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...

Hugh Downs

HUGH DOWNED American TV host Hugh Downs has died aged 99. He was best known in America for host news panel show 20/20, which turned out to be an accurate projection of his longevity. He also hosted The Today Show (the US equivalent of Good Morning) from 1962 to 1971, making him a sort of […]

Carl Reiner

REIN WHEN I DIE Mel Brooks best friend has died the day after Mel Brooks birthday. Talk about timing. Carl Reiner, who was tweeting until a few days before his death, was considered a legend in US TV. Not only was he the co-writer and muse for Brooks, and the father of Rob “This Is […]

Linda Cristal

CRISTAL BALL REVEALS LATEST HIT Argentine actress Linda Cristal has died age 89. She made her name in the 1950s in Western films and TV appearances in shows such as Rawhide. It was Westerns that provided her biggest fame, as Victoria Cannon in The High Chaparral, a role for which she won a Golden Globe. […]

Ian Holm

FELLOWSHIP OF THE REAPER Much respected film actor Ian Holm has died aged 88, which is a bit of a surprise for those who expected the cast of Alien to continue dying in the order they died on screen. (Somewhere Tom Skerrit breaths a sigh of relief…) His career started in the early 1950s after […]

Dame Vera Lynn

WE’LL (NOT) MEET AGAIN The Forces Sweetheart, Dame Vera Lynn, has died at the age of 103. When Vera was two years old, she was seriously ill with diphtheria but lived. Rumours the Reaper said “you have this century, but wait for the next one” cannot be confirmed. She began singing in her childhood and […]

Michael Falzon

FALZON’S EPILOGUE Australian stage actor Michael Falzon has died aged 48 after a battle with cancer. His career stretched two decades and multiple continents with lead roles in Sydney and London. He played Judas in a tour of Jesus Christ Superstar, and had a world tour with Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of […]

Sergei Khrushchev

DICTATORS SON DONE Sergei, son of Nikita, has died on the verge of his 85th birthday. After his fathers death he emigrated to the USA, and became a regular on the academic circuits talking of his experiences of the Cold War. He had designed cruise missiles and moon vehicles, but presumably not for the same […]

Jean Kennedy Smith

END OF THE LINE The last of the Kennedy clan siblings who tried to change the world, Jean Kennedy Smith, has died aged 92. The second youngest of Joseph and Rose Kennedy’s nine children, Jean’s siblings included 3 of the most famous American politicians of the 20th Century and the founder of the Special Olympics. […]

Willie Thorne

THORNE ON HIS SIDE Snooker player Willie Thorne has died from cancer after complications with sepsis. Thorne won The Classic in 1985, and was one of the more memorable players of his generation. He might have won the 1985 UK Championship, but for the most infamous shot of his career, missing a straight blue to […]

Nanci Ryder

DEAD EASY RYDER Nanci Ryder was once best known for being the fierce publicist of stars such as Courtney Cox and Michael J Fox, and a mother figure to younger actresses such as Reese Witherspoon, who thanked her personally during her Oscar winning speech. In recent years, however, Ryder has been known among deadpoolers for […]