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...
NO LONGER IN PEREL Born to a German-Jewish family, Solomon Perel and his family fled to Poland in 1935 as the rise of Nazism saw him expelled from school and his father’s store destroyed. Once the Nazis invaded Poland, Perel and his brother relocated once more to a children’s home in what is now Belarus. […]
DIALED BACK Actor Charles Kimbrough has died aged 86. He was best known as sturdy news anchor Jim Dial on Murphy Brown, a character in the Cronkite mould who served as a contrast to Candice Bergen’s spunky, Dan Quayle-baiting titular investigative reporter. He was also Tony nominated for Company and voiced gargoyle Victor in Disney’s […]
CLOSE ENCOUNTER WITH THE REAPER Actress Melinda Dillon has been abducted from life aged 83. Her two best-known turns were as mums – first as the mother to a child abducted by aliens in Spielberg UFO classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which earned her an Oscar nomination, and then as the mother to […]
JABOUILLE CROSSES THE FINISH LINE Racecar driver Jean-Pierre Jabouille has died aged 80. He was one of the earliest motorsport beneficiaries of Renault’s turbocharged vehicles, notching the first Formula 1 victory for the manufacturer in the 1979 French Grand Prix. He won the Austrian Grand Prix the next year, but a broken leg curtailed his […]
A TIME TO DIE… Crosby’s still, gnashed, and, er… old… Few could have predicted Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young to be one of the last great 60s bands with an intact lineup, and the biggest reason for the WTF-ness has removed himself from the equation. Grand ole git of folk rock David Crosby first made […]
BRIGIDA TO NOWHERE Fesity Italian silver screen star Gina Lollobrigida has died aged 95. After placing bronze in the 1947 Miss Italy contest, she became mainstay in both Italian and French cinema for years to come, winning early acclaim for Bread, Love and Dreams and Beautiful but Dangerous. Howard Hughes pursued her for a Hollywood […]
ICE COLD IN SYLVIA Respected veteran actress Sylvia Syms has died aged 89. Her prolific 60-year career began in the late 50s, with her first role of note as a young delinquent in 1956’s My Teenage Daughter. She rounded off the decade in fine form, being nominated for a BAFTA in drama Woman in a […]
LUCILE, PLEASE COME BACK WHERE YOU BELONG! And so the surviving half of our 2020s version of Calment and Knauss goes down. Frenchwoman Lucile Randon was born on one humble day in February 1904, three days after the Russo-Japanese War was declared and six days before the premiere of Madame Butterfly. Raised Protestant, she converted […]
THIS OBIT HAS BEEN BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE LETTERS DDP In Bernard Cribbins’s obit last year, I noted that anyone who made 50 years’ worth of children happy lived a good life. Lloyd Morrisett, as a lesser-known-but-crucial pillar of Sesame Street, could claim the same with one co-creation. An experimental psychologist, Morrisett was piqued […]
CALVIN HOBBLED Prisoner John Keith Calvin has died aged 56. Imprisoned in 2003 for the shooting of John Coates the year before, he maintained his innocence to the end. Given that the cop who put him in the slammer was later indicted for being a serial rapist, we’re inclined to think that his plight at […]
