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 Death Impends (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...
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 […]
KENZABORU OWIE Now to pay homage to the man whose death was far too much of a technical headache for the DDP system. Japanese author Kenzaburō Ōe was influenced by French and American literature (Mark Twain was a particular favourite) as well as his upbringing during WWII. Recurring themes included a harkening to his WWII […]
IN TIME IT COULD’VE BEEN SO MUCH MORE Boy George’s mum, Dinah O’Dowd, has come and gone aged 84. Though her fame was near-entirely tethered to her androgynous progeny, she was also a best-selling author and so just about scrapes by on our fame criteria. Her colour (blue) is now like the dreams of Living […]
OUT OF ORDER! Time’s up for Betty Boothroyd, the first female Speaker of the House of Commons, aged 93. Her candidacy for the chair was the first contested election for the role in decades, and was cumulative of a career she had to fight for every step of the way – she grew up the […]
REVENGE OF THE CREATURE The last surviving Universal Classic Monster actor has sunk into the murky deep, aged 93. Ricou Browning was active in water shows throughout the 40s and 50s when offered the part of the Gill-man for horror classic Creature from the Black Lagoon. His underwater prowess caught the eye of the crew, […]
IN A SILENT WAY Jazz giant Wayne Shorter has put down his saxophone aged 89. Shorter’s first childhood hero was Captain Marvel, and though his superhero love would never leave him, a new idol would inspire his career path – Charlie Parker. He joined a local bebop band alongside his brother, where their eccentric Columbo-ish […]
JUST IN TIME! Old-school France football great Just Fontaine has died aged 89. His sole World Cup appearance in 1958 was the stuff of legend – in synergy with Raymond Kopa, Fontaine was a goalscoring machine in match after match before France ran into the Brazil brick wall in the semis. Fontaine had four more […]
