INDIVIDUAL’S TAPERED VITALITY
And so my streak of only writing obits for people born on 22 July comes to an end… and the US Jersey girl’s first obit as co-host is a UK Jersey boy!
It illustrates the variance in deadpooling seasons that after a year where most contenders missed their joker thanks to the endurance of Toms Parker and Smith, virtually every contender has hit their joker on day 1 with the death of Jersey-based ITV News journalist Gary Burgess at the age of 46. The Manchester-born Burgess spent most of his childhood in South Africa, with many of his friends believing witnessing apartheid firsthand spurred him to want to make a difference. Journalism and broadcasting would prove his calling, with a 30-year career during which he worked for a number of radio and TV stations, once spent 76 hours on air as part of a charity drive, and received a number of awards. A testicular cancer diagnosis in 1999 was treated successfully, but it later recurred multiple times, terminally in 2020. This left him a cult DDP pick in 2021, and his entry into hospice late last year secured him as a canon cert for 2022, which he made by mere hours. A welcome relief for GUN, who we hear can no longer watch Golden Girls reruns without war flashbacks.
As the most stars-aligned joker pick since Joey Feek, Burgess was always going to be a very popular DDP pick. Nearly half of his 62 pickers nominated him as joker, many of them regulars of the upper echelons of the scoreboard – Heading Nowhere, Banana’s Peel Slippers, Day in the Death, Pan Breed – along with former champions David Quantick’s Showbiz Pals, Salmon Mousse, The Love Boat, and my own side Thomas Jefferson Survives. Fellow co-host GUN Fishing also scores with non-joker points, and Pity da Foolz and Octopus of Odstock are on the board a day into their DDP comebacks.
Gary Burgess
13 November 1975 – 1 January 2022, aged 46
62 TEAMS (💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀 + 40 = 13 POINTS, 🃏 (x29) 26 POINTS)