The mother of the Academy Award winning film director Anthony Minghella CBE (1954 – 2008) was a matriarch who lived by the philosophy: “You put in what you can, no matter how little that is, you don’t know how far the ripples will go”. Dedicated to community service and charity, Minghella herself was famous for introducing exotic flavours of ice cream to the Isle of Wight and even named one “Ripley’s Downfall” in honour of her son’s masterpiece The Talented Mr Ripley.
This outspoken bon vivant was Rector of the University of Aberdeen from 1998 to 2004. One half of the “Two Fat Ladies”, Dickson Wright was known as “Krakatoa” because of her fiery temper and became the country’s youngest barrister at 21. She once had sex with an MP behind the Speaker’s chair in the house of Commons, offended the animal rights lobby by suggesting that Britons should eat badgers and was bankrupted thrice. Her full name was Clarissa Theresa Philomena Aileen Mary Josephine Agnes Elsie Trilby Louise Esmerelda Dickson Wright.
This Lincolnshire lout will only ever be known for filming himself having sex with his ex-girlfriend Amber Hicking’s Staffordshire bull terrier. He was handed a four month jail sentence suspended for two years, placed on the sex offenders’ register for seven years and banned from owning animals for two years in March 2014. The dog has since been rehomed.
Considered the “largest living mammal on the planet” at the time and owned by Sparks Circus, Mary was a 5-tonne elephant who could play 25 tunes on the horns without missing a note. When an inexperienced drifter named Red Eldridge was hired to handle her in September 1916 in Kingsport, Tennessee, the elephant grabbed him with her trunk and stomped on his head. Eldridge died and in revenge the townsfolk demanded that the poor elephant be killed. Shooting failed so thus, in front of 2,500 people, Mary was hanged from a railroad derrick. A true indication of how depraved humanity can truly be.
This Lancastrian steeplejack and television personality was gentle, outspoken and self-taught. A father of five and thrice married, Dibnah described himself as “just a bum who climbs chimneys” and once stated: “If you make a mistake, it’s half a day with the undertaker”. He had no time for “fancy London types” and took the view that: “We’ve become a nation of conmen, living by selling double-glazing to each other”. His type sadly won’t be seen again.
This “straight talking” cardiologist told Kirsty Young on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs that “it was much more fun to be mafioso and naughty” than being “prudent” but it’s for her pioneering work on congenital heart disease that she’s best known. A mother of four and the “mother of GUCH”, Somerville’s ex-fellows set up a fan club called “the Unicorns” in her honour and more recently the GUCH charity was renamed The Somerville Foundation. Her desert island luxury would be a hot bath every day with Rose Geranium bath essence by Floris.
Banned from South Africa and known for his “notoroious drug use, alcoholism and promiscuity”, this comedian is nothing but controversial. Brand has more followers than Stephen Fry on Twitter and signed a £1.8 million book deal with HarperCollins in 2008. He describes himself as being like an “S&M Willy Wonka”.
The “original supermodel” looks just as good in reality as she does in photographs and was born in DeKalb, Illinois. Her marriage to the actor Richard Gere was shortlived but a union with bar operator Rande Gerber has produced two children. Crawford has endorsed politicians as varied as Mitt Romney and Barrack Obama and made pizzas with One Direction’s Harry Styles. She has over 1.2 million followers on Twitter and from her base in Malibu oversees the Cindy Crawford Home collection. It grosses $250 million annually in retail sales.
Hampstead based and a barrister by profession, Oxford educated Lady Bloch is the daughter of suspected murderer Lord Lucan. Asked how she’d describe her father to her son, Bloch told The Scotsman: “I’ll tell Cameron that his grandfather was tall, dark and handsome – a professional gambler who loved powerboating and the Cresta Run in St Moritz”. Of her father himself, she told The Mail on Sunday: “He has never been able to defend himself and the evidence was not conclusive. It was circumstantial”.
Best known for his Horrible Histories series, Deary has sold over 25 million books in over 40 languages but was described by David Starkey as a “parasite”. This Sunderland born butcher’s son is the tenth most borrowed author in British libraries yet views historians as “seedy and devious”. Schools, he has commented, have “no relevance in the 21st century” and libraries, themselves, “have been around too long”. A road runner in his spare time, in October 2013 Deary told Radio 4’s Saturday Live: “I didn’t set out to do anything. I was commissioned. I am a hack”.