Faces of the year 2010 - the women

Some of the women who have made the headlines in 2010, left to right: Iris Robinson, Amy Williams, Kathryn Bigelow, Peppa Pig (top), Sarah Ferguson, Anna Chapman, Sue Sim, Mary Bale (middle), Justine Thornton, Gamu Nhengu, Rachel Chandler, Lady Justice Hallett (bottom).....

JANUARY

Democratic Unionist MP Iris Robinson, 59, tried to take her own life, according to her husband, Northern Ireland's First Minister Peter Robinson, after he discovered she had had an affair with a teenage man.
Mrs Robinson had broken parliamentary codes of conduct for failing to report a £50,000 donation from two property developers for her lover Kirk McCambley to buy a cafe.
Before the revelations emerged, Iris Robinson announced her retirement from politics and public life on mental health grounds.

FEBRUARY

Amy Williams slid her way to becoming only the ninth British Winter Olympic gold medallist in 86 years and the first solo gold medallist for 30 years.
Her victory came in the Games at Whistler in Canada in the women's skeleton event on a trusty sled she calls Arthur.
Nicknamed "Curly Wurly" because of her frizzy hair, Williams' performance was all the remarkable since Britain doesn't possess a full skeleton track apart from a dry concrete push track in Bath.

MARCH

They called it the Battle of the Exes. In the red corner for the Oscars' best director award was James Cameron for his sc-fi blockbuster Avatar.
In the blue corner was his former wife Kathryn Bigelow for her low-budget, independent movie The Hurt Locker.
Bigelow triumphed with her film about an American bomb-disposal team in Iraq.
She became the first woman to win the best director award and described her triumph as "the moment of a lifetime".

APRIL

It was a case of a piggy in the middle of a controversy when a Channel Five children's cartoon character named Peppa Pig pulled out of a Labour Party election campaign stunt.
Peppa was due to attend the unveiling of Labour's mini-manifesto for families.
But E1 Entertainment, the company that licenses Peppa, said, "In the interests of avoiding controversy, we have agreed she should not attend."
Lord Mandelson accused the BBC of "stirring up trouble" by blocking Peppa's appearance by leaning on E1. The BBC denied the claim.

MAY

Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, became the latest victim of the News of the World's "fake sheikh" sting operations.
The veteran investigations editor Mazher Mahmood caught her on camera apparently agreeing to provide access to her former husband, the British trade envoy Prince Andrew, in return for £500,000.
"That opens up everything you would ever wish for," she told the reporter.
Later the Duchess apologised for a "serious lapse of judgement" and admitted that her financial position was "under stress".

JUNE

The glamorous form of 28-year-old Anna Chapman found itself on the front pages of newspapers around the world when she was unmasked as a Russian agent by the FBI in the US.
Chapman was part of a ring of so-called "deep sleeper" agents from American suburbs paid to penetrate US policy-making circles.
She was previously married to an Englishman in London before moving to the US after divorcing him.
Prosecutors described her as a "highly trained agent" and a "practised deceiver".

JULY

Chief Constable Sue Sim became the public face of the police hunt for the Northumberland killer Raoul Moat.
Each day Chief Con Sim, who was in temporary charge of Northumbria Police, faced the media and read out statements in a slow, enunciated style.
She drew praise for the human way she dealt with members of the public, especially those living in areas affected by the manhunt.
But she also made headlines for a minor gaffe, when she mistakenly uttered that every stone would be left unturned in the search for Mr Moat, although some commentators detected sexism in what they thought was an unnecessary focus on her appearance.

AUGUST

Forty-five-year-old bank worker Mary Bale became the subject of a worldwide hate campaign when CCTV footage of her throwing a cat into a wheelie bin was posted on YouTube by the cat's owners anxious to find the culprit.
After she'd been identified, Bale apologised for her action: "It was a split second of misjudgement that has got completely out of control."
The RSPCA pressed charges and she was fined £250.

SEPTEMBER

From geek to chic went Justine Thornton's public image after her partner Ed Miliband's election as Labour leader thrust her into the media spotlight.
The heavily pregnant Ms Thornton sported a maternity dress patterned with blue and red hearts accompanied by a blue bolero jacket and a cropped haircut to match, in contrast to her previously less glamorous style.
The 39-year-old environmental lawyer, who began her career as a child actress, gave birth to Samuel, the couple's second son, in November.

OCTOBER

After suffering the disappointment of being voted out of The X Factor, teenage singer Gamu Nhengu faced the prospect of being deported to her native Zimbabwe.
Her widowed mother breached visa conditions by wrongly claiming £16,000 in tax credits.
A member of the House of Lords, the Earl of Clancarty, asked the UK Border Agency to reconsider Gamu's case.
At first they insisted the decision was correct but later agreed to reconsider her case. Their decision is still pending.

NOVEMBER

After being held hostage by Somali pirates, Rachel Chandler and her husband Paul tasted freedom once more after 13 months in captivity.
The couple from Tunbridge Wells in Kent were handed over to local officials after the payment of a ransom thought to be in the region of $1m (£649,326).
Though they both received a beating for showing defiance to being separated, they were released in good health.
The couple held out, according to Mrs Chandler, because "we are survivors".

DECEMBER

Having refused a legal challenge to hold some closed sessions of the 7 July bombings inquest, the coroner and appeal court judge Lady Justice Hallett earned much praise for her handling of the hearings.
Giving short shrift to testimony by authorities she found unsatisfactory, she displayed a contrasting humanity and sympathy for victims who related their experiences.
"You are amazing, you sound amazing, you look amazing," she told one survivor.
"You've reduced us to silence," she told another.
Compiled by Bob Chaundy

What Kate Moss did next: record an album?

Supermodel Kate Moss is reported to be installing a recording studio in her new London home so that she can work on an album.

BY Olivia Bergin | 30 December 2010

Kate Moss ejoys a spot of karaoke at a fashion launch party Photo: REX

She's a self-confessed lover of karaoke, has enjoyed high-profile relationships with rock singers, graced music videos for the White Stripes and Primal Scream, and her voice has appeared on tracks by The Lemonheads and Babyshambles. So it comes as little surprise that supermodel Kate Moss is rumoured to be working on her own album. 
Kate Moss to open a modelling school?
The Daily Mail reveals that a close friend of her musician boyfriend Jamie Hince has said: "Kate's fashion days are winding down and she's no longer designing for Topshop, so her dream is to record an urban album."
Hince, a guitarist in the band The Kills, is also reported to have told friends that Moss is hoping to install a music studio in their new £7.5 million home in the leafy suburb of Highgate, North London.
In pictures: Kate Moss' greatest fashion hits
The Croydon-born model, 36, is no stranger to the stage: in July she accompanied Hince and musician Nick Cave by playing the tambourine at a charity gig hosted by designer Bella Freud, and in 2009 she sang with ex-boyfriend Pete Doherty (again, for charity) at the Café De Paris in London.
She also currently enjoys a starring role on the cover of Bryan Ferry's latest album Olympia, and is rumoured to be duetting with the former Roxy Music frontman on his next production.
Kate Moss's life in fashion
If such rumours turn out to be true, we could be hearing a lot more of the interview-shy model's dulcet tones over the next year...

Gordon Ramsay - Just don't mention the B-word

As chef Gordon Ramsay emerges from a hair transplant clinic, Iain Hollingshead offers some words of advice to the follicularly challenged

Christmas with Gordon Photo: Channel 4

by Iain Hollingshead 7:00AM GMT 30 Dec 2010

Just when you thought couldn’t have any less respect for Gordon Ramsay, the embattled chef whose idea of family diplomacy is to write an open letter starting “Dear Mother-in-law”, he was photographed on Tuesday emerging from a £30,000-a-pop hair transplant clinic in Beverly Hills, California, wearing a natty bandanna that made him look more like Silvio Berlusconi than he might have wished.

“Gordon Barnet!” exclaimed one newspaper, which is probably a politer version of the retort uttered by the owner of the Foxtrot Oscar restaurant when he spotted the paparazzo.

Ramsay, 44, who still possesses a fuller range of blond locks than he does a vocabulary, might seem an unlikely candidate for a transplant operation. And yet a wave of vanity has swept the Glasgow-born chef since transferring to American television. Last year he was persuaded by Simon Cowell to inject Botox into his chin. Earlier this year he joked on Radio 1 that his “goolies” might get the same treatment. Now it is the turn of his poor follicles.

Of course, Ramsay is not alone. An estimated £2.3 billion is spent annually in America on hair loss treatments. Scores of British men in entertainment, from Cowell to Jude Law, are rumoured to have had their pates fiddled with. While John Cleese, Shane Warne, Graham Gooch, Duncan Bannatyne and James Nesbitt have all spoken openly about their transplants. “It’s changed my life,” says Nesbitt. “It’s horrible going bald. Anyone who says it isn’t is lying.”

Five years ago, aged 25, I would have agreed. The process starts with denial: the camera angle was unforgiving, the light bad, the hair in the shower someone else’s. During the summer you convince yourself that you are merely moulting in the heat, like the family dog. For the rest of the year you just have to make sure that mirrors never catch you unawares, your head constantly angled down, the forehead wrinkled to minimise its burgeoning surface area.

After a year or so of this nonsense you’re on to the anger stage – often manifesting itself in frenzied research to see if something can be done. The short answer is: no. While German researchers announced recently that they hope to grow human hairs from stem cells within a year (not the first time that baldies have felt the remaining hairs, on the back of their neck, thrill with unfulfilled excitement), for now we are left only with snake-oil merchants, invasive chemistry and unappealing surgery.
In numerous online forums angry young men – a quarter of men in their 20s show signs of male-pattern baldness – debate the merits of camouflage sprays (cheap and don’t work) over laser combs (expensive and don’t work).
More expensive still is Propecia, a daily pill that costs around £40 per month. It has the advantage of actually working in most cases. However, it can also cause impotence in a small number of cases – a fairly large disadvantage given the concerns that prompt many balding men to seek remedy in the first place. Regaine, a topical lotion, has also shown positive results, but you have to pay upwards of £25 per month and keep on using it for the rest of your life.
Unsurprisingly, then, hair transplants have become an increasingly popular prospect. The surgery has improved, thanks to a technique known as Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE), which allows surgeons to take thousands of individual follicles from the thick thatch at the back of your head and replant them at the front.
The procedure takes around eight hours under local anaesthetic and is virtually undetectable if performed in the early stages of balding – which, presumably, informed Ramsay’s logic. However, it also tends to cost at least £7,000, you can’t expose the grafted area to sunlight for six months, or swim for a year, and you’ll still look pretty stupid if your hair continues to recede, creating a shiny, unhappy desert between the grafted spot at the front and the source of the graft at the back. And while it might briefly extend your American television career, everyone else will think you’re a complete wally.
All in all, then, you might as well get to the acceptance phase of the balding process as soon as possible. William Hague, Harry Hill, Heston Blumenthal – the B-Word isn’t half as bad as Ramsay probably thinks. The only thing the merry gang needs now is for Prince William, another thinning British blond, to go for a buzz cut before April.

Boney M singer Bobby Farrell dies aged 61

 

Farrell (second left) was the only male member of the popular disco quartet

Bobby Farrell, front man of the 1970s disco group Boney M, has died at the age of 61, his agent has announced.

The singer was found dead in a hotel room in St Petersburg, Russia, where he had been performing, John Seine said.
Farrell, he continued, had complained of breathing problems before and after the show on Wednesday. The cause of his death has yet to be established.
Farrell, the only male member of the popular four-piece, had been due to perform in Italy on New Year's Eve.

Born Alfonso Farrell in Aruba, he had been touring with three female backing singers under the name Bobby Farrell of Boney M.
The original Boney M, known for such hits as Daddy Cool and Rivers of Babylon, disbanded in 1986.

Michael Jackson autopsy show 'in bad taste'

 

Michael Jackson died in June 2009 aged 50

Executors of Michael Jackson's estate have asked the Discovery Channel to cancel plans for a programme claiming to re-enact the late singer's autopsy.

John Branca and John McClain said the show was "in shockingly bad taste".
In a letter, the pair accused the company of being motivated by "blind desire" to exploit the singer's death.
The show - entitled Michael Jackson's Autopsy: What Really Killed Michael Jackson - is scheduled to be broadcast in Europe in January.
"Your decision to even schedule this programme is in shockingly bad taste and insensitive to Michael's family," the co-executors wrote.
"On behalf of Michael's family, fans, common sense and decency, we urge you to reconsider and cancel this programme," they added.

An advertisement used to promote the show reportedly depicts a body covered by a sheet with one hand wearing the singer's trademark sequined glove visible.
"Discovery obviously views this as clever advertising and creative 'branding' for its programme," Branca and McClain continued.
"In fact, the ad is debased, sick and insensitive."

Dr Conrad Murray has pleaded not guilty to involuntary manslaughter

Discovery Communications declined to comment on the letter, the Reuters news agency reported.
Meanwhile, lawyers for the doctor facing trial for involuntary manslaughter over Jackson's death may suggest the singer killed himself, a prosecutor has claimed.
In a court session to discuss evidence in the case against Dr Conrad Murray, Deputy District Attorney David Walgren said he believed defence lawyers were looking into the theory.
"They don't want to say it but that's the direction in which they are going," he said on Wednesday.
Outside the Los Angeles courtroom, defence lawyer J Michael Flanagan declined to comment and said lawyers were still investigating the case.
A preliminary hearing is scheduled to begin on 4 January where it will be decided if there is sufficient evidence to hold Dr Murray for trial.
Dr Murray has repeatedly denied causing Jackson's death.

Khodorkovsky gets six more years in Russia jail

Khodorkovsky has been in court a fourth day to hear the verdict

Imprisoned former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man, has been sentenced to six more years in jail for fraud.

With his current sentence due to expire next year, Khodorkovsky, 47, now faces imprisonment until 2017.
He could "only be reformed by being isolated from society", the judge's verdict said.
Khodorkovsky was convicted on Monday in a judgment criticised by the US and others as selective justice.
Once seen as a threat to former President Vladimir Putin, he was found guilty along with former business partner Platon Lebedev of stealing from their own oil firm, Yukos, and laundering the proceeds.
After Washington accused Russia of applying selective justice, the Kremlin said in effect the outside world should mind its own business.

Lawyers for the two defendants are expected to appeal but if Khodorkovsky does remain in jail until 2017, it will mean he does not return to society until well after the next Russian presidential election.
Some analysts have suggested he could otherwise pose a political threat to the Kremlin's candidate in 2012.
'Damn you!' Khodorkovsky and Lebedev were first arrested in 2003 and sentenced in 2005 for fraud and tax evasion.
On Thursday, the court in Moscow sentenced the two men to 14 years in prison, to run concurrently with the eight-year term handed down in 2005.
The term includes time served since the two men's arrest.
Judge Viktor Danilkin had been reading the 800-page verdict out since Monday.
As sentence was passed, a woman in the courtroom shouted "May you and your offspring be damned!", according to an AFP news agency correspondent.
The two defendants, however, are said to have reacted calmly to the decision.
Supporters of the two defendants have held rallies outside the courthouse to condemn Mr Putin and the Kremlin.

Elton John: named as father on birth certificate of baby Zachary

Sir Elton John has been named as the "father" on official documents for his son Zachary born via a surrogate.

David Furnish and Elton John Photo: GETTY

By Victoria Ward 9:59AM GMT 30 Dec 2010

His civil partner David Furnish has been named as the "mother" on computer documentation for Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish-John.

The child was born on Christmas Day to a surrogate mother in California at a cost of more than £100,000.

It has been speculated that Mr Furnish, 48, is the sperm provider for the surrogacy because he is the younger of the two men.

Birth certificates in gay surrogacy cases can be changed from "mother" and "father" to Parent 1 and Parent 2 on request.

Although the birth has not been registered on a certificate yet Sir Elton, 63, and Mr Furnish appear as father...
and mother respectively on computer documentation, according to a report by the Daily Mail.

Sir Elton has described how “blessed and lucky” he feels following the birth of his baby son, just weeks before he embarks on a six-month world tour.
Newborn Zachary is expected to be brought up largely by childcare staff who have reportedly been stationed in each of Sir Elton’s homes.
But Sir Elton told American magazine Us Weekly: "For many years we have talked about fulfilling one of our greatest wishes by becoming parents.
“And now this wish has been granted to us, we feel so blessed and lucky."
The 63-year-old singer and his partner David Furnish, 48, faced questions over their decision to have a surrogate son having previously admitted that their lives were not suited to having children.
Norman Wells, director of Family and Youth Concern, said: “There is a concern that the child will be treated as a commodity.
“The amount of travelling they do does raise the question as to why they would want a child if they are not going to be at home to care for it.”
Josephine Quintavalle, founder of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said: “People sit down and discuss at length the ideal protocol in relation to adoption and there is no hesitation in giving age limits, so why does that thinking go out of the window when talking about surrogacy?
“We should be thinking about the rights of children and not the rights of adults to have whatever they want. People are willing to criticise the older mother but fathers seem to get off lightly.”
But many said that as long as the parents were healthy and could provide for their son, the baby would be happy.
Hugh McLachlan, Professor of Law and Social Sciences at Glasgow Caledonian University, said: “When people become parents they change their lifestyles.
“Although the circumstances here are unusual, they are not that out of the ordinary and will not necessarily present a problem.
“There is every reason to think that this will be a loved and happy child.”
Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish-John was born on Christmas Day.
Sir Elton and Mr Furnish are believed to have paid more than £100,000 to have the baby, through The Centre for Surrogate Parenting Inc, which runs one of the largest surrogacy programmes in California.
It is understood that the unidentified surrogate mother is not his biological mother but had carried the baby after being implanted with a donor egg from another woman.
It is believed the new fathers are planning to bring their son back to their UK home in Windsor, where a £35,000 nursery has already been built.
But Sir Elton will soon be headed off on a 26-date tour of Europe and the US, meaning that the baby will likely be looked after by staff.
Dr Gillian Lockwood, medical director and research clinician at Midland Fertility Services, said that the welfare of the child was the primary concern.
"Yes, the child may be looked after by staff but any temporary absence will doubtless be more than compensated," she said.
"They will probably be better parents then those who become parents accidentally. Couples who resort to fertility treatment have made it quite clear that their intentions are good."
Dr Magdy Asaad, from the London Fertility Centre, said: “As long as the parents are healthy and they can support the child emotionally, educate and provide for it then who is to say they should not.”
Just last year, Mr Furnish indicated that they would wait to start a family until Sir Elton had stopped touring.
“I don't think our lives are suited to raising children,” he told People magazine. "We're busy flying places all the time.
“We don't want to put the raising of children into the hands of nannies and housekeepers. We want to be active parents. We have godchildren (and) kids that we support in Africa, so we're fine.”
Dr Sandra Wheatley, a psychologist specialising in parenting and families, said sacrifices would undoubtedly be made.
“Intentions and actions are not always the same thing,” she said.
"The arrival of a baby means that lifestyles do change. If they are happy, the baby will be happy.
“It has obviously been a considered decision and something that they feel they can fulfil."