There’s the Celebrity Death Pool and the Celebrity Life Pool - perhaps you’ve participated in these and been disappointed, since you got few or no hits, while others who pile on with the easy picks always seem to rack up the points by doing the obvious, which takes no imagination.
This pool is for you. Pick 13 people who you are pretty sure are already dead and post your list here. Odds are 99.99993% that none of your picks will come back to life in the next year, making you a winner! Won’t that feel good?
Here’s my list for 2025:
Wacko Hurley
Earl Derr Biggers
Heliogabalus
Pixie Palladino
Oofty Goofty
Andy Kaufman
Doodles Weaver
Breece D’J Pancake
Generalissimo Francisco Franco*
Dorothy “Sloopy” Sloop
Leo G. Carroll
Choo Choo Justice
Vivian Stanshall
Odd Flattuma
*(All entries must include Franco. Tradition is important.)
You will be graded on originality of your picks. Odd or obscure or just plain funny choices are encouraged. Choose carefully. Don’t just post the first thirteen dead celebrities you can think of. People who died recently, like say Richard Simmons, will be judged harshly. Dead Beatles will prove you don’t care. You can enter anytime, no deadline, you can even enter a year from now if you want. Great for those who tend to procrastinate! Winner (possibly me) will be announced on January 1, 2026, if I make it to then.
Yul Brynner
Herman Hesse
Pope Hilarius
Mitch Hedberg
Generalissimo Francisco Franco
Sonny Bono
Yaphet Kotto
Richard Kiel
Ted Cassidy
Josef Stalin
Françous “Papa Doc” Duvalier
Gustave Flaubert
Sinclair Lewis
NotherYinzer Yul Brynner Herman Hesse Pope Hilarius Mitch Hedberg Generalissimo Francisco Franco Sonny Bono Yaphet Kotto Richard Kiel Ted Cassidy Josef Stalin Françous “Papa Doc” Duvalier Gustave Flaubert Sinclair Lewis
Good list. There might even be a theme here. Dictators, authors, bald guys, really tall men, Sonny Bono. I’m sure I see a pattern here. But no ladies? A dead sausage party. Put 'em on the hot dog cooker at 7-11 and watch 'em rotate.
Cervaise The Star Wars cinematic universe (Andor excluded).
I’m not sure what to make of this. Will have to ask our panel of judges. Okay, panel say no. Try again.
It was around 3 a.m. when I wrote that list. I was up waiting for the dogs to come back in and I’m lucky I could count to 5, much less 13. I never realized I picked all guys. Oops.
S’okay. No oops about it. You do realize that women are dead too. For example, Katherine Hepburn. She’s dead. People don’t always think about that. Some kind of cultural bias I suppose. No knock on anyone who forgets. Don’t do it again.
Amelia Earhart
Cleopatra
Pope Joan
Diana Rigg
Queen Elizabeth II
Marie Curie
Generalissimo Francisco Franco (just following the rules)
Eleanor Roosevelt
Golda Meir
Beverly Cleary
Phyllis Diller
Cloris Leachman
Persis Khambatta
Drummers
John “Stumpy” Pepys
Eric “Stumpy Joe” Childs
Peter “James” Bond
Mick Shrimpton
Joe “Mama” Besser
Richard “Ric” Shrimpton
Sammy “Stumpy” Bateman
Scott “Skippy” Scuffleton
Chris “Poppa” Cadeau
Tambourine player Billy Murgatroyd
Dan Taman on horns
Backup vocalist Andy Sutcliffe
Considering that Franco has to be on the list, here’s one with him and 12 people who have been given an “opening credits” cast credit on Saturday Night Live:
Francisco Franco
George Coe
Michael “Mr. Mike” O’Donoghue
John Belushi
Gilda Radner
Charles “F-Bomb” Rocket
Gilbert Gottfried
Danitra Vance
Phil Hartman
Tony Rosato
Chris Farley
Jan Hooks
Norm Macdonald
“George Coe from Archer? When was he on SNL?” On just the first episode - The Version I Heard Was, he was there to play the father figure in sketches, as they weren’t sure if viewers would accept a sketch where, say, Chevy Chase or John Belushi played the father of Gilda Radner’s or Laraine Newman’s character. When they decided that Chase et al. could do it without any problem, they let Coe go.
And we’re off; the starting gun has fired a blank, if it were loaded it might have killed a celebrity by accident, one who might have been on someone’s list by mistake but the judges have conferred and decided that would count.
I would like to step in and repeat a special advantage this pool has over those other pools in that there’s no deadline to enter and you are more than welcome to submit your list at any time during 2025. I should not have to say this, but there seems to be a difficulty among some would-be players in telling the difference between actual dead people and fictitious people who never existed, thus cannot have died. That’s something I never expected, but will now take the opportunity to emphasize that there is a difference. If you are confused, let me know and I’ll attempt to clear up this baffling sticking point in words of one syllable.
I’d say we’re well on the way to making this THE event of the annual Dead-Alive season. So Tally-ho, and may the bestest be the deadest - I think it was Ian Fleming who said You Only Live Twice, and he has yet to be proven correct but I think I can say with great confidence that he never will be - Hatchie.
I’ll do my bit for the old empire with this list, which I’ll call “Brits who liked to party”. I haven’t double-checked they’re all actually dead, that seems like too much work.
Freddie Mercury
HM Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother
Alex ‘Hurricane’ Higgins
Keith Moon
Winston Churchill
Brian Jones
Graham Chapman
Boudicca
Generalissimo Francisco Franco
George Best
Richard Burton
Sir Malcolm Sargent
Douglas Adams
I plumbed the depths of major league baseball’s archives for (most of) these dudes
Johnny “Ugly” Dickshot
Ledell “Cannonball” Titcomb
Tony Suck
Jack Glasscock
Cletus Elwood “Boots” Poffenberger
Orval Overall
General Francisco Franco
Charlie Furbush
Harry Budson “Bud” Weiser
Urban Shocker
Charles Manlove
Van Lingle Mungo
Dick Trickle
Nitpick! Francisco Franco Bahamonde’s title was either Generalísimo (with accent on the “i” and only one “s”, there are no double esses in Spanish) or Caudillo de España por la Gracia de Dios.
So now my list, just starting, will be completed in due time:
Generalísimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde
Pope Benedict
Lucrecia Borgia
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher
Farrokh Bulsara, aka Freddie Mercury