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This thread really shouldn’t exist. Off topic clickbait being plastered by Crem and a few others is its only function.

Aussie actor Ray Lawler (wiki) died in Melbourne on Wednesday, aged 103, according to a lot of tributes flooding in on Facebook. Obit guaranteed. Maybe even a QO. At least @Bibliogryphon hopes so as he’s a unique pick of theirs on the DDP!

Ysanne Churchman (wiki) dead at 99. Straight to a BBC obit. A DDP hit for 4 teams.

Even I think this thread is shit.

Ysanne Churchman puts ladyfiona's Doctor Who team up to 2 hits.

Come on Grim Reaper do your work

"Aggedor, dor, dor, push pineapple shake the tree, Aggedor, dor, dor, push pineapple grind coffee..." (An oblique reference, I'll admit!). Ysanne Churchman died way back on 4 July, but we are only now being told the news. The Archers took aim and sent her on her way to Alpha Centauri. ladyfiona is on fire, gaining a fourth hit and we aren't even at the end of July. MariNisia gets hit number two and now has a decision as to whether to convert their Joker for their earlier hit or wait it out to see how the cards fall. At the moment, no bonuses. Biblio is awaiting a QO for Ray Lawler, but it's early in the day. Leaderboard updated.

Hospitalized with COVID and double pneumonia

Now I’m no expert in pointlessly whipping horses’ legs, but the opprobrium directed at this posho seems a trifle excessive. Having seen the offending video nasty, it doesn’t seem any worse than a jockey thrashing a horse’s arse a few times at the end of a race. After all, someone has to learn these ignorant geegees how to walk sideways to an ABBA song for our amusement, don’t they? It’s quite similar to the recent Strictly hoohah, mistreating dumb animals like Zara McThingamajig.

An actress but not on Doctor Who, rather she was the writer of the 1983 story Enlightenment.

Gu Shanqing dead at 92.

What a diva!

Michael Chen dead at 92.

26.07.2024 38 Calvin Harris & Dua Lipa — One Kiss +4 28 Lil Nas X — Old Town Road 26 Demi Lovato ft. Clean Bandit — Solo 26 Benny Blanco, Halsey & Khalid — Eastside 26 Baddiel, Skinner & The Lightning Seeds — Three Lions 26 Lady Gaga & Bradley Cooper — Shallow 25 Lewis Capaldi — Someone You Loved 24 Jess Glynne — I’ll Be There 24 Stormzy — Vossi Bop 24 Ariana Grande — Thank U, Next 24 Shawn Mendes & Camila Cabello — Señorita 22 Ava Max — Sweet But Psycho 20 Rudimental ft. Jess Glynne, Macklemore & Dan Caplen — These Days 20 Drake — In My Feelings 20 Calvin Harris & Sam Smith — Promises 20 Dave ft. Fredo — Funky Friday 20 Ariana Grande — 7 Rings 20 Ariana Grande — Break Up With Your Girlfriend, I’m Bored 20 Ed Sheeran ft. Khalid — Beautiful People 20 Ed Sheeran ft. Stormzy — Take Me Back To London 16 Drake — Nice For What 14 Ed Sheeran & Justin Bieber — I Don’t Care  11 Drake — God’s Plan 11 Lil Dicky ft. Chris Brown — Freaky Friday 08 Eminem ft. Ed Sheeran — River -6 05 George Ezra — Shotgun Edit: Crazy how the new rules affect the game

Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, Sinaloa cartel top leader and "arguably the biggest drug lord in the world" arrested in Texas. Edit: Apparently suffers from leukemia.

Mick Jagger is 81.

Some other options to consider: Russell M Nelson (1924) Woody Woodbury (1924) Valdas Adamkus (1926) Estelle Parsons (1927) Jim Lovell (1928) Alejandro Jodorowsky (1929) Warren Buffett (1930) Jordi Pujol (1930) Silvia Pinal (1931) Maggie Smith (1934) Alan Bennett (1934)

No Guinea worm cases this year so far: https://www.cartercenter.org/health/guinea_worm/case-totals.html (Thanks, reddit...). It has been said that it's a race of who lives longer, the worm or Jimmy Carter.

Done.

My thoughts and opinions on a 2025 list: Keep (25) 1. Jimmy Carter (hospice) 2. Pete Murray (very frail) 3. Ethel Kennedy (very frail) 4. Cleo Laine (very frail) 5. Sonny Rollins (very old, terminally ill) 6. Imelda Marcos (diabetes, serious heart problems, ministrokes) 7. Ted Turner ("late stages" of lewy body dementia for a while now) 8. Roberta Flack (ALS, other ailments) 9. Esther Rantzen (terminal lung cancer) 10. Norman Tebbit (said to be very ailing) 11. Tom Brokaw (multiple myeloma) 12. Gene Hackman (frail, heart problems in the past) 13. Joanne Woodward (perennial dementia sufferer) 14. Stanley Baxter (no public appearances in years, care home, memory loss) 15. Nigel Starmer-Smith (dementia, bedbound for years) 16. Noam Chomsky (massive stroke) 17. Dennis Skinner (very ill for very long) 18. Hans Blix (TBE, housebound) 19. Jean-Marie Le Pen (heart failure, pulmonary oedema, stroke) 20. Willie Nelson (emphysema, other chronic health conditions) 21. Denis Law (mixed dementia for years) 22. Sly Stone (advanced COPD) 23. Clint Eastwood (increasingly frail, some health issues in the past, lost girlfriend recently) 24. Buzz Aldrin (former heavy drinker, a couple of health scares in the past) 25. Dick Cheney (enormous heart problems, see this - seems to have outlived all odds and the transplant won't last forever) Drop (21) going down from the worst drop 1. Tom Baker (weight loss, health issues) 2. Vanessa Redgrave (emphysema for a long time) 3. Brigitte Bardot (serious respiratory problems) 4. Daniel Barenboim (how ill is he?) 5. Prunella Scales (very, very slow dementia with this one) 6. Alan Greenspan (boring, but very old) 7. Dick Van Dyke (as above, but healthy too) 8. Robert Wagner (old, COPD, but doesn't seem ill enough yet) 9. Mel Brooks (very old but seems healthy and active) 10. Josef Fritzl (too stable for my liking) 11. James Whale (as above) 12. Pope Francis (recurring health problems, but has seemed better this year) 13. Louis Farrakhan (too stable for my liking) 14. Joe Bugner (severe dementia, but young and no reports of great decline) 15 / 16. Sandy Gall / Desmond Morris (seemingly healthy nonagenarians) 17. Linda Nolan (boring perennial drama queen) 18. Patricia Routledge (seemingly healthy nonagenarian and younger than most of the other healthy nonagenarians on the list) 19. Robert Duvall (yet another boringly healthy nonagenarian) 20. Raul Castro (looks, sounds amazing despite previous cancer rumors) 21. Julie Walters (past cancer) Return (4): 1. Yoko Ono (lewy body dementia for ages, other ailments) 2. Liza Minnelli (ailing for a very long time now) 3. David Attenborough (very old and should stay on the list until his death) 4. Douglas Hurd (very quiet for a long time) Add (21): 1. Michael Tilson Thomas (glioblastoma) 2. Mahathir Mohamad (enormous heart problems, very old) 3. Alain Delon (cancer) 4. Ruth Buzzi (dementia for ages, strokes) 5. Tippi Hedren (advanced dementia) 6. Sam Nujoma (tons of hospitalisations) 7. Kenneth Cope (perennial COPD sufferer) 8. Eva Marie Saint (very old) 9. June Spencer (as above) 10. Harald V of Norway (complicated health history, cancer and heart problems) 11. Sven-Göran Eriksson (pancan) 12. Sidney Cooke (how is he still alive?) 13. Tom Lehrer (frail forum favourite) 14. Geoffrey Boycott (cancer) 15. Gena Rowlands (advanced dementia) 16. Rupert Murdoch (tons of health problems) 17. King Salman of Saudi Arabia (dementia, tons of health problems) 18. David Irving (serious health problems) 19. David Graham (massive stroke, very old, very frail) 20. Jose Mujica (cancer and other health issues) 21. Alan Oppenheimer (seems very frail and pale)

I hope you are right. As far as the VP talk, Whitmer and Newsom already leaked to the press that they have no interest in the job (pretty much as soon as it became clear that the Dems were coalescing around Harris), so we can put that to bed. It's looking like the "short short" list is comprised of Kelly, Cooper, Shapiro, Beshear, and Walz. Kelly has become the +135 favorite in betting markets. While the Democrats need to win Pennsylvania and while Shapiro is the popular governor from that state, he probably doesn't check as many boxes as Kelly does. And both Cooper and Shapiro have a background similar to Harris' as lawyers and former state Attorneys General, so it's quite possible that the campaign will think this is too much overkill. Kelly's background is different, as a former astronaut, Navy captain and pilot, and now a Senator. He's seen as a badass of sorts and as a moderate, and he has done well with Latino voters in Arizona, partly because he's not as liberal as much of the Democratic Party is on issues like control of the border. He's also publicly said he's not in favor of the Green New Deal, and he's advocated for oil drilling as a response to higher gas prices. And as the husband of former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, he's a great messenger on gun control issues as well. He seems like he has the momentum to get the gig, but we'll see what happens.

Did you watch Game of Thrones? I understand your theory I just think your faith in women is misplaced. The UK has had three female PMs - Thatcher, May and Truss - I don’t see any of them as the caring compassionate sort.

Lol, imao.

Marianne Bernadotte has lived in a Stockholm care home the last 4 years. She, Marianne Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn (bedbound for the last two years since miraculously surviving covid), Princess Felicitas of Salm-Horstmar, Princess Mikasa (heart failure, two strokes this year, currently hospitalised etc), Induratana Paribatra (is she even alive?) and Ashi Tashi Dorji are all over 100 years old. Marie Christine of Württemberg will be 100 in a few months and is very frail. Sheikh Salem has been seemingly hospitalised for the last three years (and has been in failing health for two decades), Queen Ratna has been in poor health for years and Jamshid of Zanzibar was dying in 2020. It's a small miracle that the list has been without deaths for more than nine months.

Bobby Davro speaks out, saying "if you don't like the joke, don't laugh": https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-13517259/Bobby-Davro-65-insists-wont-cancelled-says-no-topics-limits-comedians-quips-dont-like-joke-dont-laugh.html Something TV audiences have been taking him at his word for 30 years.