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Dave Ismay gets a life

November 22nd 2010 09:36
: Vyoos news
Dave Ismay
Dave Ismay: big spender

What do you do when you are told you have three months to live? For Dave Ismay, a 64-year-old Briton who has spent a lifetime on stage as a comedian, the answer was: make a bucket list.


This Ismay said, was a list of things to do before he kicked the bucket.

His list included buying a Mercedes, visiting Australia, playing golf in Ireland, finishing a book about his life and auditioning for a part in a big pantomime, even though he had no idea if he would live to see the end of the season. Or even opening night.

Ismay won the pantomime role, and crossed all the other items off his list too. Well, all except one. The last one: Immortality. He might have had only months to live, but his sense of humour was surviving just fine.

He crammed all the list's activity into two months, and then returned to the real world by agreeing to independent, second-opinion liver biopsy test.

Ismay's original diagnosis was advanced cirrhosis of the liver, caused by a lifetime of heavy drinking. Ismay claims he was perplexed by this because, in his honest opinion, he had never been a heavy drinker. But how do you argue with a liver which shows all the signs of taking your life within weeks?

That's why the independent opinion seemed worthwhile. Nothing to lose.

The result of that second opinion deeply shocked Dave Ismay. Essentially, it was this: you aren't dying. You are suffering from hereditary haemochromatosis, a condition which leaves too much iron in the blood. And which is treatable.


Now Ismay has to re-budget the rest of his life. He spent all his savings having fun before he died.

He's cheated death. We suggest he cross immortality off his list as well.
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Beauty and the fleeced

June 29th 2010 06:51
laura anness

Phyllis Diller once said, "When I go to the beauty parlor, I always use the emergency entrance. Sometimes I just go for an estimate." This sort of honest appraisal of oneself is something the winner of the 2010 Miss Cornwall beauty pageant has yet to learn.

The rules of the annual Miss Cornwall beauty pageant are simple: entrants must be aged 17 to 24 and must live or work in Cornwall, the picturesque county in England's south-west.

Laura Anness, this year's winner, is 27, and she lives and works in Devon.

Laura managed to win the title - at her fifth attempt - by claiming she was a Cornwall resident and that she was aged 22. Her deceit was discovered when one of the pageant administrators noticed, while cleaning old files out of her office, that Laura's age was given as 22 on the entry forms for each of the five years she had entered the contest.

Now Laura has been stripped of the title she tried so long to win. She has also lost the chance to compete for the title of Miss England and forfeits a 12-month modelling contract.

When Laura looks back on her beauty pageant career, she can take satisfaction at least from making the final of the 2009 Miss Universe competition. It is believed there were no questions over geographical qualification for that one.



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Bride misses her own wedding

April 3rd 2010 02:47
lego wedding

A drink with a friend before your wedding is a tradition Siobahn Watson was determined to follow. Now she wishes she hadn't.

Watson, 24, of Manchester, England, a telesales assistant, was engaged to Aaron Todd, also 24, a bricklayer. A white Rolls-Royce had been hired, the bridal party's gowns had been designed, fitted and paid for, guests had been invited and a lot of money had been spent on the function at which everyone would celebrate the happy day.

Unfortunately, Watson's final drink as a single woman turned into something of a final fling as a single woman. Not all the details have been released, but we can read between the sheets.

Some hours before her wedding, Watson went out for that fateful drink with the unnamed "friend". They drank. They drank some more. At some point Watson lost her mobile phone. At some other point, the two stopped drinking and went to a motel.

We know only two things for certain that went on in that motel room. One is that Siobahn Watson went to sleep. We know that because we have been told the other thing that happened: she woke up.

She woke at about the same time that she was supposed to be saying, "I do."

Later, Watson was quoted as saying, "When I realised I had missed my own wedding, I started shaking. I could not believe I had been so stupid."

Aaron Todd, who had spent longer than expected standing, alone, by the altar, while friends and family tried continuously to ring Siobahn on her lost mobile phone, was quoted as saying, "She won't get a second chance.''

dailystar.co.uk; image: firstpersonsingular.org


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Are women vain? The eyes have it

April 2nd 2010 01:32
womens glasses
For women confident enough to see it, glasses can be an elegant statement of self-assurance.

Scientists have produced evidence that just under 50 per cent of women are vain.

[ Click here to read more ]
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archbishop vincent nichols

Internet social networking sites which promote themselves as communities are in fact undermining community life. So are texting and emails.

[ Click here to read more ]
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