Richard Simmons, US television’s hyperactive court jester of physical fitness who built a mini-empire in his trademark tank tops and short shorts by urging the overweight to exercise and eat better, died on Saturday. He turned 76 on Friday.
Simmons died at his home in Los Angeles, his publicist Tom Estey said in an e-mail, without giving further details.
Los Angeles police and fire departments say they responded to a house — whose address has matched with Simmons through public records — where a man was declared dead from natural causes.
Photo: AP
Simmons, who had revealed a skin cancer diagnosis in March, had dropped out of sight, sparking speculating about his health and well-being. His death was first reported by TMZ.
Simmons was a former 122kg teen who became a master of many media forms, sharing his hard-won weight-loss tips as host of the Emmy-winning daytime Richard Simmons Show and author of best-selling books and the diet plan Deal-A-Meal.
He also opened exercise studios and starred in exercise videos, including the wildly successful Sweatin’ to the Oldies line, which became a cultural phenomenon.
“My food plan and diet are just two words — common sense — with a dash of good humor,” he said in 1982. “I want to help people and make the world a healthier, happy place.”
Simmons embraced mass communication to get his message out, even as he eventually became the butt of jokes for his outfits and flamboyant flair.
He was a sought-after guest on TV shows led by Merv Griffin, Mike Douglas and Phil Donahue.
David Letterman would prank him and Howard Stern would tease him until he cried.
He was mocked in Neil Simon’s The Goodbye Girl on Broadway in 1993, and Eddie Murphy put on white makeup and dressed like him in The Nutty Professor, screaming “I’m a pony.”
Asked if he thought he could motivate people by being silly, Simmons said: “I think there’s a time to be serious and a time to be silly. It’s knowing when to do it. I try to have a nice combination. Being silly cures depression. It catches people off guard and makes them think, but in between that silliness is a lot of seriousness that makes sense. It’s a different kind of training.”
Simmons’ daytime show was shown on 200 stations in the US, as well as in Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Japan and South America.
His first book, Never Say Diet, was a bestseller.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS