Spade_Cooley

My attempt to retain the deathrace crown will be sent to you, as I suspect many others will, on the 31st December. I keep a longlist throughout the year on a Google Document and jot down anyone mentioned here, or that I see mentioned as being sick elsewhere, on it, along with a few words about why they're ill. December is then spent chasing up every single entry and seeing what the news has been since then. I have an "actually could be selected" longlist of about 50 names, and I have a rough idea of who 15 of my 20 picks will be. I think the number one mistake DDP entries make is overestimating the usefulness of the unique bonus.

Confirmed and a British obituary turns up straight away. Another name to be scratched off the 2013 entry forms. Which I have to update on the main database, then update on the 2012 database, then update on the images folder (to make red), then update on all the previous years pages to say he died in 2012, then update on my excel spreadsheet for DDP 2013 and if necessary replace with subs and contact the team if he was a joker. Then... you the rest... The things I do for death... Yeah, but it's all worth it when you see the smile on The Living End's face at the end of the year.

Confirmed and a British obituary turns up straight away. Another name to be scratched off the 2013 entry forms.

The song itself is terrible, it sounds like... well, Jack Johnson with stage IV cancer.

Zach Sobiech. He's got terminal cancer! He's got the heartwarming backstory! He's got coverage in English newspapers! He's got the future hit single! He's got "months to live"! And he's also 17 which makes him ineligible for the 2013 DDP. Them's the breaks.

170-candidate longlist for me. May have to cancel most of my Christmas family functions in order to see what Masao Yoshida's up to these days.

BBC Online staff are having a drill for the announcement of Prince Philip's death on Tuesday. Whether because he's weakening, or they want to be ready for Maggie/Nelson carking it, idk.

Open the door, get on the floor, everybody walk the dinosaur...

Peter Ndlovu in critical condition after a car accident that left two dead. This year's Avi Cohen?

You can't kill 30 people in less than an hour with a knife. This guy had a punt at it.

No it isn't.

Look bad, did he? He didn't look in the best of health. Looked as if he was holding on to railings to steady himself as he was walking along. Also looked a bit gaunt. You should be able to see him if you watch it on iPlayer. I'm prepared to set up Google Alerts, scour newspapers, ask friends and relatives, go onto marginal message boards and read thousands of words to research by dead pool teams. I'm not, however, prepared to watch The One Show.

If we must.... Fare Thee Well, Miss Carousel - Townes van Zandt Glaciers of Ice - Raekwon ft Ghostface Killah, Masta Killa and Blue Raspberry Let Your Light Shine On Me - Blind Willie Johnson

Probably Peter Falk if he loses his battle with Alzheimer's.

Back in hospital with a "heavy nosebleed". Cocaine's a helluva drug.

Will any of these people get a UK obit ? Its not for sure

Only good song released in 2012 was Ke$ha's "Die Young", tbh.

Another thing to consider (read "another thing for me to type instead of doing the job I'm paid to do in my office") is that one way of analysing whether someone is "famous" or not is to consider the question: if this person wasn't terminally ill, and had been struck dead by a car today, would their story have made any of the newspapers? Grace ESL obviously wouldn't: she has no claim to fame other than the fact her mad parents thing they can pray her back into existence. Ms Williams? Maybe. If this hadn't been the year that the Hillsborough report came out it'd be very unlikely, but she has had some (minor) newspaper coverage prior to all of this. Lisa Lynch? I don't know. She was a journalist, she was editor for "Real Homes" for a few years, inkies love writing about their mates at any given opportunity, but she wasn't a newspaper hack, she was a magazine one.

Yeah, this is gonna be a two-yard tap-in for 2013 if he makes it another 20 days.

Lynch is a weird one, she got the captain's armband for my team this year because she came out and said, in November last year, "I have months to live". And it's 13 months later and she's still on this earth and livetweeting X-Factor episodes. From a hospice, admittedly, but still.

I'd wondered exactly the same thing. Her Tumblr account suddenly stops two months ago, and the website she was working on isn't fully up either. So either she's carked it and nobody's told us, she's incapacitated somehow, or she's just gotten bored of the internet and found something more productive to do. Grace ESL is apparently receiving care at home right now. I'd assume she gets the requisite obituary, but who knows? The story there was a right-to-die battle, if she's just going to slink off in her sleep one night maybe that isn't news.

double-post

Nah, that's just people dicking about on Twitter. From what I'm hearing, it won't be a "happy Christmas, Ange" for the guy who has been arrested today. Do we know who it is yet?

Nah, that's just people dicking about on Twitter. From what I'm hearing, it won't be a "happy Christmas, Ange" for the guy who has been arrested today.

From the Facebook page of one of the other Andre brothers: So I don't know what to believe. Can you trust a Greek? Whatever the story, I'm sure all of us here at the DL hope that Andrew's popping those champagne corks at 11:59pm this December 31st.