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...
DEFENCE RESTS Peer and politician Robert Lindsay, 29th Earl of Crawford, has died aged 96. The earliest surviving MP (and the last to be elected in 1955), he was among the dwindling links to the Heath ministry as Minister of State for Defence. He was also noted for his mental health activism and rebuffed Scientologists […]
CHUCKED NORRIS Aussie acting veteran Terry Norris has died aged 92. He was active in both film and television, and was perhaps best known for small-screen roles such as mechanic Joe Turner in rural soap Bellbird and as copper Eric O’Reilly in police drama Cop Shop. He segued into politics in the 80s, serving as […]
BELL TOLLED Scottish footballer Willie Bell has died aged 85. He was best known for his 200+ appearances for Leeds, which included reaching the finals of the 1965 FA Cup, and also had stints with Leicester City and Brighton and Hove Albion. Scottish footballers theme team They think it’s all over scores a unique goal. […]
IF I WERE A DITCHED MAN Fiddler on the Roof star Topol dover, aged 87. He had been a presence in Israeli acting troupes throughout the 60s, but it was his charmingly folksy turn as the elderly impoverished milkman Tevye in Fiddler where he made his most enduring impact. He had already been playing the […]
AND DAT’S THE NAME OF DAT TOMB Tinseltown’s very own OJ is out of juice. Robert Blake was born into showbiz, doing vaudeville when he was still in diapers and becoming the final star of the Our Gang child-centric comedy shorts in the early 40s. Though the child roles kept trickling in (he was a […]
HE’S AS FREE AS A BIRD NOW… Last standing Lynyrd Skynyrd original Gary Rossington has been pronounced dead aged 71. Rossington yearned to be a pro baseball player, an interest that waned with time but not before meeting his future bandmates on rival high school baseball teams. Liking what they heard during a jam session, […]
DICTIONARY CORONER Veteran cartoonist Bill Tidy has popped his cloggies aged 89. His best-known works were Private Eye staple The Cloggies, starring a gaggle of clog dancers, and Daily Mirror regular The Fosdyke Saga, a working-class parody of The Forsyte Saga that was so popular it received a radio adaptation from the Beeb. He often […]
SCHROEDER’S CAT Former US congresswoman and feminist trailblazer Pat Schroeder has died aged 82. Opting to run for a Denver-based seat in the 1972 elections, her candidacy was initially seen as a long-shot but the partisan lean of the seat (it was typically Democratic and only had a Republican incumbent due to intraparty fighting in […]
MUERTARIO Mexican cinema veteran Ignacio López Tarso has died aged 98. Over the course of his 80 year career, his crowning moment was perhaps as the titular peasant in Oscar-nominated Macario, where he encounters the Grim Reaper among others in a series of surreal black-and-white encounters. A decade later he won an Ariel (the Mexican […]
OTIS, YOU WANT A TREAT AT THE VIKING FUNERAL? NFL coach Bud Grant has died aged 95. He was the most successful coach in Minnesota Vikings history, with a 158-96-5 total to his name. Pivotal to this success was the “Purple People Eater” defensive line, presumably named as such because all his players had one […]
