The origins of our game started back in the mid 1980's at David F's work. The worse weekend for Road Death's in Victoria, Australia was at Easter. About double any other long weekend. Dave and is mates ran a "Easter Weekend Road Toll Death sweep" where everyone put in A$2.00 to predict how many Road Deaths would occur between midnight Easter Thursday to midnight night Easter Tuesday. Winner takes all. As the most notorious Road Death weekend, the Road Death toll was widely reported on a daily basis over Easter with comparisons with previous years. At this time, a rigorous hard hitting Road Safety ad campaign started focusing on Easter Road Deaths and the numbers dramatically dropped to be the about average to any other long weekend which took the fun out of the game.

 

So in 1986, to continue with this theme, Dave  F's idea was to switch their attention to Celebrity people which included famous sports people, world recognised Politicians and widely known people in the entertainment industry. Everyone picked 5 Celebrities. Once a person got a Celebrity Death, that person was declared a winner and received A$2.00 from the other players. The winner then selected  another 5  Celebrities for a new game to continue. This was carried on for about 3 years where the game went into hibernation for about 5 years.

 

On New Years Eve 1994, Dave F resurrected the game with his sister Mandy F. for the 1995 year. They picked 5 celebrities plus 1 "wildcard" under 40 years of age which they predicted will die in 1995. They repeated this for the 1996 year. No winners were selected during this time.

 

At about the same time, while Stef E was working in Detroit USA, "Drew & Mike" on radio WRIF 101.1 had a Deadpool game every year at the start of January for their listeners who would fax in 3 Celebrities they would predict would die in that year. The winner was the first to get to three. Stef E's selections remained alive throughout this time.

 

Back in Oz on New Year's eve 1996, Dave F invited  5 more people for the 1997 season including current Dead Fred Society member Justin B. Dave F (with Jimmy Stewart) and Mandy F (with Sir Eric Pearce - Channel 9 News Reader)  were equal winners on 1 each.

 

On New Year's Eve 1997, Stef E , another current Dead Fred Society member  joined the other 7 to make it 8 people predicting the 5 celebrities plus 1 "Wild card" under 40 that would die in the 1998 season. This was won by Stef E with one. (with Frank Sinarta). The losers had to each pay the winner 3 cans of UDL (mixed spirit drinks). So Stef E had a great old time with 21 cans of whiskey and cola under his belt.

 

Because of our limited success, we come up with the idea of introducing the "Super Dead Freds" with each player having to pick 30 Celebrities broken down into 3 categories, the first being 20 general celebrities, followed by 5 Australians and 5 women. Then we introduced the Interchange so if one person did pick a Dead Fred, he would not be handicapped by the fact that he only had 29 left. The interchange was brought into rule so he would have 30 back in his current list. The interchange bench consisted of 3 general Celebrities. The winner receives a small Trophy and also a big perpetual trophy that he keeps for the year with the winners name and year recorded on a small plaque. Each of the losing Dead Fred Society members are then obliged to purchase a bottle of whiskey for the winner. We also have a "legends" pick. At the end of the selection process, each player selects 2 Celebrities in their current list. If a "Legend" Celebrity dies, the person receives  3 UDL cans from the other players immediately which we call a "Legend" bonus.

 

We hope you enjoyed our brief history as Stef E is currently our Champion having won back to back Super Dead Fred's in the years 1999 and 2000. As we have been life long friends, the competition is very competitive and we do have a lot of fun and laughs in playing this. We hope that this may inspire you to get a group of friends together to play your own game and version of Celebrity Dead Freds. We would love to hear from you and your success.   Yours Truly, Dave F - President,  Dead Fred Society