2006 : The Year of the Dead

[Mister Spong]

Hello!

Figured I'd ask rather than just post.... I've been successfully running a Celebrity Dead Pool for the last couple of years and wondered if anybody had any objections me hawking for potential players on here?

If you have then let me know and I won't do it but if not then I'll get all my bumph posted.

For reference there were 36 teams taking part last year that yielded a total prize fund of just under £200. If I could bust that by some distance this year I'd be absolutely over the moon!

Thanks.

[Malicious Intent]

You dont have to ask Nath - you are one of us now :)

We all know you arent just here to spam.

[Potato]

Celebrity Dead Pool? What's that?

[KiwiCoromandel]

dead celebrities floating face down in a pool?...sounds interesting.... :)

[Malicious Intent]

Perhaps has something to do with Brian Jones??

[asley]

dead celebrities floating face down in a pool?...sounds interesting.... :)

can you name some famous names?

[DudeAsInCool]

We all know you arent just here to spam.

What do you got against spammers :reallymad:

[slum_goddess]

Perhaps has something to do with Brian Jones??

[Mister Spong]

Well... not a negative response so here goes. It gets wordy and there are references to people that you won't know... but the general gist of it is there. If you're interested then please drop me a line!

And with a flash of lightning and a crash of thunder Spong descends with the third of his annual Dead Pool competitions. When I started out a couple of years ago with this ghoulish tomfoolery I never dreamed I’d be writing out invitations to the third competition which probably explains why it’s likely to launch on January 1st with the rather dull moniker of DP3. The inaugural (and badly named) Spike Milligan Memorial Celebrity Dead Pool in 2004 attracted 15 contestants and a top prize of just under forty quid before 2005 saw DP2 attract 36 contestants and a top prize of £90 up for grabs.

So what about this year? Well obviously I’d like 2006 to be bigger than in previous years. I’d be happy if I could offer a top prize of £100 and absolutely over the moon if there were 50 teams fighting it out for a top prize of £125 on January 1st. If I’m going to come anywhere close to that sort of level then I need you to do your usual selling job and get as many friends, relatives, workmates and lovers to pitch in and donate a fiver (and submit a team if they want) to the cause.

Before I go any further there may be some of you scratching your heads and wondering why you’ve got this mail so let me clear that one up. You’re receiving this mail because

1) You’re playing this year.

2) You’re not playing this year but did play in 2004 and only didn’t play in 2005 because you didn’t get round to it.

3) You’ve never played before but have indicated you’d like to

4) I think you’d like to.

5) I’ve got your email address and I think you’re broadminded enough to find this sort of thing not offensive.

6) I’ve sadly got number 5) above wrong and don’t really know you that well at all.

If you’re offended by the concept of a competition that sees people score points from the death of famous people then please let me know and I won’t include you in any future DP3 correspondence. You have my deepest apologies and I’m sorry if I’ve misjudged things.

Right! Not that we’ve got that lot over and done with here’s the deal. Full rules of DP3 are listed below but I’m sure you are bound to have questions in which case drop me a line and I’ll clarify them to everybody. Bearing in mind that I could take part in reality TV series “Bone Idle” there is every chance that chunks of this year’s rules have been culled from those scribed for 2005 so don’t be surprised if you’ve heard some of the gags before. If a rule has changed since last year I will clearly note the old rule so that you can see what is different. I don’t have to do this but i) I’m a nice bloke and ii) you can see that I have put a little bit of thought into things rather than trot out the same old bovine faeces year after year.

The Rules

1) Each player picks TWELVE (2005 : eight) celebrities and nominates one of their celebrities as a joker. There are only two conditions you need to abide by when picking your celebrities and that is that i) they are over the age of 18 (2005 : this wasn’t a stipulation but I’m trying to avoid people picking Kirsty Howard in their team this year) and ii) you have to be able to identify them by name – so for instance Ken Bigley would have scored you points but “some bloke kidnapped by an Iraqi” wouldn’t. As with last year the rule is very simple - if you can’t name ‘em then you can’t have ‘em – it’s as simple as that.

2) If one of your celebrities dies then the player scores points based on the circumstances of their death. Points are scored as follows:

Original Pick dies : +6

Substitute dies : +3

(2005 : Substitutes weren’t included but have been brought in at the suggestion of a number of players. In 2005 a death was worth a straight 5 points. For rules on substitutions see below)

Celebrity is over 80 when dies : -1 point

Celebrity is under 40 when dies : +1 point

Celebrity is murdered or commits suicide : +1 point

Player is only person to pick celebrity : +1 point

Joker dies : double points.

2006 sees the introduction of a new transfer window. The window will open at midnight on Thursday 31st August/Friday 1st September and will remain open until midnight on Thursday 14th/Friday 15th September. During this period you are allowed to remove UP TO three celebrities from your existing team and replace them with people who you think might be better bets for not seeing the year out. During the transfer window you can only contact me once to make changes to your team so be careful how you time things – delaying by a day or two might cost you a death but also might mean you can bring in that celebrity that has just been injured in a fatal car crash. It’s a fine line to tread and only you can decide when, or even if to take the chance and step off it.

There are obvious pluses and minuses to doing this but the obvious ones are that taking out a celebrity that subsequently rolls up will score you no points while the death of someone you’ve brought in will only qualify you for a reduced base score of 3 points to take into account that you’ve probably brought them in with a view to them being more likely to cark it. Substitutes are however still subject to bonus or penalty points as per any other team member.

Oh and one final thing on the subject of substitutes… and that’s that you can’t substitute your joker. Once you’ve put the pointy hat with bells onto one of your celebrities at the start of the year, you’re stuck with them until the final whistle goes or the final bell tolls. Might sound slightly mean but it does get around the whole problem of what you do about a joker if you substitute him out.

3) A death scores points if it is reported in any area of the mainstream media and is determined as somebody that was living being declared dead. This might sound a bit daft, but previously a number of people tried to pick people that were dead before the competition started or picked people that subsequently went into a coma. Sorry - the rules are clear, if your star doesn't roll up, then your points don't rack up. Just one other point on this and this hasn’t been mentioned before – mainstream media is classed as any instantly recognised news source such as the BBC, Sky, Reuters or the New York Times – a report in the hatched, matched and dispatched section of The Thrushbottom Gazette does not count as mainstream media and so you can’t go round picking local nonagenarians and claiming them as celebrities when their pee-soaked bodies are carried out of St Arthur’s Home for the Terminally Confused.

4) The game will start on January 1st 2006 at 12midnight GMT (that’s the time when most of you will be beered up and singing Auld Lang Syne) and will finish at 12midnight GMT on 20th December 2006 – not quite a full year, but it gives me time to get the money to you so that you can spend it on Christmas presents or indeed Christmas cheer.

5) Prize fund will be split 3 ways - 1st - 50%; 2nd - 30%, 3rd - 20%. As soon as the competition starts I’ll confirm numbers entered and what the prize breakdown will be.

6) Deadline for entries is funnily enough January 1st 2006 at 12midnight GMT, and only entries received up to this point will be accepted. Entries can be emailed to me at this address, but will only be confirmed on the receipt of five English pounds. This year I’m also going to ask you to be a bit more canny and come up with a team name – this might sound like an inconvenience but this year we had multiple Pauls, Daves, Matts and Richards and for me at least it all got very confusing! Team names aren’t obligatory but failure to pick one gives me carte blanche to make something up for you – so be warned!

7) All cheques should be made payable to Nathan Spong (please contact me for payment address!).

If you don’t do cheques, then let me know and I’ll provide a sort code and account number to enable you to wire me some cash. Obviously if you are likely to bump into me (or Mrs S) any time soon then you can pass the fiver on personally. Potter (I think) remains the only person that comes under the category of “special” and the several thousand miles between us has necessitated an alternative payment system that worked well in 2005 and solves the problem of his using Monopoly money on a daily basis. In the event of anyone else living abroad taking up the challenge I’ll do something similar with them and we’ll sort it on a case-by-case basis (which means yes you can pass this on to your cousin in Outer Mongolia if you think they’d be up for it).

8) In the unfortunate event of you being too good at this competition and one of your celebrities dying between you selecting them and the competition starting then you will of course be allowed to name a replacement – but your original pick won’t score you any points, because they won’t be alive when the competition starts.

9) I’m something of a slag when it comes to this kind of competition and will happily accept anybody’s money. If you know someone that is likely to be interested in playing (even if you’re not) then please pass this email onto them (but please don’t include my home address unless they’re definitely not going to post me envelopes full of dog poo!) because as far as I’m concerned, if they’re mates of yours then they’re vouched for and are more than welcome.

10) Banter is actively encouraged in this game so please feel free to mail me abuse when I get things wrong, or indeed mail abuse to other members of the game if you think it will liven things up. Please however bear in mind that some of the guys out there are using work email addresses, and while it may be nice for you to send out photos of your exquisitely pert breasts or unfeasibly large manhood as a term of abuse, some of the network administrators at these faceless corporations lack the sense of humour to see it that way and may object to your bits invading their servers. Having said that, my published email address isn’t corporate in any way, shape or form – so if you’ve got pert breasts and want to send me a photo of them than feel free. You can however keep your testicle pics as they do nothing for me. I will be sending out regular updates via email to everyone that's playing, but I'm hoping that those comedy giants at www.giftedkid.co.uk will also have some space for our own unique morbid brand of wit - there's no obligation to come along, but if you want to put in an appearance I suspect it will be kind of like ITV2 showing additional footage of "I'm a Nonentity Get Me Out of Here", or indeed "Strictly Corpses Dancing"... bits that you wouldn't normally see if you stuck to the email only updates that are equivalent to Saturday nights on ITV1.

11) There shouldn’t be any disputes, but if there are then drop me an email and I’ll try and sort them personally. If I have a day where my ability to think is seriously hindered and I can’t solve them, then I’ll pass them out to all the players to get a consensus on things that will have to be final. I don’t want to be seen to be stroppy, but I guess we have to draw a line and make a decision somewhere which may not please everybody – and I guess that dealing with people dying randomly there is always the possibility that something might happen that we haven’t considered.

12) The one area of people dying that caused me some real thought is casualties of war – should they be classed as being murdered or not? Well, without going into the ethics of what is right and wrong about war I’ve decided that people killed during conflict will NOT be counted as being murdered – but people that have been kidnapped and later executed WILL count as being murdered. Appreciate that it’s unlikely to happen, but if The Pope does get called up then it’s one less base I’ve failed to cover.

13) I will be picking Mick Hucknall in my team, regardless of the fact that the only things wrong with him are that i) he’s still breathing and ii) he’s a ginger. I appreciate that all of my advice I’ve ever given says that it’s not a good idea to pick people that you think “deserve” to die, but if I can’t have this one indulgence then the World really is a sad place.

14) Fourteen is such a crap number, so I figured point 15 should be the last one. If you’ve got any other questions then drop me an email and I’ll circulate the answer to everyone that’s playing/interested.

15) I'm now going for a lie down as this has taken all of my brain-power to type this lot. I've also got a voodoo doll in the shape of Mick Hucknall in my bedroom and I want to make sure it's handy and that Mrs S has left her large needles nearby in case I get the urge to speed along his demise.

16) Sorry, I said that 15 was going to be the last point and it wasn't. But 16 definitely is.

Bye for now.

[Malicious Intent]

George Best would be a good bet right now, but next year...hmmm.....

Anyway, this is so offensive I might just have to give it a go!

Does all the money go to the prize fund, or is this in support of your beer fund - or some other, less valuable charity?

[Mister Spong]

Every single penny goes into the prize fund. All I get out of it is the great deal of pleasure seeing all of you sickos slugging it out to see who dies first!

[Mister Spong]

Anybody game? Competition starts in 30 days(ish) and I know of at least 1 person on here who is proposing to stick a team in.

I was going to suggest that upwards 40 people can't be wrong - but look at the Houses of Parliament!

[Shawn]

Aye, I'm still game.

Can I paypal you? Hardcore?? Without lubricant???

[Mister Spong]

Seeing as everyone else is sticking to PayPal that's probably best! :D

[Mister Spong]

Why have I brought this thread back up to the top? Well it's winnings day for the 2005 competition and I've just distributed £180 to 3 lucky people in time for Christmas - and that's a nice incentive for anybody that wants to make a few quid!

[Mister Spong]

Ladies and Gentlemen and Children of all Ages, allow me to present to you the first call for entries for Dead Pool 4 - Two Thousand and Heaven! The 2006 competition is set to come to a nailbiting climax as several of the 41 teams entered are slugging it out for a top prize in excess of £100 - one of which is our very own Shawn (although his mailbox is full and he can't get any of the updates!)

Early indications are that it's going to be another good year as a number of rule changes have been brought into play to make things that little bit more competitive.

Interested? Then post here and I'll stick the rules up. In fact if you don't reply I'll probably still stick the rules up here out of spite!