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...

Stanley Donen

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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 […]

Michael Murphy

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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 […]

Felicity Hill

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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 […]

Peter Tork

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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, […]

Don Newcombe

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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 […]

Karl Lagerfeld

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A friend and apprentice of both Pierre Balmain and Yves Saint Laurent (and lover of the latter), Karl Lagerfeld was always destined for the top of the fashion industry. And when he took over and revitalised the near-dead House of Chanel in 1982, he became the epitome and ultimate fashion designer stereotype – a gaunt, […]

Paul Flynn

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Well, it was a week when independently minded Labour MPs decided to leave the party… Paul Flynn worked as a chemist in the steel industry before he finally won a parliamentary seat, being elected for Newport West in the 1987 General Election. He remained in the seat until his death, a 32-year period that took […]

John Stalker

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Starting his career as a cadet on Moss Side, John Stalker’s promotion up the police’s ranks came quickly. He first came to wider attention during the investigation into the Moors Murders, where he was one of the officers charged with examining Brady and Hindley’s taped confessions. Promoted to Deputy Chief Constable in 1984, he was […]

Gene Littler

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Renowned for having one of the greatest swings in golf history, Gene “The Machine” Littler was a legend in both the amateur and professional sides of the game. He won the US Amateur in 1953 and claimed his only major victory, the US Open, in 1961, where he finished two strokes ahead of a young […]

Bruno Ganz

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It was a credit to Bruno Ganz’s range that in his two most famous roles he played an angel and Hitler, respectively. Born during World War II in Switzerland, he originally found a home on the stage: indeed, little of his filmed CV comes before his 35th birthday, and he was awarded the Iffland-Ring in […]