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...
WALDHORN BLEGH-HORN Actor Gary Waldhorn has died aged 78. His lengthy career in theatre and TV was best known as the stuffy parish council chair David Horton in the beloved 90s BBC sitcom The Vicar of Dibley, whose carnage of main cast continues at an astonishing rate. His straight man role was tougher to act […]
IN FOR THE KILL Heavy metal vocalist Burke Shelley has died aged 71. He was the frontman and main constant of Budgie, which has influenced many hard rock acts since. His high-pitched vocals were often compared to Geddy Lee, with the band overall seen as something of a fusion between Rush and Black Sabbath. He […]
ORGAN FAILURE Organist and composer Francis Jackson has died aged 104. The musical director and resident organist at York Minster for many years, Jackson had numerous religious and secular compositions in his acclaimed oeuvre. He played at the Duke of Kent’s wedding, mentored John Barry, and continued to compose past his centennial. Three teams get […]
PETERED FALKENBURG Tennis player Bob Falkenburg has died aged 95. His finest moment was winning the Wimbledon singles in 1948, with a late-game comeback comparable to David Quantick’s Showbiz Pals DDP wins. The feat was unparalleled until Novak Djokovic did the same in 2019. Hasn’t that guy been in the news lately? After Falkenburg’s tennis […]
PAPER TOMB In what is the worst spell ever for people whose surnames begin with “Bogdano-“, Hollywood director and actor Peter Bogdanovich has died at 82. Enamoured with film from a young age – aged 12, he started to write reviews on index cards for every film he watched – his professional career began as […]
BROOK, LINE, AND SINKER America’s oldest living WWII veteran, Lawrence Brooks, has relinquished his title aged 112. He ascended to the title in late 2018 after the death of Richard Overton, but never quite reached Overton’s level of deadpool stardom due to not smoking cigars or surviving umpteen hospital stints. To Brooks’s credit, he did […]
THE AMERICAN CLOCKED OUT Broadway and TV actress Joan Copeland has died aged 99. The younger sister of Arthur Miller, she opted to use Copeland for a stage name instead as she wanted to achieve a career through her own merits, rather than from her brother’s distinctive surname. Copeland’s Broadway career began in the 40s, […]
CROAK NEWS NETWORK With an anti-vax radio host collecting their Herman Cain Award seemingly every month, it figures that at least one would give their thank you speech on the DDP stage. Doug Kuzma hosted the “FROG News Network”, with the probable Pepe reference an acronym for “Fully Rely On God”. After attending a crowded […]
BOGDANOFF BUGGERS OFF French TV host and fraudster Igor Bogdanoff has died aged 72 of COVID, quickly following his twin brother Grichka. With their weird alienesque visage, the Bogdanoff brothers were a fixture of French TV, typically with a science theme and introducing sci-fi programmes such as Star Trek and Doctor Who to France. Their […]
INDIVIDUAL’S TAPERED VITALITY And so my streak of only writing obits for people born on 22 July comes to an end… and the US Jersey girl’s first obit as co-host is a UK Jersey boy! It illustrates the variance in deadpooling seasons that after a year where most contenders missed their joker thanks to the […]
