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), The Man in Black (2010-17), Spade Cooley (2018-19), msc (2020-21), Grim Up North (2020-22), and Reptile (2020-23). Now the Committee of DI (2022), time (2024), and Banana (2023) oversee the biggest deadpool going...
YOU’RE FINISHED, BALDWIN Corrie star Johnny Briggs had died aged 85. A child evacuee during the Blitz, Briggs was trained early as an actor. He had small roles in Sink the Bismarck, The Lavender Hill Mob, and three Carry On films. He was however best known for his long running role as Mike Baldwin, Coronation […]
CITY LIGHTS DIMMED Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti has just joined the rest of sometime during eternity, and died a month short of his 102nd birthday. A contemporary of Burroughs and Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti served in the Navy during World War Two. In 1953, he found City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, an independent store that pushed […]
BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD MORGUE Dependable film and TV actor Ronald Pickup has unfortunately died of cancer aged 81. Pickup’s career lasted 60 years, from a very early career launching role in Doctor Who, to appearances in The Crown as the Archbishop of Canterbury. The same Archbishop of Canterbury who coronated Queen Elizabeth II and, in […]
NOT SO TEFLON American mobster Peter Gotti has died in jail aged 82. The older brother of the Teflon Don himself, Gotti became the boss of the Gambino crime family in 1999 but didn’t have long to enjoy the role before being indicted and charged for federal racketeering. Attempts to get compassionate release for sciatica, […]
FINAL WAVE FOR RAYMOND French photographer Raymond Cauchetier has died aged 101. A member of the French Resistance (I shall say this only once) in World War Two, he made his career as a photographer with a series of shots of Cambodia in the 1940s and 1950s. These photo collections latter met a critic […]
ITS THE GRIM REAPER, CHARLIE BROWN! How many times do I mispell this guys name before pressing “publish”, I wonder… American political advisor George Shultz has died aged 100. Shultz was Secretary of State under Reagan for 7 years in the 1980s and also worked under Nixon as Treasury and Labour Secretaries. He served […]
IN A RUSH FOR ANOTHER HIT American loudmouth radio host Rush Limbaugh has died of lung cancer, on the same day that Mount Etna errupted. Experts warned of the toxic danger to human life, and also about the volcano. Limbaugh had hosted his radio show since the 1980s, and was inducted into the Radio Hall […]
IAGO AGAIN WITH ANOTHER HIT Actor Christopher Plummer has died, slightly surprisingly at the age of 91, to give the DDP another name. In a career stretching 7 decades, he played Shakespeare (Othello) to farce (Sound of Music, and we really didn’t want a Hills are Alive pun, did we?). He played the Duke of […]
SPINKS GOES DOWN Leon Spinks has gone down fighting cancer in the 12th round, aged 67. The boxer beat Muhammad Ali in 1978 to become world champion in one of the biggest shocks the sport has ever seen. Spinks had won the light heavyweight gold medal at the 1976 Olympics, and was one of the […]
NEVER SAY DAI DIED Former Welsh international footballer Dai Davies has died in hospice care aged 72. The former Everton and Swansea goalkeeper played 52 times for his homeland between 1975 and 1982. At Wrexham, he helped win the third division title. His autobiography was translated as Never Say Dai in English. He commentated, taught […]
