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...
ROUTE 86’D Actor George Maharis has been flushed aged 94. He became one of the popular heartthrobs of his day as street-savvy drifter Buz Murdock in early 60s drama Route 66. His departure from the show midway through the third season was officially cited as due to hepatitis, though there is speculation it might have […]
JIMMY BROWN HAD PASSED AWAY NFL phenomenon Jim Brown has died aged 87. His was a multi-pronged legacy – NFL star, lacrosse star, civil rights activist, film star – though also a complicated one due to a cloud of violent temper and assault arrests. The fearsome fullback was a three-time MVP and took the Cleveland […]
FIREWORKS EXPLODE Avant garde trendsetter Kenneth Anger has fallen to a death hex aged 96. The occult-obsessed Anger was one of the first openly gay filmmakers, he was noted for a series of experimental, Gooseberry-baiting short films known collectively as the “Magick Lantern Cycle” that often invoked Satan and brushed with obscenity laws. His earliest […]
BERGER COOKED Austrian art cinema star Helmut Berger has died aged 78. He was best known for his depraved, androgynous characters, and his association with Luchino Visconti, both professionally and as lovers. In Visconti’s The Damned, about a steel family in the early days of Nazi Germany, Berger left his most lasting impression as craven […]
BOOK CLOSES ON KELLS Fancy that, in this update we have both a Billy Graham and an evangelist who take forever to die finally giving up the ghost. Theologian Tim Keller founded the Manhattan-based Redeemer Presbyterian Church in 1989, which was seen as a long shot to succeed but blossomed to a membership of 5,000+. […]
MILLENNIUM TOMB Billionaire tycoon S. P. Hinduja has died aged 87. He co-chaired multivenue enterprise Hinduja Group with younger brother Gopichand, and the brothers were the UK’s joint-richest people. Hinduja was largely unknown to the public until the Peter Mandelson-toppling “cash-for-passports” scandal in which he donated to the Millennium Dome in an angling for British […]
TEXAS MOLD ‘IM Poker sensation Doyle Brunson has folded aged 89. The grinning Southern gent nicknamed “Texas Dolly” was one of the game’s definitive figures, with his greatest feat being back-to-back wins in the World Series of Poker in 1976 and 77. He crossed the million dollar winnings Rubicon in that same time period, and […]
UNHINGED I’ve already exhausted my reservoir of drag references FFS. Paging Dr. Reptile for the best RuPaul jokes? George Logan was the Hinge in Bracket and Hinge, a drag duo of old bird classical musical aficionados. His piano-playing, acerbic Hinge served as a foil to Patrick Fyffe’s childish Bracket, and the act was a stage […]
LOWER LIFE Columnist Jeremy Clarke, who did not host Top Gear, has died aged 66. He had worked for Prospect and The Independent but became best known for taking over Jeffrey Bernard’s longstanding “Low Life” column in The Spectator in 2001. His column was noted for its wit and sympathetic portraits of troubled lives, and […]
DEMON HEADMASTER EXORCISED Look into my eyes… though they’re too rolled over to threaten anyone now. Yep, school’s out for The Demon Headmaster star Terrence Hardiman, aged 86. His headmaster was perhaps the children’s TV villain of the 90s, as an imposing megalomaniac hellbent on controlling both his school and the world. He only removed […]
