msc

Wooooo! Enjoy retirement, @Grim Up North - you were an absolute star setting up the Cmme, dealing with the spreadsheets and data entry, telling me off when I got too Glaswegian with the punters. This whole thing would have died a death in 2019 without him. Good luck @Banana - you've been vetted by the best so I have full faith!

We all knew Ryuichi Sakamoto was very ill. His throat cancer has spread to both lungs. Of note for the DL Cmme and probably the Drop 40, Sakamoto reveals in the build to his likely final public performance (already recorded in advance months ago), that he was given a prognosis of around six months to live.... in early May 2020. (DI pointed out the cancer diagnosis was before Playing the Piano 2020, not 2022.)

Ok Diego liking your posts may be a threat instead... I did in fact and was happy Tobin is already dead. He'd presumably have passed the notoriety threshold but on general principle anyway...

No one ever reads the rules. I put jokes in the crowdsourced rules safe in the knowledge everyone skins over them. Can't mind if I was in every hares pool. Most of them at least. The usual team with replacements will be in later in the month. Unless there was a rule against that I didn't read.

NOT DEAD DON'T WORRY Andy appeared on I Can See Your Voice tonight, looking his sixty odd self but in fine fettle. If someone has a thread might as well use it.

Over 5 years ago, Drol said: "ALAIN DELON!!!!!!!!!!!!" and he's nowhere nearer to the dying bit.

As a fan of many Elton John songs, I am completely lost here.

France 2-0 Poland England 2-1 Senegal Watford 1-0 Crawley

That shows how much I've been paying attention to the lower leagues...

Yeah, that's what the sweepstake thread is for! Hmm, this agreement's not going to help that "thinking every new post is the death notice", I admit.

Netherlands 2-1 USA Argentina 0-1 Australia York 0-2 Wrexham

68 Baccara – Yes Sir, I can boogie 64 Donna Summer - I Feel Love 62 Rod Stewart – I don't want to talk about it / The first cut is the deepest 54 ABBA – Knowing me, knowing you 40 ABBA - Fernando +1 40 ABBA - The Name of the Game +2 32 Hot Chocolate – So you win again +1 30 ABBA - Mamma Mia 24.The Four Seasons – December 1963 (Oh, what a night) 20 ABBA - Dancing Queen 18. Elton John & Kiki Dee- Don`t go breaking my heart -1 11 Tina Charles – I love to love (But my baby loves to dance) -5 11 Julie Covington - Don`t cry for me Argentina This is going to be a difficult one, the top ten are all perfectly fine songs. Elton's only number one until 1990 (!) is one of my least favourite of his big songs, typically.

Is on ITV right now on some cooking show. Not actually doing the cooking. Clearly in the old man stage now but can still run through his anecdotes, think he should be OK for a few years yet.

Oh don't worry, if I find out someone like Gordon Faith died you'll all hear about it.

He was a bit part local actor from Albuquerque who appeared briefly in two episodes of Breaking Bad. Can't work out how folk night have missed this.

She was in the dreaded 15th to 25th zone on my DDP shortlist but I was erring to keeping her as the stats for her cancer's prognosis grew suitably grim in the next 12 months.

DDP title race, 2022:

Hmm, there are the living names after 4 years, @YoungWillz Of the 192 old or ill suggestions, 81 are dead.

Great song. So are Name of the Game and Fernando. Actually, their weakest of the 5 there for me is Mamma Mia, one of the most internationally popular songs of the 70s. Not bad going. My favourite ABBA hit was number one a few years later.

64 Donna Summer - I Feel Love 62 Baccara – Yes Sir, I can boogie 56 Rod Stewart – I don't want to talk about it / The first cut is the deepest 51 ABBA – Knowing me, knowing you 36 ABBA - The Name of the Game +4 34 ABBA - Fernando 32 Hot Chocolate – So you win again 29 ABBA – Mamma Mia 26 Elton John & Kiki Dee – Don´t go breaking my heart 25 ABBA – Dancing Queen 24 The Four Seasons – December 1963 (Oh, what a night) 20 Julie Covington - Don`t cry for me Argentina 20 Tina Charles – I love to love (But my baby loves to dance) - 6 13 The Real Thing – You to me are everything 12 Elvis Presley – Way down

Ghana 0-1 Uruguay South Korea 0-1 Portugal Cameroon 0-1 Brazil Serbia 0-1 Switzerland Chester 0-1 Blyth Because results are being very unexpected, I went for crushing obvious dull results to bring us all back down to Earth.

Right, thanks for the kind words. Back to adding lists to the masterlist again. And we have Zemin and others to remove. Thirty days left. I'm sure it was January 1st 2016 just the other day... Yes, the usual invites/etc will go out but probably after the 9th. No rush after all.

I can help you on this one. The list is whatever Grim and his pals feel like it is when they have their annual piss up Cmme meeting. Some years they want punt picks on folk out of the limelight, some years they've been on a Mary Tyler Moore kick, some years sport is their bag. The link, if there is any, is names a group of 50-something-year old folk with access to 21st Century internet have heard of, enough to put on their list. It's as open to whim as a really big DDP team. Just one that accidentally built a cult fandom around it!

Elias Corey is something to do with synthesis which they teach in Chemistry but I wasn't paying attention at the time. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was the President of Liberia, and an exiled rebel who helped turn the country around after the Charles Taylor years. Mario Vargas Llosa is one of the most acclaimed living novelists in the Spanish language. I've never read any of his books though. Torsten Wiesel came up with the treatment for child cataracts, saving thousands of kids from a lifetime of disability. Ben Roy Mottelson worked on the atomic structure of atoms, and died in May 2022. Edmund Phelps is your traditional American economist. I knew who Wiesel, Llosa and Sirleaf were but had to google the others!

53 Baccara – Yes Sir, I can boogie 53 Donna Summer – I Feel Love 46 Rod Stewart – I don't want to talk about it / The first cut is the deepest 45 ABBA – Knowing me, knowing you 33 ABBA – Dancing Queen 32 Hot Chocolate – So you win again 32 ABBA - The name of the Game +4 30 Julie Covington – Don´t cry for me Argentina 30 Elton John & Kiki Dee – Don´t go breaking my heart 29 ABBA – Mamma Mia 29 ABBA – Fernando 26 Tina Charles – I love to love (But my baby loves to dance) 24 Elvis Presley – Way down 23 The Four Seasons – December 1963 (Oh, what a night) 20 The Real Thing – You to me are everything 17 The Wurzels – Combine Harvester (Brand New Key) 14 Kenny Rogers – Lucille  4 Slik – Forever and ever -6