I didn’t see a diary on this so I thought I’d make the community aware. I was actually hoping to find a picture of him in the gold lame jacket he used to wear on the MTV ads. I know he wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea, but he definitely had the best take on PeeWee Herman getting arrested (“If masturbation is a crime, I’d be on death row”).
Gottfried, 67, had type II myotonic dystrophy, a kind of muscular dystrophy, said his longtime friend and publicist, Glenn Schwartz.
“The increased risk for irregular heart rhythms can really be quite significant,” she said, adding: “Sometimes people underestimate how much that can happen. There’s some stuff in textbooks that suggests it doesn’t happen very much in type II, but in my experience, I see it a lot in my type II patients.”
Gottfried died of recurrent ventricular tachycardia, an abnormal rhythm in the lower chambers of the heart.
RIP Gilbert. The world needs humor more than ever.