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...

Bill Butler

JAWS OF DEATH Cinematographer Bill Butler has died aged 101. He was most renowned for his work on Jaws, where his task would prove extra important amidst the struggles getting the mechanical shark to work. His camerawork conveyed the shark’s looming terror very effectively without needing to have it on screen. Other films he worked […]

Ian Bairnson

IAN, THE SKY Oh, oh, oh, it’s tragic, you know. Veteran guitarist Ian Bairnson has died aged 69. Working as a session musician, a stint with Pilot caught the attention of the band’s onetime producer, Alan Parsons. Bairnson would be a mainstay of the Alan Parsons Project throughout its 15-year duration, and was among several […]

Seymour Stein

MORE THAN SEDATED New wave guru Seymour Stein is on the road to nowhere, aged 80. Active in the music biz from an early age, he co-developed the Billboard Hot 100 in the late 50s and was active as an apprentice in the Brill Building corridors before splitting to his own ventures. He co-founded Sire […]

Nora Forster

MRS. LYDON NOW ROTTEN Never mind the bollocks, here’s the obit. German Nora Forster was born to a wealthy publishing family and kept active as a music promoter. She worked with greats like Jimi Hendrix, and was particularly intertwined with punk, bankrolling the Clash and the Sex Pistols. The latter led to her marrying John […]

Roger Vinson

JUDGMENT DAY Former judge Roger Vinson has banged his last gavel aged 83. Appointed by Reagan in the early 80s, he briefly saw national notoriety over a decade ago when allowing a challenge to Obamacare. He hasn’t gotten much beyond local press, but in a win for Cancel My Appointments’s “only the living can’t obit” […]

Paul O’Grady

LILY RAVAGED Comedian and drag star Paul O’Grady has gone to the dogs aged 67. O’Grady started off as a social worker who rescued multiple children from abusive situations before intermingling with the Liverpudlian gay scene. He was working as a barman when remarking he could do a better job hosting ladies’ night than those […]

Napoleon XIV

THEY TOOK HIM AWAY, HA-HAAA! Longtime insane asylum resident Napoleon XIV has met his Waterloo, aged 84. Fate was not kind to this man. The heir to the House of Bonaparte could’ve reigned over all of France with a different twist of history. The missed opportunity gnawed at him, and he barely kept himself sane […]

Mark Russell

STAR-SPANGLED COFFIN US political satirist Mark Russell has died aged 90. The bowtied funnyman hosted many a PBS special from the 70s to the aughts, where he played jaunty tunes on a flag-draped piano skewering the politicians of the day. His longtime association with parody (his songs were typically retoolings of Great American Songbook canon) […]

Chabelo

LA INMORTALIDAD NO ES REAL Mexican television stalwart Chabelo has died aged 88. Xavier López Rodriguez had created the “Chabelo” child persona while working as a fill-in for TV network Televisa in the 50s, but didn’t truly make his mark on Mexican culture until starring in the longlasting children’s game show En Familia con Chabelo. […]

Robert Alexander Lindsay

DEFENCE RESTS Peer and politician Robert Lindsay, 29th Earl of Crawford, has died aged 96. The earliest surviving MP (and the last to be elected in 1955), he was among the dwindling links to the Heath ministry as Minister of State for Defence. He was also noted for his mental health activism and rebuffed Scientologists […]