DevonDeathTrip

Agree. Maybe he'll make a symbolic gesture and throw his legs out of the window instead.

This thread makes no sense at all, so I'm closing it.

Wikipedia's list of notable people from Corleone (of whom Riina was one) is made up entirely of gangsters! There were 153 murders in Corleone between 1945 and 1949, quite impressive for a town with a population of 11000. Norman Lewis, in his seminal book about the Mafia, The Honoured Society, wrote very eloquently about two extended families from the town who managed to almost completely exterminate each other in a dispute over the ownership of a tiny grove of olive trees.

Riina missed out on a birthday bonus by just four hours.

As a complete ignoramus when it comes to rap, can anyone advise on the obitability of (Kid) Frost? I believe he had cancer in 2016, but I don't know how he has progressed since then.

Retired Irish jockey Ken Whelan is apparently receiving support from a hospice, according to a report from March. I'm not sure he'll get the required obits though, as he doesn't seem to be well known outside the world of horseracing. Mind, the Daily Telegraph did give him a mention when he retired in 2012, so an obituary isn't completely out of the question.

It's all part of my cunning plan. They weren't going to be unique picks because somebody else already knew about them, therefore why hold back? My view is that the more saturated the field is with worthy candidates, the less necessary it will be for others to research and potentially find out about the picks I'm more confident they don't know about (As you might have gathered I'm actually doing some work to improve my DDP performance next year. I don't like having to scroll down to find out where I am on the leaderboard)

Athlete Lindy Remigino, 86, who won two gold medals (100m and 4x100m) at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, suffering from pancreatic cancer

Bill Heine, journalist, presenter and creator of The Headington Shark, suffering from terminal cancer.

Former Celtic and Manchester United midfielder Liam Miller rumoured to be gravely ill.

Short. Very short.

Denis Goldberg, sentenced to life in jail alongside Nelson Mandela, talks to the Guardian about his battle with lung cancer...

An update - from August- about my DDP wildcard pick Steve Pollard.

Heard something on the radio earlier about a programme where Pat from EastEnders and the darts player Bobby George go off on a cannabis smoking tour of the USA. Anyone know when it's on, because I can't miss that!

Apologies, I think I might have been had by fake news. Move along, nothing to see here

Just thought I'd bring this thread to the top...

Johnny Clegg OBE, born in the UK, but a big name in South African folk, has been suffering from pancreatic cancer for the last two years and has just embarked on a farewell tour. Reading through his wiki page and seeing that he has featured on the BBC and Guardian websites in the past, I'd say a UK obit is assured and he has walked straight into my DDP team for next year.

I know that all of the British executioners are now dead, so did some research to see if any living European executioners were still out there. The Spanish were still garotting and the French were still guillotining people in the 1970s, so I thought one of these countries would possibly have a living candidate, but it seems not. East Germany's executioners are all now deceased as well. Greece's last execution was in 1972, but a google search for 'Greek executioners' didn't come up with much. Looking further afield, I think I'm safe in saying that there are no remaining Canadian, South African or Australian executioners alive either. There's a huge, rambling and somewhat incomplete Wiki page listing executioners, if anyone else feels like going there. One candidate I found, who I think would possibly get a news mention when he expires, is Israel's Shalom Nagar, now in his eighties, who carried out his nation's only execution, that of Adolf Eichmann in 1962. I did have a chuckle when I read that Mr Nagar is a dwarf, maybe he had to use a stepladder to place the noose around Eichmann's neck?

Pop/Jazz singer Keely Smith in failing health according to this.

Sister Wendy Beckett is a must have for any discerning deadpooler. A consecrated virgin and a hermit, she rises at 1.30 each morning to begin her almighty shift of contemplative prayer, occasionally breaking off to present a TV show about art. Shockingly never capped by Deathlist.net (notwithstanding the protracted efforts of yours truly), Sister Wendy could prove to be a Deathrace dark horse if the cold gets in to her badly insulated caravan during the Great Blizzard of January 2018.

@Worthing Paul thanks for the tip. Also, congratulations for setting what must surely be a new Deathlist record of leaving it thirteen and a half years between posts. Welcome back

Does this get points for Les Mutrie? KICK-OFF Hull City 0-0 Nott'm Forest After the usual pleasantries, a minute's applause for the late Hull legend Les Mutrie, and a loud, resounding roar around the KCOM, we are underway. Hull City to kick-off. We're off.

Welsh born Canadian historian Dorothy Harley Eber is still alive at 92. She's an authority on Inuit history, although I doubt that will be enough to get her an obit here. Anyway, I only mention her as I've just had the dubious pleasure of reading her book Encounters on the Passage about the Inuit's reaction to meeting European polar explorers in the nineteenth century. I read it because I wanted to see a different perspective on the doomed Franklin Expedition, which has always fascinated me. I rather presumed that a book by a nice old lady about Eskimos wouldn't be too challenging, but it turned out to be like a horror story, apart from it all apparently happened for real. Her account of the last Franklin survivors trudging hopelessly South is summarised in this article, although the book goes on in this vein for about fifty pages. Chilling stuff (in more ways than one, I suppose)

Get well soon Drol. I think that combination of illnesses should get you the whole week off work at the very least! (I would think the two events were likely to be linked, as malfunctioning lungs aren't good for the heart. Were you given oxygen when you were first admitted?)

Aw, that's sad. Good obituary though, I didn't realise the Opies weren't university academics at all, instead they just dedicated their lives to research because they were so fascinated by their subject matter.