Dead Or Alive? Are You Sure?
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| Photo Credit : Alex Iby / Unsplash |
Yesterday I ended up down a weird and wonderful rabbit hole from a click on Twitter that culminated in a visit to Mumsnet (don't judge me - it was lunch time and I was aimlessly wandering around the internet unsupervised). The thread I ended up reading was about celebrities who were absolute twats in real life. The thing is, I read a couple of names on there and had to really wrack my brains to remember if they were (now) dead or alive.
Well, this opened a whole new tab of research on Wikipedia and IMDb with one celebrity very much alive and another still not confirmed*. I shared my thoughts with my Facebook friends who, quite frankly, are as sick and twisted as I am and it appears that I'm not on my own with this type of bewilderment.
*FYI: Bella Emberg (alive) and Mo from the Roly Polys (unsure)
*UPDATE : Bella Emberg (dead - January 2018)
*UPDATE : Bella Emberg (dead - January 2018)
Names popped up left, right and centre and many of them I had to double check. Catherine started the ball rolling with Russ Abbott (alive) and Tracy wondered about Freddie Starr (alive - UPDATE : dead, May 2019) and the Nolan Sisters (unsure of the percentage but they are definitely not all alive). Allie had to have a think about Ken Dodd (alive UPDATE : dead, March 2018) but I could absolutely put her straight on that one due to our tenuous family connections.
Kate made me actually laugh out loud when she added Rula Lenska (alive) - Lisa was convinced she was dead (but then she only realised about Superman/Christopher Reeves (dead) a couple of years ago so draw your own conclusions there) and then Kate added Dennis Waterman (alive) into the mix.
Bruce Forsythe (alive - UPDATE : dead - August 2017 ), Jim Bowen (alive - UPDATE : dead, March 2018) and Ted Rodgers (dead) were next along with Dick Van Dyke (alive and very much active on Twitter) and then Jonathan threw a triple mix of Windsor Davies (alive - UPDATE : dead, January 2019), Mollie Sugden (dead) and Jon Pertwee (dead) into the pot.
We finished off with a Chris Rea (alive) versus Gerry Rafferty (dead) story from Alex and a ponder over Doris Day (alive) from Lorraine but there were two little gems from the conversation that I'm going to share with you now...
1. Tanya wasn't allowed to play because her husband blames her for Tommy Vance dying:
I argued he was dead, vehemently. He said not, for about ten minutes. We didn't google it but the next morning it was announced he had died in the night.
2. Rachel was at a charity pub quiz a couple of years ago with a "Dead/Alive Round". One of the celebrities asked about was Wendy Richard:
I was supremely confident she was no longer with us so answered D (for dead) It was an unusual quiz in that they took in all the answer sheets at the end of each round, marked them and read out the answers and a running tally of who was in the lead. On reading out the D/A answers, the quiz master said Wendy Richards was alive. There was a rumbling of dissent among the crowd and the bloke said he'd come back to it at the end as so many of us disagreed, but that he was *fairly sure* she was still alive. Anyway, fast forward to the end of the quiz and he grabs the mic, and says, "After some research, I have to tell you that Wendy Richards is in fact dead!" The place erupted in vindicated cheers and then (as one group) the whole pub realised how horrible it was cheering the death of a well loved actress and we all pissed ourselves laughing instead.
During the conversation I was first reminded of a blog post that I wrote a couple of years ago, focusing on 10 famous people that are older than sliced bread. Even if I do say so myself, it's probably some of the best research that I've conducted for this blog and there's only two that have had to be crossed off the list. I was also given a nudge to join Steve's Fantasy Death League on Facebook and I told everyone about Gwyn's Dead Pool from which I receive an in-depth weekly newsletter about celebrity and gruesome deaths around the world. You should join both - a barrel of laughs!