msc

Curses, foiled! And I'd have got away with it too if it weren't for those meddling kids err, already knowing them all.

You can send me a copy of your DDP longlist in case I've missed any 10 point certs, thanks.

if the Hartlepool is running in 2018, I will submit a team for sure. I gather Ali is rather run off his feet of late however.

Or maybe they could have a merry Christmas by not looking up murder victims?

He's a British boxer who won a bunch of British boxing titles and had a long undefeated run iirc. Hence why his illness has been featured on the BBC, Sky, and at least once as a news story on BBC News 24!!! It's fair enough to not know fame from one country to another, but we don't tend to waltz into the Rotten Dead Pool going "Hey, will this Mario Cuomo dude obit in the US? Not certain the QO is forthcoming!"

I can see it in my inbox, @Death Impends! Shall add it to the masterlist in a bit, just in from Christmas dinner at mums and slowly gaining my whereabouts to check how many shortlisters died today.

Yeah, perhaps, but... why's that a bad thing? Does anyone care about Norwegian football outside of bits of Norway? I glanced over those stats but seems to show Fergus McCann right: live within your means, build up your own capital, dominate. Rangers just spent everyone else's money, it came back to haunt them. Died. The New Rangers probably perma-fucked for the time being. Anyhow, never mind all that. Apparently Thistle made a profit this year? Fantastic. We were a complete basket case financially only about 15-16 years ago.

2 years ago... The death heard round the (DDP) world...

She played the one who got to 100 (Maria - named Louisa in the film). Didn't get close to that age.

6 years ago, Mirror journo Sue Carroll died aged 58. I shall never forget this, you see, as I had lined her up to be the joker for my first Pan Breed DDP team. I was just checking the BBC news at a family Christmas meal and saw news of her demise, and swore loudly. Had to pass it off as having whacked my foot against the table by accident! And of course, my first sub was Luise Rainer, who didn't die. To compound things, my 2nd sub was Rhodes Boyson, who DID die in 2012.

Gcreptile likes parallels with other years - Fujimori could be the Mario Soares of 2018. And if he doesn't...

The Reaper took a swing for Rigg a few months back, but thankfully missed. Phew! A world without Emma Peel scarcely bares thinking. She doesn't have her own thread, and I'm not starting one, especially not for "survived a scare" relative good news.

Alexei Navalny makes his latest bid for the Drop 40.

Aye, back is the key word there.

I was unsure of my team but now I've found a criminal, a sports man and a FFBI type, all of whom wont obit, I feel more reassured of usual mediocrity.

Remember, relatives still need to get a QO...

My all exciting (hah) last guess at the shape of next years Deathlist. I look forward to seeing how wrong it is! (number = 2017 spot) 1. George Bush Sr (28) 2. Leah Bracknell (14) 3. Kirk Douglas (1) 4. Rev. Billy Graham (3) 5. John McCain (NEW) 6. Prince Philip (6) 7. Clive James (-) 8. Olivia de Havilland (1) 9. Vera Lynn (2) 10. Nobby Stiles (23) 11. Tessa Jowell (NEW) 12. Sean Connery (-) 13. Lord Carrington (4) 14. Bob Dole (13) 15. Robert Mugabe (18) 16. Mikhail Gorbachev (NEW) 17. Stan Lee (9) 18. Jimmy Carter (15) 19. Javier Perez de Cuellar (19) 20. Henry Kissinger (-) 21. Barbara Bush (NEW) 22. Angela Lansbury (-) 23. Leslie Philips (17) 24. Denis Norden (7) 25. Queen Elizabeth II (24) 26. Sidney Poitier (NEW) 27. Jimmy Greaves (-) 28. Herman Wouk (11) 29. David Attenborough (NEW) 30. Gene Hackman (NEW) 31. Akihito (41) 32. Fernando Ricksen (NEW) 33. Willie Nelson (NEW) 34. John Hume (NEW) 35. Jacques Chirac (-) 36. Jill Gascoine (25) 37. Pope Benedict XVI (36) 38. Ian Holm (NEW) 39. Stirling Moss (NEW) 40. Desmond Tutu (40) 41. Prunella Scales (-) 42. Douglas Hurd (NEW) 43. Franco Zeffirelli (NEW) 44. Honor Blackman (29) 45. Dean Francis (NEW) 46. Diana Athill (NEW) 47. Betty White (22) 48. Charlotte Rae (NEW) 49. Ray Wilson (NEW) 50. Valerie Harper (46) dropped - Gay Byrne, Hosni Mubarak, Sandy Gall, David Prowse, Ian St John, Bob Barker, Pierre Cardin, Doug Ellis.

Got it! All the breakable records at this point are going - points needed to qualify, most points by an individual, and so on. And even then, there's 31 names who can jump into the top 50 with a single vote, and a few still to vote as they've mentioned above. All to play for.

2013 - Coase, Clerides 2014 – Martinus, Jardine 2015 – G Cole, Woodhead 2016 - Asa Briggs, Aherne 2017 – Farnham It has become somewhat of a tradition for me for names dropped from my main Pan Breed team to die the next year. In the spirit of Christmas, this forum Scrooge announces that Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, Colin Butts and Anna Holmlund will 100% be getting the axe from Pan Breed 2018, and so by history and sods law, at least one of them is now condemned to missing Christmas 2018.

Hmm, they only just updated his contract a few weeks ago, which I took to mean the exact opposite as an update!

Aye, and Galbraith was an odd miss. He was old and he'd been ill towards the end of 2005. Promptly dropped by the list, and dies! Of all of those, some are unfortunate (on one year, die the next - instinct right but not the timing), others are bizarre (Yeltsin, and my memory still keeps trying to tell me Borgnine was a hit), but the one single staggering miss, imo, is Alec Guinness. Not only was he one of the all time greats, but he was on the 1996, 1997, 1998 and 1999 lists! I'm sure there's a lesson there.

Back when the great Peter Falk was diagnosed with Alzheimers, lots of guest posts - allowed at the time - kept showing up that year to tell everyone, even long after Falk's condition was widely known. It became a joke response to when someone brought up obvious information (ie if someone new posted today "hey, Leah Bracknell has lung cancer!") but has been overkilled to death so much it's degenerated into a meme.

Bread was by Carla Lane. So naturally every single episode should be incinerated immediately, and anyone who saw an episode vaccinated to be on the safe side.

I do have a theme team planned, and it's going to be even worse than this years one. Something for nobody to look forward to there.

People take the oft used quote on the main page seriously, I guess. That said, while LFN is right, there were a few picks this year which did look suspiciously like someone had read *some* of the forum. That, or the Cmme has big Canadian rock fans.