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, first tenure), The Man in Black (2010-17), Spade Cooley (2018-19), msc (2020-21), Grim Up North (2020-22), Reptile (2020-23), and DI (2022 – 2025). Now the Committee of Banana (2023), time (2024), the returning Octopus of Odstock (2026) and the deadpooling equivalent of a gap year temp Marlfox (2026) oversee the biggest deadpool going...
RUSH DOUR Barbara Rush first came to notice as an astronomer’s fiancée in sci-fi horror It Came From Outer Space, and remains a sci-fi cult hero for roles like that and When Worlds Collide. For the next couple of decades she was primarily known for classy upper-crust characters, adding a touch of prestige to films […]
THE L-SHAPED TOMB One of the first two women to present news on British TV, Lynne Reid Banks felt pigeonholed by only being given “the rubbish” to do and turned to writing her own book. The result, The L-Shaped Room, addressed a clandestine pregnancy in the early 60s and its forward-thinking approach struck enough a […]
WINDWARD HEIGHTS Deemed the “grand dame” of Caribbean literature, Maryse Condé was largely sheltered by her Francophile parents during her upbringing in Guadeloupe. While studying in Paris aged 16, she had her first brushes with racism and learned of colonial oppression through the novel La Rue Cases-Nègres. Politically galvanised, she moved to Africa, soaked in […]
FOX HOLE Former Controller of BBC1 Paul Fox has died aged 98. Bridging the grayscale and colour eras of the network, a CV of all his accomplishments speaks for itself: Covering the JFK assassination and the Moon landings, creating the BBC Sports Personality of the Year, commissioning Dad’s Army, The Two Ronnies, Parkinson, and The […]
CROSSED OUT Not to be mixed up with the yacht rocker, Chris Cross was a longtime anchor of Ultravox. He rode with the new wavers from their humble Tiger Lily beginnings to their Midge Ure-helmed “Vienna” zenith that presaged the growth of synths in chart music. After Ultravox’s dissolution in the late 80s, he worked […]
COME UP AND SEE GOD 2023, Steve Harwell dies. 2024, Steve Harley dies. Come 2025, we asked 100 men, name something that’s stiff. Anyway, back to Steve Harley. The frontman of popular 70s rockers Cockney Rebel, his group landed several top ten hits including “Judy Teen” and “Mr. Soft” before shooting to the top with […]
APOLLING WAY TO GO Astronaut Thomas P. Stafford has touched the stars aged 93. He was the last survivor of Apollo 10, a mission in which he and Gene Cernan rode a Lunar Module within nine miles of the Moon’s surface, an inching ever-so-closer to landing on the Moon that Neil Armstrong fulfilled two months […]
LAST WALSH Roger Ebert was big on the “Stanton-Walsh Rule”, which proclaimed “no movie featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmet Walsh in a supporting role can be altogether bad.” Though Ebert considered this rule broken when Walsh did “Wild Wild West”, it’s hard to argue with the overall CV, with highlights including the […]
FLAHERTY WILL GET YOU NOWHERE A staple of the SCTV sketch comedy programme alongside luminaries such as John Candy and Rick Moranis, Joe Flaherty played characters such as seedy station owner Caballero and vampiric horror host Count Floyd. He also delivered a letter to Marty McFly in Back to the Future Part II, yelped “jackass” […]
JUAN VICENTE PERISH Humble Venezuelan sugar cane farmer Juan Vicente Pérez came into this world a day after Matt Busby and three days before Benny Goodman. He was in for the long haul, living to 114 on the typical supercentenarian diet of God and a daily shot of alcohol. The last surviving man born in […]
