Derby Dead Pool 2017

[Bibliogryphon 9,582]

1 minute ago, Joey Russ said:

Shameless is winning the theme team for sure. No doubt in my mind...

 

I don't play on artificial turf

[gcreptile 10,972]

18 minutes ago, Death Impends said:

Sally Major gets the QO after all - http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/heartbroken-family-mum-whose-cancer-10299134

Ah, her funeral was today, I recall. Well, I take that kind of obit - though I didn't get one in the identical case of Iain Reid, whose obit, let's be honest, wouldn't have mattered the slightest bit.

 

I now think Shameless will crack the Top 20 in the end. Though my rolling scoreboard won't show it yet, with Shameless being at "only" 136,59 expected pts. That's still 4pts behind msc who stands at 140,94pts under the assumption that Sasha Lakovic will not obit. Just imagine if the popular picks Christie, Downie, Bracknell do not die in 2017 after all. Suddenly, Shameless becomes a contender.

 

Somewhat depressingly, Shameless now has 91pts and is at 4th place.

[themaninblack 2,112]

The Mirror again!

[RadGuy 1,614]

Ah, when I heard that funeral is expected for April 26th, I thought that maybe she'd still get a mention.

[gcreptile 10,972]

21 minutes ago, themaninblack said:

The Mirror again!

We like to complain about the Daily Mail, but The Mirror is far worse, and (was) my secret weapon. If you recall, last year, Shameless got the early lead with two Mirror obits.

And for this year, The Mirror just recently reported on Irfon Williams, and they also mentioned the case of Aundrea Bannatyne who just announced a couple of days ago that the doctors cannot do anything for her anymore (Belfast Telegraph). Williams and Bannatyne would put Shameless at 113pts...

[msc 18,474]

With all these folk getting their obits, Sasha better get his...

[Joey Russ 7,228]

So, do we ban the mirror for next year? That'll take care of a bunch of the shameless folk without affecting most of the old American politicians/actors that gets reported by the daily mail...

[YoungWillz 21,047]

Probably easier just to ban non-celebs.

[RadGuy 1,614]

There's a lotta different types of FFBIs out there.

 

1) Family of the famous, e.g. Tracy McGiffin, Connie Johnson. Not famous on there own but would probably obit even if they weren't a sob story due to having an actually famous relative.

 

2) Famous bloggers/fundraiserers, e.g. Kate Granger, Kris Hallenga. They've achieved fame due to their illness, but are actually pretty well-known due to their contributions to the cause. 

 

3) Bloggers, e.g. Lisa Magill, Mark Sims. Only FFBI, not well-known, but have thousands of people who read their blogs.

 

4) Pure tabloid fodder, e.g. Sara Hankins, Sally Major, Alan Aspin. Really don't do anything. Just regular citizens like the rest of us with sob stories that get them into magazines so housewives with nothing better to do can read and pretend to be sad.

 

If you ask me, #1 and #2 should definitely be allowed, no doubt about it. #3 should stay too, maybe. #4 is more debatable, but a lot of them get flushed out due to a lack of obit.

[gcreptile 10,972]

Relatives are really hard to ban - where to draw the line? Pippa Middleton? Bobby Zarin? Lee Radziwill? Ethel Kennedy? Clarissa Eden?

 

 

[drunkasaskunk 194]

I attended the funeral of one of my picks last year.

 

It was weird

[Toast 16,140]

Ban the lot, unless they have achieved something deserving of fame that is not connected to their illness or their relatives.

 

I'm seriously losing interest in the whole idea of deadpooling now.  I don't like the morbid searching for terminally ill nobodies.  It's sick, and it brings a previously defensible and harmless game into disrepute IMO.

[gcreptile 10,972]

2 minutes ago, drunkasaskunk said:

I attended the funeral of one of my picks last year.

 

It was weird

But s/he wanted to die?

[Death Impends 7,976]

I'm still of the "give a FFBI pick a low, fixed point value that overrides age" mindset, assuming coding that is feasible. And maybe the type of obit a debatably FFBI name receives could factor into how much they're worth? For instance, some of the most borderline cases ie Granger managed broadsheet obituaries (suggesting they accomplished enough that their life in itself became worth covering, rather than just the fact they were ill - even though it was illness that prompted their coverage to begin with), rather than merely an article saying they died. Whereas tabloid fodder names really only find themselves QOing via the Mail/Mirror/Sun unholy trinity. So the broadsheet obit cases could still get a full stack of points, whereas the latter would receive the penalty.

[Joey Russ 7,228]

So people such as Charlotte Eades, Paul Briggs, and Hassan Asif those who hadn't really achieved anything and still got Guardian/BBC obits, still wouldn't be punished? 

[Death Impends 7,976]

1 minute ago, Joey Russ said:

So people such as Charlotte Eades, Paul Briggs, and Hassan Asif those who hadn't really achieved anything and still got Guardian/BBC obits, still wouldn't be punished? 

 

They got articles mentioning they died in those sources, but they didn't get anything in the obituaries section.

[Joey Russ 7,228]

1 minute ago, Death Impends said:

 

They got articles mentioning they died in those sources, but they didn't get anything in the obituaries section.

Oh. They still would be punished then. I see. Thanks for clarifying.

[RadGuy 1,614]

41 minutes ago, Toast said:

It's sick, and it brings a previously defensible and harmless game into disrepute IMO.

It doesn't make much of a difference if you ask me.

 

I told some of my friends about deadpooling, carefully describing it as a game of prediction regarding celebrity deaths, and they still think it's evil.

 

@themaninblack I don't mean to be nit-picky, but I just realized the  Kath Osmond entry is missing from the Obituary Vault. 

[Toast 16,140]

28 minutes ago, RadGuy said:

It doesn't make much of a difference if you ask me.

 

I didn't.

 

Your relish at the deaths of these unfortunates is often only too plain.

[msc 18,474]

This is clearly a topic to be decided by the organiser of the 2018 Derby Dead Pool, should there be one.

[CaptainChorizo 1,982]

3 hours ago, gcreptile said:

Relatives are really hard to ban - where to draw the line? Pippa Middleton? Bobby Zarin? Lee Radziwill? Ethel Kennedy? Clarissa Eden?

 

 

Easy line to draw. Pippa Middleton is famous and a clickbait figure even if an article doesn't mention her family and someone like Ethel Kennedy was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom.    Someone like Bobby Zarin his entire article will be about how his spouse is mourning and is only clickbait for Real Housewives of wherever viewers. Relatives who might be famous because of family ties but are still famous in themselves are easy to seperate from people who were never mentioned before until their illness

[Dr_T 254]

IMHO....I think the first and over-riding consideration is "My ball, my rules".  Anyone who is prepared to put in the amount of time necessary to keep this game going is certainly entitled to make up the rules as per their own taste/moral compass/etc.

 

I agree wholeheartedly with Toast that about the prevalence of non-celebrity types making the whole thing less interesting.  I think it also does add to the ghoulishness of the exercise as well.  Reading Kate Granger's blog made it all very personal for me, so while I was 90%+ sure that she would die in 2016 I couldn't pick her (although I think that by the time of her death she was sufficiently famous to be considered).  On a purely competitive level, not being English I think gives me a disadvantage as I am not exposed to the English media which makes it hard to identify these types and harder still to pick who of these would get the qualifying obit. 

 

Is there an answer?  Perhaps making the obit a little more difficult would improve things?  I believe the standard is that the person is named in an article.  Would some of these non-celebrity types get scratched if the standard became that they are named in the headline (article title) in those papers (again without knowing much about the style of British papers it is hard for me to judge).  That way if the article is titled "Sad End for Brave Cancer Mum" then that would not score, but if the article said "Sally Major dies aged ??" then it would score.  In Australia, the former style would often occur as they might assume that a high proportion of the readership doesn't know the who the person is, hence the description is more helpful.  I would be interested in the opinions of the Obit Hunters like YW etc on this point.

 

Anyway, grist for the mill.  Thanks for reading if you made it this far.

[Spade_Cooley 9,527]

Didn't Bobby Zarin have a minor role in whichever Real Housewives it was though? 

[RadGuy 1,614]

Seems like no obit for Lakovic then.

 

Coverage of his death was minimal - only a couple of Canadian websites bothered to report on it.

[CaptainChorizo 1,982]

6 hours ago, RadGuy said:

Seems like no obit for Lakovic then.

 

Coverage of his death was minimal - only a couple of Canadian websites bothered to report on it.

In an unfortunate coincidence, Michael Mantenuto who starred in the 2004 film miracle where Lakovic had a cameo committed suicide. I could see Lakovic getting an offhand mention in an obit for Mantenuto.