Derby Dead Pool

Roxette were second only to ABBA when it comes to record sales by a Swedish act, and Marie Fredriksson was a huge part of that statistic. She met Per Gessle in the late 1970s when he was frontman of the hugely popular (in Sweden) Gyllene Tider, and Fredriksson was in a number of less successful […]

The end-of-year “Deaths of 2019” roundups usually bring us a few names that obituary writers overlooked during the year, and this time around it’s the BBC’s sports “in memoriam” reel that provides a second chance for one DDP team. The name in question is former racing driver Jim Russell, who died without a press mention […]

Pete Frates was a former minor college baseball squad player who helped kickstart one of the biggest charity movements of all time. Frates was the fourth person to ever take the “Ice Bucket Challenge”, and the first person diagnosed with ALS to do so. He’d been diagnosed with the condition two years prior and had […]

With Sesame Street marking its 50th anniversary this year, it’s perhaps fitting that the man who was second to only Jim Henson in his contribution to the Children’s Television Workshop classic has passed on. Caroll Spinney (so named because his mother went into labour on Christmas Day) was a keen puppeteer as a child and even […]

Standing 6’7 in his prime, few men did more to shape world finance in the latter 20th century than Paul Volcker. From a banking background, he was a relative unknown when appointed by Jimmy Carter to the post of Federal Reserve chairman in 1979. With the backing of Carter’s successor, Ronald Reagan, a year later, […]

During his playing career, Ron Saunders was a bustling, old-fashioned centre-forward who made up for a lack of height with pure workrate. He was Portsmouth’s top-scorer for six consecutive seasons at the turn of the 1960s, but it is his contributions as a manager that he’ll be best remembered for. In an era of “jobs […]

DDP royalty The Living End’s run of nine consecutive years with a unique hit came to an end in 2018 with the lack of a QO for Indian arthouse director Kalpana Lajmi. However, the start of a new attempt at ten consecutive years begins right now with the passing of Kate Figes. The daughter of […]

One of the leftover names from 2018 that some of the more “resourceful” DDP players recycled this time out, Stuart Fraser was an Australian rock guitarist who played with a number of bands. He was perhaps most noted for his spell with hard rock outfit Noiseworks, who had three top 5 albums around the turn […]

Often when the “oldest living state leader” dies it’s just some guy who was in charge of Guyana for two months in 1968, but this time out we’ve got a cadaver with a legit claim to historical importance. Yasuhiro Nakasone was prime minister of Japan between 1982 and 1987, a period where it finally threw […]

Another death that slipped through the cracks (hey, we’re preparing for the big handover and entries for the 2020 Derby Dead Pool are now open if you look over there), allow us to correct that. Lucette Destouches was a dancer and the wife of modernist writer/fascist Louis-Ferdinand Celine. When he wasn’t busy moaning about Jews […]