UK comedy actress Mollie Sugden dies at 86

British actress Mollie Sugden, best-known for her role as Mrs Slocombe in the television comedy series "Are You Being Served?," has died at the age of 86.

Her agent Joan Reddin told newspapers Sugden died on Wednesday after a long illness. "She was a lovely, lovely person. She was a great professional," Reddin said.

With her hair highly coiffed and referring frequently to her "pussy," Sugden played the bossy Mrs Slocombe throughout the run of the BBC's innuendo-laden Are You Being Served? between 1972 and 1985.

Re-runs of the show in the United States in the 1990s gained her a new audience overseas.

"She was great fun, a very good actress, very versatile. She could play serious stuff and comedy," said Frank Thornton, who played opposite Sugden in the series as the stuffy floorwalker Captain Peacock.

"It was a very happy show to work on -- you can't play comedy with people you dislike," he told BBC television.

Mark Freeland, head of BBC comedy, said she was one of television's iconic funny women.

"Her daftly enormous purple rinse and never-to-be-forgotten catchphrase are the stuff of comedy legend," he said.

Sugden had also found success in the BBC TV comedy series "The Liver Birds" and played an occasional role as pub landlady Nellie Harvey in the long-running ITV soap opera "Coronation Street."

Jackson's chimp Bubbles enjoys life out of public eye

Bubbles gained fame over two decades ago as Michael Jackson's simian companion. Now at age 26, Bubbles has retired to the Center for Great Apes outside Wauchula, Florida.

When Bubbles was 5 years old, he and Jackson toured Japan, where the chimp moonwalked for the media. Bubbles' new home has many places for him to hide from the limelight. The nonprofit's tropical forest setting covers more than 100 acres.

Patti Ragan, director for the Center for Great Apes, explained how Bubbles and 41 other chimpanzees and orangutans spend their day:

"They relax. They take naps together. They might go up in the top of the cupola," she said. "They go out in the chutes and lie under a tree in the tunnel system.

Bubbles was born in Texas in 1983, and it's thought he was born in a biomedical facility before being sold. When he lived with a supercelebrity such as Jackson, Bubbles could be seen in videos, posing for fan pictures, attending a news conference, his likeness appearing in a Michael Jackson video game.

"Probably the best tribute that we could pay to Michael Jackson here is to just take excellent care of Bubbles, because I know he loved Bubbles.

Disco tune saves man's life

Debra Bader was taking a walk in the woods with her 53-year-old husband one morning when suddenly he collapsed. At first she thought the situation was hopeless.
The one-minute PSA from the American Heart Association instructed listeners, in the event of cardiac arrest, to perform chest compressions very hard to the beat of the 1970s Bee Gees song "Staying Alive." When someone suffers cardiac arrest, as pop singer Michael Jackson did last week, the heart stops functioning completely, and brain death begins within four to six minutes if the victim doesn't receive help.
Bader says she was surprised you can save someone in cardiac arrest without doing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. "And the fact that you have to deliver the compressions that fast was news to me. It's certainly different than what I learned as a Girl Scout back in 1968.
Bader says doctors at the hospital where her husband was treated have an alternative song. "They told me they do CPR to 'Another One Bites the Dust,' which also has about 100 beats per minute," Bader says. "Doctors have kind of a dark sense of humor."

So does Bader like the song "Stayin' Alive"?

Shahid the cause of Priyanka's bad health?

The grapevine is abuzz with the news that Shahid is the cause of Priyanka's bad health. It is said that he being a vegetarian and teetotaller, Wanted Priyanka to give up her drinking habit, which she's not willing. Rumour has it that they had a fight when Priyanka had vodka on Shahid's birthday. Regular fights seem to have stressed out the actress and thus affected her health.

Rumourmongers seem to be reading too much into the silence of Shahid Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra. The alleged couple has not made their relationship public, but stories on them keep hitting the headlines hard one after another. Here is one more bizarre story about them doing the rounds.

Priyanka was hospitalised recently for exhaustion and stomach infection. Shahid was by her side at the hospital and his parents too visited her.