A FISH NAMED ‘DUMB ASS’ … AND MORE FROM THIS ONLINE NEWSIE
Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com
Comedian John Cleese made a big splash — and headlines — last week when he claimed Airbnb left him high and dry for a film shoot by taking his money under Fawlty pretences.
He Tweeted they left him homeless in Huntsville by taking his deposit, but giving the Muskoka towers to someone else — but thus earning him 1,000 offers from kind cottage country folk.
Grovelling Airbnb said it was all a mistake. And that the farcical British funny man, who played Basil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers, had made a request that hadn’t been accepted by the humourless host.
The Monty Python star is said to be in pre-production for Cut the Painter, playing a retired writer living in a small Canadian town and starring with his daughter Camilla.
Corner Gas star Eric Peterson plays his former writing partner.
And “Oscar Leroy” would no doubt call his new co-star a “dumb ass” for getting mixed up a mess worthy of a plot similar to A Fish Named Wanda in which Cleese was caught with pants down while in a London flat during lover’s tryst with fellow actor Jamie Lee Curtis.
No word on whether “Mr. Wonderful” Kevin O’Leary offered his summer Dragons Den.
PANDEMIC PREDICTION CLOSE TO REALITY
This week I came across a timely story I wrote in MuskokaTODAY back on Dec. 14, 2006: ‘Prepping for inevitable pandemic flu.’
It was about a health unit and district “tabletop exercise” that played out before Christmas 15 years ago about what would happen — “when not if” — Muskoka and Simcoe were hit with a corona-like virus.
“We’re at least prepared for something catastrophic,” medical officer of health Dr. Charles Gardner said in the story.
Don Currie, Muskoka’s then manager of emergency services, said 360 people could die.
As of today 255 in the region had died due COVID-19.
JIM WHITE LAST OF THE TELEGRAPHERS
Celebrations of life are popping up as family and friends mourn loved ones who were lost during the pandemic.
Due to restrictions the number of funerals allowed has been down, while cremations are up more than normal.
Now provincial rules allow for more people to attend church and secular services in person — and outdoors.
That means more graveside interments, like the one last week for James White, 87, of Gravenhurst, who passed away at home three weeks ago today.
While he died of a heart attack, Dorothy, his wife of 67 years, held a backyard celebration last Thursday under a big tent.
At the home where he died.
It was a lovely affair on a gorgeous summer’s afternoon that afforded her and their four sons — Edward, Michael, William and Daniel — a chance to say goodbye with family and friends.
He wouldn’t have wanted all the fuss — but he got it.
James Wilbur White was born March 24, 1934, in Whitehall, a ghost town now up near Sprucedale.
An interesting note on the back of the service program, showed his birth weight as “8 lbs.”
And after his first month he weighed 10.4 lbs., before the next five months growing to 12 lbs., 13.13 lbs., 15 lbs., 16 lbs. and 16.13 lbs. after six months.
At 11 months he weighed 21 lbs.
His first two teeth came in at six months, followed by two more at 8 months and four more at 10 months.
The trivia was pulled by the minister from the White family Bible and was included in the service.
White was one of the last telegraphers with the railroad, a job he got when his dad moved the family to Gravenhurst just after the Second World War.
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