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...
BERMUDEZ TRIANGLE Former Peruvian military dictator Francisco Morales Bermúdez has died aged 100. The Prime Minister under Juan Velasco Alvarado, who took control of Peru via coup in 1968, Morales Bermúdez attained power after overthrowing his ailing boss via another coup. His reign was credited with realising that, in light of economic challenges, eternal military […]
SCALPED-FARI Italian journalist Eugenio Scalfari was perhaps best known for conducting a number of dialogues in his dotage with Pope Francis, on Francis’s faith, Scalfari’s secularism, and the state of the Catholic Church. Some of the snippets attracted wide media attention – firstly in 2014, when Scalfari revealed that Francis said in one interview that […]
WILD BUNCH TAMED Whiskered, sandy-haired cowboy actor L. Q. Jones has died aged 94. Born Justus McQueen, he liked the name of his character in debut film Battle Cry so much he nicked it for his own career. After acting in a string of WWII films, Sam Peckinpah corralled Jones into his stable of regulars […]
COLLAPSE-EUM Jazz saxophonist Barbara Thompson has died aged 77. Initially pursuing a classical path, her admiration of John Coltrane and Duke Ellington rerouted her to jazz. From there she founded several jazz/rock ensembles in the 70s, and often worked in collaboration with her husband, Colosseum drummer Jon Hiseman. She made guest appearances on albums by […]
OUT OF HIS MISERY Actor James Caan was approached by the Reaper, bada bing, died aged 82. He initially aspired to be an NFL player, before college courses enthralled him with the acting world and saved me from a routine “not another sodding NFL obit” conniption. Early film roles were mostly in Westerns or NFL-related, […]
STORCHED EARTH The fort has collapsed on US comic actor Larry Storch, who has hunkered down at a grand 99. Growing up during the Great Depression, he scraped by as a comic with a knack for impressions. Several encounters during his WWII naval service were key to Storch’s career success – a chance meeting with […]
MISSING, PRESUMED Crime novelist Susie Steiner, whose books I’ve seen in my grocery store’s bargain books section, has died of big bad glio aged 51. Initially a journalist who worked for most major UK papers, she turned to novel writing in the early 2010s. Her detective thriller trilogy featuring DI Manon Bradshaw (nowt to do […]
(SIX FEET) DOWN IN MEXICO On one day in early 1922, Betty White and former Mexican President Luis Echeverría both came into this world. Only the latter achieved the centenary, probably aided by the fact that Echeverría’s PR team wasn’t jinxing their client’s upcoming birthday with premature celebrations, instead insisting for years he was too […]
IN LIKE GWYNNE Sports commentator John Gwynne has gone to a new box aged 77. Though he commentated on a whole gamut of sports from rugby to cricket, he was most prominent as a darts commentator for Sky Sports, where he covered 20 world championships and 20 world matchplays. Many fans saw him as part […]
CERO SANTOS Longtime Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos has died aged 79. His length of tenure, from 1979 to 2017, pretty much gives away the type of African leader he was. Angola’s second president four years into the former Portuguese colony’s independence, he took power in the thick of a civil war and had […]
