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...
THE LION SLEEPS TONIGHT Author Wilbur Smith has died aged 88. Smith was best known for his book When The Lion Feeds, and sold over 140 million books in his career. He published 49 books, mostly with Pan Macmillan or Harper Collins. He was picked by two teams, Dead and Dusted, and Passing of the […]
FW DE MORTE I was hoping he’d last till next year so DI would have to deal with this obit! Former South African leader FW de Klerk has died aged 85 after a battle with mesothelioma. De Klerk was a minister and leader in the apartheid government who went onto win the Nobel Peace Prize, […]
FLOWERS IN THE GRAVEEnglish footballer Ron Flowers has died aged 87. He played for 15 years and 500 games for Wolves in the 1950s and 1960s, and also played a decade in the midfield for England alongside Bobby Charlton. Flowers didn’t play during the 1966 World Cup, despite being in the team, as Alf Ramsey […]
RAN Costume designer Emi Wada has died aged 84. She won the Academy Award for Best Costume Design in 1985 for her work on Ran alongside the Japanese directorial great Akira Kurosawa. She was a unique hit for Easy Peasy Japaneasy. Emi Wada18 March 1937 – 13 November 2021unique
Etel Adnan Lebanese poet Etel Adnan has died aged 96. She won several awards for her poetry, including the Lambda Literary Award, and was also an acclaimed oil painting artist. She was a unique pick for Alternative Observations 2021, presumably as she was among the most acclaimed writers in the Arabic world. Etel Adnan24 February […]
EAST FOR EDEN Former spouse of the Prime Minister, Clarissa Eden, has died aged 101 to give The Crowdsourced Deathlist another success. The niece of Winston Churchill (dunno if you’ve heard of him), Clarissa spent her teenage years in Paris and London society, surrounded by the likes of Josephine Baker and future spies Burgess and […]
FINAL SCOPE Former UK civil servant Andrew McDonald has died aged 59 due to complications of cancer and Parkinsons disease. McDonald was given what might be called the shortest straw in governing history, when he was made chair of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Committee in 2009. As the man who had to clean up the […]
COGNITIVE DEATH THERAPY Psychiatrist Aaron Beck has died aged 100. He came up with the Beck Depression Index, which is still used to determine the severity of a depressive episode. However, it was in the 1960s that Becks reputation was made. A long term sceptic of the benefits of just feeding pills to people with […]
ZENIT(H) FOR RANGERS MAN Walter Smith, the most successful football manager in post-war Scottish football, has died after a short illness aged 73. Smith played over 150 matches for Dundee United between 1965 and 1980, before he became a team coach at the club under the great Jim McLean. At United, Smith was already developing […]
STARBRIGHT EXIT Musician Pat Martino has died aged 77, after a long period of ill health. Martino was a jazz guitarist who worked with a variety of performers, before he suffered a near fatal seizure in 1980. Suffering amnesia, he had to teach himself from scratch how to play the guitar again, with no short […]
