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...

Larry Storch

STORCHED EARTH The fort has collapsed on US comic actor Larry Storch, who has hunkered down at a grand 99. Growing up during the Great Depression, he scraped by as a comic with a knack for impressions. Several encounters during his WWII naval service were key to Storch’s career success – a chance meeting with […]

Susie Steiner

MISSING, PRESUMED Crime novelist Susie Steiner, whose books I’ve seen in my grocery store’s bargain books section, has died of big bad glio aged 51. Initially a journalist who worked for most major UK papers, she turned to novel writing in the early 2010s. Her detective thriller trilogy featuring DI Manon Bradshaw (nowt to do […]

Luis Echeverria

(SIX FEET) DOWN IN MEXICO On one day in early 1922, Betty White and former Mexican President Luis Echeverría both came into this world. Only the latter achieved the centenary, probably aided by the fact that Echeverría’s PR team wasn’t jinxing their client’s upcoming birthday with premature celebrations, instead insisting for years he was too […]

John Gwynne

IN LIKE GWYNNE Sports commentator John Gwynne has gone to a new box aged 77. Though he commentated on a whole gamut of sports from rugby to cricket, he was most prominent as a darts commentator for Sky Sports, where he covered 20 world championships and 20 world matchplays. Many fans saw him as part […]

Jose Eduardo dos Santos

CERO SANTOS Longtime Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos has died aged 79. His length of tenure, from 1979 to 2017, pretty much gives away the type of African leader he was. Angola’s second president four years into the former Portuguese colony’s independence, he took power in the thick of a civil war and had […]

Brian Jackson

THE MAN FROM DEL MONTE SAYS LESS! The world of canned fruit connoisseurship has plunged into crisis with its most esteemed critic no longer around to give his stamp of approval. Brian Jackson was the actor who thumbs-upped Del Monte products as the debonair, white-clad Man from Del Monte in numerous 80s commercials, which created […]

Mona Hammond

BLOSSOMED OUT Actress Mona Hammond has died aged 91. Born in Jamaica, she immigrated to the UK in pursuit of a theatre career. She paved the way for subsequent black actors in British theatre through both her esteemed career and her co-founding of the Talawa Theatre Company. Her best-known role however was on the telly […]

Sonny Barger

THE LEADER OF THE PACK, NOW HE’S GONE… Hellraising outlaw biker rebel Sonny Barger has died aged 83. A troublemaker in his youth, he learned to swear from a parrot at a bar, dropped out of school after frequently skirmishing with classmates and teachers, and was honourably discharged from the Army for faking his birth […]

Deborah James

DEBBIE HARRIED The aughts had Jane Tomlinson, the 2010s had Kate Granger, now for the 2020s edition of the FFBI-transcending cancer campaigner. Deborah James was a deputy head teacher at the time of her 2016 bowel cancer diagnosis, which spurred her to pursue a path in journalism to raise cancer awareness. In 2017 she started […]

Margaret Keane

BIG EYES SHUT   Yep, the master of painting saucer-eyed staring children, Margaret Keane, has blinked her last aged 94. From a young age, the hearing-impaired Keane studied people’s eyes during conversations to help comprehend them. This would lead to a lifelong fascination with eyes as means of expression, which she considered to be windows […]