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...
ACROPOLIS NOW When the Wikipedia Deaths in 2020 page describes your notoriety as “folk hero”, you know this is going to be a good one. Hitler’s 1000 Year Reich dream died in 1945. Manolis Glezos, a man twice sentenced to death by the regime, has died in 2020 of old age issues. He was […]
JUST THE ONE OF US Who are we going to lean on now, when we’re in trouble? Singer Bill Withers proved that March 30th was not such a lovely day after all, by dying from heart failure aged 81. Withers, who recently bucked the trend by being inducted into the Rock n Roll Hall […]
PHIL 90 Scientist Philip Warren Anderson has died at the venerable age of 96. Physicist Anderson won the Nobel Prize in 1977 for his work in electronic structures and magnets. This work helped create memory devices for computers, including the one that helps store all the witty and wonderful obituaries on the Derby Dead […]
HEADS TOWARDS SHINING LIGHT Composer Penderecki, whose first name is enough to gave a DDP host a panic attack trying to spell, has died after a long period of ill health. A unique pick for regulars Bucket of Blood, who assumedly are regular readers of Slipped Disc. Penderecki’s work was regular used in films, […]
HARROGONE James Ramsden has died aged 96. A former brewer, the former Conservative politician was MP for Harrogate from 1954 to 1974. He served in the governments of Harold MacMillan and Alec Douglas-Home in the War Department, and became the last ever War Secretary in 1963. With the Labour election victory in 1964, the post […]
JUST A MINUTE, MELLYS DEAD Andree Melly, who died in January aged 87, has got a qualifying obit some time after the fact. The younger sister of jazz legend George, and the wife of actor Oscar Quitak, Andree was a familiar figure on British stage. An RSC regular, she appear in Merchant of Venice, as […]
FADE TO GRAY Musician Henry Gray has died after a spell in cancer with hospice. Ahem. In fact he died in February, but it was only recently a bored self isolating obituary writer gave him the Guardian treatment. Gray, who was 95, was a well respected New Orleans piano man who worked with the greats […]
VITALSTATISTIX: DEAD Comic book artist Albert Uderzo has died aged 92. Famous the world over for his work on the Asterix series of comic novels, Uderzo paired up with writer Rene Goscinny in 1951. They had their break in the Tintin magazine, before releasing the first Asterix book in 1961. The pair produced 24 books […]
SUZY DELAIRED Actress Suzy Delair has died aged 102. She appeared in a variety of French films from the 1930s through to the 1970s, but is best known outside France for Atoll K, the Laurel and Hardy film. She was the partner of director Henri-Georges Clouzot for many years, whose films she appeared in. She […]
SOL OVER NOW Sol Kerzner has died aged 84 after a brief period of being gravely ill. A South African businessman, he ran a bunch of hotels and in 1979 developed Sun City. Thanks to legal loopholes, he provided gambling and topless revue to the masses, and inspired many great musical acts to disregard the […]
