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...
ETHEL BEREAVERS Actress Helen Slayton-Hughes has died aged 92. A frequent old lady face on aughts/10s US TV, her best-known role was as stenographer Ethel Beavers in 11 episodes of Parks and Recreation. She was picked by Most Unique Picks 2022. Helen Slayton-Hughes30 October 1930 – 7 December 2022, aged 92💀💀💀💀💀 + 👻 = 9 […]
PATRICK TAMBAY A LA FLAMBÉ Racing driver Patrick Tambay has died aged 73. Racing with a variety of teams throughout the late 70s and early 80s, his most notable stint was with Ferrari, where he won his two Grand Prixes. He was a major morale booster for the team, who was shellshocked from the death […]
ROGER, WILKO, OVER AND OUT It’s another sign we’re getting old that one of the biggest (and happiest) miracle recoveries of 2010s deadpooling is no more. In 2013, guitarist Wilko Johnson announced that he was refusing treatment for terminal pancreatic cancer, and his surprise endurance into 2014 made him a canon cert for what seemed […]
BANG A JIANG! Chinese bigwig Jiang Zemin has died aged 96. Jiang rose to political prominence after the Tiananmen Square protests, and was selected as Deng Xiaoping’s heir apparent as a compromise candidate – ie unsympathetic to human rights, but not as openly violent about it as the party hardliners. Come 1993, he was president. […]
WEIR DODDERS OFF As eager deadpoolers winnow which ALS/MND/etc names to pick for 2023, this year’s most popular has removed himself from the equation. Rugby star Doddie Weir played as a lock for the Scottish international team throughout the 90s, and his towering build and chaotic playstyle once prompted Bill McLaren to describe him as […]
DOCUMENTARY SEDIMENTARY Documentarian Julia Reichert has died aged 76. Her first doc, Growing Up Female, is preserved by the US National Film Registry, and in the decades since she and husband Steven Bognar produced Oscar-nominated works focusing on the midwestern middle class. One of these documentaries depicted the closing of an Ohio GM factory, and […]
X MARX THE SPOT Surgeon Clare Marx has put down her scalpel aged 68. A longtime orthopaedic surgeon with the NHS, she became a “first female X” multiple times in recent years, as the first female president of Royal College of Surgeons of England in 2014 and then the first female chair of the General […]
FINAL CONCERT FOR THE PIANO GRANDAD Unlikely meme star Alan Melinek has died aged 86. After the cancer death of his wife in 2006, he turned to playing the piano to raise funds for Cancer Research UK. Videos of him performing were posted to TikTok, and made him a viral phenomenon under the “Piano Grandad” […]
ALL IN WITH ALLAM Former Hull City owner Assem Allam has died aged 83. The Egyptian-born businessman took control of the Tigers in 2010, when they were on precarious second tier grounds. Under his ownership the team’s fortunes turned around with a return to the Premier League, but his standing fell with the fans in […]
MOURNIN’ NORMAN Footballer Maurice Norman has died aged 88. He was most prolific as a centre half for the Tottenham Hotspurs, where he scored 16 goals. His couple dozen appearances for the England international team included the 1962 World Cup, where he was memorably outjumped by Garrincha during the quarter final. His career ended prematurely […]
