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), and Grim Up North (2020-22). Now the Committee of DI (2022), Reptile (2020), and Banana (2023) oversee the biggest deadpool going...
STEEL MAGNOLIA RUSTS No man has had a more eventful 2023 than Jimmy Carter. After announcing in February that he was likely to die this century rather than next century, he put his time left on this globe to good use: Ran marathons, stopped burglaries, threw Rolf Harris and the Unabomber off the Empire State […]
DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY REVOKED Actor Joss Ackland has died aged 23. He was one of the busiest actors for decades, with over 130 film credits to his name and believed to have more stage credits than any living actor from Falstaff to Juan Peron. Perhaps his finest moment on the silver screen was as the cuckolded […]
ONE LAST TRIP Far out man… I walked into this obit thinking psychedelic drugs guru Roland R. Griffiths was a 60s counterculture lad, but in actuality his research took place in the 1990s onward. He was already known for his groundbreaking research on caffeine when he started meditating regularly, which prompted a spiritual awakening and […]
A S BYATT IN THE ABYSS Novelist A. S. Byatt has died aged 87. She was best known for her lengthy romance tome Possession, a Booker-winning novel where two academics piece together the hitherto-unknown relationship between two fictional Victorian poets. Besides the Booker, her many honours included the damehood and a species of beetle being […]
ZENNED OUT Buddhist activist Daisaku Ikeda has died aged 95. He was the third president of Soka Gakkai, the religion’s third largest sect in Japan which promoted a happiness-focused brand of Nichiren Buddhism. Boasting a followership of 11 million, the group has exerted political muscle in the National Diet while promoting causes like literacy, China-Japan […]
TRUMP CARD Well before Donald Trump briefly clambered into the political arena when running for the 2000 Reform Party nomination, his sister Maryanne Trump Barry was a judicial veteran. She was appointed to a District Court Seat by Ronald Reagan in 1983 and then elevated to the Appeals Court by Bill Clinton in 1999. Though […]
LUNAR OBIT Few can deny the tumult of 1968. The War in Vietnam waged on, MLK and RFK were assassinated, and Bobby Goldsboro’s “Honey” was released. But America got some Yuletide cheer from the Apollo 8 astronauts, who completed the first manned orbit of the Moon on Christmas Eve that year. The crew leader, Frank […]
ONE MORGUE THING TV murder mystery scribe Peter S. Fischer has died aged 88. Closely associated with Richard Levinson and William Link, the trio co-created the juggernaut Murder, She Wrote and Fischer wrote several dozen episodes. Before that he was a reliable writer for Levinson and Link in the Columbo stable, behind a string of […]
SLAYED OF HAND TV magic pioneer David Berglas has vanished aged 97. After fleeing Nazi Germany for England as a prepubescent, he helped the US Army with denazification espionage missions. Once that winded down, he planned to join his family’s textile business before being wooed by a chance encounter with magician Ken Brooke and recharting […]
HOOSIER DEADDY The tempestuous volcano of college basketball has gone dormant. The sport revolved around Bobby Knight for many years, such was the longtime Hoosiers coach’s influence on basketball strategy. “The General” was a buster on the court, with a motion offense tactic that led him to a 902–371 coaching record, multiple awards/championships, and Olympic […]
