Well we tried this last year, but of the 64 individuals named, a grand total of 64 of them are still alive and well. Few were particularly bad guesses, so the inevitable conclusion is that we are simply fated to do badly. Anyone considering refraining from hypothesising should therefore consider that by taking part, they are quite possibly increasing the likelihood of survival for those that they would have picked.

Before I name my guesses, I think it's apt to remember Luciano Pavarotti, Evel Knievel (who I'd have sworn had been dead for years), Kurt Vonnegut and all the others that did leave us in the last year.


The scoring system is as follows. Each correct guess is worth 10 points plus another point for each year below 90 that they were on death (if they were below 90). A 91 year old individual would be worth 10 points, as would a 110 year old. However a 85 year old would be worth 15 points and a 25 year old, a whole 75 points. So you could pick a lot of more likely, low point people; or a set of high value longshots. Or a mixture of the two. Or whatever you want really.

And now on to the picks:

1. Abe Vigoda (86) - although I've read that his death has been foretold for a while now

2. Tony Bennett (81)

3. Kirk Douglas (91)

4. Amy Winehouse (24) - My only real long-shot pick. I read somewhere or other that she doesn't think she can survive without her husband, who I think is going to prison or something. I don't put as much research into this stuff as my canny foretelling suggests.

5. Quincy Jones (74)

6. Roger Moore (80) - It's been 46 years since the first Bond film came out, and unless you count David Niven, they're all still alive. Moore is the oldest, so I'm picking him as the first one down.

7. Ray Wilson (73) - Same as with Moore, I have no desire for this to happen but I figure that it's about the right time for another of the England '66 team to go.

8. Ariel Sharon (79) - This was a toss-up between Sharon and Castro. According to the great, but unreliable source of information that is Wikipedia, Castro is on the mend, so that sorted this choice.

9. Carl Reiner (85)

10. Olivia de Havilland (91) - Even though she's the oldest one on this list, for some reason I don't think this will be her year. I'm just putting her down for the benefit of gender equality.

The Pope is on the front page of Wikipedia once again. This guy is the most important Christian on the planet, but he just looks really evil. I mean REALLY evil. He looks evil, he has a sinister voice and if at all possible I think he has an evil walk. And it probably isn't helped by the frankly uncanny resemblance to the Evil Emperor from Star Wars:




But giving credit where due, in this image obsessed society it's hard to remember that a lot of these perfect looking celebrities look distinctly average and normal if you take away their armies of make-up people. Some however, do not look normal. See if you can figure out which of these two pictures is Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas.

Alternate title: The Inconvenient Truth.

After Al Gore began extolling the virtues of a carbon neutral lifestyle, he was naturally opening his personal life to close scrutiny, and some of the results found are rather suspect.

This article in USA Today in my opinion shoots a little wide of the mark. It criticises the former presidential candidate for advocating living without excess whilst having 3 houses dotted around the country. But it does raise some interesting points. Whilst Gore recycles and drives a hybrid car, he hasn't taken up the option provided by his utility companies for his Virginia home (with similar schemes existing in Tennessee) to pay extra in return for part of your power being generated from renewable sources like wind energy. It is also shown that, at the time of the article at least (December 2006, I have no idea how to find out if it's still true), despite being executor of his family's trust for years, he hasn't sold off his shares in Occidental Petroleum.

And this article, released yesterday by the Tennessee Center for Policy Research notes that the Gore family used 20 times the electricity of the average American home last year in their Nashville mansion alone. The power that they consumed in August would power two average households for an entire year.