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...
Denise Nickerson made her TV debut at the age of 2, appearing in a commercial for a local heating firm. She didn’t stop acting for the next 20 years, becoming a go-to child actor for daytime TV soaps and appearing on The Phil Silvers Show (as Bill Bixby’s daughter, for some reason). In 1971 she was […]
God knows how, but Rip Torn somehow made it to the age of 88. They say he could have been the next Marlon Brando or James Dean, had he not had a very slight falling out with Dennis Hopper on the set of Easy Rider. Torn was kicked off the movie (replaced by Jack Nicholson) and […]
Ross Perot’s run at the US presidency in 1992 was the most successful ever by an independent candidate, and the third most successful by a third-party candidate in history. In an attempt to realign American politics, he then set up the Reform Party, which took 8.4% of the vote at the 1996 election. However, its […]
Although he may have been best known to the rank-and-file public as Sandy Thomas in Emmerdale, the newspapers did Freddie Jones a bit of a disservice by just referring to him as a soap star on his death. An am-dram performer until his 30s, he went on to be a respected Shakespearean actor on stage (his […]
Born in Lodz, Poland, Artur Brauner was a student at a local polytechnic when Germany invaded in 1939. He and his family fled together to the Soviet Union, but while they chose to move to Israel in 1946, he opted to make Berlin his new home. There he set up Central Cinema Company, one of […]
Joe Kadenge was one of the first regional superstars of African football, and he was as much a symbol of the New Kenya of the 1960s as President Jomo Kenyatta. Kadenge captained both his national team and club side of AFC Leopards, and went on to manage his country in the early 2000s. In poor […]
Sutopo Purwo Nugroho spent most of his life warning people about impending deaths, so it was only fitting that he flagged up his own for the benefit of the Derby Dead Pool faithful. Sutopo was a civil servant who was named head of PR at the Indonesian National Board for Disaster Management in 2010. He […]
Joao Gilberto’s music crystalized the optimism that typified Brazil at the start of the 1960s. Taking inspiration from American soft jazz, artists like Gilberto and Antônio Carlos Jobim gave birth to the genre of “bossa nova” – new beat. With crooner-esque vocals, finger-picked guitars and jazzy harmonies, it was the perfect music for a Brazil […]
Horse-racing journalist, failed bookmaker and perhaps England’s greatest living misogynist, John McCririck, has fallen. From his reputation as a professional rent-a-gob, it may be hard to believe that McCririck was originally a highly respected writer – Harrow-educated, he revolutionised the way track data was broadcast to the BBC in the 1970s and was even named […]
Leon Kossoff was one of the “School of London” painters that shunned the art trends of the mid-20th century and instead took their inspiration from the Old Masters. While he never achieved the fame of some of his contemporaries (Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud), Kossoff had a lengthy and respected career and was still holding exhibitions […]
