Those we lost, missed and scored in 2016…
2016: Deaxit!
Wow! What a year 2016 was, ladies and gentlemen. It was a rum year in this ol’ world for many but for celebrity passings, 2016 will go down as one of the very best. It was such a year that there were mainstream chatterings about the level of celebrity deaths we had and whether this was an outlier or whether we’re heading for a golden age for obit writers…
After all the drama of Christmas, it seems even the Grim Reaper decided that enough was enough for 2016 and there are no new hits to report, just a few misses (‘Bambi’ illustrator Tyrus Wong, ‘M*A*S*H’ actor William Christopher and former Tour de France winner Ferdinand Kubler). There was final entrant for the List of the Lost as theologian Huston Smith missed out on getting a UK obit…
DQSP’s 4th time around
2016 was the year of the underdog shocking the establishment, as demonstrated by Donald Trump’s election win, the Leave campaign’s victory in the European referendum and Leicester City’s remarkable Premier League title win. But there was no such shock in the DDP main race as David Quantick’s Showbiz Pals won for a record 4th straight time. And it was his best performance yet in a year which in the 20th anniversary broke pretty much all known records.
DQSP scored 17 hits (a new record), which would have been more if Michel Delpech snagged a UK obit. He finished with another all-time record of points in a year with 155. You would think then he would have strolled to victory but that was not the case. Heading Nowhere produced their best performance yet with 16 hits and 150 points to take the runners-up spot, with the legendary The Living End bagging another podium finish in third with 16 hits and 148 points. It was a competition high on quality and set a new benchmark for deadpooling.
Put it this way, the previous points record of 112 would have put you outside of the top ten! In all, 14 teams went over 100 points, 9 teams more than the previous record in a year. In retrospect it was all done and dusted by September, when DQSP bagged their 17th hit. Such was the volume of hits piling in in the early stages of the competition. For a while it looked as if the well had run dry in terms of overall hits as the contenders were running out of candidates, but the DDP showed it’s quality overall with an astonishing 30 hits in the last month to set yet another record…
In the Theme Team League, the controversial Shameless, with it’s team of cancer-affected candidates won comfortably despite having more “losties” than actual scoring hits.
Hits and Misses…
Where do we start? As mentioned, there were records falling all over the place and not surprisingly the overall hit record for the DDP was smashed. The new record is now a whopping 275 and that despite over 100 misses (previous DDP picks not chosen in 2016) and over 50 picks for the List of the Lost (picks which didn’t gain the requisite UK obituary). The slight tweak to obit rules had arguably a marginal effect.
Among the enormous hitlist was: Actors Gene Wilder, Frank Finlay, Peter Vaughan, Robert Vaughn, George Kennedy, Jean Alexander, Gareth Thomas, Liz Smith, Andrew Sachs, Burt Kwouk, Frank Kelly and of course the sad double of Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds as well as Fisher’s ‘Star Wars’ co-star Kenny Baker. From the world of sport there was two absolute legends, Muhammad Ali and Johan Cruyff as well as golfer Arnold Palmer and long-term FIFA president João Havelange. From entertainment there was Terry Wogan and fellow DJs Ed “Stewpot” Stewart and Jimmy Young, Ronnie Corbett, Paul Daniels, ‘Coronation Street’ creator Tony Warren, Jimmy Perry (‘Dad’s Army’), Garry Shandling, Carla Lane (‘Bread’) and of course Zsa Zsa Gabor.
In politics there were several Tory ministers (Cecil Parkinson, Jim Prior, Patrick Jenkin) as well former First Lady Nancy Reagan, Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej, former Israeli PM Shimon Peres, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and UN General-Secretary Boutros Boutros-Ghali (so good, they named him twice!). If you want a bit of culture there was filmmakers Douglas Slocombe and Guy Hamilton (‘James Bond’) as well as writers Barry Hines, Harper Lee, Umberto Eco and Richard Adams. And from the world of music we had Beatles producer George Martin, Peter Maxwell-Davies, Ska pioneer Prince Buster, Glen Frey (The Eagles), Leonard Cohen, Rick Parfitt, Merle Haggard and on Christmas Day, George Michael…
So who did we miss? The List of the Missed was worthy of one of the earlier DDP performances. There was of course the death of the legendary David Bowie (whose death on January 10th arguably got the ball rolling in 2016 for celebrity passings) as well as his former drummer Dennis Davis. Bowie’s passing was rivalled by another pop superstar in Prince as well as fellow musicians Pete Burns (Dead or Alive), Scotty Moore, Leon Russell and Suicide’s Alan Vega. But there was also actor Alan Rickman, comedian Victoria Wood, acerbic columnist A. A. Gill, ‘Carry On’ scriptwriter Norman Hudis, sports commentators Jack Bannister and Bud Collins, playwright Arnold Wesker, serial killer Robert Black, news reporter Michael Nicholson and from football, Cesare Maldini and the designer of the FIFA World Cup trophy, Silvio Gazzaniga.
I haven’t even mentioned who we lost completely yet but they included two-thirds of Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Earth, Wind and Fire’s Maurice White, film director Michael Cimino (‘Heaven’s Gate’), actor David ‘The Big Lebowski’ Huddleston (“oh prairie shit”), footballer Dalian Atkinson, Ethiopian Olympic legend Miruts Yifter (“The Shifter”) and 4 Grand National Winners (yes I know animals don’t count!).
No wonder the TV is full of adverts for funeral cover!
Into 2017…
So what do we have in store for 2017? For a start there is the new points bonus of the Drop 40 hits, replacing the largely redundant “Unlucky 13” bonus. There were a record 13 last year (another record!) but who knows at this stage who’s is going to make the list and who will eventually drop (there were only 4 in 2015). 2017 will mean another record for me as I will host this venerable competition for the eighth time, surpassing the mark set by the DDP’s original founder, Big-Iain (he’s back again this year). However I am considering my options on whether to continue at least solo. Oh and by the way, watch out for a few “cosmetic” changes to the webpages…
Written by The Man in Black on 3rd January 2017.