Top 10 Respected People Who Turned Out to Be AWFUL

#10: Martin Bashir

In 1995, Bashir acquired a landmark interview with Princess Diana for “Panorama”. Some estimates believe 200 million people watched it globally. He was also responsible for a 2003 documentary about Michael Jackson, which smeared the singer’s reputation. There was a subsequent court case about Jackson’s scandalous behaviour, which didn’t find him guilty. Bashir resigned from journalism in 2021, apparently because of ill health. Others thought it was because it was revealed in 2020 that the Diana interview was acquired fraudulently. This was the nail in the coffin for Bashir, whose reputation had been declining since the Jackson documentary.

#9: Ian Watkins

Lostprophets were a Welsh rock band that became pretty big in the late 2000s and 2010s. They got a couple of top-ten singles and a variety of Kerrang! Awards. The band ground to a halt in 2012, when their lead singer, Ian Watkins, was given 29 years behind bars. Within a year, the band had split up, then later formed a new band without their evil ex-singer. Since then, he’s not been having the best time in prison. In 2018, he was found with a mobile phone and got 10 extra months on his sentence. In 2023, fellow prisoners took him hostage and attacked him with a toothbrush.

#8: Tony Blair

In the 90s, the Labour Party’s Blair was considered a modernising reformist. One of his biggest early successes was the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, a huge stepping stone for the Troubles in Ireland. Now, if you bring him up, few remember his early successes. Instead, his career is defined by his involvement in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. This event became majorly controversial. Over 20 years later, there’s still significant debate over its legality. 139 of his 412 MPs opposed it, and in the end, Iraq never had any WMDs, which was the reason the war broke out. Eventually, Blair became so unpopular that he resigned in 2007.

#7: Max Clifford

One of the most successful publicists of the past few decades was Clifford. One of his most famous stories was The Sun’s “Freddie Starr ate my hamster” article in 1986. Other clients of his included O. J. Simpson and Simon Cowell. Eventually, in 2012, Operation Yewtree revealed he was a horrible person, who abused multiple teenagers in his career. Despite pleading not guilty, Clifford was convicted of eight counts of indecent assault. In May 2014, he was sentenced to 8 years in prison, and only got out in August 2014 to attend a funeral. This was his last brief burst of freedom, since Clifford died in prison 3 years later.

#6: Stuart Hall

Next on our list is another target of 2012’s Operation Yewtree. “It’s a Knockout” was a hit game show that first ran in 1966 and then ended in 2011. This made host Stuart Hall a national celebrity. Public opinion of him took a 180 in 2012, after Hall was arrested and charged with three counts of assault. The victims ranged in age, the youngest being 9 and the oldest about 17. Hall pleaded guilty and apologised to his victims, but that came after a period of denial. During that time, he called the victims “gold-diggers and liars”. He received a relatively short sentence, getting released in 2015, likely because of his confession.

#5: Chris Langham

For a time, Langham was a highly celebrated comedian. His most famous role was Hugh Abbot in “The Thick of It”. He lasted two seasons before getting fired after a monumental scandal. In 2005, Langham was arrested after police found despicable photos and videos on his computer. Langham was sentenced to ten months in prison, alongside getting put on the register for a decade. His defence was that he was simply researching a role, which few people believed. Since his release, he’s tried to bounce back into stardom, but no one’s interested.

#4: Harold Shipman

It’s a doctor's job to heal people, but one doctor, Harold Shipman, did the opposite. Over 30 years, he targeted over 200 people and was found guilty of killing 15 of them. He’s currently the only UK doctor found guilty of murdering his patients. Shipman’s downfall came in 1998, after he forged a fake will for one of his victims. It excluded all of their children from their inheritance, but gave it all instead to Shipman. This was so suspicious that he was arrested, and an investigation began. In 2004, Shipman took his own life in prison. This was before he ever confessed or explained his motivations, leaving us to wonder why he did it all.

#3: Prince Andrew

One of the biggest royal scandals of the 21st century was when Prince Andrew went on “Newsnight”. It was because Andrew had been friends for years with convicted criminal Jeffrey Epstein. There are multiple pictures of the two together, even some after Epstein was first released from prison. One of Epstein’s victims, Virginia Giuffre, claimed to have been intimate with Andrew on multiple occasions. One time, she was only 17. Evidence for these claims includes flight logs and photographs. Andrew’s famous interview went so poorly, he resigned from Royal Duties in 2020 and has since retreated from the public.

#2: Rolf Harris

The celebrity who had the biggest fall from grace because of Operation Yewtree was Australian personality Rolf Harris. In the 50s and 60s, he became a star after releasing tracks like “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport”. He then dominated British music and television for decades. Harris was so famous, he painted the Queen in 2005. In 2013, he was arrested on suspicion of being linked to Jimmy Savile. The resulting trial found him guilty, and he then served 3 years in prison. After his release, he spent the rest of his life in disgrace, then died of old age in 2023.

#1: Jimmy Savile

The epitome of an evil celebrity hiding in plain sight was Savile. For years, he was a celebrated presenter, hosting influential shows like “Top of the Pops” and “Jim’ll Fix It”. You’ll never see either on television ever again, unless it’s part of a documentary. Throughout his life, he did huge quantities of charity work. This was all a front, however, which we found out in 2012, a few months after his death. This caused a domino effect, which revealed the BBC had been employing horrendous criminals for decades. Now, Savile’s legacy and name are synonymous with pure evil.

Were there any figures we forgot to mention? Let us know in the comments below!