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...
ORACLE OF DEADPHI Actress Marie Alice has died aged 85. Predominantly a stage actress, she originated the role of Rose Maxson in August Wilson’s Fences and won a Tony for her portrayal. She also notched an Emmy for playing soft-spoken dorm director Lettie Bostic in A Different World, a Cosby Show spinoff that benefited from […]
NEILL BEFORE GOD Former Arsenal manager and captain Terry Neill has died aged 80. The youngest captain in Gunners history, Neill first wore the armband aged 20 and scored 10 goals in over 200 appearances. He also played for the Northern Ireland national team, and closed out his playing career for Hull City. He turned […]
THROWN TO THE SEA WOLVES ZZ Topped broke their 2022 wooden spoon with James Caan, now time to grind it to shreds. Robert Hoffmann was an Austrian actor best remembered as the titular castaway in The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, a French-German children’s TV adaptation of the Defoe novel that was a BBC summer staple […]
YIELD MARSHAL One of the instances of broadsheet-catnip military spunk that the DDP always gets a few of each year, Peter Inge, Baron Inge has died aged 86. He participated in the Malayan Emergency early in his career, then rose through the ranks in the four subsequent decades to reach field marshal. In the 90s, […]
NATIONWIDE MOURNING Inaugural Nationwide presenter Michael Barratt has signed off aged 94. Despite stewarding a popular BBC programme, the rest of the UK media had to step up to the plate to give him a QO. FFS, Beeb! A journalist since his teens, Barratt worked in both Africa, where he interviewed Albert Schweitzer, and his […]
IVANA HIT If you want a further sign of the deterioration of the BBC, the first wife of the “you’re fired” guy gets a BBC Breaking. At this rate the Beeb will have a wall-to-wall coverage section whenever Gabrielle D’Allonches dies, if she hasn’t already. Ivana Zelníčková married an Austrian ski instructor to escape the […]
BERMUDEZ TRIANGLE Former Peruvian military dictator Francisco Morales Bermúdez has died aged 100. The Prime Minister under Juan Velasco Alvarado, who took control of Peru via coup in 1968, Morales Bermúdez attained power after overthrowing his ailing boss via another coup. His reign was credited with realising that, in light of economic challenges, eternal military […]
SCALPED-FARI Italian journalist Eugenio Scalfari was perhaps best known for conducting a number of dialogues in his dotage with Pope Francis, on Francis’s faith, Scalfari’s secularism, and the state of the Catholic Church. Some of the snippets attracted wide media attention – firstly in 2014, when Scalfari revealed that Francis said in one interview that […]
WILD BUNCH TAMED Whiskered, sandy-haired cowboy actor L. Q. Jones has died aged 94. Born Justus McQueen, he liked the name of his character in debut film Battle Cry so much he nicked it for his own career. After acting in a string of WWII films, Sam Peckinpah corralled Jones into his stable of regulars […]
COLLAPSE-EUM Jazz saxophonist Barbara Thompson has died aged 77. Initially pursuing a classical path, her admiration of John Coltrane and Duke Ellington rerouted her to jazz. From there she founded several jazz/rock ensembles in the 70s, and often worked in collaboration with her husband, Colosseum drummer Jon Hiseman. She made guest appearances on albums by […]
