Sun Wukong's Deadpool Game
I did a death list similar to your own from 1978 until 2003, when I moved to China and out of the zone.
My list also consisted of 50 people, but I wasn't allowed ANYBODY from the previous year, which makes it much more of a challenge - I couldn't just keep putting a swathe of the same wrinklies year in year out. It was excruciating when terminally ill people like Mitterand, Ian Dury, Helen Wills-Moody staggered into another year after being on for the previous one, and Lord Porritt booked out "a few minutes into the New Year"
I also had to recreate the age balance of the previous year's celebrity deaths, which invariably meant at least four or five under 50s.
I think a change in your rules to forbid annual repititions, and maybe encourage more predictions of premature demise, would make it more interesting.
Incidentally, my best performance was 10, which I achieved in 1989, 1995 and 1997.
This gave me an idea.
DeathList 2024 Part 2.
A mishmash of TCD, Drop 40 and dropped DeathList names. Names with asterisks are in positions they previously held on the list.
I don't like shadow lists, so BUMP for good old Sun Wukong. I had to remove Alan Alda because he was on my previous entry in 2019.
1. William Russell
2. David Graham
3. June Spencer
4. Frank Field
5. Emperor Akihito*
6. Françoise Hardy
7. Jonnie Irwin
8. Billy Connolly
9. Violeta Chamorro
10. Julie Goodyear
11. Jim Lovell
12. Tom Lehrer
13. Janey Godley
14. Mike Ditka*
15. Patrick Murray
16. David Attenborough
17. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei*
18. Brian Wilson*
19. Michael Tilson Thomas
20. Toby Keith
21. Eva Marie Saint
22. Tim Bilton
23. Theo Burrell
24. Rex Williams*
25. Tommy Chong*
26. Vera Miles
27. Edmund White*
28. Angie Dickinson
29. Marianne Faithfull
30. Ozzy Osbourne*
31. Liza Minnelli*
32. Yoko Ono*
33. Dave Myers
34. Leo Beenhakker*
35. Rob Burrow
36. Stephen Darby
37. Steve McMichael
38. Terry Waite*
39. Simon Cowell
40. Simon Cowell
41. Randy Jackson*
42. Hal Linden
43. Douglas Hurd*
44. Andy Taylor
45. Jake "The Snake" Roberts*
46. Ronnie Wood*
47. Linda Ronstadt*
48. Joni Mitchell*
49. Shannen Doherty*
50. Paul Gascoigne
6 subs, because in a normal year you could expect 9 hits by 13th May: 1. Isabel Perón 2. Khamtai Siphandone 3. Rhod Gilbert 4. Vladimir Putin 5. Zhang Lixiong 6. Joan Langsford
6 subs, because in a normal year you could expect 9 hits by 13th May: 1. Isabel Perón 2. Khamtai Siphandone 3. Rhod Gilbert 4. Vladimir Putin 5. Zhang Lixiong 6. Joan Langsford