So we did kind of expect her to fight back in some way, what with her being a bit “interesting” in the head.

What we didn’t expect was that she’d wish cancer on anyone who had ever wronged her, tumours on those who had slighted her and death to those who gave her funny looks.

Sure, she denied she’d actually said that, but we happen to trust The Observer over Bionic Commandette.

Let’s make one thing clear: hecklerspray is not the type to unfairly judge people, places or things, as we are really, really nice.

Unless it’s Heather Mills. And even then, technically, it’s fairly judging her.

Where some celeb-types attract scorn simply by being who they are
(and through the help of millions of squawking, cloying, piss-stained females), or by dying, some bring it on themselves by being a massive, massive twat.

Who would like to guess which side Heather Mills falls into?

And now – as we believe The Observer – we have an even better reason than before to slate the self-obsessed, sympathy-hungry eterno-victim.

In an interview printed this past Sunday, Heather Mills reportedly said:

“The truth always outs in the end – no-one gets away with those things. Certain journalists have written horrible things, and then they’ve got cancer, or they’ve had a tumour, or they’ve died. And it’s terrible for them, but they’ve done really evil things. I truly believe things come back round.”

Why the paper would print her as saying that without her actually saying it we do not know – it’s pretty obvious they would get the crap sued out of them. But the woman with the best hecklerspray picture available on our database quickly backtracked, through her new favourite means of communicating with us peasants: Twitter.

It may just be our mind working overtime, but that does seem very much like a comment from a hecklerspray user. She later added:

We may be gullible – we may be – but Heather Mills did say:

“The truth always outs in the end – no-one gets away with those things. Certain journalists have written horrible things, and then they’ve got cancer, or they’ve had a tumour, or they’ve died. And it’s terrible for them, but they’ve done really evil things. I truly believe things come back round.”

Apparently.

So why not Patrick Swayze himself? It’s been reported that Patrick Swayze will pen a memoir with the help of his wife Lisa. The book will span Swayze’s entire life – which means, unless things take a turn for the better soon, it’s going to have an incredibly depressing ending.

Because, Jesus, The Beast? Have you actually seen that thing? Talk about a terrible way to end an autobiography. Way to bum us all out, Patrick.

Think Patrick Swayze at the moment and, sadly, you tend to think of the stage 4 pancreatic cancer that he’s been blighted with for the last year. That’s not without good reason – for all the upsetting talk of a two-year survival prognosis, the fact is that by doubling the life expectancy of a patient in a similar position, and by seeing off pneumonia in the process, Patrick Swayze has become something of an inspirational figure.

But, despite all this, there’s much more to Patrick Swayze than just cancer. He was named the sexiest man alive in 1991, for example. Plus he wrote She’s Like The Wind, guest-starred in an episode of MacGyver and was the single weirdest thing about Donnie Darko. And those are all things worth preserving.

And that’s why his continuing battle with cancer has spurred Patrick Swayze on to write his autobiography. Along with his wife Lisa, Patrick Swayze has announced that he’s planning to write what is bound to be an incredibly inspirational memoir. People reports:

Despite reports, the source says that Swayze, who is battling pancreatic cancer, will not write an inspirational book. Instead, The Beast star will focus on his life’s journey, including his current fight against cancer. No word yet on when the book will be published.

Oh, alright then. Patrick Swayze’s book won’t be inspirational after all. We’d quite like to think that Patrick Swayze is going to go out of his way to make his autobiography as deliberately curmudgeonly and demotivating as possible. Not just about his fight with cancer, but about everything that’s ever happened to him – we’d especially love to see chapter headings entitled Letters From A Killer: What In Shitting Christ Was I Thinking? and My Parents? Ugh, Don’t Talk To Me About My Parents – but that’s unlikely to happen, realistically.

Nevertheless, we’re sure that Patrick Swayze’s book will turn out great. Just so long as he remembers not to go into too much detail about anything that happened to him between 1992 and, say, 2007. Our lives are busy enough as it is without having to read page after page on the voice work that Patrick Swayze did for The Fox And The Hound 2.

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As if battling stage 4 pancreatic cancer and holding on for much longer than anyone anticipated wasn’t enough, Patrick Swayze now also has pneumonia beat. Last week Patrick Swayze checked himself into hospital with pneumonia, but he’s already well enough to be released.

It just goes to show Patrick Swayze’s tenacity. In fact, we’re starting to think that this Ghost’s final scene all over again – God isn’t letting Patrick Swayze die until he chops a baddie in half with a window or something.

Since he was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer last year, Patrick Swayze has never taken the easy option. Not only has he dealt with the illness in public, letting everyone know his fears and bravery in intimate detail, but he’s also found the time to film an entire TV series – foregoing painkillers and only taking one day off throughout the shoot.

And if that wasn’t enough, Patrick Swayze has even decided to take on additional illnesses as well. Last week Patrick Swayze admitted himself to hospital with pneumonia, and obviously the world feared the worst – the chemotherapy had ravaged his immune system and if it didn’t finish him off for good then at the very least everyone expected an indefinite hospital stay.

Turns out, though, that all the worry was unnecessary. Just one week later and Patrick Swayze is well enough to leave hospital and return home, as BBC News reports:

Actor Patrick Swayze has been released from hospital one week after checking himself in with pneumonia, his publicist has confirmed. Annett Wolf would not elaborate on the Dirty Dancing star’s condition, but said he was “well enough to have been released”, and was resting at home.

It almost defies belief that Patrick Swayze can continue to do so well in the face of such gigantic hurdles. In fact, if we were Swayze we’d see how far our luck could go and riverdance across a motorway or deliberately enrage a bear with a stick or something. The way he’s going, we’re pretty sure he’d escape from both unscathed.

Honestly, our admiration for Patrick Swayze is tempered only by the fact that he didn’t show this strength of spirit when he was choosing his movie roles. Because, really, he can fight off pneumonia but he couldn’t say no to Steel Dawn? Disappointing.

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But hold your horses, everyone. Just because he managed to beat one depressingly short cancer prognosis, Patrick Swayze wants everyone to know that he’s not going to live forever. In fact, in a bleak reality check during an interview with Barbara Walters, Patrick Swayze has only given himself two more years.

Patrick Swayze has got guts – making that admission while staring directly at a million-year-old bouffant Skeletor who logic dictates he should survive by several decades? That’s bravery.

Since he was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer last year, Patrick Swayze has managed to walk the line between inspiring and gut-wrenching with more deftness than a thousand daytime made-for-TV movies. Not only did he beat the odds by not dying of cancer within the five weeks he was given, but he then went on to beat the odds again by foregoing painkillers to film a TV show during his treatment.

Patrick Swayze has even survived long enough to hear his own obituaries, but no matter how much his recovery has surprised doctors and the general public at large, it’s clear his luck won’t last forever. And that’s something Patrick Swayze made horribly clear during an interview with Barbara Walters in an interview to be broadcast tonight. Reuters reports:

“I’d say five years is pretty wishful thinking. Two years seems likely if you’re going to believe statistics. I want to last until they find a cure, which means I’d better get a fire under it. You can bet I’m going through hell. There’s a lot of fear here … Yeah, I’m scared. Yeah, I’m angry. Yeah, I’m (asking) why me?… Am I dying? Am I giving up? Am I on my death bed? Am I saying goodbye to people? No way.”

It’s an honest assessment from someone who knows he’s already done better than most. Statistics show only a five percent survival rate over five years for a man in his condition, but simply by being alive a year after his diagnosis, Patrick Swayze has doubled the usual life expectancy of a regular pancreatic cancer patient.

But regardless of whether Patrick Swayze manages to keep the cancer at bay for two years or five, it doesn’t matter – through his sheer grit and determination, Patrick Swayze will prove to be an inspiration for many decades after his death.

What’s more, it means the mawkish Dirty Dancing tribute night that every TV station in the world is planning for the day after Patrick Swayze dies is still anywhere between two to five years off. In a way, we’re all winners.

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What’s more impressive is that Patrick Swayze has got his pancreatic cancer on the run. He’s responding well enough to the treatment that he’s even made his own, admittedly quite rubbish-looking TV show.

So Patrick Swayze doesn’t seem like he’s on death’s door. And if you think he is, keep it to yourself, because Patrick Swayze is so furious about it that it’s all he can do not to get all penultimate scene of Ghost on your arse.

Manufacturers of limited-edition plate sets featuring badly-painted pictures of Patrick Swayze dancing in a vest and the slogan ‘Nobody puts baby in a corner… except pancreatic cancer. Patrick Swayze: 1952 – 2008′, we have some bad news for you. It doesn’t look like Patrick Swayze is going anywhere.

It’s astounding to think that back in March Patrick Swayze was given just five weeks to live because pancreatic cancer had taken hold in his body. But then the five-week mark passed. And then the five-month mark. And then enough time for Patrick Swayze to have to deny that he was going to star in Point Break 2 because he realised he wasn’t going to get out of it by dying first.

Between this and his new TV show Beast, it seems like Patrick Swayze has got his pancreatic cancer well and truly licked. Whether it’s because he was rich enough to afford the best cancer treatment in the world or because God doesn’t want him to leave Earth until he’s made a sequel to Letters From A Killer, a movie which He wrongly regards as a classic, it doesn’t matter. Patrick Swayze is on the mend and that’s what’s important.

Unless you’re the National Enquirer, because if that’s the case then what’s important is writing all kinds of stories about what a feeble old cancer-suffering wanker Patrick Swayze is as often as possible; something that Swayze himself has not unreasonably got the arseholes with. The New York Daily News reports:

“They’re reporting that I’m on my last legs and saying goodbye to my tearful family!” he railed. He called the coverage of his battle as “emotional cruelty” – especially, he said, “when hope is so precious… It’s upsetting that the shoddy and reckless reporting from these publications cast a negative shadow on the positive and good fight I’m fighting.”

Honestly, these people should know better than to morbidly follow every last gasp and croak of a man with a serious disease. Not only does it reflect very badly on the publications in question, but you also have to wonder if any of these journalists have ever seen Ghost.

Annoy Patrick Swayze in this life and he’ll come and get you from the next life. Or he’ll sort of jump inside Whoopi Goldberg’s body and make her come and get you. Or he’ll help Demi Moore do some pottery. Or something.

Look, it’s ages since we last saw Ghost. Just, anyway, look, stop it.

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While some will say that Michael Crichton’s legacy will be Jurassic Park, the best-selling novel that was turned into movie phenomenon; or ER, the TV series he created from his own experiences as a doctor; or even Westworld, the movie he directed that was exactly the same as Jurassic Park except with a bald-headed robot cowboy instead of dinosaurs, they are respectfully wrong.

For us, Michael Crichton will be remembered for one thing and one thing only – this video. It’s the climax to the movie adaptation of his novel Congo. Evil gorillas have never been brutally dismembered by a laser gun inside a volcano so gracefully. Michael Crichton, you will be missed.

And now Patrick Swayze has been given another second chance, and this one is perhaps even more remarkable. When he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, Patrick Swayze was supposedly given five weeks to live. That was back in March, and not only has Swayze not died, but he’s also managed to star in a TV show in the meantime as well.

So Patrick Swayze has hit the promotional circuit, giving a bracingly upbeat interview to the New York Times where he revealed how proud he is of his continued recovery while admitting that chemotherapy is ‘hell on wheels’. It must be working, though, because Swayze is doing a fairly good impression of a man on the mend. Maybe our dream of seeing Red Dawn 2: Zombie Commies get made wasn’t so stupid after all.

Everyone likes a story about a man who beats the odds - Rocky, Winston Churchill, that chap who eats all the hotdogs – and that’s why there’s such a huge swell of goodwill for Patrick Swayze at the moment.

Earlier this year, it was revealed that Patrick Swayze had been struck down by such a vicious strain of pancreatic cancer that he was only given five weeks to live. As expected, all kinds of tributes bordering on obituary were paid to Patrick Swayze, but it seems they might have been a little bit premature.

Because in July, months after he was supposed to be dead, Patrick Swayze seemed to have the cancer licked. And now, almost four months after that, not only is Patrick Swayze even better still, but he’s been feeling well enough to star in a TV series.

The show will no doubt be horrible, given that a) It’s called The Beast, b) it’s on A&E and c) it’s got Patrick Swayze in it, but the fact alone that Patrick Swayze even has the drive to make it is nothing short of spectacular. And Patrick Swayze’s just as pleased about that as anyone else, as he told The New York Times:

“How do you nurture a positive attitude when all the statistics say you’re a dead man? You go to work… I do find myself, at the end of the day, riding home sort of catching myself with a smile on my face. I’m proud of what I’m doing… It’s a battle zone I go through. Chemo, no matter how you cut it, is hell on wheels.”

We’ve said it before, but it’s phenomenal that Patrick Swayze can pull 12-hour days working on a TV show while battling chemotherapy.

Some have said that Swayze’s recovery is down to God refusing to accept that he’s completed all of his objectives on Earth – which is rubbish, because until he was diagnosed with cancer Patrick Swayze’s objectives on Earth seemed to involve making really crummy films – but regardless, it’s hard not to be impressed.

9 - A French man gets his arm stuck down a toilet. Ha ha ha – BBC

8 - Please let this be true: Guy Ritchie’s Madonna: The Movie – Holy Moly

7 – A slightly disgusting miles per gallon calculator for your own body – Carconnection

6 - Baconnaise. Exactly what it sounds like it is Thank you, geniuses – Holytaco

5 - An acorn cakelet pan! – Bakingbites

4 – The title of every single unmade music biopic ever – Best Week Ever

3 – Christopher Nolan dissects a scene from The Dark Knight. Fails to answer the question “Hey, what’s up with Batman’s silly voice?” – LA Times

2 - You know what we wish existed? Wine based on The Sopranoes. What? It exists?! – Videogum

1 – Jamie, a longtime hecklerspray reader, has been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. He’s keeping a spiffy, abnormally testicle-heavy, blog about it, though, so go read it – Cancerouscapers

However, although he may have physically passed away, Paul Newman will never really die – he’ll live on forever in our hearts and minds with both his indelible, iconic movie roles and also his yummo salad dressing.

When someone as legendary as Paul Newman passes away, it’s only natural for other celebrities to share their memories of the deceased with everyone. So, as such, we’ve decided to pass on perhaps the most relevant tribute of all – Paul Newman’s co-star in Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, The Sting and Termintor 3: Rise Of The Machines, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

On Friday night, Paul Newman died after a period of ill health. He was 83. During his lifetime, Paul Newman managed to succeed in industries as varied as food production, philanthropy and NASCAR, but the thing that he’ll go down in history for is his movie work.

The Hustler, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, The Hudsucker Proxy, Road To Perdition – regardless of the age he made them, Paul Newman imbued all these movies with the sort of intelligent, dignified, macho cool that only really comes along once a generation.

So, as such, it’s only right that one of the men we should be paying attention to in the wake of Paul Newman’s death is his spiritual successor, Arnold Schwarzenegger – the man who took Paul Newman’s nuanced ethos and applied it to films about angry vikings and pregnant men.

Addressing a crowd of Olympians and Paralympians in California this weekend, Arnold Schwarzenegger took the time to commemorate Paul Newman’s passing. The Mercury News reports:

“There’s just one thing, news that we have, that is sad,” the governor said. “Last night Paul Newman passed away because of cancer, and so our thoughts and prayers go out to Joanne (Woodward)—his wife—and to his friends and his family.” Schwarzenegger had met Newman but never appeared with him in a movie.

Of course, it’s only right for Arnold Schwarzenegger to publicly mention Paul Newman’s death – as Governor of California, he’s ultimately in charge of a state that’s just 2,865 short miles away from where Newman lived.

Anyway, now that Schwarzenegger has paid tribute to Paul Newman, the grieving process can begin in earnest. And, if that means we’ll all get to watch Cool Hand Luke again in memorial, then at least some good can come of it.

And that seems to have triggered something weird in Jade Goody’s brain. Since getting cancer has made her famous and liked again, Jade has taken it on herself to keep the momentum going by recounting awful periods of her life to various publications while photographers take pictures of her crying.

Following yesterday’s revelation that she once smoked crack in front of her mother, Jade Goody has now revealed that she was once kidnapped by a fake taxi driver. God knows what Jade will admit to tomorrow – maybe she once got sexually abused by some cattle or bought a pair of shoes made of tumours or something – but at least we know that this isn’t the most depressing Jade Goody news that we could hear. No, that’d be that they’re letting her back on the telly.

You wouldn’t want to be Jade Goody at the moment. OK, to be fair you wouldn’t want to be Jade Goody ever. In fact, most right-minded people would rather deliberately suffocate themselves in horse diarrhea than be anything like Jade Goody. But you especially wouldn’t want to be her now.

The reasons are too numerous to mention, but since Jade Goody is perhaps one of the only cancer sufferers in the country to also have a one-armed lesbian mother, an incarcerated boyfriend and a public reputation as a bit of a hateful racist, she just doesn’t seem like someone you’d want to particularly swap with, does she?

But, by a tragic coincidence, exactly one week after Jade Goody was seen sobbing her heart out on the cover of a million magazines because she’s got cancer, Jade Goody can now be seen sobbing her heart out on the cover of a million magazines because she’s got an autobiography coming out and promoting that seems to require her to dredge up every last gruesome event that’s ever occurred to her in public while a photographer snaps away at her miserable face.

Yesterday, of course, was ‘Jade Smoked Crack’ day, where Jade Goody admitted to smoking crack to make her mum stop smoking crack, even though that sounds like admitting to sitting in front of Weightwatchers eating a KFC Bargain Bucket to stop the lardies from eating so much.

And today? Well today Jade Goody has decided to inexplicably tell the world that a bloke kidnapped her once by pretending to be a taxi driver. Now reports:

The reality star, 27, and her then boyfriend climbed into his car thinking it was a cab. But when the driver dumped Jack Tweed, 21, in the middle on nowhere, Jade panicked.  She managed to overpower him and get out of the vehicle.  ‘I didn’t know what to do, then instinct kicked in,’ she writes in new book Jade: Catch A Falling Star. ‘It was to grab the driver’s head and begin hitting him as hard as I could.

It’s terrible, isn’t it? Why would anyone want to kidnap Jade Goody? All you’d end up with is a dumpy woman tied up in the corner of your house and a migraine from all her nasally bellowing. Jade Goody, hand on heart, would be one of the last people we’d kidnap.

Worse still, Jade Goody’s got a new perfume coming out soon as well, called Controversial. If she’s going through all this emotional anguish for a book, imagine what she’ll do for something that she doesn’t even have to read. Honestly, it’s going to be like the last few scenes of Requiem For A Dream, except a bit more council.

Yeah, now you remember. Anyway, Jack Tweed has just been sentenced to 18 months in prison for doing one of those things. That’s right – Jack Tweed went to prison for wearing an illegal hat. What a disturbing criminal this man is.

Oh, OK, not really. In actual fact, Jack Tweed smashed a 16-year-old boy in the face, head and chest with a golf club, the scamp . It’s terrible news for Jade Goody – first she got cancer and now Jack Tweed’s gone to jail. Still, on the plus side at least nobody’s calling her ‘Pig-faced Big Brother racist Jade Goody’ any more. That has to be worth something, right?

We don’t have any scientific proof for this, but we’re pretty sure that wearing a trilby actually turns you into a monster. Look at Pete Doherty – pre-trilby he was the lovely bloke from The Libertines, then he puts on a trilby and goes to jail. Similarly, Blake Fielder-Civil was compelled to kick a pub landlord’s face in as soon as he put a trilby on. Then there’s the worst offender of all - Patrick Truman from EastEnders, whose trilby made him think sexy thoughts about Pat Butcher. Disgusting.

And now Jade Goody’s ex-boyfriend Jack Tweed has joined the trilby monster club by getting sentenced to 18 months in jail for beating up a boy with a golf club. The Times reports:

Tweed pleaded not guilty and denied any knowledge of the assault at his trial in July, but at today’s sentencing his lawyer said, in mitigation, that his client had lost his temper after being the victim of “sustained abuse” by local youths… Andre de Moller said Tweed had attacked Daniel in order to teach the teenager “a lesson”.

Frankly we didn’t think that Jack Tweed was capable of such violence, but only because it requires the brainpower to necessitate basic motor skills and – from watching his exploits on Celebrity Big Brother last year, where he basically acted like an amoeba with a Zara storecard – we just didn’t think he had it in him.

However, the timing of Jack Tweed’s conviction genuinely could have come at a worse time. Jade Goody’s just been diagnosed with cervical cancer and – if the front covers of every single magazine we’ve looked at for the last fortnight are correct – Jade’s understandably quite distraught about it.

Without Jack around, who’s going to be there for Jade? Her crazy one-armed lesbian mother? Oh please. And that’s all she’s got – well, her and the depressingly large slice of the population who’ll rush out and buy Jade Goody’s inevitable ghostwritten book My Struggle, but that’s it. No wonder Jade calls Jack her rock.

True, that’s mainly because he’s completely inert, devoid of any signs of life and painful when struck into the face of a 16-year-old boy, but you get the picture.

The 83-year-old has reportedly been told he has weeks to live following chemotherapy treatment for lung cancer and, when confronted with the news, he told doctors he wanted to die at home.

Just as he has proven time and time again through his long life, Paul Newman is nothing less than a man’s man – dictating where death is allowed to get its slimy mitts on him.

While we did all hope that Newman would crack a pool cue over cancer’s back, it would appear that the insidious little bastard of a disease has managed to one-up Butch Cassidy.

While we hope to God, Allah, Buddah, Xenu and everyone else in-between that the reports are as inaccurate as the ones saying Bernie Mac was healthy, recent images of Newman have left us with little hope, showing the legend looking weak and frail – a shell of the man we at hecklerspray have a real love for.

The love we spread around for the marinade king isn’t the kind you would normally get on hearing a legend – and be in no doubt that Paul Newman is anything but a legend – is on their way out, or has recently died. No, hecklerspray has constantly sung the praises of one of the greatest actors the world has ever seen.

We reckoned he was involved in one of the best scenes with one of the top ten movie assassins.

We pointed out his involvement in one of the top ten sports movies of all time.

And we obviously included his turn as a part of one of the top ten movie heists of all time.

Never let it be said we had anything other than utter admiration for the man.

Speaking to the Daily Mail, a friend of the family said:

“He didn’t want to die in the hospital. Joanne and his daughters are beside themselves with grief.”

The source heartbreakingly went on:

“The sudden move angered his children. It’s especially hard for them to come to grips with what’s going on. The word they’ve been given is that he has only a few weeks to live.”

It’s not often we’re lost for words but – well, we pretty much are now. Paul has apparently spent the last few weeks making sure his business and personal affairs are in order, as well as giving away his prized Ferarri to a friend. Not hecklerspray, unfortunately, but we’re not going to complain. Much.

It really has been something of a shitty few days for entertainment news – Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes both suddenly passing away over the weekend, and now the apparent impending death of one of the true greats of cinema. And you wonder why we’re so pissed off all the time.

We are hoping that the reports are fabricated, but if not: make your final marinades Paul – you will be missed. We have used the word a few times already in this post, but here we go again: the man is a legend.

And he makes chicken taste gooooood.

Four months ago Patrick Swayze was diagnosed with a particularly vicious bout of pancreatic cancer that we were told would kill him within weeks. Now, though, Patrick Swayze has surprised everyone by looking remarkably healthy – so what gives?

According to Patrick Swayze himself, his apparent recovery is a ‘miracle’. Miracle schmiracle, we say – it’s obvious that Patrick Swayze is doing so well because of a) impressive advances in oncology and b) Patrick Swayze’s realisation that royalties from sales of Ghost DVDs have rocketed since he got cancer and if he hangs around long enough he’ll be able to afford a speedboat.

You’ll have noticed that we haven’t paid too much attention to Patrick Swayze since he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer back in March. That’s partly because we were respecting Partick’s request for privacy during his treatment, and partly because Miley Cyrus got her pants out and that was obviously way more important.

But since then two major things have happened to Patrick Swayze. Firstly, given that Swayze apparently only had five weeks to live when he was diagnosed, he had to watch while people like Whoopi Goldberg give tributes to him like he was already dead, which much be a pretty weird thing to experience. And secondly?

Secondly Patrick Swayze got better.

The five-week mark came and went and, rather than dying, Patrick Swayze gradually started to look healthier. Last month doctors told Swayze he was well enough to return to work and now he’s made his first statement about his incredible recovery. The Telegraph reports:

Asked about his health, a grinning Swayze, 55, gave a thumbs up and replied: “I’m a miracle, dude, I don’t know why.” … In addition to hospital treatment, the star is sticking to a healthy eating regime in a bid to keep the cancer at bay.

It’s genuinely great news to hear that Patrick Swayze is winning his fight against cancer, and hopefully his health will continue to improve.

A few more months of incremental recovery and maybe Patrick Swayze will even stop being known as a brave cancer survivor and go back to being the bloke who was kind of crappy in Steel Dawn. But for that to happen we all have to believe.

It was an age of moralising without snobbery, with heroes you wanted to be and leading men you wished you could just hug and say ‘thank you’ to.

Paul Newman is a man from that age, and to this day he carries on being a shining example to the world of Hollywood as to what makes a man.

Newman doesn’t bother hyping himself up to be our new saviour – he eschews the limelight that could so easily surround his incredible array of charity works and instead focuses on, well, raising the money. Not constantly appearing on TV to tell us all that he’s raising money – the man just goes out there and does it, managing to make some damn fine marinades for your chicken in the process.

Not like those modern day ponces who skip around from chat show to radio discussion, elaborating to anyone who cares (clue: no one) on how they aim to change the world, that China may not have a great human rights record and generally patronising all with the combination of ears and the ability to understand language.

Nor does he take his time being clinically insane, leaping about the place, alienating fans and generally being a grade ‘A’ berk. The man may subscribe to a religion, he may not, but he certainly doesn’t jog around from port to port cramming his beliefs down anyone’s throat.

What a guy.

Paul Newman inhabits the same echelon of existence saved for members of the human race who are just great, above all reproach and come across as thoroughly nice people – like Gregory Peck, for example. The kind of people that even we at hecklerspray towers find it hard to take issue with.

But unlike the Pecker, Newman isn’t dead. And if his latest statement about his health is anything to go on, the 83-year-old won’t be for a while. Speaking to journalists through his spokesperson, the following factoid was revealed:

“Newman says he’s doing nicely.”

Granted, this does nothing to quell the rumours that the retired actor is gravely ill with cancer, but if Paul says he’s doing great, hecklerspray believes him.

If one of the manliest men that has ever existed tells you he’s okay – even if it’s through a third party – then he’s okay. Stop the speculation and just hope the alleged lung cancer isn’t true; we’ve had enough life-threatening cancer for this year, thanks.

To be fair though, cancer clearly wouldn’t stand a chance against Newman. He’d crack a pool cue over that fucker’s back.

Just a few months ago, the Dirty Dancing star had weeks to live after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. But it was reported this week that 55-year-old Patrick Swayze is actually returning to work.

Yes, you heard that right: cancer-stricken Patrick Swayze is going to be back on your TV screens very soon. Next year, in fact.

It’s not the first time he has been linked with a return. Only a couple of weeks ago, there were rumours he was to star in a sequel of the highly-successful surfing movie Point Break.

But he quickly denied that that was the case, which, of course, we all expected. I mean, he has cancer, right!?

However, this week Patrick Swayze confirmed he will be returning to work – in the TV show The Beast – after the doctors confirmed he is fit to resume work.

Fit to resume work? Pretty incredible! I mean this is not a bout of the flu – he has an aggressive form of pancreatic cancer, for God’s sake!

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