Master Obit

Got to be Chomsky.

The negatives: I don't really see what the point of the "suggestions for 2025" thread was if there was never any question of them deviating from their "pick anyone famous who is 90+" strategy. 41/50 picks are 90+. Similar to the rule that no more than half the list can have featured the previous year, I think it'd be much more exciting if there was a rule that no more than half the picks can be 90+ Just as Rob Burrow and Jonnie Irwin were missed last year despite being virtually guaranteed hits, Steve McMichael and Peter Yarrow are overlooked this year. Roberta Flack being dropped is extremely risky. There are still too many bed-blockers for my liking - Greenspan, Murray and Gall are all going to be kept on the list until they die by the look of it despite the fact they're only really on it for being extremely old and there's no reason to assume they won't all plod on to 104. They're very much a "committee is in their 60s, and these people were slightly relevant decades ago but no one young would know them" feel to them. The positives: Dick Cheney has finally been dropped, and I'm glad to see some of the other boring picks like Daniel Barenboim gone (even if they've been replaced by other boring picks). Yoko Ono is a great returnee. I reckon there might be twice as many hits as last year, which sounds great until you remember there were only six last year.

I'm surprised to not see Tomiko Itooka - 117 Inah Canabarro Lucas - 117 Ethel Caterham - 116 Might as well have them at this point if the strategy is to just pick really old people. I will say that the list will probably get double digits, but I can't see it doing extremely well.

This first point means virtually nothing when he's led a lifestyle of not looking after himself. 93 and 88 aren't really crazy ages, so there's no reason to think he's blessed with insane genetics that will counterbalance his unhealthiness. He's a heart attack waiting to happen, and is to undertake an incredibly stressful job. I'm saying he sees 85 tops.

I'll say Noam Chomsky, fuck it.

I have to nitpick here and state that it having happened recently doesn't make it less likely. The events are independent. I do agree it's an unlikely event, nonetheless.

Can we please lock this thread ASAP before mymango posts a heartfelt tribute? I think it'd crash the site with how long it'd be.

Damn. I reckon he'll struggle to recover from this but you can never count him out.

He'd probably get less if he was actually better at presenting himself to the people. The Winter Fuel Allowance thing was a bit of a PR own goal, and was really inviting criticism for going after the most vulnerable members of society. A lot of the pensioners who can't now claim it didn't necessarily need it, but he should really have anticipated that going for them so quickly would be seen as targeting the vulnerable. I spoke with a relative in their 70s who falls in to this category, and he doesn't even disagree that at its roots it wasn't a terrible idea, just that it felt like an unfair immediate attack on the aged especially when Labour is supposed to be all about defending the weak in society. It could easily have been deferred and slotted in a bit later down the line when there couldn't really have been an angle for "Keir wants to immediately kill the pensioners!" It would still have invited criticism from the press, but there'd have been more people willing to entertain it as a tough, but necessary, decision as opposed to a mercenary attack on the vulnerable.

Yeah, that's clearly not trustworthy. I am the king of the gays, not this imposter.

Dude, get help. Seriously. There's dark humour and then there's...needing psychological help.

Fascinating. I'd be interested if you have any stories/information about when you met him!

Would that have been Reg Dean?

I'm not sure that's enough to put him on the list tbh. Picking people on the basis of poor mental health is risky.

Michael Caine is a good shout, not sure on the others though. Judi Dench and Connie Francis are old but I don't know of them being ill, Judi Dench especially I can imagine hanging around until at least late 2020s. ABBA members are late 70s and would surely be a wasted pick unless you know of any of them being particularly at risk of dying anytime soon. What's the deal with Drake Bell?

Britain's oldest man already was Donald Rose in most people's eyes. The guy was clearly very old, but I'm skeptical of 109. "Poor records" is the most common subterfuge people use to inflate their age. It's incredibly convenient because if the records don't exist then nobody can disprove it. Until any hard evidence is made available that he was born in 1914, I'm not going to believe it. I'm sure the GRG will verify him soon, though. They don't need documents to "validate" a claim, so long as it looks like they're producing output to compete with LQ.

Pity, I preferred to imagine that good old Gooseberry was spending all his waking hours frantically trying different search terms to establish which z-list celebrities were next on the list of sex trophy recipients. Someone has to do the work I suppose!

Judging by this thread, you must be responsible for about a quarter of the total visits to the sun/mail websites. I'm quite curious how you dredge all these up. Is your entire search history "is expecting", "gives birth", "announces pregnancy"?

Isn't there a thing called palliative lying, where it's considered kinder to simply tell the person that their deceased loved one will be "back shortly" etc, and divert their attention to a different topic? I think it's far kinder to let people in the stages of advanced dementia think they're alive than force them to go through the same sadness over and over again.

Looks like he died following a fall a few weeks prior. Sad but what a remarkable life, and definitely nicer to go without a long decline than spending years in a very frail state.

Once you get to very old age (90s and beyond), you're depending an awful lot on luck. A healthy lifestyle and taking care of yourself will give you a much better chance of making it to old age in the first place, but beyond a certain point there's so much that's out of your control that you've really just got to hope for the best. Which supercentenarian did you meet?

It's a minor irritance, but is there any chance that the block on sending a couple of messages/PMs in short succession could be relaxed for established members? I get that it's there to stop spambots, but surely it could be removed for people who are clearly established members (maybe a minimum of 100 posts over at least 3 months)?

I heard he was a right bastard. I guess we shouldn't speak ill of the dead, but he's unlikely to care now. Wätter off a duck's bäck now.

I will do these for Q1 when I am next there, I can't do Q2 though. It seems my local archives hasn't yet got Q2.