People in the News: 2010s

English explorer, writer, broadcaster and film maker: reported missing in 2017 while undertaking an expedition in Papua New Guinea, but resurfaced after after a few days, having made his way to an abandoned mission station		Benedict Allen
American technology entrepreneur, whose friendship with Boris Johnson from 2012 (when she was living in London and he was Mayor of London) came to national attention in September 2019 when he became Prime Minister, triggering allegations of conflicts of interest		Jennifer Arcuri
Controversial Belizean businessman and Tory life peer: co–author of an "unauthorised biography" of David Cameron, published in 2015, which included allegations of a bizarre and arguably obscene act, involving a dead pig's head		Michael (Lord) Ashcroft
Australian Editor–in–Chief of the website Wikileaks (commonly known as its founder): took asylum in the Ecuador Embassy in London, in 2012, when facing extradition to Sweden on rape charges (still there in November 2017)		Julian Assange
Coventry woman caught on CCTV, in 2010, putting a cat in a wheelie bin		Mary Bale
Chief Executive of the charity Kids Company, and former media darling (dubbed the "Angel of Peckham" and "Our Own Mother Teresa"): forced to step down in 2015, after it was revealed that the charity was unable to pay its debts, despite receiving millions of pounds in government grants		Camila Batmanghelidjh
British costume designer, described by Stephen Fry as "dressed as a bag lady" when collecting her BAFTA for Mad Max: Fury Road (2015); also won the Oscar for the same film, and for A Room with a View 29 years previously		Jenny Beavan
Serial prankster – best known as the creator of 'cheerful chav' Lee Nelson – who handed Theresa May a P45 during her speech at the 2017 Conservative Party conference (saying "Boris asked me to give this to you")		Simon Brodkin
Chelsea FC club doctor: left in September 2015 after being described as "naive" by Jose Mourinho for going onto the pitch, when summoned by the referee, to treat a player (Eden Hazard) whose injury he thought didn't warrant it – but meaning that the player subsequently had to leave the pitch, and Chelsea were already down to 10 men because Thibaut Courtois had been sent off in the 52nd minute (v. Swansea, in the opening game of the 2015–16 Premiership season)		Eva Carneiro
Became the first woman to take up the post of (Lady Usher of the) Black Rod, in February 2018; previously Director of the Wimbledon Championships		Sarah Clarke
High–profile British public relations specialist: often represented controversial figures such as O.J. Simpson, Jade Goody and Simon Cowell; created the famous headline "Freddie Starr ate my hamster" (later admitting that the story was fabricated); sentenced to 8 years in prison in 2014, after being convicted on eight charges of sexual assault on girls and young women; died in hospital in 2017, aged 74, of a heart attack after collapsing in his prison cell		Max Clifford
American journalist (born in New York, 1956): foreign affairs correspondent for the Sunday Times, from 1985; killed in 2012 by an improvised nail bomb, while covering the siege of Homs in Syria		Marie Colvin
7th Director of the FBI: appointed in 2013, sacked in 2017 by Donald Trump		James Comey
Resigned as David Cameron's "communications director" in 2011, following continued allegations of phone hacking while he was editor of the News of the World (2003–7) – a post from which he resigned for the same reason		Andy Coulson
Pornographic actress, real name Stephanie Clifford (born Stephanie Gregory): paid $130,000 in the run–up to the 2016 US Presidential election, to prevent her speaking (or writing) about about an affair she claimed to have had with Donald Trump in 2006		Stormy Daniels
Appointed chairman of the UK Environment Agency in September 2014; resigned in January 2016, after being heavily criticised in the previous month for remaining on holiday in Barbados during the disastrous floods in northern England		Sir Philip Dilley
Rochdale pensioner described by Gordon Brown as "a sort of bigoted woman" during the 2010 election campaign		Gillian Duffy
29–year–old Londoner, of mixed Irish and African–Caribbean descent, whose fatal shooting by police in 2011 (while under investigation for suspected involvement in gun crime) sparked riots across London and elsewhere		Mark Duggan
Succeeded Mark Thompson as Director General of the BBC in 2012, but resigned 54 days later after a Newsnight report falsely implicated Lord McAlpine in the North Wales child abuse scandal		George Entwistle
American financier and convicted sex offender, a friend of Prince Andrew, who committed suicide in jail in 2019		Jeffrey Epstein
UKIP leader, opposed Mr. Speaker John Bercow in the 2010 general election (in defiance of tradition whereby the Speaker, as a neutral, is not opposed); injured in a plane crash on the morning of election day (flying in a plane towing a UKIP banner, it was believed that the banner got caught in the engine); beaten by the Conservative candidate Craig Mackinlay in the 2015 general election, a former deputy leader of UKIP (Thanet South constituency)		Nigel Farage
Appointed by Donald Trump as National Security Advisor, but forced to resign 24 days later (February 2017) after it emerged that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence about his communications with the Russian ambassador to the USA		Michael Flynn
Mayor of Toronto, 2010–14: admitted in 2013, after months of speculation, to smoking crack cocaine, "probably in a drunken stupor"; died from cancer in 2016, aged 46		Rob Ford
Chief Executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland, 2000–8 – controversially awarded a £700,000 p. a. pension after taking early retirement in January 2009 – just as the bank was effectively nationalised, and one month before it announced a loss of £24.1 billion (the largest annual loss in UK corporate history) – stripped of his knighthood in 2012		Fred Goodwin
TV journalist who claimed in 2010 to have euthanized a lover suffering from AIDS (died in 2013, aged 74)		Ray Gosling
BBC China editor, resigned over New Year 2017/18 alleging pay discrimination between men and women (returning to her former post in the BBC newsroom)		Carrie Gracie
Manchester's first honorary citizen, after her part in raising $23 million to aid the victims and families affected by a terrorist bomb detonated at the Manchester Arena following her concert there in 2017		Ariana Grande
Dubbed "king of the High Street" by BBC Radio 4's Profile in 2012; branded the "unacceptable face of capitalism" after BHS (which he sold in March 2015 for £1) went into administration leaving a £571m hole in its pension fund; pictured lounging on his £100 million super–yacht Lionheart in Summer 2016 as BHS employees faced life with no job and no pension		Sir Philip Green
Succeeded George Entwistle as Director General of the BBC, in 2013; previously the BBC's Director of News (1993–2001) and Chief Executive of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (2001–13); appointed a life peer in 2010		Tony Hall
Deputy Leader of Liverpool City Council in the 1980s, expelled from the Labour Party in 1986 as a member of the extreme left–wing Militant group: re–admitted in February 2019, but suspended 48 hours later		Derek Hatton
BP chief executive, heavily criticised following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico (2010)		Tony Hayward
Jilted by 25–year–old Crystal Harris, in 2011 – at the age of 85		Hugh Hefner
Royal Bank of Scotland Chief Executive who (reluctantly) gave up his £963,000 bonus in 2012		Stephen Hester
Media personality, named in March 2019 as the youngest dollar billionaire ever, at the age of 21 – beating Mark Zuckerberg by two years		Kylie Jenner
American footballer who chose not to stand during the American national anthem, in 2016		Colin Kaepernick
American political analyst whose wife had to drag their children out of the room when they 'video bombed' a BBC television interview in March 2017		Robert Kelly
Sky Sports presenter, resigned in 2011 after "prehistoric banter" between him and fellow presenter Andy Gray concerning a female assistant referee was made public		Richard Keys
Saudi Arabian dissident and Washington Post columnist, assassinated at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul in October 2018 by agents of the Saudi government		Jamal Khashoggi
Blackpool woman, 32, convicted of urinating on a war memorial in 2010 (and of "performing a sex act on a man in public" nearby)		Wendy Lewis
27–year–old co–pilot who deliberately crashed a German aircraft into a mountain in the French Alps, in 2015		Andreas Lubitz
Commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, dismissed by President Obama in 2010 after making derogatory comments about senior US officials, including Vice President Joe Biden, in an article in Rolling Stone magazine		Stanley A. McChrystal
Journalist shot dead during rioting in the Creggan area of Londonderry, 2019 (aged 29)		Lyra McKee
Female assistant referee in a Premier League match between Liverpool and Wolves, 2011, subject of derogatory remarks by Sky TV presenters Andy Gray and Richard Keys, which resulted in their resignations (they were soon snapped up by TalkSport)		Sian Massey
Died August 2015: the last surviving pilot who flew in the Dam Busters raid		Les Munro
Son of the founder, forced to resign as Chairman of BSkyB in 2012 after being implicated in the phone hacking scandal		James Murdoch
Portsmouth pub landlady who in February 2012 won a legal battle to overturn her conviction for using foreign decoders to show Premier League matches		Karen Murphy
WWII spy, codename Rose, died in Torquay in 2010		Eileen Nearne
American dentist who achieved notoriety by shooting Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe (July 2015)		Walter Palmer
Underwear model, former girlfriend of Wayne Bridge, whose well–publicised affair with John Terry led to his losing the England captaincy in 2010 (she was also rumoured to have had relationships with other Chelsea players)		Vanessa Perroncel
South African Olympic athlete: sentenced to 5 years imprisonment in 2014 for fatally shooting his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, on St. Valentine's Day 2013		Oscar Pistorius
Wife of David Cameron's Environment Secretary, Chris Huhne (1984–2011): a Greek–born economist, and former Joint Head of the UK Government's Economic Service; sentenced to eight months in prison in 2013, along with Huhne, after they were each convicted of attempting to pervert the course of justice (after he was caught speeding in 2003, she had claimed that she was driving the car, and accepted the licence penalty points on his behalf so that he could avoid being banned from driving)		Vicky Pryce
Nom de guerre of Stephen Christopher Yaxley–Lennon, far–right political activist and co–founder of the English Defence League		Tommy Robinson
CIA operative who returned to the USA claiming diplomatic immunity in September 2019, three weeks after allegedly causing the death of 19–year–old motor cyclist Harry Dunn while driving on the wrong side of the road, shortly after leaving RAF Croughton, in Northamptonshire		Anne Sacoolas
Captain of the Costa Concordia, the cruise ship that ran aground in the Mediterranean in January 2012, resulting in the deaths of 32 people; sentenced to 16 years imprisonment, in February 2015, for manslaughter (and other offences)		Francesco Schettino
Russian defector and former military intelligence officer, poisoned (along with his daughter Yulia, who was visiting him from Moscow) with a nerve agent of the Novichok series, in Salisbury in 2018		Sergei Skripal
US computer professional and former CIA employee: leaked classified information concerning US state surveillance in 2013, and was charged with espionage; granted asylum in Russia, after his US passport was revoked; subject of the 2015 Oscar–winning documentary Citizenfour (the code name he used on his emails to Laura Poitras, who was the recipient of his revelations and the director of the film)		Edward Snowden
Former Prime Minister of Norway (2000–1 and 2005–13): appointed Secretary General of NATO in 2014		Jens Stoltenberg
44–year–old woman who died in hospital in Salisbury, in July 2018, after being exposed to a "high dose" of the nerve agent Novichok (as allegedly used in the poisoning of Sergei Skripal)		Dawn Sturgess
US Airways pilot who landed his plane in the Hudson River shortly after take–off, saving the lives of all 155 people on board (January 2010 – played by Tom Hanks in the 2016 film)		Chesley Sullenberger
Temporary receptionist (employed by outsourcing company Portico) sent home by Price Waterhouse Coopers in 2016, for refusing to wear high heels (thus contravening PwC's dress code)		Nicola Thorp
British doctor found guilty by the BMC in 2010 of offences relating to his claims over the relationship between MMR and autism		Andrew Wakefield
Comedian dumped by his girlfriend in October 2018 after being caught kissing his Strictly Come Dancing partner Katya Jones		Seann Walsh
BBC news presenter (Today, Radio 4) who revealed on his 50th birthday in 2011 that he was the illegitimate son of former BBC newsreader Peter Woods		Justin Webb
Thai boys' football team whose members were trapped in a cave in 2018 following sudden and heavy monsoon rainfall; they were rescued after two weeks underground, and later visited Old Trafford to watch a Premier League game as guests of Manchester United FC		Wild Boars
Celebrity chef, caught stealing cheese and wine from the Henley–on–Thames branch of Tesco in January 2012		Anthony Worrall Thompson
David Cameron's enterprise advisor – former Trade & Industry Secretary (under Thatcher) – resigned in 2010 after claiming that "the vast majority of people" in Britain had "never had it so good" despite the "so–called" recession		Lord (David) Young

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People in the News: 2010s