When the man behind the teams Gooseberry Crumble, Apricot Crumble and Cyanide Crumble predicted that deaths in the year 2020 would be like a non-stop enema, we laughed. If only we knew he was conjuring up some vodoo covid…
beware the crumble, DDP’s own Mystic Meg…
So if you are reading this, well done! You survived 2020! No, I’ve no idea how either. It was a year in which breathing became its own catchphrase, both in the death in America of George Floyd which spurred the summer BLM protests, or with the, to date, 1.8 million covid deaths world wide. Still, at least Trump lost.
… you mean he’s still in office another fortnight? Oh, America…
In brief, as the bells rang out, we had a few last 2020 dispatches to mention:
Ronald Atkins was, by far, the oldest living former British MP. Twice elected for Labour in the uber-marginal seat of Preston North, he attributed his longevity to keeping active and enjoying seafood. He is currently the oldest verified MP to ever live. He was picked by four teams, including Gray Panthers, and the Ronnie theme team, And its Goodnight from Him!
Eugene Wright was the last surviving member of the original Dave Brubeck Quartet. The Senator was a jazz legend, who played on some of Brubeck’s signature sounds like Take Five and Blue Rondo a la Turk. He was a unique pick for Gobbing on Life.
Dick Thornburgh was a former Governor of Pennsylvania who later served as the US Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr. He was a unique hit for Oh Ronnie Where Art Thou.
Tommy Docherty managed Scotland, Chelsea and Manchester United. He was replaced at both of the latter teams by the late Dave Sexton, though only one of those was for sleeping with the physios wife.. He was picked by four teams, including Black Penguins of Death and Simply Dead.
Arnold Wolfendale did die but didn’t get a qualifying obit in time.
And so, I guess it’s time for the old Father Ted raffle joke. It’s in the one where they rig the prize draw to save the winter heating money after Fr Jack crashes the prize car. “The last raffle I went to, the hosts actually won, so you know, that happens a lot.”
And now we all look at the DDP co-host…
But seriously, many congratulations are due to Reptile, who won at a canter with The Love Boat after many years of being in and about the top 20. For years he claimed he overthought his team selection, so clearly having to put the team in a week early is a winning strategy. It was the year of the lockdown, and The Love Boat kept a socially distanced lead at the top of the table from July. He finished with 14 hits and 155 points, and a lead of 25 points (the largest gap between 1st and 2nd since The Living End massacred everyone in 2011), so there was no deny the best team won the year. No one else had their eyes on coach Sonia Kinsella, and the smart picks of footballer David Hagen and former hitman Popeye Velasquez proved crucial.
2nd place went to Once You Go Black, who followed up an outstanding 3rd place debut year with one step even better. Will it be one step closer in 2021, or will the Curse of 2nd Place reappear, proving this one step beyond?
In joint 2nd (3rd place) was To Kill a Gabor Sister, a promising team for the last few years that have now retired from deadpooling. They held firm on picks like Doug Supernaw and Michael Robinson that others were wary of, and got the full reward. If this is Rad’s farewell, we can only wish him the very best.
YOUREOUT actually lead the DDP hours into the year with the death of Don Larsen, whose Hogmanay announcement of end-stage hospice care came too late for anyone else to pick. This lead lasted 48 hours before theme team Last of the Summer Winos scored with the demise of Christopher Beeny, who you can incidentally watch on Britbox just now in all five series of the original Upstairs Downstairs. This lead lasted longer than 48 hours… 72 hours to be exact. Then Prozac Nation author Elizabeth Wurtzel died. It wasn’t the first “D’oh” your faithful co-host let out at seeing a shortlisted name get away, and it wasn’t the last.
You Could be a King or a Little Street Sweeper took the lead, and held the lead on three separate occasions in January 2020 thanks to Roger Scruton and the much missed Monty Python star Terry Jones. He sandwiched short runs by House of Soon to be with the Lord (Sultan Qaboos) and Roasting Bodies in Redcar (Shin Kyuk-ho), but on the 25th January, an ominous sign for the rest appeared as The Love Boat took the lead. Oft-fancied regulars Day in the Death and 2016 runners up Heading Nowhere lead jointly through February, and To Kill a Gabor Sister lead from March to July. Civil rights icon John Lewis’s death put Day in the Death back in front, but then former Scottish footballer David Hagen died from MND and The Love Boat never looked back…
One odd factor in 2020 was that the qualifying obits came from all over the place. Not just from the full range of qualifying obits – now extensively expanded for 2021 – but some of the places in those obits. A retrospective obit for Pete Felton arrived months after he died, and Tom Belso got a qualifying mention a mere 343 days after he died, for example. The two weirdest cases of the QO being found down the back of a sofa in the dead of night came for two people you’d have expected to have gotten the full broadsheet obituary. In any other year, Richard K Guy would win the Oddest Obit, as his appeared as a mention of death in the Times crossword! Five months after his death! They all count.
However, oddest QO of the year has to go to horse racing trainer Rory Gilsenan. When he died, the owner of the Sick-bed of Cuchulainn theme team went looking everywhere for a suitable obit for their man. They found one in the Sunday Telegraph print copy, but it wasn’t in their online website. Not to be deterred, they nabbed a copy of the digital version on Pressreader, proved the existence of the obit, and the existence of a DDP loophole no one had ever thought of in one small step for man. They got the points, and this route is now mentioned in the rules. What’s next? Someone posts their copy of the Economist to yours truly?
Spotted – the new place desperate DDPers scour for death notices in 2021…
By numbers, Kirk Douglas was the hit of the year, with 158 teams cashing in. For general DDP player sadness, we note the deaths of Alex Trebek, Terry Jones and Nicholas Parsons as being of special note. This co-host was knocked for six by the sudden death of Dame Diana Rigg – life’s getting on a bit when your schoolboy crushes start dying of old age! However if you asked me to pick the Hit of the Year, I would point to You Dirty Rotten Swine You Deaded Them! and their pick of Egghead Dave Rainford. Some reading between the lines carefully sussed the quiz genius’s TV absence had a grim reason, and unique points were cashed in last March.
The Drop 40 dropped off 17 members with Nobby Stiles, Olivia de Havilland, Lee Kerslake, Stirling Moss, Babs Windsor and civil rights icon John Lewis among the fallen not mentioned above. Other notables we lost and saw scores on included music legends Ennio Morricone, Eddie van Halen, Bill Withers, Annie Rosss, Juliette Greco, Peter fn Green, Kenny Rogers and Little Richard. Football lost Gerard Houllier, Peter “The Cat” Bonetti, Jack Charlton and Diego Maradona, whilst comedy lost greats such as Roy Hudd, Sydney Lotterby, Johnny Beattie, Jerry Stiller, Derek Fowlds, Eddie Large, Carl Reiner and Tim Brooke-Taylor, co-writer of the Four Yorkshiremen Sketch. Screen legends Max von Sydow, Honor Blackman, Earl Cameron, Ian Holm, Wilford Brimley, Michael Lonsdale, Dave Prowse and Sean Connery went, as did small screen stars Jill Gascoine, Heather Chasen, Regis Philibin, Kamala, Frank Bough, Des O’Connor and Geoffrey Palmer. We also lost a trio of much loved authors (John le Carre, Clive Cussler and Astrrix scribe Uderzo), acclaimed scientist Freeman Dyson, snooker eccentric Willie Thorne, magician/sceptic James Randi, American icon Chuck Yeager, The Fink himself and the great Northern Irish peace campaigner, politician and Nobel Peace Prize winner, John Hume. They’ll all be missed.
The Yorkshire Ripper also died. That fucker wont be.
One of these four mysteriously not mourned quite as much…
Those we missed in 2020 included Rush drummer Neil Peart, ghost botherer Derek Acorah, popular musicians John Prine and Manu Dibango (both covid fatalities), tiger fan Roy Horn, comedy legend Bobby Ball, 70s tunesmith Spencer Davis as well as underrated actors Maurice Roeves, and Louis Mahoney. No one twigged Kobe Bryant’s helicopter exploding or healthy 91 year old actor Orson Bean becoming a car sandwich either…
As for those we forgotten entirely.. Peter Hobday we know was the first sub for one team. Frances Cuka, Heather Couper, David Collings, Lord Armstrong, Jay Benedict, Radi Antic, Ida Schuster, Dave Greenfield of The Stranglers, Hilary Dwyer, Lynn Faulds Wood, Derek Ogg, Astrid Kirchherr, Fred Willard, Richard Herd, Ben Cross, Chadwick Boseman and John Sessions: all names DDP players could easily have gone for at some point but no will never get the chance. And no one foresaw Brodie Lee’s death on Boxing Day at all either, obviously.
If anything summed up 2020, it was much loved wrestler Shad Gaspard’s death aged only 39, sacrificing himself to save his young son from drowning in April. If anything really summed up 2020, however, it’s that young celebrities sacrificing themselves to save their own children from drowning wasn’t a unique event. In July, former Glee actress Naya Rivera went in exactly the same way. We salute them and despair of a world which bumps them off yet keeps Peter Tobin and Lucia Hiriart alive and seemingly well…
Truly the year was covered in blood. 278 hits in the DDP was a new record.
A top ten finish saw Tom’s Chainsaw Massacre win Newcomer of the Year. A Trophy for Atrophy were one of the most improved with their first top ten finish. Nicked but Not Dead won a controversial Theme Team League which saw mass rule changes for 2021.
Anyhow, I think we can relax now we’ve escaped the spectre of 2020…
What’s that? 9 DDP hits for 2021 already. The team are in a Rush to get things moving…
What’s Gooseberry’s prediction for this year. “An even bigger enema.” Oh, for the love of….
Play us out, Ennio…