war. I'm not too sure how scientists have just figured out that seafarers of yore kept records of the climate. Books by British explorers like William Dampier, Joseph Banks and Alfred Maudslay, which are littered with detailed references to the weather, have been around for centuries. Nor do I think it's news to anyone that there has been freakish weather in the past. There were the volcanic winters of 536 and 1816 which led to "years without summer", going further back to 38AD, a massive storm surge on the Thames killed ten thousand people, still Britain's worst natural disaster. So yes, there has always been bad weather, but you may be interested to know that the world has been hotter on average over the last fifty years than it ever has been in the last ten thousand years. If the global average temperature was to rise by just one more degree, the world will be hotter than it has been for the last million years. Scientists predict that the world could heat up by as much as six degrees over the next one hundred and fifty years, there is no evidence anywhere to suggest that the planet has ever before warmed up that much before in such a short space of time. The effects on us all will be catastrophic. I find it very hard to believe that humans have nothing whatsoever to do with this sudden acceleration of climate change. In light of that, and bearing in mind the continuing threat of diseases, nutters with large bombs, overpopulation, etc, I continue to look to our collective futures with much pessimism. But please continue to try and convince me otherwise, LFN, I'd love to stop thinking the sky is about to fall on my head.

Sounds like a horrible death as well, hanging upside down on ropes in freezing conditions whilst deprived of oxygen. Still, they must have had a hell of view (albeit the wrong way round) as they dangled over the abyss.

Any news on Dino TOsO OoO? I've decided he is going to get an obit, so he'll be going on my DDP team if he's ill enough.

Link http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1217265134...=googlenews_wsj Robert Novak, has revealed his prognosis is "dire" and announced his immediate retirement.

Dino de Delaurentiis

Historian, linguist and writer, Ji Xianlin, 97, one of China's leading intellectuals - according to his Wiki page "he currently lives in semi-seclusion in a military hospital." Here's an article about him. The report also has a recent photo of rocket scientist and DDP pick Tsien Hsue-shen (Qian Xuesen)

No recent news on the health of President Bingu Mutharika of Malawi. However, a year after the death of his wife, he is reported to have found a soulmate in Vera Chiluba, the ex-wife of ailing former Zambian President Frederick Chiluba. President Mutharika is 76 and suffers from advanced prostate cancer.

John Uphoff. Obscure, but certain to get an obit on the BBC.

^ I had fun writing Judith Kerr's bio on the HDP

Brazilian artist Athos Bulcão, who often collaborated with DL pick Oscar Niemayer, has died at the age of 90. Here are a couple of examples of his work.

Former Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam, 92, who has been suggested loads of times before on DL, has spent several weeks in hospital and is now receiving "rehabilitation" for an undisclosed ailment.

José Alencar has suffered a setback after a new tumour was found in his abdomen.

Lewis Croft: Munchkin. His obit says that there are seven surviving munchkins.

Steve Fossett "may have faked his own death", according to investigators. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2462912/Ad...-own-death.html

Countdown in crisis. Des O'Connor gone and Carol Vorderman effectively fired after the was told to take a 90% pay cut. The man who owns the rights to the programme is threatening to pull the plug. There are few things in life that I feel strongly about, but if Countdown disappears from our screens, I will not be a happy man.