msc

That's right, the big guy gets his own thread after his appearance on BBC1 tonight reminded me to start a fucking thread for him. Tom Baker, The Doctor Who to anyone with a vague awareness of the show, is 86 now, and has apparently been in frail health the last few years after a lifetime of booze started to catch up. Apart from his 7 year lead role in Doctor Who and its lifetime of pop culture references, he was also famously Rasputin in Nicholas and Alexandra. He's also the narrator of Little Britain, Captain Redbeard in Blackadder and the voodoo loving artist in Vault of Horror. Anyhow, here he is on BBC1 an hour ago: Proper future DL front pager.

Glad your issues got fixed. The Special AKA were on board with their song Free @Gooseberry Crumble too.

Where the fuck has 2022 2023 gone to? Apparently it's the 1st November 5th November already, so time to set in motion another Crowdsourced Deathlist. The 2022 3 version looks set to finish ahead level with the official Deathlist (though they lacked the help of Gary Burgess actually all the 2023 TCD picks were vaguely sensible). Hey, no one is ever going to know that was copy and pasted from last years thread. Job done. 2023's list saw a number of familiar faces exit, pursued by a bear, from George Alagiah to Rolf Harris, Topol to the Unabomber. So let's see how the class of 2024 do. Will the 2024 edition be able to top our current list? We will see, but for the time being let's go over the rules, shall we? THE RULES Rules 1. Please send a list of celebrities you wish to vote for to msc, during the time period of 5th November to the 31st December 2023. The list must have a minimum of 12 names on it, and a maximum of 50. Yes, this means we are open now, as I'll just forget to officially open it otherwise. This has happened on multiple occasions... Please send them by either PM or via Shadow List thread, not by email, semaphore, Morse code, Deathlist live chat, animated corpses, text messages, or any other means of communication you can think of. And you may only submit via 1 of those two methods above, NOT BOTH METHODS! 2. Your 1st choice will gain 50 points, 2nd 49, etc etc to 50th which will gain 1 point. This is true even if you only send in 12 names, or 13 names, or 49 names. 3. When the deadline passes, all of the points that an individual celebrity gain will be added together, and the top fifty celebrities with the most points overall will go on the Utterly Unofficial Forum List. 4. Feel free to add substitutes at the bottom of the list, which will only be counted if one of your fifty die before January 1st 2024. If for example your number one pick is such a smart one they die before January 1st, then I will give 50 points to your 2nd pick, and so on until 1 point is given to the first substitute. 4b) Anyone who wishes to avoid a Pope Benny the Fuckwit Meltdown and just says "oh put my subs in at the number of the person who died" gets 10 post likes from diego. 5. Do try to make the picks as "Deathlisty" as possible. More Buffy Sainte-Marie, less Chickadee, if you know what I mean. Someone likely to score an obit with one of the major English language news outlets. 6. The deadline for sending in entries is 31st December 2023 at 9 pm GMT. That's 4pm New York Time (31st December) and 8am (1st Jan) Melbourne time to help out non-Brits. This earlier deadline is so there's enough time to complete the list before the new year as well as enjoying some extra time off as well. I am keeping Joey's earlier cut off time for simplicity because did you see what that bloody ex-Pope did? Chaos everywhere. 7. This is essentially a forum game without a winner. It does however put the long held notion by some that the combined minds of the forum know better than the Committee to the test. 8. Who picked whom will remain anonymous. Unless the person announces it of course. 9. The paranoid probably shouldn't send in their DDP unique hopefuls. Whilst I do not intend to steal them away, it would make no sense: if the person then showed up on the list, their chances of being unique would be very slim indeed! 9b. If you do wish to send your DDP unique hopefuls, I won't complain! 10. To keep to the Deathlist spirit, only the top 25 ranked celebrities from the current list of Crowdsourced Deathlist 2023 survivors will be used: Jimmy Carter, Henry Kissinger, Joanne Woodward, Glynis Johns, Roberta Flack, James Whale, Frank Field, Rosalynn Carter, Jonnie Irwin, Linda Nolan, Eva Marie Saint, June Spencer, Dick van Dyke, Ruth Buzzi, Nigel Starmer Smith, Andy Taylor, Mel Brooks, Yoko Ono, Sandra Day O'Connor, Jean Marie le Pen, Rob Burrow, Shannen Doherty, Norman Tebbit, Jacques Delors, David Attenborough, Noam Chomsky, Marianne Faithfull, Sonny Rollins, Stanley Baxter, Randy Jackson, Norman Lear, James Earl Jones, Francoise Hardy, James Watson, Vera Miles, the Duke of Kent and David Graham. As usual, this is something for me to worry about, not you. ie: 10a) Our actual collated list will stick to the "25 from the previous year" rule. 10b) As a result, if our top fifty, after all votes have been counted, has more than twenty-five of the 2023 survivors (named for ease in Rule 10), then the lowest ranked excess survivors will be axed from the list in favour of The Fifty-First ranked celebrity and so on... 10c) Since we don't know if that'll be an issue until I actually do the counting, voters don't need to worry about limiting their personal lists to 25 survivors. It'd be nice if they did, but that's life. 11) Please pick living people. Folk do die before 1st January, but there were a few cases of people dead for a number of years chosen last time. Please do not pick animals, or ISIS prisoners, or kids, or any of the usual no go areas. 12) The Deathray Rule. If Deathers is reading this, he is more than welcome to find some way to get his usual 50 points for that bloody weatherman in! If that bloody weatherman doesn't get his formerly traditional 50 from a mystery person (ie, not you, TQR) then this rule will be retired in 12 months time. Anyhow, enjoy. Or not. Will Esther still be telling us That's Life in 2024?

Oh I haven't started one of these for a likely future DL pick in ages. Writer, critic, rent-a-cynic, political philosopher and never off the TV pronouncer Noam Chomsky is 92 this year, and judging by this appearance last week on one of the online lefty news channels, is starting to show and sound his age after a long period of doing the old Dorian Gray thing. As someone who doesn't want to leave the limelight he'll do his continual aging in public, so here's a thread for him. And we can't have Gooseberry start all the A lister threads now...

So, as we already worked out you were secretly high up in government during those Brexit negotiations* so with that in mind. Telford is a UK constituency and so... we need to await news if you've forced Rishi Sunak to have an election soon after the locals? Got it. Good luck. *For any newcomers, Biblio's work trips had a habit of corresponding to Brexit negotiation trips abroad in 2017-ish.

Cause of death - anti-freeze in the wine.

tbf I'm a Glasgow socialist and, by comparison, the political distance between me and Ken Clarke is a lot shorter than it is between me and Suella Braverman or George Galloway!

@RoverAndOut sorry to hear about your dad. Best wishes to him and you. I had a stroke in my early twenties and a lot of that feels familiar though I was lucky with my age and the severity level. Short term memory is buggered even today though, among other symptoms I'm stuck with! I do remember vaguely atos, or the dread and atmosphere to the interviews more than the actual questions. Anyhow I'll be cheering the demise of ids come election night. Sunak is a shithead cunt. And a Millionaire one to boot who only knows struggle when his servants are sick. I know what would help improve the nations collective mental health. A fucking election.

Christopher Reich also has a small but memorable role in the original Survivors, as the Doctor who realises there's a pandemic before dying of it and telling his friend (and show main character) Jenny to get to the countryside. He's also in one of the Armchair Thrillers, though not the one with the ghost nun everyone remembers. Sheena Penson is in a good Taggart but in a blink and you'll miss it extra role. She was recurring in Still Game but not memorably so. Patricia Heneghan had a recurring role in Crown Court in episodes not yet repeated by Talking Pictures. She was in a lot of the early 70s TV classics, and played a minor role in classic film Whistle down the Wind. Murray Hayne a recognisable face. Another memorable role in Survivors, Hodges from When the Boat Comes in (seemingly never off Drama), Martin in the (godawful) Brothers, and yes, as a hypnotised killer in a Tara King episode of The Avengers. One of those "that face" old school actors.

The weekend before the election, The Observer did a bunch of constituency polls, one of which showed Enfield Southgate as being only 3 points between Portillo and Twigg. This led to a vast influx of Labour volunteers to the seat on the final week. Anyhow, Portillo says he genuinely expected Paxman to bring this threat to his own seat up in their early discussion but Jeremy refused to. Even so, he thought it would be "worrisomely close" but not an actual defeat until he got to the count. In 2011, Ken Clarke did one of his Ken Clarke interviews (you know, drink in hand, no tact), and said he felt Hague had made the error of going to be elected leader a parliament too early, that he should have let Ken Clarke fail in the role in 97-01 and then take over when the shine fell off Blair. Now, Clarke would say that, and I think Hague had a bit of the Kinnock about him whenever he got elected as Tory leader, but in that same interview, Clarke suggested Ed Miliband had made the exact same error, and would have been better going for the Labour job in 2015-16 when the public would be more amenable to listening. Which also turned out true, though Labour's choice of Jeremy Corbyn somewhat negated any advances! Also, while I don't think WIlliam Hague was PM material, he looked like bloody MacMillan or Disraeli next to Iain Duncan bloody Smith!

At least he's lived long enough to no longer have the worst famous person in a tank photo accolade.

Great work @Ulitzer95. Will look at more in-depth when on laptop next. @YoungWillz you did mention Lillias Walker as you were the source for some bigger name fans hearing about it!

The year is 2040. AI Trump rules half the world, Clorox is running the msc memorial Deadpool, and James Whale is still saying he's only got one more Christmas this time.

Worth adding that we love a political narrative and the 92 narrative ignores that polling had become much kinder to the Tories under Major but was being ignored because obviously the Tories were going to lose. John Major was quite popular with the public even among those who disliked his government. As for Blair, a lot of 95/96 political news stuff has gone up on YouTube and it's an eye-opener. Leading Tories several times pointing out the polls can be wrong, they are hearing a different story on the doors, Tony Blair hasn't won over the public and Labour don't have any policies. I was getting deja vu watching. A lot of Tories legit thought the polling was wrong and that's been backed up to me by campaigners and candidates from the time. It also chimes with my admittedly childhood memories that Blair became popular after the election. But as with 1992 we like our narratives binary. I think now is worse because frankly many people respected Major, Ken Clark, Michael Forsyth, etc even as they voted them out. Who has genuine widespread respect in this cabinet? I always try to be fair and even then I'm struggling for names.

I love House of Games. Especially the "what year did X happen", where on the map is this thing and how many x in the UK rounds. They've added a bunch of boring rounds but I'll still watch to get to the good ones.

I'd keep Burns over Stuart, personally. Also I was today years old when I found out that, despite the press calling her a centenarian on her death (which I vaguely remember), Lillian Gish was only 99 1/2. I guess not everyone who makes 99 will make it to 100 or something.

As formerly seen in the Stats thread, but it's a bit lost in the shuffle here. So here is a thread for quick reference on who won all the various Deathlist forum (and related) deadpools. The Deathlist Forum Deadpool Hall of Fame Hartlepool Deadlypool 2006 – Football Fan 2007 – Football Fan 2008 - Football Fan 2009 – Why Not? (whoever they were) 2010 – MaryportFuncity 2011 – MaryportFunCity 2012 – The Unknown Man 2013 – Bert Trautman 2014 - Estuarian Float 2015 – Captain Chorizo 2016 - Maryportfuncity 2017 – Death Impends 2018 - Dead Cow 2019 - The Old Lady 2020 - Maryportfuncity 2021 - Funeralopolis 2022 - Banana I once led the Hartlepool Deadlypool for 5 whole days – 9th Jan to 14th Jan 2012 – between the deaths of Malam Bacai Sanha and Dame Lesley Strathie. DDP (since forum opened) 2004 – The Deathlist Committee (Grim Reaper/Statto/Welshman/others) 2005 – (Fallen Sparrow) 2006 – Football Fan 2007 – Football Fan 2008 - DDT 2009 – (Tonight Matthew, I’m Going to be Badly-torn Boy) 2010 – Octopus of Odstock 2011 – DDT 2012 – DDT 2013 – Spade Cooley 2014 – Spade Cooley 2015 – Spade Cooley 2016 – Spade Cooley 2017 - Bert 2018 - Dr T 2019 - Death Impends (at long last) 2020 - Reptile 2021 - Salmon Mousse 2022 - Spade Cooley Scavenger Hunt Deadpool I(2016/17) – Rotten Ali II (2018-20) - Roverandout III (2020-1) Banana IV (2021-2) - Roverandout V (2023-) Windy City Deadpool 2016/17 – Death Impends 2017/18 - Death Impends 2018/19 - Death Impends 2019/20 - Clorox 2020/21 - Death Impends 2021/22 - Joey Russ 2022/23 - tbc Hare’s Death Pool 2014 – Rotten Ali 2015 – Toast 2016 – Gcreptile 2017 - Grim Up North 2018 - Death Impends 2019 - John Key 2020 - JiromeonKimura 2021 - An Fear Beag 2022 - Death Impends Deathrace 2009 – Raskolnikov 2010 – N/A due to lack of death 2011 – DDT 2012 – Spade Cooley 2013 – DDT 2014 – Death Impends 2015 – msc 2016 – DDT 2017 – Death Impends 2018 - msc 2019 - Rad 2020 - Rad 2021 - An Fear Beag 2022 - Banana 2023 - Banana Shaun’s Death by Numbers 2015 – Sir Creep 2016 – DDT 2017 - Gcreptile 2018 - Death Impends 2019 - Death Impends 2020 - Death Impends 2021 - Captain Chorizo 2022 - Banana By Election Bingo 2015-2020 Parliament –Rockhopperpenguin, The Engineer, Voice of Young Maryport, Time 2017-2019 Parliament - Boris Johnson Advent Avalanche 2016: Death Impends 2017: Sean 2018: Banana 2019: Reptile 2020: Spade Cooley 2021: Bibliogryphon 2022: Drol The Midsummer Dead Pool 2016: Spade Cooley 2017: Captain Chorizo 2018: The Dead Cow 2019: Clorox 2020: Toast 2021: Perhaps/Chorizo TIE 2022: Drol Inverse Dead Pool 2011 – Garn2 2012 – Estuarian Float 2013 – N/A (didn’t happen due to change of host) 2014 – Bibliogryphon 2015 – Death Impends 2016 – Pedro67 2017 – Drol 2018 - machotrouts 2019 - drol 2020 - TQR 2021 - BabyBlue 2022 - Yorkshire Banker Soapstar 2021 - Toast WTF deadpool 2017 – Imnothades, rockhopperpenguin Half Year Deadpool 2010 – Windsor Kentucky Derby Dead Pool 2014 – Dr Zorders Predict the Paper 2012 – Paul Bearer Easter Deadpool 2017 - Book 2018 - Joey Russ The Deathlist Cup 2017 – deadsox 2018 - DDT 2019 - Spade 2020 - An Fear Beag 2021 - Reptile 2022 - Joey Russ Alt Obits 2017 – Jiroemon Kimura 2018 - AO Guy 2019 - AO Guy 2020 - Joey Russ 2021 - Banana 2022 - Banana Poker Tournament 2017 – Death Impends 2018 - Death Impends 2019 - Captain Chorizo 2020 - Perhaps 2021 - Captain Chorizo Six People Six Months 2021 - Reptile Jokers 2017 – Death Impends 2018 - Torva Messor 2019 - An Fear Beag 2020 - Book DL Prediction Game 2016 – Book 2017 – Book 2018 - John Key 2019 - Vaagheid 2020 - TomTomTelekom 2021 - Vaagheid 2022 - msc 2023 - The Daredevil Doug Stanhope 2021 - JiromeonKimura ABC Deadpool I (2018) - Gcreptile II (2019) - Rad III (2020) - Captain Chorizo IV (2021) - Banana V (2022) - Reptile 5-4-3-2-1 2018 - Gcreptile 2019 - Gcreptile Inverse Death Pools 2018-20 - The Old Lady Deaths of the Silver Screen I (2018-20) - Reptile II (2020-22) - En Passant Twisted DL 2022 - Book End of Days Deadpool 2020 - Joey Russ Electoral Deadpool 2022 - Drol 20/20 2020 - Book 2021 - Annami 2022 - MariNisia Deathlist COrrection Game 2019 - Willz 2020 - Etushi Centenarians Pool 2020 - Drol, Chorizo 2021 - Drol 2022 - Great Uncle Bulgaria Nobel Prize Pool 2021 - WEP Arghtons Deadpool 2020-21 - msc Number of Combined Deadpool Wins 18 - Death Impends 11 - Reptile 9 - Spade Cooley, Banana 8 – DDT, Captain Chorizo 7- drol 6 - Book 5 – Football Fan, Joey Russ, 4 - Maryport, An Fear Beag, msc 3 –, Rad, Toast, Jiroemon Kimura 2- Bert, Rotten Ali, Esturian Float, rockhopperpenguin, John Key, The Dead Cow, The Old Lady, Clorox, Vaagheid, Perhaps, Bibliogryphon, Roverandout 1 – Why Not?, The Unknown Man, Deathlist Cmme, OoO, Raskolnikov, Sir Creep, The Engineer, Voice of Young Maryport, Time, Sean, Garn, Pedro67, ImnotHades, Windsor, Dr Zorders, Paul Bearer, deadsox, Grim Up North, Dr T, machotrouts, Torva Messor, AO Guy,TomTomTelekom, TQR, Etushi, Willz, Funeralopolis, Salmon Mousse, Baby Blue, WEP, Annami, En Passant, Yorkshire Banker, The Daredevil, Great Uncle Bulgaria, MariNisia Will be added to as more deadpools are won (and/or brought to my attention). UPDATED 16th January 2023

Political Bastards, volume 1 of a three trillion book series...

A nod of the hat towards @Octopus of Odstock for the tip. And yes, I take their motorsports suggestions very seriously.

If Joe Haines told me I lived in Scotland I'd demand a second opinion.

Joe Kinnear has died.

Remember FOUR MONTHS ago when you said Ed Davey was resigning by the end of the week?

I was tempted to pick a bunch of old CAS members for the Cup but I couldn't find your list of the old ones in the 2 minutes I searched before giving up.

A reminder that back in the nineties small steps were being made towards, if not peace, understanding. Then a fanatic, inspired by the words of Benjamin Netanyahu, shot Israeli leader Rabin dead. (In case you think I'm being unfair, a few weeks before Rabin was shot, Netanyahu led a protest march where he brought out a noose and had folk chant Death to Rabin.) Despite inflaming a situation that directly lead to the assassination of a political opponent, Netanyahu was able to take power afterwards, on the basis of being the strongman who can protect Israel from violence. And any time moves were made on either side (not enough of course) he was there to snuff them out. He built a coalition of the fearful, the trusting and the xenophobic. The attacks in October were an existential crisis for Netanyahu, because his entire career is based on being the strongman who prevents this, and it turned out his entire life was built on bollocks and lies, and his own actions had made things much, much worse. The IDF attack on the charity workers doesn't surprise, because Jeremy Bowen (well known BBC journalist) was specifically targeted in 2000. There's been a flexible definition of enemy combatants used in the past, for which the buck stops with the man in charge: Benjamin Netanyahu. For the terminally thick (not you, Willz), this does not mean the anti-semites are right. Fuck them. Israelis have a right to exist same as the rest of us, and racists can get to fuck, but... the Palestinians also have those rights. This is only going to end through some form of two state peace treaty, and the warmonger leaders pretty much need to be removed for any chance of that to succeed. (This includes Hamas, who aren't the voices of all Palestine as much as Netanyahu isn't the voice of all Israel.) It's not surprising, but it is extremely depressing. I can't see either side getting rid of their cunts, and meanwhile, children and innocents continue to die horribly.

And many thanks for a speedy and stress less succession. TCD will be in good hands.