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...
DICK BUPKIS Fearsome NFL star Dick Butkus has died aged 80. Playing his entire professional career with the Chicago Bears, his brutal steamroller playstyle portended the aggressive, CTE-inflicting direction the NFL would take and is considered the gold standard for linebackers. He was inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame in 1979 and often ranks […]
GLUCK OFF AND DIE Hopefully no one points out it’s actually pronounced “Glick”… Louise Glück won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2020, the first American poet to do so since T.S. Eliot some 70 years prior. The daughter of the co-inventor of the X-Acto knife, Glück proved incisive herself with emotionally charged poetry that […]
DEAD BAXTER Theatre actor Keith Baxter was perhaps best known as Prince Hal in Orson Welles play and film Chimes at Midnight, a composite of multiple Shakespeare plays that brought Welles’s Falstaff to the forefront. The production of the play was a clusterfuck – the actor who played one of the earls had a drinking […]
GARAVITO ES FINITO What’s not to love about the Isley Brothers? From the fervent gospel excitement of “Shout” to the Motown magic of “This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak for You)” to the funky groove of “It’s Your Thing”, Rudolph Isley was present on countless classics. He later retired to become a preacher, and […]
MOULD GROWS WHERE MY ROSEMARY GOES Singer Rosemary Squires was likened as a British Doris Day due to a similar sunny agreeability to her music. She was a popular singer with big bands, jazz ensembles, and light entertainment programmes from the 40s through the 60s. Though changing music tastes faded her star, she still remained […]
O’DONOVAN NOW SUNSET SUPERMAN Radio broadcaster Brian O’Donovan has died aged 66. The Irish-born, Boston-based O’Donovan was best known for promoting Irish culture through his longrunning show A Celtic Sojourn. He was diagnosed with glioblastoma last year, and his obitability hinged entirely on Yahoo UK picking up some of the Boston coverage of his death, […]
THE PRINCESS IS IN ANOTHER CASKET Archduchess Yolande of Austria was the widow of Archduke Carl Ludwig of Austria, who himself was the son of last Austrian Emperor Charles I. She is the final person to be entombed in the Habsburg family’s Imperial Crypt, which has now reached maximum capacity. Beyond that there’s not much […]
THE RIGOR MORTIS AFFAIR Acting great David McCallum has died aged 90. He got his start as a child actor on the radio, and through the late 50s and early 60s was a recognisable film face in roles such as a James Dean type in The Secret Place, a junior Titanic operator in A Night […]
THE STINKING DEFECTIVE Acclaimed actor Michael Gambon is facing a Gambon coroner, aged 82. His natural home was the stage, and no less than Laurence Olivier decreed him a rising star. His first encounter with Olivier, where his audition of the Richard III opening soliloquy wooed Sir Larry, enraptured the young Gambon with carefree excitement […]
FEINSTEIN’S THEORY OF NO LUCIDITY In the beginning, there was darkness. Then Dianne Feinstein turned on her lamp. Feinstein was well known as a doddery member of the senate, specifically the Roman Senate, where she was believed to have won her seat in a campaign that highlighted her discovery of fire and ties to Fred […]
