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...
MOURN! What’ll it be Norm? One big dose of formaldehyde. If Pope Francis was the biggest death this year newswise, the literal biggest goes to George Wendt. After a few years of bit-part character acting, Wendt became a name everyone knew as Norman Peterson on Cheers. The corpulent barfly was the bar’s most reliable customer, […]
POPE BEYOND HOPE April went up in (white) smoke to bring us the death of the year in His Holiness Pope Francis. As Pope Benedict stepped down amidst a torrent of paedo scandals, the conclave settled on the Jesuit cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio. Naming himself after Francis of Assisi was a sign of things to […]
HUCKLEBERRY FIN Top billing on this update goes to Val Kilmer, Hollywood leading man of the 90s. His portrayal of Tom Cruise’s rival Iceman in Top Gun put him on the map, and soon enough he was Jim Morrison, Doc Holliday, and Batman. A “tough to work with” reputation tapered out his superstar days and […]
NO LONGER IN THE CONVERSATION, KILL SOFTLY ALL YE FAITHFULL There’s no Pope (yet) but it’s still been a bumper month for celeb deaths, with one of the most striking in both fame and circumstance being Gene Hackman. The popular everyman made his film debut in his 30s and was relegated to bit parts until […]
FIX THEIR HEARTS OR DIE Welcome DDPers to our whopping thirtieth iteration of the Derby Dead Pool. As per the norm, there has been a blizzard of January hits (including five fallers from the Drop 40) to give our game an exciting start. In addition to the committee members DI, Banana, and time, we’d like […]
DDP 2024: THE IRON LEGUME So that’s 2024 then. The year in which Scott Thorson would’ve been a better deadpool pick than Jimmy Carter, and Jimmy Carter would’ve been a better candidate for the Democrats than Biden or Harris (but no Democrat was winning over the decisive Hannibal Lecter fanboy demographic). I wrote this before […]
SHEARED WOOLLEY, JACKAL OFF, AND OTHER NOVEMBER THRILLERS Quincy Jones was an aspiring jazz musician and early pal of Ray Charles who went on to reshape the music industry through his collaborations with everyone from Frank Sinatra to Count Basie. His work with Michael Jackson was the most prominent, and some of the most iconic […]
DIDN’T MAKE IT THROUGH THE NIGHT Kris Kristofferson was one of country’s ironclad greats with songs like “Help Me Make It Through the Night” and “Me and Bobby McGee” under his belt, acted in films like A Star is Born, and formed the all-star quartet the Highwaymen with Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, and Willie Nelson. […]
NO, I AM A GONER 2024 may remain a slow slog of the year, but it’s still claimed some legends, and now we’ve got the booming timbre of James Earl Jones to narrate the necrology. From a leading Shakespearean actor of the 50s (in the face of an environment where opportunities for black actors were […]
UNDER THE CANDELABRA As I wind down my hosting stint, it is poetic I get to send off my archnemesis in a final showdown like some sort of samurai film. Scott Thorson’s troubled life is best remembered for a relationship with Liberace marked by lavish gifts, undergoing plastic surgery to more closely resemble his bf, […]
