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), and msc (2020-21). Now the Committee of DI (2022), Grim, and Reptile (both 2020) oversee the biggest deadpool going...
AMORTE Dependable cinéma français star and less dependable DDP bedblocker Jean-Louis Trintignant has made his exit aged 91. Born into a well-off family, Trintignant considered racecar driving and law as career paths before being enamoured by the stage. His role as Brigitte Bardot’s squeeze, both on screen and off, in And God Created Woman garnered […]
HUMAN CYBORG MALFUNCTIONS Last month in the DDP we had George Perez among the cadavers, whose many superhero creations included one Cyborg. Now for a man who tried to make himself one. Computer scientist Peter Scott-Morgan was the first in England to earn a Ph.D. in robotics, a fascination that began after watching Star Trek […]
BADA BINGHAM BADA BOOM Norn Iron football miracle worker Billy Bingham has died aged 90. As a player in the 50s, he was most prolifically associated with Sunderland and was on the Northern Ireland national team when they made their World Cup debut in 1958. After a broken leg curtailed his playing career, he remained […]
LISBON ANTIQUE Prolific Portuguese-British artist Paula Rego has died aged 87. An associate of the London Group, she initially worked in abstract collages before turning to representational pastel works. Folk tales were a frequent inspiration behind her striking paintings, as were feminism and support of abortion/criticism of the pro-foetus movement. She was a unique pick […]
NEIN HEART MAN Darts player Shaun Greatbatch is busted aged 52. Best remembered for being the first player to perform a perfect nine-dart finish while on live TV, he garnered the nickname “Nine Dart Man” for the feat. More pertinent to the deadpooling world was a long, long-term battle against multiple myeloma that made him […]
CURB HER, BABY! Ann Turner Cook, who has died aged 95, was up there with Queen Libby as one of the very few alive to be famous for 90+ years. In 1928, the fledging Gerber Products Company conducted a contest for an image of an infant to use as their logo, and the winning entry […]
DERBY DEAD! Iconic jockey Lester Piggott has reached his final furlong, aged 86. The lanky (by jockey standards), partially deaf Piggott cut an atypical horseracing star, but his talent and feisty personality made him a dominant figure of the scene for decades. His ability was already evident as a prepubescent, winning his first race aged […]
DOWNWARD TILT Irish travel cyclist and writer Dervla Murphy has made her final journey aged 90. Her love of cycling was apparent from a young age, and an early fantasy was to travel on bike from Ireland to India. She fulfilled her childhood dream in the early 60s, weaving through Europe and the Middle East […]
PAHOR ENTERS THE NECROPOLIS Boris Pahor could have died at any point in the past half-century and it would have been a remarkable feat in light of what he survived to get there, let alone making it to a grand old 108. Born in Italy to a Slovene community, his experiences as a minority amidst […]
SOUL-DAMN-O Credit to Evil Grimace for the pun, and you can’t spell “Sodano” without “sod”… 26 May was a sad triple whammy in celebrity death, with Ray Liotta, Andy Fletcher, and Alan White all having sound pop cultural legacies in Goodfellas, Depeche Mode, and Yes, respectively. A day later, balance has already been restored with […]
