Many saw the funny side of Patrick Swayze’s death because he played a ghost in a film. Those same people probably didn’t care much for Dirty Dancing, so thought they’d troll everyone who looked upset.

Much like those hooting at those wailing over pictures of Colonel Gaddafi at the moment. Basically, death brings out the comedian in everyone. LONG LIVE GALLOWS HUMOUR!

With that, have you seen Lisa Niemi? She’s Swayze’s widow. Grief can do weird things to a person and she’s been photographed doing something rather unsettling with a Patrick Swayze dummy.

Niemi unveiled Swayze’s creepy wax statue at Madame Tussauds in Hollywood and stroked his face like he was still alive.

Brrr.

In fairness, Niemi will still miss Swayze. They were married for 34 years and no amount of watching the sex scene from Roadhouse is ever going to bring him back.

She said:

“It became clear to me that someone had put a lot of love into this, for a man I loved so very much”

“He had this kind of mischievous, but confident look … and things like his core (were) very, very strong and they worked on his arms more, so it’s very detailed. There’s a lot of work that goes into this.”

Alright! Get a room!

Hey! That makes us wonder: Did Tussauds build a lifelike appendage on the wax dummy and let his widow have one last night with her husband?

God we hope so.

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It is a truth passed down from generation to generation amongst Hollywood’s glittering elite. There’s no reason to make something if you can remake something. Hollywood film executives are willing to remake or reboot any film or franchise in the pursuit of artistic fulfilment*.

From tat like The Day The Earth Stood Still to horror classics like Dracula, it’s nigh-on impossible to escape the pervasive influence of the Hollywood remake in modern cinema. Hollywood is even willing to remake remakes and reboot reboots. One need only look at the treatment of The Incredible Hulk & Spiderman to see that Hollywood’s pursuit of film-making perfection** is a rolling juggernaut of epic proportions.

These big-money remakes of classics usually focus on films and characters that are omnipresent in the minds of the public, encouraging a sense of anticipation as idiots clamber over one-another to see the first teaser trailer on Youtube, while cynics raise their flared nostrils skywards and sniff loudly that it’s never going to be as good as the original.

Even the ‘modern classics’ aren’t safe. Those films that people loved as children for being cheese-filled romps full of dance sequences and genuinely awful dialogue are being recreated for the Glee generation. Just look at Footloose, a film so terrible the first time around that both Kenny Loggins & Kevin Bacon still have night terrors where they’re being chased around a small town by the blood-vomiting, putrefying corpse of John Lithgow. Now it is the turn of 1991 Surf ‘Em Up, Point Break to fall into the crosshairs of the Hollywood snipers.

Say what you want about the original Point Break; it’s not terribly good but it’s not terribly terrible. It is, without a doubt, one of those films that people remember fondly until they sit down to watch it one night and realise that they’d rather be face down in a shell-hole being stabbed in the back by a rusty bayonet than watching Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze play some hard-surfing, hard-loving, hard-men with Gary Busey thrown in to really ramp up the crazy factor.

Therefore, it’s the perfect film for Hollywood’s razor-taloned vultures to get involved with.

The remake has been picked up by Warner Bros & Alcon Entertainment who seem keen to get the film cranked out as quickly as possible, presumably in order to give it that rough, unprepared, ill-conceived notion that runs through most modern cinema. Yes, it really is a golden*** generation.

The film doesn’t have a director yet but movie-goers should have no fear. It already has a screenplay by Kurt Wimmer. Kurt Wimmer is the man behind 2010′s Angelina Jolie vehicle Salt. A statement released by Alcon Entertainment said, amongst other things:

“Kurt’s take infuses the story and characters with new twists and settings. We’re very excited to be in business with Kurt, and Michael DeLuca, Chris Taylor, and John Baldecchi.”

This is Kurt Wimmer the man who- in case you missed it- wrote Salt, one of the least original films ever made by human hands. Luckily for Wimmer it would have been the least original film ever made but Tom Cruise had to drop out of the part and it was hastily re-written for Angelina Jolie.

Anyone unfamiliar with Wimmer’s work should watch any Steven Seagal film, replace the strong male protagonist with a strong female protagonist and imagine a twist that’s as insultingly blatant as asking a young police constable to hold your passport while you beat his grandmother about the head using his own truncheon.

We can only assume that these are the twists to which the Alcon Statement refers. We can only hope that the new Point Break will follow Salt’s lead and include an obvious set-up for a sequel which it will never get.

*Cash

**Money

***Bullion

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Remember us telling you the mindcrushing news that Dirty Dancing was about to be remade? Well, Glee’s Lea Michele is strongly rumoured to be lined up for the part of ‘Baby’, as made famous by Jennifer Grey.

She’s a pretty obvious choice when you think about it, what with her being incredibly wholesome, and thereby, able to portray the saccharine blossoming of sexuality with some berk with a haircut.

Of course, Michele is about to leave Glee because half the cast will have to graduate (don’t write off a Fame-esque spin-off yet though) so she’ll have the time to play the awfully named Frances ‘Baby’ Houseman. But who will play Patrick Swayze’s character, Johnny Castle?

Well, Derek Hough – you may remember him as being Cheryl Cole’s rock/lover/potentially gay chum – has been put forward to lift Michele out of some water.

However, Michele does have some stiff competition from limp quarters. Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez are also being linked with the gig. We sincerely hope that it isn’t the latter because you just know her child groom, Justin Bieber, will be in with a shout of lead after he cluttered up the set of CSI Somethingorother.

The movie is set to thrill sexless men and women sometime in 2013, and of course, there’ll be a heap of casting rumours floating around ’til an official announcement is made.

Somewhere in LA, a casting couch is going to be very busy and need repeated dry-cleaning sessions before long.

Blecch.

Dirty bit.

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They, had, the time of their lives and they owed it all to lonely women, rapt with their nine bars of Galaxy. That’s right. We’re talking about Dirty Dancing which starred Baby Houseman and Johnny Castle as a pair of dancing things.

The original film was endured by the world over 20 years ago, prompting morons to reenact the lifting scene at their awful, awful weddings.

And now it’s coming back in a remake which will no doubt irritate everyone who think that there’s nothing wrong with the one that already exists, provoking them to say “You can’t replace the Swayze!” Hopefully, this redux will have robots in it.

The studio making the film (who cares what they’re called?) say:

“Paying tribute to the emotional excitement of first love, the thrills and complexity of sexual awakening, the soul stirring power of dance, and the classic tale of teenage Baby’s forbidden romance with Johnny Castle, the remake will incorporate classic songs from the 1960s, hits from the original film and brand new compositions!”

So it’s exactly the same as the old one, only with some new songs?

Wait! There’s more! The film’s original choreographer, Kenny Ortega, will direct the remake, to make it more exactly the same as the original.

Ortega has good form too. He directed Michael Jackson’s tour film “This Is It.” There’s probably a joke about ‘Ghost’ in there, what with Swayze and Jackson being really dead.

Ortega says in a statement to the film police:

“Patrick Swayze set the bar for men dancing in the movies as Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire did before him. I believe everywhere you look there is evidence that the talent is out there and I can’t wait to begin the process of discovering the next breakout triple-threats”

Dirty bit.

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Holidays and mini-breaks.

Folded:

• The BBC (for having the good sense to show Point Break last Sunday as a Patrick Swayze tribute. Roadhouse next please)
• Slovenia (radical)
• Free Batman: Arkham Asylum downloads (only map packs, but they are gratis so stop complaining)
• Saturday morning at the movies (just you and the rest of the loners, but an entire screen nearly all to yourself. Don’t see Fame though, people will think you’re doing stuff)
• Charlie Brooker’s Gameswipe (He’s done it again, he’s made Bad Influence ’09)

Creased:

• Cheapo post-it notes (if they don’t say ‘Post-It’ on the back and they cost £2.00 for 400 then they won’t stick to anything more challenging than a flat horizontal surface)
• Dappy (one third of N-Dubz. The one with the hat. The silliest one, in other words)
• Ghosts ‘n’ Stuff by Deadmau5 (good track, if it didn’t have that bloke from Pendulum singing all over it. Unfortunately it does)
• Il Protagonisto (what Robbie Williams was planning on calling his new album. Seems like senility comes and goes for him these days)
• Cheryl Cole (started out chavvy, went all fit, now back to chavvy again. And as for that skid mark of a new single…)

Bad times…

• ‘The Swizzle’ (put Road House on and remember Patrick Swayze in the worst at his best. “My way… or the highway”)
• Put this in front of any url (why? Because laughing at Kanye West is fun)
• Troy Kennedy Martin (died this week and he wrote the screenplay for The Italian Job, so that’s definitely earned him a mention)
• Keith Floyd (heart attack. Drink some wine and remember this guy too)
• Pirates of the Caribbean 4 actually sounds like it could be quite good (probably won’t be though)

• Kanye West (second Creased appearance this month for the mini-man even Diddy thinks is a pillock)
• Reece’s Pieces (like peanut M&M’s that have gone off)
• Serena Williams (nice controlled behaviour for the 28 year old veteran)
• Children swearing (is there ever a more disheartening sound?)
• Derren Brown… has become David Copperfield (“I’m an American”)

Patrick Swayze – actor, dancer, singer, cockney rhyming slang mainstay – has died of pancreatic cancer. He was 57.

If you’re like us, you were probably expecting to read that last sentence 20 months ago. That’s when Patrick Swayze was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and the rumours about him only having weeks to live emerged. It’s a testament to Patrick Swayze’s strength of mind that he not only ended up clinging on for over a year and a half, but that he also continued to work painkiller-free for much of it.

It’s a sad day, but at least Point Break will be on TV soon.

News of Patrick Swayze’s death doesn’t come as a surprise – not least because every other celebrity on the face of the Earth has dropped dead since about May – but it’s still a shock. Throughout his battle with pancreatic cancer, from his diagnosis to his frank interviews on the subject, Patrick Swayze gave the impression that he was a survivor. He may have read his own obituary several times over, but that wasn’t going to get to him.

Swayze’s outright defiance and refusal to roll over in the last few months of his life – he even made a television series during his cancer treatment, refusing painkillers for the duration – was an inspiration. And now he’s dead. A statement released by Patrick Swayze’s publicist last night simply read:

“Patrick Swayze passed away peacefully today with family at his side after facing the challenges of his illness for the last 20 months.”

But although he’s gone, Patrick Swayze won’t be forgotten. Not so much for the body of work he left behind – there can’t be too many people rushing to watch Letters From A Killer in tribute this morning – but because of the spirit of determination he embodied. Every day that he outlasted his initial five-week prognosis was a giant victory, and every tiny hurdle he crossed in the meantime – beating pneumonia and writing his memoirs – felt like he was triumphantly kicking fate in the teeth.

So Patrick Swayze may be gone, but he’ll always be with us. That goes double for Whoopi Goldberg who, if history has any say in the matter, he’ll soon be possessing in a harebrained attempt to woo Demi Moore from beyond the grave.

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Poor old Patrick Swayze. To hear your own obituary once is bad enough. But now he’s heard it twice, which seems a little extravagant.

And it’s all thanks to our old friend the internet. Yesterday afternoon an announcement on a Florida radio station led to internet reports claiming that Patrick Swayze had lost his battle with pancreatic cancer. This in turn led to a tidalwave of sad-face emoticons on Twitter – officially the greatest sign of bereavement that the internet is sanctioned to use.

Thing is, though, Patrick Swayze hadn’t died – of anything – and now he’s a little bit pissed off.

We know three stone-cold facts about Patrick Swayze. 1) For him to survive pancreatic cancer for this long is a testament to both medical science and his own tenacity. 2) When Patrick Swayze does die, people will claim that they enjoy his movies more than they really do, because most of them are rubbish. 3) Patrick Swazye isn’t dead.

The third one is possibly the most important. Patrick Swayze isn’t dead. He absolutely isn’t dead. If you see Patrick Swayze today and decide to poke him with a stick to see if he’s dead, he’ll break the stick in two and put both parts in your bottom as punishment. Do dead people do that? No they don’t. Because they’re dead. Patrick Swayze, on the other hand, isn’t dead.

That didn’t stop the internet exploding into life yesterday afternoon, though, after it was reported that Patrick Swayze had passed away in hospital. The rumours originally stemmed from KISS FM in Jacksonville, Florida, but then quickly spread onto gossip sites and then onto Twitter, where anyone will believe any old bollocks so long as it’s accompanied by one of those sad face colon-parenthesis things.

And how did the fully-alive Patrick Swayze react to the news that he’d just died? By leaping inside the body of Whoopi Goldberg to try and remind Demi Moore how much he loved her? Sadly not. He just got his publicist to release a mardy statement instead. BBC News reports:

Annett Wolf said the star, who is battling pancreatic cancer, was alive and well and responding to treatment. Wolf’s statement read: “This is to confirm that Patrick Swayze did not pass away this morning contrary to severely reckless reports stemming from a radio station in Jacksonville, Florida. Patrick Swayze is alive, well and is enjoying his life and he continues to respond to treatment.”

This is the second time that Patrick Swayze has had to go through this unsettling ordeal. The first came right after his diagnosis with cancer, when his friends and co-stars reflected on his life in the past tense to whichever television camera was nearest to them. And now this.

Honestly, when is Patrick Swayze going to get the message? If people are saying he’s dead then maybe he should act dead in order to spunk away his life insurance payout on a bloody great speedboat. It’s what we’d do. And it wouldn’t take much, either – just a couple of accomplices, a few weeks of hiding and the dead body of Richard Gere. We’re always getting those two mixed up.

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Plenty of people have profited from Patrick Swayze’s cancer – and, yes novelty ‘NOBODY PUTS PANCREATIC CANCER IN A CORNER’ T-shirt vendors, we’re looking at you.

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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Nobody could have ever expected Patrick Swayze – the man who wrote the embarrassingly weedy She’s Like The Wind, remember – to be this strong.

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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When Patrick Swayze was diagnosed with cancer last year he was initially given five weeks to live, a deadline he easily beat.

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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The fact that Patrick Swayze is still around nine months after he was apparently given five weeks to live is clearly impressive.

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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The last time Patrick Swayze had a second chance it was in the movie Ghost, and he used it to cut a bloke in half with a window.

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.

There are some ‘are they-aren’t they?’ games that we prefer not to play, as they’re simply not as much fun as they should be.

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.

The more eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that Patrick Swayze isn’t as dead as he’s supposed to be.

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.