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...
LAST LINE OF THIS ‘STANZA Hey, Jerry. Hey, George. Did you hear my mother died? Yeah. How did you know? I didn’t tell you yet! George, you were shouting “GEORGE COSTANZA IS FREE, BABY!” past my apartment this morning! What else could that possibly mean? Yeah… you’re right. Well well, your parents reunited again… Don’t […]
PERSOFF FACES JUDGMENT NIGHT “HE’S still alive? He was middle aged when most media was still black and white!” was a reliable staple for casual deadpoolers in the earlier bits of this century. Prolific character actor Nehemiah Persoff was one of the very last great instances of that tradition, appearing in 200+ films and TV […]
RYDELL LOW Early 60s teen idol and Grease school namesake Bobby Rydell has died at 79. Among a phalanx of clean-cut lads, usually from Philly, who dominated US radio waves before the Beatles fundamentally restructured the listening populace’s tastes, his early ability on the drums brought him a regular TV spot aged 9. Picked up […]
LION SLEEPS TONIGHT Scottish rugby player Tom Smith has died after a long struggle with colon cancer, aged 50. Playing as a prop, he was widely considered one of Scotland’s greatest at the sport. His career highlight came when playing for the British & Irish Lions on their 1997 tour to South Africa, where his […]
ELMER AUTHOR NOW VEWY QUIET Beloved children’s author and illustrator David McKee has died aged 87. Publishing his first book in 1964, he achieved major success several years later with the Elmer the Patchwork Elephant series, which celebrates diversity through its jolly, rainbow-patchwork elephant protagonist. A brush with racism – McKee’s first wife was of […]
BILLINGE-URY TIME WWII vet Harry Billinge has died aged 96. A D-Day participant, he was one of only four in his unit to survive the pivotal invasion. He was locally known in Cornwall for his decades of charity work. Never forgetting his fallen comrades, in his final few years he fundraised for a D-Day memorial […]
COLONEL POPPED In charting Elvis Presley’s rise and fall from humble Mississippi lad to genre-defining cultural phenomenon to pill-popping lardarse, no other name was as pivotal as his manager, Colonel Tom Parker. The enigmatic Dutchman illegally immigrated to the US and long cloaked his true origins, portraying himself as a southern gent and promoting famous […]
C. W. RECALLED Pig Pen, 10-4, this here’s the Rubber Duck, we got word round here that one of our truckers didn’t make it, fer shur it’s one of the smokies that got im… Pig Pen, 10-4, I hear ya, yer sayin’ it was just the Big C… From annoying Donald Duck impersonations to Chuck […]
ADROIT DETROIT PICK FOR REPTILE Former Detroit Symphony Orchestra boss Anne Parsons has died of lung cancer, aged 64. After leading several other classy musical bodies across the US, she came aboard the DSO in 2004 during a time of financial turmoil for the orchestra. Her leadership, defined by a strategy that emphasised vaster outreach […]
CERCLING THE DRAIN Belgian footballer Miguel Van Damme has died aged 28 after a half-decade battle with leukaemia. He played as a goalkeeper for Cercle Brugge, a club that frequently yo-yos between the Belgian First and Second Divisions. Van Damme’s cancer struggle somewhat paralleled this, with a constant alternation between remission and recurrence that left […]
