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*An e-mail proclaiming that comedian Sinbad had died of a heart attack Wednesday morning spread like wildfire across the Internet Thursday and had folks as famous as Lionel Richie calling the comedian/actor to find out if it was true.
Well, it most certainly was not.
As reported yesterday, Sinbad, born David Atkins, is very much alive and had nothing but jokes about his untimely demise while speaking via phone with EUR’s Lee Bailey Thursday afternoon.
“So what did you tell Lionel Richie?” asked Bailey.
“I told him you’re talking to a ghost,” Sinbad joked. “I’m trying to get a track from him, so I said I’m real sick. I need some music for my daughter.”
Sinbad’s brother and manager, Mark Adkins, told us yesterday afternoon that he began receiving calls about the death rumor on Saturday.
“I started getting a lot of comedians calling me saying that they heard Sinbad had passed away,” said Adkins. “Then it had died down for a couple of days, and we thought it was just a little local rumor, but then it went across the country. I got calls from Detroit and New York; radio stations calling. I guess there’s some sort of obituary or something on the e-mail blast that people had that made it seem real.”
Moved by the widespread concern, Sinbad told us: “I wish that people would’ve called me back like this when I was alive. I gotta die more often.”
He also joked that people were taking his death so hard because he owes those people money.
“Seriously, folks are worried that they ain’t gonna get their cash back,” he said.
“I’m writing a movie about this now,” he continued, noting that he hasn’t made a film in 10 years. “Seriously, my death is gonna be my comeback.”
The rumor seemed to have come from a hacked-into page on Wikipedia, a widely used Internet encyclopedia that allows anyone to contribute information. The page, seen here, said Sinbad “succumbed to a fatal heart attack on the morning of March 14, 2007.” The page also lists a biography and filmography for Sinbad, which seemed to offend him even more than the fake death.
“They had some jacked up stuff there, man,” he said. “Like come on, man. Give me a good sendoff. …They had me in Maxim magazine interviewed, they said [I was] the worst comedian of all time. I was like, don’t put that on the obituary. You supposed to like a man in death.”
Considering even more benefits of his fake passing, he said: “I’m hoping the IRS don’t know. Hopefully, I can keep this death thing going a little while longer.”
Getting serious for a brief moment, Sinbad admitted that this was actually the second time he has been the subject of a death rumor, and the news is always hardest on family members, close friends and the people who aren’t aware of the truth.
Sinbad said of the person who started the rumor: “If somebody has nothing better to do today, then I’m happy that it gave you something to do. Because if that’s all you have to do in your life, you have a sad life. If the best you could do is create a page that said somebody is dead, then your life is already dead.”
“Think about the energy it takes to do something like that,” he continued. “You have to have so much negative energy in your system, that you’re the walking dead.”
Listen to Lee’s conversation with Sinbad below.
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