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...
RATCH UP ANOTHER HIT Bates, Lecter, Cheney… some individuals are so terrifying that mere mention of their name can chill the bones. Louise Fletcher, who has died aged 88, contributed “Ratched” to that pantheon. The child of deaf parents, Fletcher was a regular on TV Westerns in the late 50s before taking a long sabbatical […]
QUEASAR Astronomer Maarten Schmidt, the first to identify quasars, has vanished into the black hole aged 92. One obituary called him “the father of quasars”, which seems a bit misleading for a phenomena that predated him by billions of years. A protége of Jan Oort, Schmidt entered the space scene while radio astronomers were perplexed […]
HASSLE IN THE CASTLE Good morrow. Many of the elderly personnel in the DDP belonged to a different era, but it’s exceptionally rare for one to carry the spirit of half a millennium ago. Castle-restoring Scottish medievalist Raymond Stanley Morris, AKA the Laird of Balgonie, has fallen in the moat aged 92. Looking something like […]
UNE FIN EST UNE FIN It just wouldn’t be a Queen Libby death without someone who would otherwise claim the month as their own dying right after… French New Wave auteur Jean-Luc Godard has exited the world as he made his career, jump cutting to his end via assisted suicide aged 91 rather than gradually […]
PAPAS IN A BRAND NEW BAG! The Greek flavour of Monica Vitti is no more. Irene Papas dipped her toes in the acting world through Shakespeare plays and ancient Greek tragedies before turning to film in 1951. Critics noted that she epitomised “the quintessential idea of Greek beauty”, and more importantly, that she was a […]
HI HO, SILVA, AWAY! Hollywood tough guy Henry Silva has died aged 95. Raised in Spanish Harlem, which hardened his skin and fast, his sharp and chilly face beckoned for villainous roles. With dozens of gangster, thug, and all-around baddie roles to his name, he made early impressions in Frank Sinatra films – first as […]
DEKLEIN Photographer William Klein has died aged 96. Born in New York, he resettled in France after World War II. He was initially a painter under the tutelage of cubist Fernand Léger before a camera won at a poker game inspired a career shift. His gripping, wide-angle photos were noted for being among the first […]
REYNOLDS WRAPPED The actress Joyce Reynolds, also a DDP pick, died recently with so little fanfare that her passing was only uncovered via an online people database. No such misfortune for the classicist Joyce Reynolds, with the Telegraph rolling out an obit the day after her death, aged 103. Noted for her expertise in inscriptions, […]
JACK GING OFF Character actor Jack Ging has died aged 90. The former University of Oklahoma college football player was inspired by Tyrone Power to take up acting, and his film career included supporting roles in various Clint Eastwood Westerns and the lead in Korean War drama Sniper’s Ridge. On TV he appeared in The […]
LIQUID EQUITY Actor and director Harry Landis has died aged 90. A prolific TV face over six decades, he was noted in his later years for his role as Holocaust survivor barber Felix Kawalski in mid-90s EastEnders episodes and as boorish suitor Mr. Morris in three episodes of Friday Night Dinner. He was also a […]
