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...
IT’S NO WAY TO MAKE A LIVIN! So after a pleasantly-long drought of them dying, I get to write about a Columbo killer. Alas for Dabney Coleman, I can’t remember much about his 90s episode bar the Little Richard cameo. Which is saying far more about the episode than Coleman, as he knew how to […]
SHE HAD A GUD RUN Is there anything that she cannae do? Breathe, apparently. Gudrun Ure was long respected for her Shakespearean roles, but it was mistakenly being hit by a magic ray that granted her pop culture immortality as Super Gran. As her mighty OAP fended off Scunner Campbell and other baddies with her […]
FORTY MILES OF DEAD ROAD If Jerry Lee Lewis was the last surviving star of 50s rock n roll, guitarist Duane Eddy was the biggest stander of its remaining practitioners. Eddy disliked his singing voice, but with his echoey twang nevertheless gave each of his instrumentals an Eddy trademark. The rowdy “Rebel-‘Rouser”, replete with claps […]
IT’S A TERRIBLE THING TO LOSE Turned to stone? Mr. Blue Skin? Some bands give you one song to work with, others give you a whole platter of classics. Richard Tandy tagged along with his schoolmate Bev Bevan to play harpsichord on The Move’s “Blackberry Way”. His presence with The Move was on-and-off, and when […]
CÉSAR SALAD The third World Cup-winning footy manager to die this year, César Luis Menotti took Argentina to glory in the 1978 edition. As a player in the 60s “El Flaco” (“The Slim One”) was teammates with Pelé, and his Cup victory came despite his controversial refusal to use teen prodigy Diego Maradona. He won […]
DEATHS OF GIRLS AND WOMEN Few can dispute David Quantick’s Showbiz Pals’s 2013 wins as one of the all-time great DDP victories. It shattered the previous hits record off a blend of cutting-edge research, correctly called remission-turned-relapses, and fortune favours the brave. One of the few duds was Alice Munro, the acclaimed Canuck short story […]
COPPA KEEL There is a strange deadpooling paradox to Kristin Hallenga. No one can dispute that her death aged 38 was at far too young an age. Yet she also was an ancient relic of the DDP, first being picked for her stage 4 breast cancer in 2010 after being diagnosed the previous year. She […]
THE BLACKOUT If Roger Corman and Mark Damon were both basketball players or something, I may well have fused them into one obit, as it’s fitting that Damon met his maker shortly after Corman. A frequent face in spaghetti westerns, Damon would star in Corman’s The House of Usher and become a pioneering champion of […]
COLONCIDE Basketballer Corey “Homicide” Williams has died aged 56. The US-based player ultimately made Australia his home, and as a star player for the Townsville Crocodiles was a key figure in increasing popularity of the National Basketball League. A brush with advanced colon cancer landed him on multiple teams’ radars, with Smart Beta entering the […]
SHIRLEY YOU CAN’T BE BREATHING Author Shirley Conran has died aged 91. Her self-help Superwoman introduced the phrase “life’s too short to stuff a mushroom”, and bonkbuster Lace introduced “Which one of you bitches is my mother?” She devoted her later years to maths activism, and now adds points to Bibliogryphon’s Bookworm Food. Shirley Conran21 […]
