Six degrees
Malcolm Glazer (below), Manchester United's American owner, is reportedly planning to list the world's second most lucrative sporting franchise on the Hong Kong stock exchange. The news keeps the club in the non-sporting spotlight after the recent travails and machinations, some of them of a distinctly unsporting nature, of star player Ryan Giggs ...
The midfield veteran unwittingly exposed himself online, if you'll pardon the expression, after he was discovered to have been playing away from home. Not content with taking out a privacy injunction, he then demonstrated his understanding of the workings of social media when he tried to take legal action against Twitter after he was named by users of the site. He got named even more afterwards, for having the affair, in which the other party was one Imogen Thomas ...
The model and former reality television star has a bit of form where footballers are concerned, having also 'dated' Tottenham and England star Jermain Defoe and the slightly less illustrious Matthew Collins, then of Swansea City, as well as other celebrities including actor and comedian Russell Brand (but, then, who hasn't?). To tell her side of the story after the Giggs affair became public, the former Big Brother contestant enlisted the help of Britain's best-known publicist, Max Clifford ...
The king of kiss-and-tell has worked with a diverse group of clients, some of whom were never likely to win popularity contests, but even he drew the line at representing Michael Jackson after he was cleared of child abuse charges in 2005, saying, 'It would be the hardest job in PR after Saddam Hussein.' Clifford, who has represented everyone from David Copperfield to Simon Cowell, started his own firm in 1970 with a handful of stellar clients, including another popular but controversial figure, Frank Sinatra ...
With everything from depression to accusations of Mafia involvement, Ol' Blue Eyes' image often needed a bit of polishing. But he was still loved enough to be able to reflect some of his personal glory onto other people, for instance donating money and acting as a fund-raising ambassador in the 1980 and 1984 United States elections on behalf of president Ronald Reagan and his vice-president, George H.W. Bush ...
Later president himself, Bush originally made his fortune in the oil industry, in 1953 setting up exploration company Zapata Oil - with the help of a little cash (OK, quite a lot of cash) from his hyper-patrician family. When the company was finally broken up and sold off, part of it, Zapata Offshore, was bought by a businessman by the name of Malcolm Glazer.
