themaninblack

There's not much point me doing that, as I've had no signal since at least April (I turned it on hoping to watch the Grand National) but I haven't been arsed to call the aerial man out. Well it's on ITV next year so you may get a better chance of seeing it!

Latest update. Have to keep on top of these things, you know...

For some weird reason he's not on my master database...

Rory Bremner must be gutted - his greatest ever impression (apart from John Major!) RIP

The sunday papers have their "Those we missed in 2016" supplements. Couldn't they wait like, four weeks until the year is actually fu cking over? Didn't they learn from last year?

Not a 'national treasure'. Wouldn't be 'unexpected'. Funnily enough I've just realised now, so I withdraw that nomination...

Bruce Forsyth

And a DDP miss believe it or not...

A dick to the bitter end...

I've been half-obsessed by the subject in the last month or so. That's the internet for you, you can wander off into all sorts of places!

Billy Shears?

Crumbs!

Are you going to do a main team this year? No.

This has prompted me to have a look at some of the "losties" to see if we can smuggle in a couple of obits. I'm not sure whether this counts but actor Cory Feldman dedicated his much annihilated TV performance to Majestik Magnificent but the article doesn't explicitly mention that he died!

It's the legendary astronaut that beat the DDP record. Out of this world...

I shall be doing a sequel to the Fawlty Towers theme team...

I am looking forward to the kick off, although I am disappointed that we are still allowing non-celebrities to be (qualifying) picks. I WAS hoping that we would only attribute points to those who get an obits from authorised sources ***AND*** which describe the “celebrity” of the stiff in the first (say) 30 words of the article. For example – the following are from qualifying obits from this current game – · “Italian beauty queen who became a 1950s screen goddess”. · “The character actor was best known for playing . . . . “ · “ the talented Cuban trumpeter” These suggest to the casual reader that, in life, the person had some discernible “celebrity” attributes. HOWEVER, the following from officially scoring obits do seem to lack the celebrity status required (IMHO) for a celebrity dead pool · “Brave mum-of-three” · “a Nevada woman “ · “Pakistani student” There are millions of Brave mums of three, thousands of Nevada women and thousands of Pakistani students, however, in today’s society that does not make them celebrities, whereas – I contend - being a Beauty queen, a character actor and even a Cuban trumpeter does. I know it can be difficult to determine “celebrity” (is a rubik’s cube champion or the world bog-snorkling champion a celebrity???) but I think a bit of common sense should prevail. We all know what 'celebrity' is. It's like pornography - I can't provide a definition of what it is but I know it when I see it. I think that allowing picks who are famous for dying (and not for their celebrity whilst still alive) has significantly weakened the game. That said, bring it on. To be frank, this is an issue I've prodded around without coming to a satisfying conclusion. I received an email from another prospective competitor just prior to opening the nominations which covers much the same ground: What is classed as a "celebrity" and indeed what is classed as a "theme" team. In broad terms, I would regard a theme team as one which narrows the options somewhat. When it comes to celebrity, it becomes an administrative quagmire if you set out to enforce restrictions. For instance at what point and by what particular criteria do you judge who goes in and out? There's likely to be around 450-500 teams of 20 "celebs" each, so potentially I (or whoever succeeds me as host) will have to go through each team and judge they are excluded based on certain conditions. The UK obit rule is the key factor in whether a hit gets points or not and is therefore the most reliable indicator we have, but of course you cannot foresee whether there will be a UK obit for nominated persons and base your decision on exclusions on that. And as we know, Shamless for example only got 5 scoring hits, enough to almost certainly win the TTL but most of the "hits" of his didn't get the points. But of course Shameless was on the start line to begin with... Which is why I decided at an alteration to the scoring (albeit minor) to encourage more "mainstream" picks and try to off-set the impact of the "cancer mums" phenomenon somewhat. I had originally came up with a much radical alteration to the scoring back in the summer but in the end practical considerations meant that it boiled down to a rather cautious addition... One option is to separate the two pools and that could potentially open the option of making changes to the points schema for both. However, there is the overlapping issue of the same celebs being included in two leagues. But the pro-TTL faction would complain that it would leave them put of the main pool and thus from gauging their performance against the main set of teams (Shameless sits in joint 38th position for example). And of course we must consider that there are those that are strongly against any restrictions to entry, the "Anything goes" faction...

Of course it should be or. EDIT: It is or, but the email I sent was a somewhat hurried cut 'n paste job from last year's email, so forgot to replace the ands with ors, but it's there in the Rules & Scoring page. So carry on...

Could this be the Drive for Five?

Depends on the date they agree he died on. There needs to be a date of death as the database will not accept a blank...

"You better watch yer deaf and dumb in that game, Rodney..."

Kelvin MacKenzie...

No I didn't...

No doubt there'll be some changes once 2016 has finished... Shouldn't I be here with 4,6 hits per year? After the year my hit rate per year will be at least 5,67. Aye, but have you got enough points? This list of the 50 is those with the most accumulated points which are then subsequently marked by hit average. Incidentally the "least" experienced in that 50 is Golden Slumbers with 5 years, compared with the most of Jesus Jones with 18...