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...
HE’S DEAD Y’KNOW Sir Lennox Hewitt has died aged 102. A prominent civil servant in Australia, he worked closely with Prime Minister’s Gorton and Whitlam. He also served as the chairman of Quantas Airlines. He was the father of Blair and Brown era Cabinet minister Patricia Hewitt. He was also the last standing survivor of […]
WELCOME TO DEAD’S HOUSE Nobuhiko Obayashi has died aged 82, after a long battle with cancer. The Japanese director was best known for cult horror film House, where school girls are killed by a malevolent house. He continued to make films while suffering from terminal cancer, with Labyrinth of Cinema coming out last year. He […]
SANDERS FINALLY MAKES THE HOLE Golfer Doug Sanders has died aged 86. A four time runner up at major championships, he was perhaps best known for losing the 1970 British Open at St Andrews, when he had a single shot to win the title and missed it. Known as the Peacock of the Fairways for […]
PUSSY NO MORE Honor Blackman has died aged 94. One of the most acclaimed actresses of her generation, she was instantly recognisable for a number of roles: Goldfinger, The Avengers, Terror of the Vervoids. OK, maybe not that last one. Without Cathy Gale kicking her way into equal screen time with Patrick Macnee’s Steed in […]
NOT WAVING BUT DOWNING Acclaimed photographer John Downing died a few days before his 80th birthday. A war photographer for five decades, Downing was known for his cool under pressure, even when being interrogated in a jail as a suspected spy by Idi Amin. He visited Chernobyl and Afghanistan, and was the only photographer on […]
DEADINIAN Actor James Drury has died on the eve of his 86th birthday. He was best known as the lead actor in The Virginian, a Western TV series that ran from 1962 to 1971 and was popular on both sides of Atlantic. He was also in Forbidden Planet. He was picked by three teams in […]
BURBIDGE REACHES EVENT HORIZON Astronomer Margaret Burbidge has died aged 100. Known for her work in the 1960s on discovering quasars (supermassive black holes for you Muse fans), she also created the Faint Object Spectograph (a super-magnifier for detecting gamma rays and wavelengths) on the Hubble Space Telescope. Claiming the World War Two blackouts made […]
A REAL DEAD RINGER FOR DEATH Actress Shirley Douglas has died, a few days after her 86th birthday. The Canadian actress appeared in films like Dead Ringers and as the Grandma in Barney’s Great Adventure. She was also a prominent civil rights activist and anti-Vietnam War campaigner in the 1960s. Her work with the […]
THIRTY-FATHOM OBIT American TV actor Forrest Compton has become another to die of coronavirus. He was 94. He appeared on TV shows such as Gomer Pyle, 77 Sunset Strip and Hogan’s Heroes. He was also in One Life to Live, which he has now proven, and McBain, which isn’t what you’re thinking it is. He […]
FALLEN COUNT Immunologist William Frankland has died after a very long life, aged 108. He had already cheated death from TB as a Prisoner of War when he began studying under the tutelage of Alexander Fleming. It was during this time Frankland made his early mark on British medical history, organising a placebo test to […]
