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...
REPTILE MAN NOW COLD BLOODED Reptile enthusiast YouTube Brian Barczyk has died aged 54. The founder of reptile zoo The Reptarium, he hassled about with his menagerie to an audience of 5+ million. His favourite animal was the snake, of which he owned over 30,000, but he also owned lizards, crocodiles, turtles, and the occasional […]
BATTER UP Veteran TV director Roy Battersby has died aged 87. He became known early on for his unabashedly leftist documentaries, often depicting working class struggles. The BBC blacklisted him for his association with the Workers Revolutionary Party, but he had a fruitful second wind directing popular dramas including Between the Lines, Inspector Morse, Cracker, […]
STUPORED MARIO Brazilian football great Mario Zagallo has died aged 92. The forward played on two World Cup winning teams in 1958 and 1962, and was the last survivor of the former after Pelé’s death. He later turned his hand to coaching, and promptly won another World Cup in 1970. Only Franz Beckenbauer and Didier […]
ANOTHER TRUMP GETS FIRED Melania Trump’s mum, Amalija Knavs, has died aged 78. This marks a third year in the row where there’s a Trump family hit in the DDP. Your aim is getting more frustrating than John Hinckley’s, Reaper. She was unique for Manifest Death-stiny. Amalija Knavs9 July 1945 – 9 January 2024, aged […]
MILITARY SPUNK FUNTIME HOUR Nothing like some ancient army officers to help kick off the year, albeit two of a very different moral bent. Frank Kitson’s most favourable obits still made sure to say he was “controversial”. As did Kissinger’s. You know where this is heading. Kitson cut his craft during the Mau Mau Uprising […]
ZZ TOPPED Oddly topically, both Israel and Palestine get a cadaver in these early days. Zvi Zamir was chief of the Mossad from 1968-74, where he retaliated against the Munich massacre and received advanced warning, largely unheeded, of the attack that morphed into the Yom Kippur War. He was 98 and picked by The Policies […]
AL-AROURI BOREALIS!? AT THIS TIME OF YEAR, AT THIS TIME OF DAY, IN THIS PART OF THE COUNTRY, LOCALIZED ENTIRELY WITHIN YOUR DEADPOOL!? If there’s any good we can say about Hamas, it’s this – they’ll confirm a senior official’s death ASAP, rather than keeping us on tenterhooks the way ISIS does. Saleh al-Arouri was […]
And so the door closes on 2023. Sure, we laughed as pack of cocky billionaires steered a Logitech game controller into Davey Jones’s Locker, and stood in horror as war waged in Gaza. But overall, in contrast with 2022’s obvious shape, the past year has felt largely a retread. Putin’s still a fuckwit, the Tories […]
DINGLE SMELLS Emmerdale star Steve Halliwell has died aged 77. His scrappy flat-capped Zak Dingle was the pulse of the soap, making an unforgettable first impression getting into a bare-knuckle brawl with Ned Glover. He lost the bout, but won the audiences with his troublemaking. Dingle was planned just for that brief run, but proved […]
EUREKA, THEY FOUND HIM Madcap inventor Wilf Lunn has died aged 81. The child of deaf parents, he became a familiar face on the hearing-impaired-geared children’s programme Vision On, where he displayed zany bicycle contraptions like the pigeon catcher and the choir boy tuner. His popularity spread and he was soon appearing on Eureka, Jigsaw, […]
