The SS Ourang Medan was a Dutch cargo ship that sent out a distress call, but by the time help arrived the entire crew were dead with their eyes open, staring ahead with a look of incredible horror on their faces. As she was about to be towed to land the ship exploded, and sank to a watery grave – refusing to give up any answers as to what happened on her salty decks.

The first mention of the SS Ourang Medan and all its suddenly dead crew was in a periodical published by the United States Coast Guard. Allegedly, the ship sent out a distress call, and according to GettysburgGhosts.net, it went something like this:

“”All officers including captain are dead lying in chartroom and bridge.  Possibly whole crew dead.”  This message was followed by indecipherable Morse code then [the words] “I die.”"

Help arrived as you can imagine – and only after a few hours. It was too late. Everybody on board was dead. As the rescue party boarded they saw a gruesome sight – the entire crew was at the doorway of decomposition with their eyes open, their arms outstretched, and their lifeless faces twisted in absolute horror. The ship’s dog was dead as well – found with a tooth-filled snarl on its lips.

The Medan itself was completely undamaged, and the sailors had no visible wounds to explain their mass-demise. Before the boat could be explored further flames exploded out of the cargo hold, and the would-be rescuers were forced back to their own vessel. Then the death-ship exploded, and sank out of man’s reach. Had the other ship’s crew not managed to cut the ropes holding the two barges together, perhaps both would have plunged together.

There are several theories as to how all those men died – ranging from the inhalation of carbon monoxide to some kind of nefarious UFO intervention. In the end, nobody really knows what happened.

You know what else nobody knows? If the Ourang Medan ever concretely existed or not. As we already stated, the first mention of the Medan was in a publication put out by the US National Coast Guard. One would think that meant sources were well documented. But perhaps this isn’t the case. Wikipedia seems to think so anyway:

“Several authors note their inability to find any mention of the case in Lloyd’s Shipping Register. Furthermore, no registration records for a ship by the name of Ourang Medan could be located in various countries, including the Netherlands. While Bainton states that the identity of the Silver Star, which was reported to have been involved in the failed rescue attempt, has been established with some certainty, the lack of information on the sunken ship itself has given rise to suspicion about the origins and credibility of the account. Bainton and others have put forward the possibility that accounts of, among others, the date, location, names of the ships involved, and circumstances of the accident might have been inaccurate or exaggerated, or that the story might be completely fictitious.”

So did the ship ever exist? No record of it anywhere would certainly seem to indicate that it didn’t. This point is counter-argued with a barely-post WWII mentality saying that some sort of top secret chemical cargo may have required absolute secrecy – and then triggered all those deaths.

It seems to us an ace scuba team should be able to answer all this once and for all. Let’s see if we can’t put one of those together.

But the forthcoming American Idol will be groundbreaking. That’s because it’ll be the first American Idol theme season – and the theme is ‘everybody be really nice to all the contestants, even if they’re clearly awful, in case more of them show up dead outside Paula Abdul’s house’.

Actually it’s not. Simon Cowell has spoken about the death of Paula Abdul’s obsessed fan and has decided that, though sad, he’s still going to be a bastard to everyone he meets. Hooray!

The death of Paula Goodspeed was upsetting on so many levels. Partly because it was a waste of a young life, partly because the warning signs went unheeded for so long, partly because choosing to kill yourself because you couldn’t be Paula Abdul’s best friend is possibly the silliest decision that anyone could ever make and partly because it would seem that American Idol may have been a direct factor for her suicide.

Shortly after Paula Goodspeed was found dead in a car near Paula Abdul’s house it emerged that she was a former American Idol contestant who was chosen to appear on the show because she was so obsessed with Paula Abdul that her house was littered with life-size paintings of her. Brought on, laughed at, ridiculed for her dental braces and sent packing – the American Idol machine chewed Paula Goodspeed up and spat her out.

And now that she’s dead, Goodspeed has made sure that she’ll hang over the entire new season of American Idol like a particularly miserable cloud. Firstly, Paula Abdul is spooked out and angry at the show’s producers, which will make for an interesting dynamic when American Idol reaches its live stages. Secondly a hasty format rejig means there won’t be so many lunatics appearing in the American Idol audition shows. And thirdly, there’s Simon Cowell.

Simon Cowell’s bread and butter is the withering put-down but, now those put-downs have been linked to a woman’s suicide, there’s a chance he’ll have to reign them in a bit on the new American Idol. And what’s Simon Cowell left with if you take away his shocking rudeness? Some ill-fitting trousers, the world’s least-flattering haircut and a voice that sounds like KITT from Knight Rider’s gay uncle who’s been struck down with a nasty case of M.E.

So will we see a new, fluffier Simon Cowell when American Idol premieres next month? Not bloody likely, as he told Reuters:

“I have thought long and hard about this… I think we will continue in the way we have always done. We have tried to have a sense of humor. The show is not an inherently mean show… What happened was awful. My regret is that we didn’t know how troubled this person was. If I had gone back in time and known what she was going through, I wish we could have spent time trying to help her, but we genuinely didn’t know.”

To be fair, Simon Cowell does have a point here – none of the American Idol contestants who he’s scolded for looking a bit gay or probably being disabled have killed themselves, so maybe Paula Goodspeed was just a tragic one-off.

And he’s absolutely right to refuse to drop all the sarcastic comments. Rude Simon Cowell may have accidentally helped to prompt one untimely suicide, but that’d be a drop in the ocean to the millions of horrified viewers who’d start disgustedly stabbing themselves in the face if Simon Cowell ever hugged someone or – worse still – actually started crying. Just thinking about that has given us the creeps, actually. Bleurgh.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!

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.

For the last 35 years, the highlight of January has been Mr Blackwell’s worst-dressed list – a bewilderingly written, mostly-alliterative rhyme-heavy blizzard of celebrity nastiness that couldn’t have sounded any more camp if it was read aloud by a talking buttplug in a feather boa at a Cher concert.

But Mr Blackwell won’t be writing a worst-dressed list for 2009, because Mr Blackwell has died of complications from an intestinal infection. It’s a sad day for sure but, who knows, maybe one day scientists will find some of Mr Blackwell’s blood inside a mosquito that’s been trapped in amber and splice his DNA with frogs to create a theme park where all the exhibits run around telling you that your blouse looks crap.

Mr Blackwell was a myth wrapped in an enigma. You might occasionally think of yourself as a myth wrapped in an enigma too, but chances are that if you are, Mr Blackwell would have noticed the enigma you’re dressed in and called it ‘enig-moronic overkill that’s simply over-the-hill – a tacky terror from head to toe’. Because that’s just what Mr Blackwell did. Every single bloody year.

Not any more, though, because even though his annual worst-dressed list was the basis for the story we most look forward to writing every single year, he’s died. What a selfish old bastard. AP reports:

Mr. Blackwell, the acerbic designer whose annual worst-dressed list skewered the fashion felonies of celebrities from Zsa Zsa Gabor to Britney Spears, has died. He was 86. Blackwell died Sunday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center of complications from an intestinal infection, publicist Harlan Boll said.

While Mr Blackwell will be best-remembered for his worst-dressed list – the influence of which can be felt everywhere, from fashion magazines to every single Sex And The City script to websites like this – that’s not all Mr Blackwell did with his life. He says he invented jeans for women, for example, plus he used to be a prostitute. And, um, that’s about it.

But without Mr Blackwell and his worst-dressed list, the world will be a sadder, more alliteration-free place. Now is not the time to be upset by this news, though – by dying now, Mr Blackwell has left us one of the greatest gifts we think we’ve ever been given.

Because he wasn’t able to update his worst-dressed list before he passed away, Mr Blackwell has effectively made sure that Victoria Beckham will be the worst-dressed woman until the end of time itself.

We’re misty-eyed with gratitude.

And that’s that he definitely knows when he’s too old for something. Like Lethal Weapon 5, for example. There had been talk that a Lethal Weapon 5 script was written and ready to go, and that everything hinged on Mel Gibson’s approval but, according to director Richard Donner, Mel Gibson wants nothing to do with it.

So that’s that – there absolutely isn’t going to be a Lethal Weapon 5. We can therefore rule Mel Gibson out of making any belated sequels to his movies from now on. Unless he got our script for What Women Want 2, that is. We think it’d be right up Mel Gibson’s alley because, in this one, the thing that women want is the extermination of the Jews.

It’s easy to be hard on Mel Gibson, for his alcoholism and his crazy views about Jewish people and the way that all his films are basically gory splatterfests that people only go and see because they’re about Jesus. But you have to admit that Mel Gibson won’t do anything for money.

Given that every action movie you loved as a youngster – and some that you didn’t love at all – has made a comeback in some form or another, attention has naturally been turning to Mel Gibson lately. He’s just got so many movies that deserve a belated sequel that one has to be made at some point – face it, you’d go and watch Mad Max 4: Beyond The Thunderdome Left At The Lights And Just Past B&Q or The Man Without A Face 2: The Man Without An Arse.

But the real hot prospect was seeing Mel Gibson star in Lethal Weapon 5. Everything was lined up – Lethal Weapon writer Shane Black had written the script and was all set to direct it. All that was needed was for Mel Gibson to give the nod and Lethal Weapon 5 would be rushed into production at the speed of light.

But it’s not to be. According to Richard Donner – the director of Lethal Weapon 1 – 4 and a man who obviously isn’t bitter at all not to be asked back – Mel Gibson isn’t having anything to do with it. The LA Times reports:

“Mel turned it down,” Donner said. “I would like to think that Mel turned it down because I wasn’t involved. Knowing Mel, I would like to think that. Would that be the kind of thing he does? It sure would be.”

In a way it’s sad that there’ll be no Lethal Weapon 5. Not because we hold any particular interest in it, but because we’re fascinated to see what it’s like. After all, Lethal Weapon was good, Lethal Weapon 2 was bad, Lethal Weapon 3 was really bad and Lethal Weapon 4 was awful. If that pattern holds then people would have had to think up a new word to describe exactly how bad Lethal Weapon 5 is.

But perhaps Mel Gibson wasn’t swayed by Richard Donner’s lack of participation in Lethal Weapon 5. Perhaps the fact that Shane Black had written in some younger characters to do all the legwork in the movie offended Mel Gibson’s sense of vitality.

Or perhaps it was the fact that Lethal Weapon-style movies just aren’t Mel Gibson’s cup of tea any more. Would Mel have given the go-ahead if Lethal Weapon 5 was about him and Danny Glover graphically torturing Joe Pesci’s eyes out in slow motion while speaking in a made-up language? Almost certainly yes.

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.

Wallace was reportedly found by his wife on Friday evening. He had committed suicide.

He was best known for his sprawling 1996 epic Infinite Jest – an epic satirical panorama which simultaneously enthralls, infuriates and excites. It’s without doubt one of the most remarkable books published in … well, forever … and if you haven’t tackled it yet you should run out and buy yourself a copy.

Failing that, have a gander online for some of his journalistic efforts and check out his short stories. In an age in which Jordan’s ‘novels’ can outsell the combined Booker shortlist six-to-one, a gleaming beacon of intelligence such as DFW will be sorely missed.

But hold your horses, buster. Aaron Eckhart isn’t going to be in Batman 3. That might sound like common sense, seeing as how his character Two-Face stacked it to death off a building at the end of The Dark Knight, but apparently a handful of internet ninnies have decided that Two-Face didn’t die at all, and that both he and his silly voice will return for Batman 3.

And that’s why Aaron Eckhart has come forward to declare once and for all that Two-Face is definitely 100% dead. But don’t worry, disappointed Aaron Eckhart fans – he might not be returning for Batman 3, but copies of his 2007 Catherine Zeta Jones cookery-based romantic comedy No Reservations are still available to buy or rent on DVD. Yes, we thought that’d please you.

This whole Batman 3 malarkey is getting a bit out of hand, isn’t it. Because The Dark Knight has taken over half a billion dollars since it was released, everyone’s got so desperate for news about the sequel that they’ll believe any old crap that’s hurled at them.

But in reality, not much is known about Batman 3 at all. The only concrete Batman 3 facts are as follows:

1) Catwoman and The Penguin definitely won’t be appearing in Batman 3.

2) Despite this, Catwoman will definitely be played by Angelina Jolie.

3) In addition, Cher will also definitely be Batman 3’s Catwoman.

4) Johnny Depp. Definitely.

And they’re literally all the stone-cold facts we can tell you about Batman 3. All of them are unequivocally true. As is the news that Two-Face died in The Dark Knight and definitely won’t be returning for a sequel. No, really.

Seriously, Aaron Eckhart can’t make that clear enough. You know that bit at the end of The Dark Knight where Two-Face and Batman fall out of a window and everyone’s all like “Oh, Two-Face is dead” and Batman has to run off because there’s a dog chasing him or something? Yeah, despite what the corner of the internet that smells most like Clearasil and stale jism says, he is actually dead. Even Aaron Eckhart says so. Eckhart told Comingsoon:

“He is dead as a door nail. He ain’t coming back baby! I asked Chris [Nolan] that question and he goes, “You’re dead” before I could even get the question out of my mouth. “Hey Chris, am I?” “You’re dead!” Alright, cool.”

So that’s that – Two-Face is definitely dead, definitely not coming back and that definitely means that in Batman 3 Christian Bale will have to find someone new to growl incoherently at.

To take stock, then – Aaron Eckhart won’t return for Batman 3 because his character’s dead and Heath Ledger won’t return because he’s actually dead. Cuh, some people will do anything to make sure they don’t get a crappy, pointless, totally unexplained Cillian Murphy-style cameo at the start of the next film, won’t they.

That’s because Don LaFontaine has died. You know Don LaFontaine – he’s the man who has done the voiceover for every single movie trailer in the history of time. The man with the voice so intimidatingly authoritative that if he slipped the phrase ‘now take off your trousers’ into a trailer, cinemas everywhere would end up full of shivering confused people in their knickers. Yeah, him. He’s dead.

It’s being reported that Don LaFontaine died of complications arising from pneumonia, but let’s hope he hasn’t gone to heaven. Chances are his voice would have made God’s sound weedy and effeminate in comparison, and we hear that God gets really quite vengeful when he thinks someone’s got a bigger willy than him.

Don LaFontaine was born with a voice that was always going to lead him down one of two career paths – voiceover artist or devil-worshipping serial killer. Fortunately he ended up choosing the former, and the rest was history.

Blessed with a voice that made it sound like he’d been chainsmoking vinegar-flavoured crack through a cactus made of sandpaper since he was three, Don LaFontane provided the voiceovers for approximately 5,000 movies – including Terminator 2 and Fatal Attraction – and more than 350,000 adverts. He was so in demand that he even had a limo and a full-time driver to ferry him around the 60-plus voiceovers he recorded each day, the flash git.

He was also the man who made Meet The Robinsons sound exciting enough for us to actually pay to see it, which makes him a bit of a bastard, but let’s not go into that now.

Because Don LaFontane is dead. The Hollywood Reporter reports:

Don LaFontaine, the undisputed viceroy of voiceovers, died Monday of complications from the treatment of an ongoing lung-related illness. He was 68… SAG president Alan Rosenberg: “Don was a phenomenal actor and a prodigious and amazing voice talent who could, like the best voice artists, make any material uniquely his own. His contributions on and off ‘mike’ enriched the profession and the guild. He will be greatly missed by all of us.”

While quite sad in its own right, Don LaFontaine’s death is also going to have an immense effect on the world of movie trailers. Without his trademark melodramatic growl around, chances are that Hollywood’s going to start making trailers with vague high-pitched voiceovers.

Would you go and see a Steven Segal film if Mark Owen did the talking in the trailers? Of course you bloody wouldn’t. In fact, we’re pretty sure that Don LaFontaine’s death has killed the trailer industry, and therefore the movie industry, and therefore all culture, forever. Thanks a lot Don, you selfish mortal sod.

Andre Young Jr was found dead on Saturday morning. However, the auopsy carried out on his body offered no clues into his cause of death. And that means that everyone involved will have to go through an uncomfortable wait while a toxicology test is carried out.

As sad as this obviously is, the parallels between Dr Dre’s son and Anna Nicole Smith are painfully clear. In short this story will probably go on forever, with weird scary clown facepaint videos and a lengthy investigation into the paternity of Andre Young Jr’s bab… no, wait, it’s nothing like Anna Nicole Smith’s death. Sorry.

We haven’t really covered the untimely death of Dr Dre’s 20-year-old son Andre Young Jr yet. We’re not sure why, since the tragic deaths of non-celebrities is obviously such a rich mine of comedy, isn’t it?

But, to get you up to speed, at around 10am on Saturday morning, Andre Young Jr was found unresponsive in his bed by his mother after a night out with friend. Shortly afterwards, he was declared dead by paramedics.

That in itself must be upsetting enough for Andre’s parents, but the news has been compounded by the fact that his autopsy was inconclusive and he now has to go through a toxicology test. People reports:

“We don’t know yet why he died,” Capt. Ed Winter told PEOPLE Wednesday. “There were no signs of trauma or foul play. We’ll be doing toxicology and other tests, which will take up to six weeks.” A toxicology test is “mainly to determine whether alcohol or drugs played a part in a person’s death,” Capt. Winter said.

Meanwhile, Dr Dre himself has released a statement about Andre’s death:

“Dr. Dre is mourning the loss of his son. Please respect his family’s grief and privacy at this time.”

So, for once, we will.

And we’ll be the first to hold our hands up and say: we ‘effed up. Both in printing a story with contradictory information, entitled ‘See – We Told You Bernie Mac Was Going to be Okay’, then going on to delete said story from the site when news of Bernie’s death broke – it was a kneejerk reaction that, in hindsight, probably wasn’t the best of ideas.

In frantically trying to minimise the offence caused by the post, we ended up going against what hecklerspray is all about – so for both of these reasons above we say sorry.

Just as it was not our intention to say anything truly offensive, it was also not our intention to print misinformation concerning Mac’s health. Unfortunately, this is the way it sometimes goes with the Hollywood lark, and relying on the statements of a publicist who is saying the actor was getting better is something we will probably do less of in future, as it’s ended up with us looking like a right bunch of idiots.

Bernie Mac was a popular and respected comedian in his hometown of Chicago, as well as around the US. His profile had extended throughout the world with his burgeoning movie career, though his success and popularity were mainly centred in his native America.

Needless to say though – people knew who he was. The name, the face, those eyes – he may not have been the A-lister everyone talks about, but people certainly recognised the man and his accomplishments.

But what set Bernie apart from the crowd – from the legions of stand-ups turned actors, sitcom fodder and everything in-between – was his attitude towards life. Talking to the AP in 2001, Mac said:

“I came from a place where there wasn’t a lot of joy. I decided to try to make other people laugh when there wasn’t a lot of things to laugh about.”

There isn’t much more you can offer a man with an attitude like that than your respect, and we want to offer up ours through this somewhat insignificant tribute and apology to the man, his family, his friends and his fans.

In fact, there is incontrovertible evidence that Bernie Mac was a good guy – evidence that goes beyond the usual gushing praise the passing of an entertainer usually produces.

The simple fact that the man was very, very rarely featured on the pages of hecklerspray as anything more than a name mentioned.

This isn’t saying the man wasn’t famous enough, or that we didn’t think he was good enough to cover – it just shows that in his personal life, off the screen and away from the cameras, he was a normal, everyday family man. Not a pathetic, attention-seeking, money-grabbing waste of skin like so many of those that adorn these very pages.

So for that at the very least, Bernie Mac, we salute you.

It has been drawn to our attention, however, that a picture exists on another recently deceased entertainer’s website. The late Isaac Hayes, ex-Chef and Shaft singist who passed away yesterday, has a photograph of three celebrity personas who are, from left to right, Bernie Mac, Isaac Hayes and Samuel L Jackson.

Is this a huge coincidence, or is it some kind of warning? Not that we’d want to pick up on any of this mumbo-jumbo, but the fact that the actors are in the correct order of their deaths… well… we’re a bit scared for Sam right now.

Have a look for yourselves. (Note that the site doesn’t seem to have been updated since Isaac’s sudden death, so this picture will probably be removed later today and replaced with a tribute to the soul giant)

Or just check it out here.

Assuming that Angelina Jolie has had herself some kids is one version of the game we’re more than willing to play. Even when it’s as clearly wrong as some people can be. That’s almost fun, if you’re into that kind of thing.

But a new take on the game seems to have been popping up over the course of the year – first we had Patrick Swayze and his cancer that was definitely going to kill him within weeks, then it didn’t, leaving the public confused and Swayze looking healthier than ever. Now it’s the turn of Bernie “I took over from Bill Murray in Charlie’s Angels” Mac to keep the press and public frantically guessing as to whether he’s actually alive, dying or dead.

Frankly, it’s quite a morbid game and we don’t want to play much.

Bernie, 50, admitted himself to hospital on the 3rd of August and was subsequently placed into treatment for pneumonia. It didn’t take long for something of a mild frenzy to whip up, though at first most news was simply taking the ’straight report’ route – as favoured by journalists that can’t be bothered trying very hard – telling the public Mac had been admitted for treatment.

Not long after, a new element was added to the game when reports emerged of an unnamed source – the most trustworthy of all the sources – saying Bernie was in a ‘very, very critical condition’ and alluding to him being either near to death or actually dead. Now, frankly that’s a bit unfair on the man, don’t you think? So, yes, he did do a far worse job than Bill Murray in Charlie’s Angels 2 and his role in Transformers was forgettable at best – but there’s no need to start spreading rumours that he’s actually dead now, is there. That’s just low.

Thankfully, reports have surfaced today quoting Bernie Mac’s rep as saying these words with their mouth – whether they were angry, crying or simply aloof when spouting these communications, we do not know:

“Bernie Mac is still alive and being treated at a Chicago hospital for pneumonia and is expected to make a full recovery.”

But regardless of the emotional state of this so-called ‘rep’, at least they were concise, to the point and didn’t bother with baseless speculation. Frankly, those aspects make the guessing game too hard to judge. At least with direct statements you can almost accept it as fact, especially when it comes from one of these ‘rep’ things with a name, Danica Smith. She went on to say:

“Mr. Mac is responding well to treatment and will be released soon.”

The disease is, according to those that report these things as fact, not related to Bernie’s long-standing sarcoidosis – a chronic disease that can cause inflammation of tissue, especially around the lungs. Mr Mac, as it would appear he likes to be called, has seen the remission of the disease since 2005.

All good to know. Hecklerspray sends our get well soon psychic beams out to you, Bernie.

However, heavy drinking and smoking have alarmingly made her thinner, sicker and a bit more violent. Oh, and there’s the drugs. You can’t forget about the drugs.

Anyway, all of this combined might be about to kill her, her Dad says. Who’d have guessed?

It’s been fairly well documented that Amy Winehouse has dabbled in the occasional drug. Despite the pleas of her family, friends and her record label, she still manages to flop around aimlessly and collapse in a heap for photographers.

After attempting to play Glastonbury and partaking in a bout of bare-knuckle boxing, Amy Winehouse’s health is reportedly in sharp decline. She was diagnosed with chronic lung disease emphysema last month and her long-suffering dad and messenger boy Mitch has warned that she could face a long and painful death.

Digital Spy reports:

“I want people to understand; even if they give her one cigarette they’re causing her harm. We would be talking about a very slow and painful death, gasping for air. I would like to say to anybody who would supply her with substances to think about that.”

Uh-oh, sales of Benson & Hedges are set to rapidly plummet following this announcement. Surely, Amy will take this advice seriously and not partake in the occasional smoke.

But, then again, that’s like trying to convince Manchester Utd that we’d be a suitable replacement for Ronaldo.

Of course, this story would be nothing without an appearance from Amy’s Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaake. We know that’s not how you spell it, but we think ‘Blake’ is just a cover name. Anyway, Mitch Winehouse must be dreading the day that Blake is released from prison, because he’s thought to be the one who got Amy in all this trouble to begin with, right?

Nope. Mitch claims that once Blake is released from prison, he will go straight to rehab, clean up his act and become a scout leader and sell cookies to old women. Once again, he said:

“I’m quite old-fashioned and I believe that love can conquer anything. I believe they can have a happy ending, I really do believe that.”

Maybe Amy and Blake can become a modern day Romeo And Juliet? Picture the scene! In their scabby Camden flat amongst the used needles, vomit and spewed-up blood, the loving couple can lie together in each others arms as one slowly dies from a smokers cough. Shakespeare would be proud.

 Larry Harmon, credited not with the creation of the Bozo character but with the popularisation of an existing clown and in the process the creation of a legend, died of congestive heart failure on Thursday, aged 83. It is unconfirmed whether he was in full costume at the time, though we hope he was – just so the man could get one last smile from the world.

It's easy to wax lyrical about the decline of traditional entertainment in modern society, with the 'yoofs' and their obsession with 'music', 'video games' and 'gangland violence', but one thing has remained constantly popular in the culture of children's entertainment: the clown. Without Harmon and his Bozo character there likely wouldn't be such a prevalence of the silly, slappy-footed, red-nosed berks flitting around from house to house, making children squawk. And frankly, without Bozo's popularity, that behaviour would be frowned upon, if not illegal.

Larry did not come up with the Bozo the Clown character of his own accord – he purchased the rights for it and worked from there, introducing what is now taken for granted as how a clown should look, as well as helping the word 'bozo' enter common language – for example, 'Lindsay Lohan's dad acts like a bozo'. See? Without Harmon and his marketing savvy hecklerspray would have had to rely on a different descriptive term for that cash-hungry twit. You have to have respect for that.

Leading the character through 50 years of development, Harmon introduced Bozos all around America to entertain – or terrify – children through the States, as well as TV shows aired around the world. Where other entertainers fell by the wayside, got bitter, sold out or simply gave up, Harmon continued and the popularity of his Bozo character never waned. Waiting lists to hire a Bozo often stretched into the years range, even today. Go on – try and hire a genuine Bozo. We dare you. Bet you can't get one to do a party within the next few months. If you can we'll give you a prize: the respect of your peers.

The world has lost another genuine hero – a man who deserved the money he made, rather than inherited it through a chance meeting of sperm and egg or through having no discernable talent yet a bizarre ability to make idiots in papers and on semi-popular entertainment blogs write about them. Larry Harmon created an icon, lived the American Dream before it died and made a lot of kids laugh in the process. For this, hecklerspray will be carrying out one minute's worth of prat-falling in his honour.

Conversely, there may be people out there that are glad the man is dead, if only because he introduced a million nightmares into the childhoods of many. Not that we'd agree, it's just, y'know, clowns are terrifying.

In Emmerdale for instance, all the characters belong to rival farming tribes and live in the middle of nowhere. Coronation Street is full of a variety of characters, from the old, young and transsexual. But the best has to be EastEnders. It's attempt at showing murky gangster activity is hilarious. All these soaps also have one thing in common. 

It doesn't matter how legendary a soap character is, as soon as they've been killed off they'll never work on television again. For one unlucky EastEnders character, their 14-year stint is soon to be over. But who is it? Find out after the jump.

The most obvious EastEnders character to drown in a mouldy beer keg or vat of boiling chip fat would be serial lady loser Ian Beale. Over the years he’s married various women, had sex with prostitutes and had all sorts of arguments with resident hardman Phil Mitchell. We would have said Grant Mitchell, but he was off filming badly made programs on gangs at the time. 

So we’ve kept you in suspense for long enough, who is going to the unfortunate character to be given the chop? Well it’s someone who has never really had a home and has been passed from family to family in Albert Square. But he is no tramp or student. His storylines have seen him run over, kidnapped and, recently, traded for a pineapple.

Whilst Pat Butcher would have been a reasonable guess, it is actually Wellard the dog. 

Starting off life with the annoying Robbie Jackson, played by the really annoying Dean Gaffney, this loveable pooch occasionally pops up in the odd episode to randomly bark at strangers, dry-hump people's legs, steal sausages from the butchers and terrorise old people. Sonia and Gus have since been in charge of looking after him, but they got bored of having to clean up dog shit and passed him onto some other naive cockney resident of the square. 

Despite the show announcing the death of Wellard, it doesn’t mean he won’t come back in twenty years time as a ghost dog. Remember Dirty Den? Apparently he got shot, fell in a lake and died a bloody death. The truth of the matter is that Dirty Den is immune to bullets and didn’t die. People who say he was brought back to boost ratings are just cynical.

When he wasn’t wanking on the internet, Den came back to try and run the square. This failed and he ended up being killed again and buried in the pub cellar. We expect to see him again in 2046. 

So how will Wellard die? Details haven’t been released yet, but we are willing to bet that a Korean restaurant will buy Ian Beale’s cafe and transform it in to a snack bar using Wellard as the filling for a sandwich.  

Or he’ll just die, take your pick.