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...
Born into a family who made it rich as Canadian wildcat oildrillers, Pat Bowlen played as a wide-receiver while at the University of Oklahoma, but never had the chops to be a professional American footballer. So instead he bought a team: the Denver Broncos to be precise, in 1984. His tenure brought three Super Bowls, […]
It may have taken a few months for her obituary to come through, but they all count the same… Fay McKenzie was the last known surviving woman to have acted in the 1910s (she played a baby in the 1919 Gloria Swanson movie Station Content). However, she went on to make a serious name for herself […]
The grave of Thin Lizzy frontman Phil Lynott, in Dublin’s St. Fintan’s Cemetery, is the most-visited gravesite in all of Ireland. And those who made the pilgrimage would often be greeted by Philomena Lynott, his mother, who spent large amounts of time maintaining his grave. Before leaving, she would kick the headstone because he “was […]
Due to her love of the high life and free alcohol, Sylvia Miles was the origin of the phrase “she’ll turn up to the opening of an envelope” (the aphorist in question was her friend, veteran gossip columnist Earl Wilson). But she was more than just a party girl. The wrong side of 40 when […]
It’s one of the minor quirks of longevity that two of the people that have held the title “Britain’s Oldest Person” shared the same name: Grace Jones. The original carked it back in November 2013, and has now been joined by Grace Catherine Jones of Broadway. The likelihood of that trio being joined in super-centenarianity […]
And we have a new deadpool leader… Gabriele Grunewald was an American middle-distance runner, specialising in the 800 metres. She turned pro in 2010, one year after she was first diagnosed with adenoid cystic carcinoma. Over the following decade, while still competing in track athletics, she had her thyroid and salivary glands removed, a six-inch […]
One has to feel some sympathy for the theme team Stiff Upper Lip, a line-up of 20 World War II veterans. So far two of their selections – both unique picks – have departed this mortal coil without a qualifying obituary, in the shape of Conway Berners-Lee and Jim Russell. And it was looking like […]
Few artists, let alone musicians, came to represent their home region as much as Mac Rebennack, better known as Dr. John. His medley of blues, boogie-woogie and old-time medicine show ephemera has become, for many, the platonic ideal of New Orleans culture. It very nearly didn’t happen that way, however. Dr. John was originally a […]
Lennart Johansson was the man in charge of international football at a team when money was being siphoned away from the smaller sides towards the bigger teams, player (and agent) demands were seen as more important than financial stability, and the stench of corruption followed a number of surprisingly well-funded smaller FAs. Thank God we’ve […]
Although he was a RADA-trained actor (where he was roommates with John Hurt and Ian MacShane) with a 40-year career on the stage, Paul Darrow will forever be remembered as Avon in Blake’s 7. Making his debut in the show’s second episode, he became the program’s focus following the departure of Blake (Gareth Thomas) at the […]
