In the years following Beethoven’s death the world’s chief regret was that nobody had pried out his brain and attached it to a bunch of wires and electric pencils. Why, had that been the case, perhaps we’d have just one more brilliant symphony. Yes, if that were the case perhaps Ludwig’s genius could have added some much needed atmosphere to all those Pat Boone albums.

But that was a different time, and the accepted ethics of yester-year likely wouldn’t have allowed for zombification of any sort.

Lucky for Michael Jackson’s removed brain, we’re no longer confined by such primitive notions.

Well they did it. They pulled Michael Jackson’s brain right out of its boney little nest-like skull. Some say it’s because his family intend to plant it in a limber-legged white robot. Others say it’s because Prince ordered it served to him atop a steaming bed of rice on the 30-year release-anniversary of Purple Rain.

We, however, believe the brain hasn’t actually been in there since it melted in the great Pepsi fire of ‘84. The coroner probably didn’t take that severe heat into account. Whatever the case – when Michael Jackson’s body is laid to rest sitting upright in one car of a spinning, fully lit underground ferris wheel, it’ll be with an empty head. According to some sources anyway – sources like Mirror.co.uk:

Michael Jackson will be buried this week– without his brain. As his family tries to finalise details for the King of Pop’s funeral on Tuesday they have been told it will be held back for tests. They faced the grim choice of waiting up to three weeks for Jackson’s brain to be returned to them or go ahead and bury him without it – which they have decided to do. Los Angeles Coroner’s spokesman Craig Harvey confirmed that neuropathology tests will be carried out to see if it holds any clues to the exact cause of his death.

If you’re worried about Jackson’s body feeling lonely down there in the grave, don’t. As we understand it they’re gonna install a little 6′ tall elevator directly above his coffin so that the brain can come and go as it pleases. And if you’re worried about the brain getting lonely – well don’t do that either. Aside from the elevator thing, it’s also got Mike’s original nose to keep him company.

If we could only work out some kind of sniffly Morse code system between a musical stenographer and the nose/brain combo, we could maybe get a Thriller II or something. That’s a good idea, right?

Yeah, that’s a pretty good idea.

Another good idea is maybe they could implant the brain in Keith Richards. Didn’t he lose his a while back? If Mick Jagger is uncomfortable with the idea he shouldn’t be. After all, he’s really old.

We would, however, recommend he not let his grandsons in the room for band practice. Not for slanderous reasons, mind you, but just because we think smokey recording studios are less than ideal environments for children who don’t want to be ogled by the swollen eyes of recent brain recipients.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!

The American-born actor is undoubtedly one of the greatest masters of his craft to grace our screens. Perhaps best known as the enigmatic Number 6 in the brilliant cult 60s series The Prisoner, he was also a talented writer, director, and producer for this as well as other series. He would often use a pseudonym for his off-screen roles; such was the level of his modesty.

Patrick received two Emmys while working on Columbo, and was more recently recognised for playing King Edward in Braveheart, probably the only vaguely factually-correct role in the film. As the Warden in Escape from Alcatraz we saw him play another villain, and his performance easily challenged Eastwood’s for the most memorable of the film.

Prior to starring as the retired secret agent in The Prisoner, McGoohan played the lead character, John Drake, in the spy thriller Danger Man. It was often suggested that the spy he played in Danger Man and Number 6 were in fact one and the same, though Patrick denied this.

It was the riddles, mysteries, moral codes, integrity, modesty, philosophy, imagination, and ability to provoke profound thought that McGoohan weaved into his characters and his own life which has elevated him above his peers.

He has left a great legacy and will not be forgotten.

[story by Keith Emmerson]

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!

So there can’t be a person on the planet who’d want to trade places with John Travolta at the moment. As you’ve probably already heard, John Travolta’s 16-year-old son Jett died at some point between January 1 and 2 from a seizure brought on by his Kawasaki syndrome.

And now John Travolta has released a statement about Jett’s death, thanking the public for its support and describing how ‘heartbroken’ he and his wife are. Horrible news.

The investigation into the death of John Travolta’s son Jett in the Bahamas on Friday, while profoundly sad, seems like it might drag on for a while. Jett Travolta, who suffered from the rare heart condition Kawasaki syndrome, died after apparently having a seizure in a bathroom and hitting his head.

Now, however, it has emerged that John Travolta and his wife Kelly Preston are to be questioned by police after suggestions that Jett’s body was left unnoticed for up to 10 hours, alongside rumours that the Travoltas didn’t give Jett medication for his condition because it went against the tenants of Scientology. John Travolta, for what it’s worth, denies these claims.

In the meantime, though, John Travolta has broken his silence over Jett’s death with a statement released on his website:

We would like to extend our deepest and most heartfelt thanks to everyone who has sent their love and condolences. Jett was the most wonderful son that two parents could ever ask for, and lit up the lives of everyone he encountered. We are heartbroken that our time with him was so brief. We will cherish the time we had with him for the rest of our lives.

The Bahamas, a teenager’s death, a drawn-out investigation, suggestions of the misuse of medication – the whole thing has horrible shades of the death of Anna Nicole Smith’s son in 2006. Hopefully, though, Jett Travolta’s death won’t become the same gruesome pantomime that Daniel’s did.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!

No? Most of us? No, not most of us either? Some of us have had visions of Jennifer Garner being persecuted by a mob for believing in Jesus? No? Not even some of us? Just Jennifer Garner’s psychiatric patient stalker Steven Burky, then? Oh.

Well, it’s just a shame that Steven Burky won’t get to warn Jennifer Garner of his vision, then, because Garner has just taken out a court order claiming that she’s living in mortal fear of him. So let’s just hope that Jennifer Garner doesn’t end up being assaulted by a violent mob because of her faith in Jesus Christ, because if she does, Jennifer Garner is going to end up looking pretty bloody stupid.

If you’re a celebrity with a stalker, rule number one is that you must never deliberately lead them on. It doesn’t matter what they do – whether they try to blow up an airport in your name or whether they send you boxes of sex toys accompanied by photos of themselves drinking unidentified yellow liquid – you must always remain standoffish in case they flip out and get all Single White Female on you.

That’s a lesson that Jennifer Garner could do well to learn. She’s had a stalker by the name of Steven Burky for a few years now. He’s a born-again Christian psychiatric patient who believes he was satanically abused as a child, and every now and again he’ll pose as different people to get to meet Jennifer Garner, or send her mounds of weird love letters, or just turn up at her house unannounced – but Jennifer Garner has been dealing with him in completely the wrong way.

Look at it this way – what are the two main things that Jennifer Garner is famous for? That’s right – marrying Ben Affleck and letting Gary Busey lick her neck. And what does that tell any potential stalkers about Jennifer Garner? That a) she’s sexually attracted to idiots and b) she likes it when strangers lick her neck. Honestly, she may as well spray herself with catnip and paint ‘STALK ME NOW’ on her tits.

Which, actually, she doesn’t have to do. You see, Jennifer Garner already has Steven Burkey and – since he has visions of Jennifer being beaten to death for her religious beliefs, along with other visions involving witchcraft, human sacrifices and dark conspiracies – he’s probably filling her crazy quota quite nicely.

He’s certainly filling her ‘petrified that one day she’ll be murdered by a crazed stalker’ quota, if the court order that Jennifer Garner has just taken out against Burky is anything to go by. In her court papers, Jennifer Garner wrote:

“Mr. Burky’s repeated efforts to contact me, his delusional and paranoid letters, his appearance at my private residence, and his recent claims that I will be ‘persecuted’ in a manner that may result in my death are all extremely frightening. I now fear not only for my own personal safety, but also for the safety and well being of those I love and care most about, including my husband and my daughter. Also, I am currently pregnant and fear for the safety of my second child once born.”

Thanks to the court order, Steven Burky isn’t allowed within 100 yards of Jennifer Garner. Not that he’d be able to do that at the moment, of course – he’s too busy being being locked up in a psychiatric hospital – but it will definitely ease Jennifer Garner’s mind.

After all, everyone knows that if there’s one thing that infatuated mental patients cursed with nightmarish Old Testament-style visions of apocalyptic death respect, it’s court-ordered restraining boundaries. Everyone wins.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!

And this fierce sense of anti-establishment also includes the way she raises her daughter. When most moviestars have children, for example, they’ll sell pictures of the baby to a magazine for millions of dollars. But not that’s not how Nicole Kidman rolls.

Similarly when most moviestars have children, they’ll give interviews about how great it feels to be a mother and how wonderful their child is. But, again, Nicole Kidman doesn’t roll that way – which is why in her first big interview since the birth of her child, Nicole Kidman didn’t seem to do much except for shriek about how she doesn’t want to die and how she can’t stop crying. Attagirl, Nicole.

Nicole Kidman has been a mother for several years now, but that doesn’t count because a) her kids are adopted and b) they were adopted with Tom Cruise, which means they probably live in a cage with their eyes pinned open watching pro-Scientology propaganda interspersed with scenes from The Last Samurai. Probably.

So when Nicole Kidman gave birth to a baby daughter earlier this year, it was just like becoming a mother for the very first time. And with that birth came a wave of violently intense new emotions that Nicole Kidman had to deal with.

Admittedly you wouldn’t know it – over the last few years Nicole Kidman’s face has become so morbidly expressionless and bat-like that the only emotions she’s able to convincingly display are ‘ennui’, ‘mild displeasure’ and ‘corpse’ – but she has.

No, really, the birth of her baby has left Nicole Kidman in such a state that, as far as we can work out, she can’t stop crying because she’s always thinking about death. The Boston Herald reports:

“I’m raw and emotional… I cry even thinking of her. But they are tears of joy. Because I suppose I never thought I would get to (have a baby). To have been given it so late in life – I’m so ready for it… It’s very bittersweet. Because at 41, I think, ‘I want to see her 21st birthday, and I want to see her get married.’ My relationship with death used to be far more ambivalent… now it’s very much about staying in the world.”

Thinking logically it won’t be too hard for Nicole Kidman to stay alive until her daughter’s 21st birthday because by then she’ll only be 62 years old. And it’s not like she’ll be exhausted by the pressures of work either – it’s been so long since Nicole Kidman made a film that anybody actually liked that she should probably start thinking about semi-retirement as it is.

Because, honestly, it seems as though Nicole Kidman has got such a good handle on this motherhood lark that she should probably turn her hand to writing parenting guides, starting with a book for new mothers in their forties entitled NO! I DON’T WANT TO DIE! I’M SO AFRAID! ARRRRRRGH!

Or something.

That's right – it appears that hoofing down crack and cigarettes all the time like a stinky old tramp hasn't done Amy Winehouse's lungs any good at all. According to her dad Mitch, in fact, Amy Winehouse has been diagnosed with the early stages of emphysema – a disease that'll kill her if she doesn't quit drugs immediately.

Now, obviously this isn't news because it's been discovered that Amy Winehouse is close to death – any fool has been able to see that for the last year or so – but because her contraction of emphysema has helped us complete our Amy Winehouse Disease Bingo card! Hooray! Now we just have to decide whether we go double or quits with weaponised Marburg. She doesn't already have that, does she?

Amy Winehouse is like a walking medical encyclopedia, albeit a walking encyclopedia that you don't want to touch in case it gives you headlice or bellows the word 'Blake' at you for an hour and a half until you forget what you wanted from it. Anyway, our point – we think – was that Amy Winehouse knows a lot about disease.

For starters Amy Winehouse's skin is apparently riddled with impetigo, plus she once contracted the rare disorder of taking too many drugs and almost dying – and now it's her lungs that are all effed up.

You see, Amy Winehouse's father has told the world that his daughter has emphysema. It's a cruel illness, striking down any number of people, so long as they're elderly soap opera actresses who smoke an irresponsible amount of cigarettes during their lifetime. And Amy Winehouse, too, apparently. BBC News reports:

Mitch Winehouse told the Sunday Mirror his daughter has early stage emphysema and an irregular heartbeat. "Doctors have told her if she goes back to smoking drugs, it won't just ruin her voice, it will kill her," he said. "With smoking the crack cocaine and the cigarettes her lungs are all gunked up. There are nodules around the chest and dark marks. She's got 70% lung capacity."

That's actually quite serious-sounding. Still, hopefully the early diagnosis combined with her father's insistence on repeatedly humiliating her in public will force Amy Winehouse to dramatically change her ways before it's too late. After all, if we can say anything about Amy Winehouse it's that she always learns from her mistakes.

Wait, no, what we meant to say was that if we can say anything about Amy Winehouse it's that she never learns anything, not even in the face of serious life or death consequences, and she's doomed to repeat the same mistakes time and time again until she inevitably messes her life up beyond repair. Yeah, that scans better.

Anyway, if Amy Winehouse can successfully combat her emphysema now, perhaps she can go on to become a spokesperson for young women who keep catching diseases traditionally reserved for the elderly. After all, just think of the awareness that can be raised for the likes of The Association For Gout-Stricken Teenagers or Incontinence Pants For The Under-25s with a megastar like Amy Winehouse onboard.

So says Dr Jack Hattem, who, backed up by secret FBI files, says the Hollywood bombshell was somehow fooled into believing she would be revived in time as part of a plot involving Senator Robert Kennedy, the brother of JFK, who was gunned down 40 years ago this week.

Instead, Monroe, who staged many fake suicide attempts throughout her life to gain sympathy, was left to die by staff and friends. It’s all in Hattem’s new book Marilyn Monroe: Murder By Consent.

Certainly, Marilyn Monroe may have been dead for 46 years, but that doesn’t mean that people have stopped speculating about the circumstances of her death. We spoke to Dr Hattem and listened to some of his more compelling claims, including where Kennedy was on the night of Marilyn Monroe’s death and why the recently unearthed Marilyn Monroe sex tape might not be the only one knocking about.

This is turning out to be quite a big year for Marilyn Monroe. Not only has Lindsay Lohan aped her by getting naked and covering herself with a net curtain, but a Marilyn Monroe sex tape has also apparently been uncovered in recent months. So with sex dealt with, what about death?

While it was ruled to be suicide, theorists have long had their doubts about the way that Marilyn Monroe died – and thanks to a set of FBI records released 20 years ago that have been inexplicably ignored until recently, those doubts seem to have some substance.

According to Dr Jack Hattem’s book Marilyn Monroe: Murder By Consent, Monroe died because Robert Kennedy, along with Monroe’s close ‘friend’ and Hollywood actor Peter Lawford, convinced her to make another fake suicide attempt.

Caught between his family, who wanted to play down its relationship with Marilyn Monroe and the fact Monroe was threatening to shop a red diary containing ‘pillow talk’ between the pair and confidential secrets about the Cuban Missile Crisis if he ever left her, Robert Kennedy and Rat Pack member Lawford hatched a plan to visit Monroe on the day of her death. Hattem said:

“It is my guess that they had discussed with her, in no uncertain terms, that they needed for her to fake a suicide attempt. They guarantee she would be woken up, and that the fake suicide attempt would gain her so much sympathy from 20th Century Fox – who had fired her – that she would get her job back. But they threatened her somehow. She could be talked into things, because she wanted desperately to be cared about.”

At the time, Kennedy denied the visit, claiming he was in San Francisco. Which he might have got away with, except for the fact the FBI just happened to be busy tracking both Robert Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe at the same time. Hattem explained:

“The CIA had long considered Marilyn Monroe a threat to national security from the time she had married Arthur Miller, because they thought of him as a leftist. Then the FBI started listening in on her phone calls and tracking her – even to Mexico, where Bobby Kennedy had a fling with her. A private detective took an audio tape of Bobby Kennedy and Marilyn in an ‘affair’. The FBI was tracking Kennedy, their boss, all over the place and listening in on his conversations, possibly because Hoover wanted something on Kennedy – and he certainly got it, because as she was dying, they were listening in.”

Adding to the muddle is Marilyn Monroe’s housekeeper Eunice Murray, who found her face down on her bed, and her psychiatrist Ralph Greenson.

Apparently, Monroe fired Murray on the day of her death – which Hattem suggests is why she didn’t rush to try and revive Monroe; and was sleeping with Greenson – who allegedly gave Monroe an extra-large dose of barbiturates on top of what she already had been given.

What’s most interesting, though, is Dr Hattem’s story of the conversation between Bobby Kennedy and Peter Lawford at around 4am the following morning:

“In the FBI files, the FBI is recording Kennedy saying to Peter Lawford ‘Is she dead yet?’”

Throw in the fact that all of Marilyn Monroe’s phone message disappeared, to later be discovered in the chief of police’s private files, and that her red diary could not be found – Hattem’s guess is that Kennedy had a large hand in it. He said:

“I’m certain Robert Kennedy stole it when he came by her house after she was dead.”

But if Robert Kennedy’s involvement in Marilyn Monroe’s death is rooted in fact so firmly that there’s even an FBI file on it, why hasn’t more been made of it?

“I think the reason is that everybody already believes the Kennedys killed her.”

According to Daniel, “Motherfucker was crazy,” and, “It was the drugs.”

“He tried like hell, though,” she says. “He’d wear you out. That man died trying to come.”

Well, this is joyous news. Nobody likes a drugged-up 70-year-old trying to come more than hecklerspray. And if anybody tries to tell you different, it’s a goddamn lie.

Daniel went on to regale GQ with a story concerning Mr. Brown that is so brilliant we’re not even going to try and change the words, so here it is verbatim:

"One night in the summer of 2001, after he’d slathered her in Vaseline (“He liked you all greased up,” she says. “Like a porkchop”) and wore her out trying to come, he gave up and left the room, and Gloria dozed off. When she woke up, Mr. Brown was standing at the foot of the bed in a full-length mink coat over his bare chest, a black cowboy hat, and silk pajama pants with one leg tucked into a cowboy boot and the other hanging out. He had a shotgun over his shoulder and a white stripe of Noxzema under each eye. “I’m an Indian tonight, baby,” he announced. “C’mon, let’s let ’em have it.” Then he dumped a pickle jar of change on the floor, told her to get a machete, and went out to the garage. He took the Rolls, drove ten miles to Augusta, weaving all over the road, clipping mailboxes, smoking more dope, and screaming about being an Indian."

Sweet Jesus. Go back and read it again. Go on. We’ll wait right here. Done it? How great was that?

James Brown truly was the last of the great mental musicians. Jim Morrison’s gone. Keith Moon’s gone. Who, of our unfortunate current lot, is going to do such wonderful things? You won’t catch Dan Gillespie-Sells of The Feeling or Luke Pritchard of The Kooks drinking a bottle of cough medicine through their eye and then pissing it onto a television as it falls from a fourth-storey window onto a granny. This is the kind of behaviour we want from our rock stars!

RIP James Brown. Hecklerspray misses you.

Read More – Papa – GQ Blog 

OK, that wasn't a question that was on anyone's lips, since the sole sum of public knowledge about Daniel Smith is that he sometimes looked quite embarrassed when Anna Nicole Smith dragged him in front of the cameras on her reality TV show.

However, the inquest into Daniel Smith's death has revealed that an accidental drug overdose killed him. Truly Daniel Smith was the Heath Ledger of September 2006, albeit a Heath Ledger who wasn't in any films and had a bit of a slutty mum.

Daniel Smith always seemed like a bit of an afterthought in the Anna Nicole Smith story. Perhaps that's because every time that anyone thought of a perpetually-cringing teenage son hovering around, Anna Nicole instantly lapsed from being 'sexy and eccentric' to 'slaggy and dangerously irresponsible'. 

Even Daniel Smith's death was overshadowed by the near-simultaneous birth of Anna Nicole Smith's daughter. True, baby Dannielynn was named after Daniel, but when your entire legacy consists of a oddly-spelt infant's name it can't be all that great. No wonder Daniel Smith killed himself.  

Except that Daniel Smith didn't kill himself. Well, he did, but not on purpose. That's what the jury at an inquest into the death of Daniel Smith discovered anyway. 13 months after Anna Nicole Smith died, 19 months after he himself died and 18 months after it was announced that he died of a drug overdose, the inquest in the Bahamas has ruled Daniel Smith's death as an accidental overdose. Reuters reports:

Tabloid star Anna Nicole Smith's son Daniel died of a drug overdose, an inquest jury in the Bahamas ruled on Monday. The seven-member jury took 73 minutes to reach its unanimous verdict after coroner William Campbell had directed them to return one of three options. He said they could decide 20-year-old Daniel Smith died of "non-dependent abuse of drugs," or by "accident or misadventure," or they could return an open verdict.

73 minutes doesn't seem like a very long time to pass judgement a young man's untimely death, especially a boy who used to get caught stealing his mother's methadone, but at least it's over. Daniel Smith is now with Anna Nicole Smith in scary clownface heaven where Anna Nicole can feed Daniel as much Ecstasy as she likes without worrying that he'll die from it, what with him already being dead and all.

And with Daniel Smith's death all wrapped up, that means that this will absolutely be the last piece of news about Anna Nicole Smith that you will ever hear. For at least three days.

Read more:

Anna Nicole's son died of drug overdose, jury says – Reuters 

But get this, they're not. Rumour has it that Amy Winehouse's new songs are called things like I Love Moonbeams And Glitter-Monkeys and Boys Make My Heart Go Cock-A-Doodle-Doo! and are all so happy that they could probably be used on a Haribo advert.

Just kidding – Amy Winehouse's new songs are so depressing that her friends think she'll kill herself soon. But we had you going, didn't we? April fool!

The list of things – self-inflicted or otherwise – that Amy Winehouse has to deal with every day includes self-harm, the abuse of hard drugs, some rubbish tattoos, a husband incarcerated for a violent attack, constant media scrutiny and an illness that makes her skin look all weird.

Ironically these are the exact same circumstances that Lipps Inc went through when they wrote Funky Town, but Amy Winehouse seems to have veered off in another direction. Amy Winehouse, you see, is in the process of writing a new album. And how do you follow up the multi award-winning biggest-selling album of 2007? Simple – by being so weirdly fixated on death that it makes The Holy Bible by Manic Street Preachers sound like Rhythm Is A Dancer. Digital Spy reports:

A source revealed: "Her next album is darker than ever. Amy’s got low self-esteem anyway but her skin has made her want to hide away from the rest of the world. And we have started noticing more and more cuts on her arms. Her problems are pushing her over the edge and she’s turning into a depressed recluse. It’s not good for her to stay in so much. People try to get her to leave the house and tell her not to worry about what people say. But she’d rather sit around her dingy flat all day writing about death."

Which is weird, because we heard that Amy Winehouse's new album was going to be a set of Christmas songs recorded with Mika. Actually, if that's the case it explains the depression completely. Imagine being shut in a soundproofed room with Mika for weeks at a time. We want to kill ourselves, and we're just imagining you imagining being trapped in a room with Mika. We can only imagine how Amy feels.

Anyway it all sounds very serious, and those around her must fear that Amy Winehouse will imminently try to commit suicide if these lyrics are as dark as everyone says. But on the plus side, her songs will probably be used less on Dancing On Ice and X Factor if they're called things like The Shrieking Unrelenting Blackness Of My Poisoned Soul. So it all balances out really.

Besides, just because Amy Winehouse is writing some depressed lyrics, it doesn't mean that she's going to kill herself. Look at Ian Curtis, for example.

OK, bad example. 

Read more:

New Winehouse album is 'suicidal' - Digital Spy 

That's an almost unfathomably horrible thing for anyone to have to go through, and yet Dennis Quaid has happily given a televised interview where he recounts the whole awful story from beginning to end. Why would Dennis Quaid subject himself to this? Because he's still furious about the cock-up and claims that medical mistakes are responsible for 100,000 deaths a year in America alone, that's why. 

And also we suspect it's because if Dennis Quaid didn't talk about his children almost dying, he'd have had to talk about Vantage Point instead. He must have gone for the least emotionally-gruelling choice.

Dennis Quaid is a man who knows about trauma. He's starred in a 3D Jaws movie, worked with Lindsay Lohan and spent the best part of decade married to Meg Ryan. If that's not an iron-clad training for battle-worn stoicism in the face of trouble we're really not sure what is.

And it's exactly what Dennis Quaid needed in November when his newborn twins almost died of a massive overdose of the blood-thinning drug Heparin. Without properly reading the dosage on the bottle, a nurse at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center injected Quaid's two-week-old twins Thomas Boone and Zoe Grace with 10,000 units of an anti-coagulant instead of just 10.

And now Dennis Quaid has been interviewed by 60 Minutes about his experiences and the 100,000 Americans killed by medical mistakes each year, as Reuters reports:

"It's bigger than AIDS. It's bigger than breast cancer. It's bigger than automobile accidents and yet, no one seems to really be aware of the problem." In the Quaids' case, staff at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center near Beverly Hills gave their two-week-old twins, Thomas Boone and Zoe Grace, 1,000 times the recommended dose of the blood thinner heparin last November. "It basically turned their blood to the consistency of water, where it had a complete inability to clot. They were basically bleeding out at that point," Quaid said.

Although the babies have now recovered, Dennis Quaid wants to stop this from happening again, which is why he's suing Heparin manufacturer Baxter Healthcare Corp for everything its got, or at least a tiny fraction of it. However, Baxter has queried the fact that Dennis Quaid isn't suing the hospital for employing people who can't tell the difference between 10 and 10,000, especially since the hospital didn't even notify the Quaids of the mistake until word got out to the media.

But still, that's not important because – unless those specific hospital workers are impressively prolific - they're probably not responsible for all 100,000 annual deaths. And misreading medication labels is an exceptionally easy thing to do – this one time we meant to buy a bottle of Calpol SixPlus to chug in pursuit of a legally-available buzz like our dead hero Pimp C, but we accidentally picked up a bottle of Sugar Free Calpol Infant instead.

That was our night shagged, we don't mind telling you.

Read more:

Dennis Quaid recounts twins' near-death experience – Reuters 

As everyone knows, Heath Ledger died because of an accidental overdose of prescription drugs – and now an investigation has been launched into the doctors who prescribed those drugs to Heath Ledger.

Needless to say, this investigation won't bring Heath Ledger back, but it might get a couple of doctors struck off, which is the next best thing. Stupid doctors with their 'cures' for all these so-called 'illnesses'. Idiots.

When someone dies – especially when they die in a sudden, untimely way – it's natural to want to blame something. That's why those Australians murdered all those stingrays after one killed Steve Irwin, after all. Well, that and because some people are born so stupid that they should probably be locked in a cupboard for their own safety as much as anyone else's.

And similarly people are on the lookout for someone to focus their anger about Heath Ledger's death on. Heath Ledger's passing was a mystery for weeks – some claimed that it was a deliberate suicide, some claimed that illegal drugs were involved, and some even claimed that it might have been pneumonia.

But all of that was kicked into touch when Heath Ledger's autopsy revealed that he died of an accidental overdose of prescription drugs. And now that's been figured out, the time for bloody-minded vengeance is upon us, with a couple of doctors who may have prescribed the drugs to Heath Ledger being first on the list to cop the blame, as MSNBC reports:

Two doctors are under investigation in connection with prescriptions disbursed to actor Heath Ledger before he died, Access Hollywood has learned. "The investigation is proceeding aggressively and can conclude from as soon as one day or several weeks," a DEA source told Access. According to People magazine, the doctors are located in California and Texas. The source could not confirm to People if any wrongdoing was involved in the investigation, saying, "We don’t know yet. The agents were there this week, and we are waiting to hear from them."

Now nobody should rush to any hasty conclusions here. As much as Donda West's death proved that everyone loves to blame a doctor – and we personally blame doctors for everything from our inability to sleep at night to the way there's never any hot water in our shower – there could be any number of logical explanations as to why these doctors prescribed drugs to Heath Ledger.

Yes, they could just be unscrupulous and unethical abusers of their profession who care about money more than the lives of their patients, but on the other hand, perhaps Heath Ledger genuinely needed all that Oxycontin and Vicodin prescribed to him. Because, you know, if anyone was in need of two different kinds of dangerously addictive and easy to abuse painkillers, it's the star of 10 Things I Hate About You, right?

Read more:

DEA investigating 2 doctors tied to Ledger’s Rx – MSNBC

For a year, in fact – today is the first anniversary of Anna Nicole Smith's untimely death at the hands on all sorts of different drugs. And, although the anniversary has been marked by a moving tribute by Larry Birkhead, it's also being commemorated by the public as well.

So if you see any confused, slurring women stumbling around tonight, with their faces proudly daubed to make them look like the kind of clown that children see in horror movies, know that it's all in remembrance of Anna Nicole Smith.

It doesn't seem like a year since Anna Nicole Smith died, does it? That's because, what with all the squabbles about her burial site and who fathered her daughter and who got all her money, people only actually shut up about Anna Nicole Smith about a couple of weeks ago, and even then Heath Ledger's death made everyone remember her anyway. 

But anyway, although it's easy to laugh at Anna Nicole Smith for being a hopelessly bewildering clown-faced drug-addled soft-porn star who went to the trouble of fake-marrying her own lawyer just to pass off her baby as his and had a creepy habit of treating dolls as if they were real, it's important to remember that she was a real person. And, as such, individuals are marking her death by doing something a little more heartfelt than just reminding everyone that Anna Nicole Smith used to paint her face like the world's most nightmarish clown like we're doing.

For example, Larry Birkhead – the father of Anna Nicole Smith's daughter Dannielynne Hope briefly stopped trying to hit on Paris Hilton to deliver his own, actually rather heartfelt, message on his website today:

"Anna Nicole Smith I LOVE YOU AND HOPE YOU ARE PROUD OF OUR BEAUTIFUL BABY GIRL. PLEASE WATCH OVER US AND GUIDE US ON OUR JOURNEY THROUGH LIFE. WE MISS YOU.

2-8-07

LOVE,

LARRY AND DANNIELYNN"  

Which is quite sad, at least until you remember that the love probably isn't reciprocated if the endless ways that Anna Nicole Smith attempted to wriggle out of all those DNA paternity tests when she was still alive are anything to go by, and that those rumours about Larry Birkhead and Howard K Stern being gay lovers are still floating about.

Still, let's not get dragged down by too much mawkishness. Let's use today to remember the way that Anna Nicole Smith really was…

OK, scrub that. Let's remember Anna Nicole Smith in a way that's more flattering and a bit less truthful.

Read more: 

Larry Birkhead Leaves Tribute to Anna Nicole Smith – People 

The New York City medical examiner has declared that Heath Ledger died from “acute intoxication by the combined effects of oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam and doxylamine,” in a report that's just been released.

As sad as this news is, we should focus on the positives – not only can Heath Ledger's family continue with their lives knowing that at least it wasn't suicide, but Heath Ledger looks set for pub quiz immortality by being the answer to the question "Which celebrity cause of death would get you the highest score in a game of Scrabble?"

Right, that's it. We're never taking any medicine again. Seriously, it's killing people like flies. First Pimp C died because of all the cough mixture he drank and now Heath Ledger has joined the 'accidental overdose' club along with Anna Nicole Smith.

Two weeks after he died, the official medical examiner's report into the cause of Heath Ledger's death has finally been released MSNBC reports:

The cause of death was “acute intoxication by the combined effects of oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam and doxylamine,” spokeswoman Ellen Borakove said in a statement. Oxycodone is a painkiller marketed as OxyContin and used in other painkillers such as Percodan and Percocet; hydrocodone is used in a number of painkillers, including Vicodin. Diazepam and alprazolam are the generic names for the anti-anxiety drugs Valium and Xanax, and the other two drugs are sleep aids commonly sold under the brands Restoril and Unisom. Borakove wouldn’t say what concentrations of each drug were found in Ledger’s blood, or whether one drug played a greater part than another in causing his death. “What you’re looking at here is the cumulative effects of these medications together,” she said.

Although the report isn't going to bring Heath Ledger back, it will go some way to hushing the storm of speculation surrounding his untimely death. Although the accidental overdose scenario seemed likely from the outset, there were also conflicting reports suggesting that Heath Ledger died a natural death or that Heath Ledger was so miserable that suicide looked like a genuine option. Throw in a banned video of Heath Ledger at a drugs party and everything got so confused that only an official report could clear things up.

The report into Heath Ledger's cause of death comes as Heath's family prepare for his funeral, so at least all the mysteries and rumours about his death can be laid to rest at the same time that he is. Plus, unlike Pimp C, at least Heath Ledger died before he could perform a gangsta rap all about his love for the thing that killed him called Sipping On Some Alprazizzlam. So at least there's some dignity, however small.

As for us, we're serious about that 'no medicine' thing. In fact, all these celebrity medication deaths have got us quietly freaking out in case the BCG vaccination we had at school over a decade ago suddenly decides to turn evil and finish us off.

Read more:

Heath Ledger died of accidental overdose – MSNBC 

But now a coroner has officially declared that Pimp C's cause of death was down to drinking too much cough syrup. Honestly.

Incidentally, one of Pimp C's best-known songs was Sippin On Some Sizzurp, all about how nice it is to drink loads of cough medicine at one. It's an irony not seen since Steve Irwin recorded the Baton Rouge Jigg gangsta classic Fightin With Some Stizzrays.

On the basis that their lives are worth more than a hundred of ours, it's always sad when a celebrity dies – even if we didn't really know who they were when they were alive. And that's the case with Pimp C, who was found dead in his Hollywood hotel room on December 4.

Apparently Pimp C was influential in more ways than we could describe. Not only did Pimp C help lay the foundations for hip-hop's Dirty South movement, but he also had a number one album and one of the first rappers to classify themselves alphabetically by profession, along with Pimp A, Pimp B and Spot-Welder W. 

However, the death of Pimp C quickly became a mystery. A mystery that's now been solved thanks to a coroner's report. Turns out that it was the cough syrup that killed Pimp C. The Los Angeles Times reports:

Rap artist Pimp C… died accidentally at a Sunset Strip hotel because of the combination of a medical condition and cough syrup, the Los Angeles County coroner said Monday… The coroner's report said the death was "due to promethazine/codeine effects and other unestablished factors." But Butler had a history of sleep apnea, a condition that causes the sufferer to stop breathing for short periods during sleep. In tandem with that malady, the cough medication probably suppressed the artist's breathing long enough to bring on his death, Winter said.

As it happens, it seems like drinking cough syrup is quite the hobby in parts of America. Apparently you can mix it with soft drinks, call it 'Lean' and sell it for $200 on the streets. But maybe Pimp C didn't know that. Maybe Pimp C just had a tickly cough.

It's a possibility, but that theory becomes a little undone when you realise that Pimp C guested on the Three 6 Mafia song Sippin On Some Sizzurp, all about how drinking vast amounts of cough syrup is like a normal drug, but with the added benefit that you wake up the next morning free of catarrh.

So maybe Pimp C knew what he was doing when he drank the cough syrup before he died. Hopefully his death will put an end to this ridiculous drug craze for good, even if it means Lethal Bizzle trashing his plans to release the forthcoming single Monged Off My Chops On Tixylix.

Read more:

Cough syrup cited in rapper Pimp C's death - LA Times