Commtech Sio Bibble

Currently he seems well enough to run again but he really shouldn't. I do find it fascinating how long some American politicians cling to power and stay in office, in terms of the House of Representatives 13/435 (2.9%) are over 80, whereas in the UK only one of the 650 MPs (0.15%) in the House of Commons are 80+.

Most of that speech was expected, worrying but expected. I think they worst takeaway is the repeated subtle mentions of getting his own back of the judiciary and the 'betrayers'.

His absence at Carter's funeral and the inauguration has been put down to supposed 'COVID concerns', but personally that only adds to speculation about his health. It's been 13 years since his heart transplant which puts him on the upper side of the post operation life expectancy. If it was just the inauguration he'd skipped I'd be less concerned but I honestly think he's on his way out.

Michael Keating as sub 3 then

Out of the 6 crowdsource hits so far, the official DL has shared 2, but I wouldn't count the other 4 as misses necessarily. Black Bart isn't really a deathlisty name and I'd never have expected him to make the list. Plowright was one of many interchangeable nonagenarian female actors, she could have been swapped for someone like Dickinson or Novak, but that category feels more like a lucky dip than anything else. Law is the first inevitable victim of last year's catastrophic list and the need to drop 19 people, it's the nature of the game and not something that was unexpected coming into 2025. Yarrow feels the most like a miss, definitely could've and probably should've made it, even if he didn't get the BBC coverage almost every other UK paper did put out an obit, more worthy than certain other US picks *cough* Gates Sr *cough*.

With 2024 heading into its final 2 months, in keeping with tradition, it seems about the right time to start making the preparations for next year's Crowdsourced Deathlist. Your 2024 list has, so far, absolutely smashed the official list out of the water, let's see if we can do it again. This is my first year fully hosting, the only change to the rules that I will be making is making entries close a few hours earlier. The rules are below, in case you need a refresher or want to check the new closing time. THE RULES 1. Please send a list of celebrities you wish to vote for to Commtech Sio Bibble (myself), before the deadline. The list must have a minimum of 12 names on it, and a maximum of 50. Yes, this means we are open now. Please send them by either PM or via Shadow List thread, not by email, semaphore, Morse code, Deathlist live chat, animated corpses, text messages, or any other means of communication you can think of. And you may only submit via 1 of those two methods above, NOT BOTH METHODS! Private messaging is preferred. Any entry in the shadow list thread must have myself tagged in it so I know to include your entry. 2. Your 1st choice will gain 50 points, 2nd 49, etc etc to 50th which will gain 1 point. This is true even if you only send in 12 names, or 13 names, or 49 names. 3. When the deadline passes, all of the points that an individual celebrity gain will be added together, and the top fifty celebrities with the most points overall will go on the Utterly Unofficial Forum List.  4. Feel free to add substitutes at the bottom of the list, which will only be counted if one of your fifty die before January 1st 2024. If for example your number one pick is such a smart one they die before January 1st, then I will give 50 points to your 2nd pick, and so on until 1 point is given to the first substitute. 4b) Anyone who wishes to avoid a Pope Benny the Fuckwit Meltdown and just says "oh put my subs in at the number of the person who died" gets 10 post quotes from Comped.  5. Do try to make the picks as "Deathlisty" as possible. More Buffy Sainte-Marie, less Joan Langsford, if you know what I mean. Someone likely to score an obit with one of the major English language news outlets. 6. The deadline for sending in entries is 31st December 2024 at 4 pm GMT (or your equivalent local time) This earlier deadline is so everything can be organised and ready for January 1st and so I don't have to sort out submissions whilst drunk/hungover (it is new years eve after all). 7. This is essentially a forum game without a winner. It does however put the long held notion by some that the combined minds of the forum know better than the Committee to the test. 8. Who picked whom will remain anonymous. Unless the person announces it of course. 9. The paranoid probably shouldn't send in their DDP unique hopefuls. Although I have no intention of taking any of them. Plus if they're unique in the DDP they're hardly gonna score big here. 10. To keep to the Deathlist spirit, only the top 25 ranked celebrities from the current list of Crowdsourced Deathlist 2024 survivors will be used, this is something for me to worry about, not you... 10a) Our actual collated list will stick to the "25 from the previous year" rule. 10b) As a result, if our top fifty, after all votes have been counted, has more than twenty-five of the 2023 survivors, then the lowest ranked excess survivors will be axed from the list in favour of The Fifty-First ranked celebrity and so on... 10c) Since we don't know if that'll be an issue until I actually do the counting, voters don't need to worry about limiting their personal lists to 25 survivors. If you really want to you can include all of the survivors in your entry, it will just reflect poorly on you in my eyes.  11) Please pick living people. Folk do die before 1st January (that's what subs are for), but there were a few cases of people dead for a number of years chosen last time. Please do not pick animals, or ISIS prisoners, or kids, or any of the usual no go areas. Thank you for participating. Surely Ar Jimmy can't make it long enough to make his 10th appearance.

Breaking the Law 6/50 17th January 2025 Footballer Denis Law has died. Law’s football career began whilst he was a teenager, he was signed to Huddersfield Town’s youth team, he was promoted in 1956 and made 81 appearances for the club. After leaving Huddersfield he spent a year at Manchester city before being transferred to Italian club Torino for a record breaking £110,000. The following year he was again transferred for £115,000 this time to Manchester United, the team he would become most associated with. Throughout his 11 years at Man U he scored 237 goals and achieved the third best goal tally in the club’s history. Law, Bobby Charlton and George Best became known as the United or Holy trinity at Manchester United due to their individual and collective excellence. At this time Law was also playing internationally for his home country of Scotland. Law retired in 1974 having spent his final year transferred back to Man City. He jointly holds the Scottish international record goal, having scored 30 times in competitive matches. He is also the only Scottish player to ever win the Ballon d'Or. Denis Law died yesterday aged 84. He was making his 2nd appearance on the Crowdsourced Deathlist, this year at no.25 His death gives us our 6th hit so far only 17 days into the year, with 2 of those being on the same day and the most recent 3 being on successive days. I’ve seen flies drop slower than this bunch.

Dick Van Dyke

The Dictionary Deadpool Returns Welcome back to the Dictionary Deadpool (The Squeakquel), a few things have been tweaked since last time so make sure to read the rules. Each participant must pick a 10 letter word reasonably valid in the Oxford English Dictionary and then for each letter of the word choose a ‘celebrity’ who’s first or last name matches with the corresponding letter (similar to the ABC deadpool). If your chosen word includes the same letter more than once, please choose different ‘celebrities' for each. Example - Strawberry Simon Cowell Terry Gilliam Ryan Reynolds Alan Alda William Shatner Barlow, Thelma Ewards, Huw Roberts, Eric Roberts, Julia Yuri Oganessian Scoring - Each death will be scored based on the value of the letter in the English language Scrabble so in the example above Thelma Barlow would be worth 3 points as B is worth 3 in Scrabble. There's no difference in points whether first or last name is used, however Alliterative Names, such as Alan Alda, will score double points. Unique picks are worth an extra point. Unique & Alliterative picks are worth triple points. General Rules - Entries close at midday (BST) August 4th and must be sent by private message. Usual deadpooling rules apply (have to be reasonably famous, no death row picks etc…). Make sure to clarify who you’ve chosen if necessary or else the first google result for that name will be used. No need to pick subs, if one of your picks dies in the next week I'll PM you to ask for a replacement. I’m not particularly fussed about obituaries just as long as there’s enough proof to say they’re dead, so feel free to pick as many famous Mongolian sheep farmers as you want. Posting in the thread that your chosen celebrity has died is greatly encouraged, however at the end of the game I will check to ensure no-one has been missed from the scoreboard. In the case of a tie, the team with the most unique picks wins, if it’s still a tie after that the winners can either choose to share the victory or agree to meet in real life and fight it out. Duplicate words are not allowed so if 2 players submit teams with the same word, it’ll be first come first serve and the second player will have to change their entry. A bonus point will be awarded at the start of the game to the player who, in my opinion, has chosen the most interesting word. The game will end one year after starting (August 4th 2025). Thank you for playing.

My hands are getting tired from writing all these damn crowdsource obits

Read her last Plow-rites 5/50 16th January 2025 Actress Dame Joan Plowright, Baroness Olivier has died. Plowright began her stage career aged 20 in 1948, joining the English Stage Company in 1956. The following year she co-starred alongside Sir Lawrence Olivier in the original London production of John Osbourne’s The Entertainer, the pair would marry 4 years later. In 1960 she made her big screen debut in the film adaptation of The Entertainer, for which she received a BAFTA nomination for best newcomer. In 1961 she won the Tony Award for best actress for her performance in A Taste of Honey. In 1963 she began working with the National Theatre, and spent much of the next two decades performing at the Old Vic Theatre and other theatre houses around London. During this time she frequently appeared in televised plays for ITV. In 1991 she appeared in a supporting role in the film Enchanted April and won the Golden Globe for best supporting actress, as well as receiving an Oscar nomination. In the same Golden Globes ceremony she won the award for best supporting actress in a television role for her performance in HBO’s TV film Stalin. Following these accolades she began making more appearances in film, she became recognisable to a younger audience for her roles in Dennis the Menace (1993), 101 Dalmatians (1996) and Disney’s Dinosaur (2000). Following a CBE in 1970, In 2004 was made a DBE (Dame). Having struggled with her eyesight for a few years, in 2014 Plowright was legally blind and announced her retirement from acting. Joan Plowright died yesterday aged 95, putting us on 5 hits just over half a month into the year. She was making her 1st appearance on the Crowdsourced Deathlist, at no.22

5th Crowdsource hit and we're not even 2/3rds of the way through January yet

Christopher Benjamin QO (if he wasn't picked then LoTM)

Unfortunately it would appear that Beauvais died last year off the radar (https://thomasbeauvais.muchloved.com/).

Benjamin definitely dead (apologies for spreading doubt), family's statement courtesy of Lisa Bowerman, he died on the 10th.

All credible sources appear to have retracted statments, Fantom and David seem to have deleted their posts and both Hadoke's and Big Finish's tweets have also disappeared. Maybe he isn't dead?

Much sadder about Traitors Linda being banished than I was about a certain other Linda today.

They get the people with the most experience and knowledge in the area and it's likely that those people will be older, pre-written obits are for the big names and when those people, like Jimmy Carter, live an extraordinarily long life, it shouldn't be too surprising if the obit writer goes before the subject. In Nolan's case it seems a bit weird to have an obituary on ice for at least 6 years, but the guardian seems to have a massive backlog of pre-written obits, covering anyone who has even been within an inch of fame.

Seemingly the Guardian have been expecting her death for a while too, as the author of her obituary died in 2019.

Nolan No More 4/50 15th January 2025 Irish singer and TV personality Linda Nolan has died. Linda was born into the large Nolan family, who’s parents, in the early 70s, decided to form a girl group consisting of their 6 daughters. Their debut single was a song entitled ‘Blackpool’ about the English seaside town’s football club, surprisingly this song didn’t make the charts. In 1978 the group’s third album ‘20 Giant Hits’ became their first success reaching no.3 in the UK album charts. The Nolans had a further 5 top 40 albums in the UK, but never got higher than no.3, unlike in Japan where their 5th album ‘Making Waves’ reached no.1, selling over half a million copies. In 1979 the group's single ‘I’m in the Mood for Dancing’ was released to massive success, peaking at no.1 in Japan and South Africa, and reaching the top 5 in the UK, Ireland, Belgium, The Netherlands & New Zealand. In 1981 they became the first European act to win at the Tokyo Music Festival. Although the group’s members often came and went it wasn’t until 2005 that they officially disbanded, eventually reforming twice in 2009 and in 2020. A familiar face on UK TV she participated in shows like Blankety Blank, Nevermind the Buzzocks and Loose Women. In 2014 Linda came 8th in the 13th series of Britain’s Celebrity Big Brother. Linda was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005, and was given the all-clear in 2011, however in 2017 the illness returned. In 2020 the disease spread to her liver and in 2023, her brain. Although repeatedly declaring that the end was nigh, Linda continued to defy the odds throughout her treatment. Linda Nolan died earlier today aged 65. She was making her 6th appearance on the Crowdsourced Deathlist, this year at no.16

Nolan is #6

Genuinely never thought this day would come

Over Christmas my mum mentioned him thinking he was already dead, I think having mixed him up with John Sessions, she'll probably be quite confused when she finds out.

Her death was announced 11 days ago of course it has already been mentioned here, I'm not going to lecture you I'm just going to call you a twat and leave it there.

Terry Davis (wiki) Labour MP (1971-1974, 1979-2004) and Secretary General of the Council of Europe (2004-2009) died on December 9th aged 85.