msc

I think he's the sort who wants to die with their boots on, like how his pal Johnny Cash was performing until pretty much the final weeks of his life.

Right. MacGowan, Redgrave, Williams, Boothroyd, Khamenei, Cheney and Lynn seem easy drops tbh. Akihito seems in better nick now he's retired - I mean, he is ill, but doesn't seem deathbed ill. If they can drop Gorbachev (bring back Gorby) they can drop Aki for a bit. So that';s 8, 8 more to go. Alan Greenspan might die in 2022 but he feels like he'll be around for a while, and crucially, I don't particularly care if he is a DL miss. I don't particularly believe the Castro ailment rumours so I'd drop him tbh. So by this point I have Delors, Newhart, Walters, Marcos, Yoko Ono, Le Pen and Stanley Baxter, with only one of them staying. I'd be most inclined to keep Stanley Baxter of that lot, but this is the bunch which would get to stay if there were more DL hits in 2021... For my disagreements with you, Biblio: Doherty and Nolan both advancing Stage IV cancer now, and the former have COPD to boot. It would be unwise to drop them now, even if they proved a year too early this year. Burt Bacharach is meant to be highly frail, he could go at any time. Willie Nelson is touring but really old and frail and seems to be in borrowed time, ditto Crosby even if he was exaggerating that 2 years to live in 2019. Brooks is old enough and famous enough to take his permanent seat on the list (there are spaces for never goes), and as for Cribbins, the hell am I jinxing that man by taking him off the sodding list!

Genuinely I was updating the HOF, saw this thread, thought "who won that again?" and then a message I'd posted 9 months ago saying I'd work out the scores. To which my immediate thought tbh was "Oh fuck it!"

Lucky her - I've got the Secret Service, the Met Police, a bunch of rich folk and their aides and Extinction fucking Rebellion as neighbours for the next 3 weeks or so...

RESULTS In reverse order, to maintain some pretend suspense.... First up, harsh luck to Captain Chorizo, who has had 3 deaths since the game ended on May 31st. I hummed and hawed about Z-Cars, but decided to stick to Deathray's list to save nightmares (although I totted up the points WITH Z-Cars as fairness and it turns out... sod all difference between the top scorers!). Apparently Alan Bradley never murdered anyone either - I assumed he must have, but no, attempted murder doesn't count. Nor does death by tram count as a car crash. Curses, foiled again. Deathray's Point Stack intent was taken on board, so basically everything accumulates. So in 8th place Death by Arsenic, 33 points Taking part is cool though, yeah? 7th place Great Uncle Bulgaria, 51 points In the DDP, 51 points off one pick would be fucking amazing, to be fair... 6th place Captain Chorizo, 89 points A low placing for a regular but they went for a number of hunches which didn't pay off. JOINT 4th PLACE That's nearly a podium spot Handrejka, 175 points and (don't fall over in shock, Biblio) Bibliogryphon, 175 points Some teams ask where they went wrong. Both of them teams missed out on Johnny Briggs, who would have got them the win. 3rd PLACE The Bronze Medalist Msc 199 points Hi everybody! Yep, more bridesmaid status for that guy. Whoever he is... And now... The moment you've all been waiting for... The best loser is.... RUNNER UP Silver Medalist Old Crem 224 points You lost by 8 points, very harsh luck, literally any other pick in the world being successful would have meant a win. And the winner of the Soapstar to Superstar Deadpool 2020-21 was... TOAST!!!!! With 232 points She got 3 of the Big Four, and Jim Trott to boot. No no no no no no yes she's the winner! Now it's time for everyone to go "well done Toastie!" and wait for Deathers to show up and tell me I should have counted Softly Softly Taskforce or something... The Calculus Section

Spade actually changed it in 2018 but, err, it seems to have reverted back!

October's been culling my shortlist like it was Boris Johnson getting rid of the pro-EU Tory MPs!

You can't beat Ulitzer Thatcher Willz Wee Jum to the news here, even with a breaking news notification! Felt he wasn't long for this world after the rumours/stuff earlier this year.

Don't worry, he didn't actually break the lobbying rules, it's just that the goalposts were moved, by the badgers.

Ditto Mastermind, iirc, (neither of which have any dosh on the line) but I mean more stuff like Tipping Point, The Chase, Eggheads, etc.

They look for folk who will be interesting on TV, not folk who necessarily might be good at quizzes.

Richard Franklin undergoing yet more surgery this week for his ongoing health issues. This is this 4th surgery in 14 months for folk keeping score at home. Hmmm.

I'll leave it to Scrabble fanatic @DevonDeathTrip to correct me if wrong, but I believe the psychologist's (like I'm trying to spell that even with it written in front of me!) name is still over 30 points behind his age of 87.

Ah St-John Stevas - eccentric, witty, often non-partisan (watch the 79 election where he is the first to console Shirley Williams about losing her seat), and a solid ally of the Arts and education. One of my favourite stories of his was how he got up to leave a Cabinet meeting early, pleading that he had an engagement to attend. "But I'm attending the same function!" said a bewildered Maggie Thatcher, to which Norman quickly replied "Yes, but it takes me twice as long to get ready, darling!" Another was when a Cabinet colleague complained to him that he was a compulsive name dropper, and Norman said "You know, the Queen said that to me just yesterday!"

He used to do a lot of US TV (like Gotham here) and was one of those actors its good to see - the US equivalent of a Danny Webb type actor for example.

Yes, but in fairness, a 19 year old "celebrity"* is still a 19 year old and wont have the maturity of an adult to deal with insufferably rude people, so to speak. *I had genuinely never heard of her before now, but on hearing her father is Gordon Ramsay, she has my full sympathy there!

I mean, it shows you how big a name he is that within 2 hours of a friend mentioning his health in a House of Lords statement, the news made not only every major newspaper in the UK, but also the TV news, the most read article on BBC News and was the number one trending topic on Twitter in the UK. For someone who never held high office. As Canadian Paul used to say about candidates, he's famous enough and sick enough for the Deathlist.

No, he's not dead, but Robert Durst has been charged with the murder of his wife in 1982. Which, to be completely honest with you, I thought he'd already been found guilty of last month!

Calling for euthanasia suggests months to go, tbh, but then, Brian Rix did that and just keeled over weeks later. DL wise - Jowell made it, and while she held Cabinet posts, Field had more of a TV presence - especially in the last 5 years with Brexit and his disdain for all things Corbyn. I could certainly see them adding him.

I saw that earlier and thought "I wonder how long that'll stay off the forum". Cheeky sneak unique picks are difficult to find these days. But yes, Drop 40, Deathlist, if he makes Jan 1st. Sounds like a big if.

When Charles left his mic on at that photo op and bemoaned how awful Witchell was and the BBC reporters had to cover this "scandal", you could tell most of them blatantly agreed with Charlie's summation of the guy!

She might outlive Nicholas Witchell given the state of him these days. Though I like the hedging his bets black tie just in case.

Yes, I was just looking and noticed that, despite him being frequently mentioned by me and Reptile in the Cmme chats and so on, neither of us actually picked the sod! In anything by looks of it. Err, well done Time!

Oh that is a big one, he was on my long list for years and recently transferred to the shortlist after that documentary - he seemed to be going downhill quickly once he could no longer perform.

When I was a kid, the BBC showed Sound of Music and Bedknobs and Broomsticks on the same Easter break, and I will go to my grave insisting that the Angela Lansbury magic fest for kids is the superior film. And she actually fights Nazis in that one, too!