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...
And so the DDP gets its first murder victim of 2019… Really, when your actual defence lawyer calls you one of the worst sex offenders in British legal history, things aren’t too likely to end up with gin and tonic on the lawn. Richard Huckle was a devout Baptist with no criminal record before he […]
Alexey Leonov was behind one of the great checkmarks in the space race “to do” list. On March 18, 1965, he became the first man to conduct a spacewalk, spending 12 minutes outside the Voshkod 2 craft. It was meant to be a much shorter walk, with Leonov tasked only with taking some photos of […]
With the autumn nights drawing in, some of the more fastidious among you may have already started pencilling their longlists for the 2020 DDP. If so, Juliette Kaplan was probably the first name you had to cross out. The former Coronation Street and Last of the Summer Wine actress had made the papers a-plenty in recent weeks […]
Andres Gimeno was the man who made Spain an international tennis powerhouse. He was a highly skilled amateur when, in 1960s, the International Lawn Tennis Federation voted not to professionalize. He switched sides and began playing as a pro on the breakaway circuit – earning a whopping $16,000 a year, plus expenses. The tennis world […]
Perhaps best (only?) know to a UK audience as the camp old lad who pops up at the end of the Jackass movies, Rip Taylor was television royalty on the other side of the Atlantic. Like many comedians of his generation, he got his first break while on military service and performing in USO shows. […]
In sports journalism, there is a tradition that when someone so loathed by all of his peers dies, the obituary refers to them as “one of the game’s great characters”. Ginger Baker was one of the music industry’s great characters. A man who made Bono look humble, Kanye West appear chilled out and Van Morrison […]
Diahann Carroll was one of the entertainment industry’s last great glass ceiling-smashers: the first African-American with her own sitcom (Julia), the first African-American woman to win an Emmy and a groundbreaker as Dominique Deveraux in 80s shoulderpad-fest Dynasty. A performer from a young age, she first paid the bills as a model and regular in Ebony magazine. […]
Jose Jose was one of the most successful, popular and troubled artists in the entirety of Latin music. First breaking through with his song “El Triste” in 1970, Jose was soon dubbed “El Príncipe de la Canción” (“The Prince of Songs”) by Mexican media. Into the 80s, his music began to achieve popularity outside of […]
Dying back in August but with her death only making it to the papers a few months later, let’s pay our respects to actress Anna Quayle. A child actress (she first appeared on stage aged 3 in a production of East Lynne) Quayle’s first significant film role was as the girl who fails to recognise John Lennon […]
Two-time French president, two-time French prime minister, and a mortal enemy of both George W. Bush and Bono: Jacques Chirac has died aged 86. A promising rugby player in his youth, Chirac was an avowed Communist until his political views were dragged to the right during military service in Algeria. Upon returning to France he […]
