Death happens. Why not make it interesting?
The online competition to guess which famous people won't make it to the end of the current year. If they're elderly, ill, or just live a high-risk lifestyle, stick 'em in your team, and for each one whose death you correctly predict, you'll score points. DDP was dreamt up in Derby, England (hence the name...) by Big Iain back in 1996. Other hosts: Siegfried Baboon and Rude Kid (2003-7), Octopus of Odstock (2008-9), The Man in Black (2010-17), Spade Cooley (2018-19), msc (2020-21), Grim Up North (2020-22), and Reptile (2020-23). Now the Committee of DI (2022), time (2024), and Banana (2023) oversee the biggest deadpool going...
MORE BONES TO COLLECT Inuit elder Qapik Attagutsiak has died aged 103. She was the last surviving Inuit contributor to World War II, helping gather seal and walrus bones which were then shipped to cities to be converted to ammo and aircraft glue. After the war ended she was active as a seamstress and midwife, […]
FIELD OF MULCH Lest you thought 1923 was finished with its missed centenaries of note, Mike Nussbaum slips out the back door a mere six days before hitting 100. Nussbaum was a pillar of Chicago’s theatre scene and was the oldest working actor in the US. While the theatre was his home, he was best […]
A MINOR OBIT MLB’s longest consecutive playing streak belongs to Cal Ripken Jr, who played 2,632 consecutive games for the Baltimore Orioles. His replacement on the would-be #2,633 was one Ryan Minor, who played 142 games total across his entire career. Before that he had a brief basketball career with the Oklahoma City Cavalry. Of […]
EXIT SANDMAN Torben Ulrich boasted many talents – a tennis player who once reached the semifinals at Wimbledon, a jazz journalist and musician who was releasing albums into his 90s, and a director of artsy films. If the surname looked familiar, your intuitions were correct – he was also Lars’s father, and his input on […]
SO LOW Economist Robert Solow has died aged 99. He was known for his pioneering work linking technology to economic growth that formed the basis of the Solow-Swan model (exogenous growth model). He won the Nobel Prize in 1987, and was picked by three teams. Robert Solow23 August 1924 – 21 December 2023, aged 993 […]
MIGHTY ATOM SPLITS Tap dancer Mo Moreland has died aged 87. First known as half of the husband-and-wife club act Mighty Atom and Roy, she later led the Roly Polys fat lady dancing troupe that often appeared on Les Dawson’s TV shows. She was picked by two teams. Mo Moreland1936 – 15 December 2023, aged […]
GENERAL FUNERAL Actor Jack Axelrod has died aged 93. He was active on US TV from the 80s to 2020, and was noted for roles such as a mafioso in General Hospital, the “Electrolarynx Guy” in My Name is Earl, and a semiconscious patient in Grey’s Anatomy. Also a guest star on It’s Always Sunny […]
MILLAR TIME Rugby player Syd Millar has died aged 89. The prop played for both Ireland and the Lions, and later coached the Lions on their fabled 1974 South Africa tour. He was picked by Dr Shipman’s waiting room and The Sick-Bed of Cuchulainn. Syd Millar23 May 1934 – 10 December 2023, aged 892 TEAMS […]
THE DEATHBED OF CUCHULAINN Irish punk great and dentist’s nemesis Shane MacGowan’s miraculous long run of gravity defying has come to an end. His family encouraged him to be well-read and he managed the impressive feat of reading Joyce and Dostoyevsky by age twelve. He managed the even more impressive feat of taking to the […]
NORMAN MAKES THE HIT PARADE! US sitcom titan Norman Lear has moved on up aged 101. If his primary claim to fame in the UK is “that chap who Americanised UK sitcoms”, in the States he was one of the most important figures in TV history. He was there from the medium’s nascency, writing jokes […]
