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...
The so-called “Willesee Pause” was a key feature of Australian news interviews for years: Mike Willesee would simply not talk, and politicians would – usually with fatal consequences. Willesee was a figure on Australian news for 50 years, from an upstart beat reporter to the man who changed the course of an election with a […]
Another year, another dead Soap star. However unlike Robert Mandan, who played Chester Tate in the classic, ground-breaking sitcom, Katherine Helmond had no issues getting an obituary. Helmond started her career off as a stage actress – receiving a Tony nomination in 1973 – and didn’t really develop a presence on TV or film until […]
Born Andreas Priwin in Berlin, Previn’s family escaped Nazi Germany and came to the United States when he was just 9. Seven years later, he was already working for MGM’s music department. His first credited piece of music was the score for the 1949 Lassie movie The Sun Comes Up, which he later called “one […]
Your first time singing on stage is bound to be nerve-wrecking. Especially if it’s opera. Especially if it’s at the Vienna State Opera. Especially if you’re 29 and had no formal training. Especially if it’s in the lead role of Aida. And you have the first lines. And it’s the first time the opera has […]
Kent Football United, a fifth-tier women’s football team with a website that hasn’t been updated since 2016, probably aren’t used to setting too many records. However, one of their players has now booked a place in DDP history. Jordan Dawes, who played in goal for the Dartford-based outfit and was formerly on the books at […]
Pity the makers of this year’s Oscar “In Memoriam” package, who now have to rearrange everything in Premiere Pro to fit Stanley Donen in. The last surviving director of note from Hollywood’s Golden Age, he was often referred to as the “king of the musicals”. Starting off as a Broadway dancer, he soon developed a […]
The murder of Anita Cobby in 1986 remains one of Australia’s most notorious crimes. The former beauty queen was walking home from a train station when she was kidnapped by a gang of five men, who proceeded to repeatedly rape and torture her over a period of hours, before slitting her throat to prevent her […]
There’s no tardy slips on the DDP…. Dame Felicity Hill only got in to the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (later the Women’s Royal Air Force) in 1940 after the officer interviewing her fiddled with her application forms so she could meet minimum height requirements. However, she soon took to the career, rising to the very […]
There he goes, no longer walking down the street… The history of pop music could have been very different if “the one who isn’t Crosby, Nash or Young”, Stephen Stills, had passed his audition for The Monkees in 1966. However, casting agents thought the future Buffalo Springfield frontman was too ugly to join a boyband, […]
In a Major League Baseball career panning 11 seasons, Don Newcombe broke a string of records for pitchers. No stranger to landmark moments (he played for the first modern racially integrated baseball team, the New England League’s Nashua Dodgers), Newcombe was named Rookie of the Year in 1950 and the following season led the league […]
