The death of trade unionist Jack Jones a couple of weeks back means that a third of the way through the year Paul has two-nil lead over everyone else in our Deadpool game.

This year's Deadpool game seems likely to be won by Paul as he was the only player with Harold Pinter. Still, one day yet to go.

The death of Mark Felt puts Paul on two deaths in this year's Deadpool game, bringing him level with Mike and myself. Under the tie-breaker rules I would win as I have the youngest death (relatively speaking as Charlton Heston was 84). There are, of course, just under two weeks left of the game.

The death of Studs Terkel on Friday means that Paul moves up to joint second place in this year's deadpool game.

Annoyingly, I can't update the web site, or upload some changes I've made to the templates for this blog because FTP to both servers is broken. One reports an authentication error and the other a timeout error. :-(

I met Jeremy Beadle once. He was hosting a charity quiz night that WW sent a team along to.

No one had him on their lists for this year's Deadpool game.

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This morning we launched a revised version of the Visit London home page. Along with a tie up with Trip Advisor, a new Japanese site and a site for the China in London season, as well as lots of behind the scenes improvements, it's been a really packed January.

One thing that crosses over from behind the scenes to public is the addition of microformats to the site. hCard, hCalendar and hReview are all in use. Whilst hCard was straightforward to implement I found the hCalendar and hReview formats a little tricky to apply to our data. Anyway, install Operator and take Firefox for a whirl on the site and see what you find.

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Rugby tomorrow. Oh yes, it's Six Nations time again.

I've finally got the 2007 Deadpool lists up on the web.

What an exciting end (?) to an otherwise quiet Deadpool game. Before Christmas gleet was in the lead with Augusto Pinochet (b.1915) and Ivor Cutler (b.1923) and littlebun was just behind with Pinochet and Sir Malcolm Arnold (b.1921). I was languishing at the bottom of the heap with no deaths in 2006 at all.

Then on Boxing Day, Gerald Ford died and I was suddenly catapulted out of the zero-pack and into, um, fourth place.

But, they've only gone and hanged Saddam, and guess what? I was the only person to have him on my list (and he would have been disallowed next year under the 'no one on death row' rule). And, at 69 years old he was the younger than good old Sir Malcolm by a fair margin and hence I'm in the lead with under 48 hours to go.

Now, if someone would pull the plug on Sharon (also disallowed next year, under the 'no one on life support' rule) we'd have some half way respectable scores all round (well apart from Howie aka Giroscope).

It's been a quiet year for the deadpool game, but at last we get the most eagerly anticapted death on anybody's list - Pinochet is dead. So a point for several people including gleet who maintains his lead.

I'm not sure what to think - the deadpool game is in obvious bad taste; but the ghoulish way the media reported every up and down of George Best's last few weeks makes me feel somewhat uneasy for doing the same.

As far as the game is concerned this moves Janice and Chris up from one death to two where they join littlebun. Andy, gleet and myself have four deaths each and Jolyon brings up the rear with just one.

Just five weeks to go so time to start thinking about next year's lists. Will 2006 match 2005 in deadliness?

Simon Wiesenthal has died which brings me up to four deaths and into second place on the youngest-death tie breaker. Who do you think will be next?

Gosh, they're dropping like flies this year.

William Rehnquist has died, which puts gleet in the lead by means of the youngest-death tie-breaker rule.

James Doohan has died.

Scotty always seemed like the "nicest" character from the original crew and James Doohan seemed like one of the nicest actors, seemingly without the ego that some of his co-stars possessed.

( You know what )

Sir John Mills has died which in deadpool terms increases Andy's lead and move me ahead of the field and into a close third place.

Saul Bellow has died which gives Andy a narrow lead in the deadpool (he and gleet have two deaths apeiece, but Bellow was three years younger than Lord Callaghan).

Which makes bugger all difference to the deadpool game as everyone had him on their list.

Lord Callaghan dies aged 92 which is the first Deadpool casuality of the year. Putting gleet into the lead.

I was bored. So here are some facts and figures about this year’s deadpool game.

Continue reading this Very True Thing