12. Michael Barrymore, Drowning Scandal
An English comedian and television host, Michael may have never made much of an impact in North America but he was a pretty big deal in The U.K. during the nineties. The host of a show named after him that ran in between 1991 and 2000, called Barrymore, as well as game shows like Strike It Lucky, he was a major player on comedy stages and TV. Then everything went wrong after a party at his house in March of 2001. After news broke that a man by the name of Stuart Lubbock had been found dead in his pool, Michael found himself the subject of much gossip. Ruled to have died from drowning, the autopsy found traces of drugs and alcohol in his system and concluded he’d suffered severe injuries to his anus. The manner of Stuart’s death changed the way the comedian was seen.
Implied to have had some level of responsibility in the death of his guest by British tabloids, their claims that he held “drug-fuelled gay orgies” severely damaged his career. Never implicated by police in any way for the death and considering that Lubbock’s wounds were eventually found by pathologists to have happened after he left Michael’s home, his treatment seems anything but fair. The subject of public outrage, a Christmas special he intended to make was cancelled and he was fired by the network that he’d long worked for in the shadow of the incident.
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