msc

We have to go back to 2010 to find the last time there were fewer than 8 hits in the final 16 days of the year.

Even in a sea of genuinely thick MPs, he is one of the absolute thickest.

Oh go on then, how I'd do it, as it stands. DL2024 KEEP Dick Van Dyke, Alan Greenspan, Nigel Starmer-Smith, Jimmy Carter, Dick Cheney, Mel Brooks, Jacques Delors, Robert Wagner, Norman Tebbit, Sandy Gall, Joanne Woodward, Ethel Kennedy, Stanley Baxter, Jean Marie le Pen, Cleo Laine, Pru Scales, Yoko Ono, Robert Duvall, Imelda Marcos, Pete Murray, Bob Newhart, Willie Nelson, Dennis Skinner, Sonny Rollins, Linda Nolan. REMOVE Desmond Morris, Alan Alda, Marianne Faithfull, Angie Dickinson, Khamenei, Hal Linden, Andy Taylor RETURNEES Douglas Hurd (old and frail), Noam Chomsky (apparently very ill), James Whale (cancer well noted), David Attenborough (ancient, A list, and shouldn't be off the list), Shannen Doherty (bad mix of cancer metastases), Denis Law (ill and unusually quiet) tbh if Ozzy or Liza returned I'd rather axe Cleo Laine or Sandy Gall than take a spot from a newcomer. Too many decent picks out there. NEWCOMERS June Spencer, Glynis Johns (ancient and frail), David Graham (very frail and ancient, stroke complications), Jim Lovell, Patricia Routledge (A list and in care home now), Gene Hackman, Clint Eastwood (both 94 and too big to miss), Rupert Murdoch (sudden retirement puts him in frame imo), Brian Blessed (big guy, old and just bereaved, bad combo), Pope Francis (on his way out imo), Roberta Flack (terminally ill A lister), Tom Baker (legend, frail), Bruce Willis (huge star, very ill, 50/50 to go in 2024), Franz Beckenbauer (massive football name, allegedly very ill), Patrick Murray (terminally ill sitcom star), Esther Rantzen (terminally ill UK household name and pest), Joe Bugner (big name boxer, very ill, a very DL name), Sly Stone (music legend, very poor health), Sam Neill (big star with cancer) I chose between Glynis Johns and Eva Marie Saint, David Graham and William Russell, Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin, Franz Beckenbauer and Mario Zagallo (Zagallo iller but Beckenbauer seems more DL Cmme friendly) and there was just no room for Frank Field or Michael Aspel. I dont see them going for Toby Keith, Louis Van Gaal, Janey Godley etc etc.

Be surprised if he overtakes Anthony Eden circa August. FFS Lord Grenville, named above, abolished the slave trade with a minority government and the Lords and monarchy against him. Sunak has a massive parliament majority and has achieved fuck all to improve Britain.

Any of the Shahs of Sunset die, you could kill two birds with one stone!

Which is bollocks. It's about two people down on their luck who are nostalgic about the past but realise they still need each other, framed through the memories of past Christmases. It's the most Christmassy song possible and if it's depressing at points, so be it, it's that combination of down mixed with that hope which make it so timeless. Excellent song, excellent band.

It, The Pretenders and Jona Lewie the three that speak most to me and have for decades.

TV’s MAUDE’S HOST IS A GHOST!* 17/50 5 December 2023 American TV producer Norman Lear has died, aged 101, to give The Crowdsourced Deathlist another success. Lear was the brains behind legendary TV shows such as Maude and the Jeffersons and was credited with using his platform to push progressive messages well ahead of their time. Such as “don’t be a shit” and "sometimes women can be intelligent too". Such messages are still controversial on modern TV. He brought Till Death Us Do Part (All in the Family), and Stepford and Son (Sanford and Son) over to the US with remakes, which proved as popular as their originals. This meant he worked with Beryl Vertue, who signed Terry Nation's famous Daleks merchandise contract, and who also was the mother in law of Steven Moffat, and no, I am not using Six Degrees of Separation to mention Doctor Who links and build up the obit of someone not very known in the UK. He won six Emmys, and founded the People for the American Way to fight religious influence on TV. *Couldn't resist

REAPER v DAY 16/50 1st December 2023 Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has died aged 93 after a long battle with frail health. When O’Connor was nominated for the US Supreme Court in 1981 by Ronald Reagan, she was the first woman in history to be promoted to that bar. She gained a reputation as a moderate, which was eighties speech for someone who voted with William Rehnquist 99% of the time but put on a sad face about it. She backed the majority against Al Gore in 2000, as without she wouldn’t have been able to retire until 2005. Which is when she retired anyway.

DIPLOMATIC HISTORY 15/50 29th November 2023 The much loved American politician Henry Kissinger has died at the grand old age of 100. Kissinger was widely respected for his behind the scenes dealing with most US governments since the 1960s. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973, for heroically bombing the shit out of Cambodia and Vietnam, and Tom Lehrer retired in honour at his idol winning the prize. Kissinger pushed heavily for the rise in power of peaceful friends to America like Pol Pot and General Pinochet, and even in recent years, as an aged old man, he continued to use his stature to call for world peace, by giving Putin everything he wanted. In America, he helped pushed History’s Greatest Monster Jimmy Carter out of office with overwhelming public support. The Wall Street Journal mourned his loss, stating that places like Cuba where the CIA hadn’t bombed to shit had remained under the control of anti-American dictatorships to this day. Henry Kissinger named Diplomacy, a game where you conquer the shit out of other countries, as his favourite board game in 1973, and his legacy remains in the millions of people he freed from their enslaved lives, with the power of napalm. He also served on the International Olympic Committee, because even Joao Havelange wanted to look better sitting next to someone.

GOT CARTER 14/50 19th November 2023 Former First Lady of the United States, Rosalynn Carter, has died after a battle with dementia. That’s right. The former White House host is toast. I thank you. Rosalynn’s midwife was Jimmy Carter’s mum, so they knew each other from when they were toddlers, dated in the 1940s, and married in 1946. This started a seventy seven year marriage, which is longer than most life sentences. Rosalynn pushed Jimmy to succeed, she was the one who got him to run for President. As First Lady, she sat in on Cabinet meetings, represented the US at high conventions, was an envoy and used her position to push for mental health reform. It was she who pushed heavily for the formation of The Carter Centre, and she became an honorary fellow of the American Pyschiatric Association. In 2007, she successfully pushed Congress to pass a bill legalising equality in health insurance between physical and mental illnesses. She was ninety-six.

A RIGHT BOBBY FRAZZLER 13/50 21st October 2023 Footballing legend Bobby Charlton has died aged 86, after a long struggle with dementia. Charlton was immediately synonymous with Manchester United. A survivor of the Munich plane disaster, he played for Manchester United from 1956 to 1973, playing in over six hundred games and scoring over 200 goals. A scorer of great goals, Hugh McIlvanney remembered a fellow journalist bemoaning “Not another one of your aimless long sh…WHAT A GOAL BOBBY CHARLTON!” Charlton’s United won three league titles, the FA Cup, and famously the European Cup in 1968, when the deadly trio of Bobby Charlton, Denis Law and George Best trounced Benfica. (Bela Guttman was haunting Benfica, even before he died.) With England, Charlton played in three World Cups. He wasn’t picked to play in 1958, when England went out early. In 1962, he played well, but found the team ill designed to cope with his talents, or Brazil, and another exit happened. In 1966, Alf Ramsay decided to build his entire team around Bobby Charlton. Charlton’s midfield nous, and goals led to the team to the 1966 World Cup final, where oddly he and Franz Beckenbauer were told to mark the other. This is why the two greatest players in the world in 1966 had no bearing on the World Cup final as they expertly marked the other one entirely out of the game! Bobby, alongside his brother Jack, won the World Cup for the only time in English football history. In 1970, Charlton again played well against Brazil and the Germans, but oddly Alf Ramsay substituted Charlton, wishing to rest him for the Semifinal. As Brian Glanville quipped, no point resting if you don’t make it, and the lack of Charlton inspired Beckenbauer to dump England out of the Cup. Bobby Charlton retired from England duty on the spot. Charlton remained linked to his first love of Manchester United, and was a frequent ambassador for the club. Behind the scenes, he had a family feud with brother Jack, but both managed to patch things up before Jack’s death in 2020. Charlton was an outspoken promoter of United and England and the 1966 team, so when he became unable to do so, through health, alarm bells began to ring. He was also manager of Preston North End in the 1970s, and they were relegated. Even legends have their limits.

MORTERISMO 12/50 22nd September 2023 Giorgio Napolitano has died aged 98 to give the Crowdsourced Deathlist another success. Napolitano was President of Italy from 2006 until 2015, under which time Italy won the World Cup and made to the finals of Euro 2012. They also crashed out in the group stages of the World Cup in 2010 and 2014, but hey, they’ve yet to qualify for the World Cup under Sergio Mattarella’s tenure as Italian President, so that guy is clearly a jinx. A 1940s Communist, he shifted towards social democracy and became a member of the Prodi government. He was also a friend of Henry Kissinger, the Nobel Peace Prize winner. When the European financial crisis hit Italy, Napolitano had to replace Silvio Berlusconi as Italian PM. Luckily, he was listening to a lot of R.E.M. records at the time, and knew that Monti, this seems strange to me. Like a true Communist, he got a state funeral.

THE HEADLINE FORMERLY KNOWN AS "TV HOST IS GHOST" 11/50 26th August 2023 US TV host Bob Barker is now a ghost, to give The Crowdsourced Deathlist another success. Best known for his hosting of The Price is Right for thirty five years, Barker was also known for his animal conservation activism, frequently telling people to get their husbands neutered. Sorry, dogs. To back this up he supported those well known animal lovers PETA. Between Price and his earlier show Truth or Consequences (New Mexico), Bob Barker was a frequent on TV screens in America for over half a century. Barker appeared in Happy Gilmore, a film which shocked audiences by starring Adam Sandler and yet actually being funny. In his scene, Bob Barker plays TV host Bob Barker, who gets in a fight with the main character over the results in a charity goal tournament. At least an alligator didn’t bite his damned hand off, though! Nearly 90, he made a popular appearance as guest host of Monday Night RAW, sparring with fellow Republican Chris Jericho. He won eighteen Emmys, the Lifetime Achievement Award, the Hall of Fame, and had a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, but clearly his greatest achievement was winning a Slammy Award in 2009, which put him on equal terms with Sunny Owen Hart . (Joke pre-written 5 years ago edited due to Sunny murdering a guy.) Bob Barker was on the verge of his 100th birthday and ends many years of people being surprised he was still alive.

6 lists in. Plenty of time, 3 weeks to go. Currently there's someone younger than me in the top ten...

Dunno. Obligatory reference to it being one of my favourite DDP theme teams, though. (Although its younger than me now, that's surely some error...)

He's the host of the long awaited UK version of Jeopardy, which @Death Impends can hardly wait to be bored senseless hearing about in January.

Forgot about her, which is odd for someone 20 times more famous than Mel Brooks...

Apart from Meghan Markle, people having not heard of things is the dullest recurring forum discussion this place has on a regular basis.

Hairy Biker Dave Myers has returned to TV, but in this fluff piece for The Mirror he says: Which doesn't sound very optimistic to me.

Suffolk Strangler Steve Wright re-arrested on suspicion of the unsolved murder of teenager Victoria Hall in 1999 after new evidence was found. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-67649142

Retiring from Childline with immediate effect on health grounds. Was determined to keep going there as long as possible earlier in the year despite the cancer.

The BBC prop department in the sixties was one of the best for historical drama. The production teams all had a lot of experience in dressing up Shakespeare and others. (Oh, and Planet of Giants, that model fly is genuinely superb.)

I didn't think of Reign of Terror there, but come to think of it, the best scene (Ian and Barbara arguing about the ethics of time travel and "the good guys") is in a missing episode! Most of the early Hartnell space stories don't tend to be massively loved - Sensorites, Rescue, Keys of Marinus, Web Planet, Space Museum, all have their fans but none are lauded as classics. (Of those, I like The Space Museum the most, though it suffers from a director unsuited to comedy, and a lead guest actor who suffered a concussion shortly before recording! Marinus is absolutely schizophrenic, great stuff not to the mind-blowingly dull!) The Dalek Master Plan was probably the first proper space epic but, oh look, 9 episodes of 12 are missing!

The Massacre is the worst of the Hartnell historical losses. Hartnell in a dual role, a grim plot, directed by a TV great and with an amazing cast (Quatermass himself is in it) and pioneered some TV effects. We have nothing of it bar the audio. The Smugglers is also gone bar 90 seconds of footage which suggests it was an engagingly made thriller. The Myth Makers audio has entire moments of silence because the story was focused on the visual story telling. Very infuriating. Even some of the big favourite SF stories suffered. See the 6 part epic Dalek story which Patrick Troughton debuted in, or most of his 7 part Dalek war series finale in 1967. Fury from the Deep was loved by my mum. Seaweed taking over oil rigs, lots of folk horror stuff which sounds amazing on audio (and they've animated it). What do we have? About 40 seconds of off air clips, which suggest the rest of it was as amazing as everyone says. Mind you, we lost the BBC coverage of the moon landings at the same time too.