Justin Fashanu for "BBC Radio 1". Fashanu was the subject of an early internet meme in 1996 when the BBC opened their poll for the Sports Personality of the Year award to e-mail votes for the first time. An online campaign was organised among students in an attempt to enable him to win the title, but his votes were excluded from the final tally by the show's production team. In March 1998, a seventeen-year-old claimed to police that he had been sexually assaulted by Fashanu after a night of drinking. Homosexual acts were illegal in the US state of Maryland at the
Catherine Cookson her youth wanted to write about 'above stairs' in grand houses, she later and successfully concentrated on people ground down by circumstances, taking care to know them well. Cookson wrote almost 100 books, which sold more than 123 million copies, her novels being translated into at least 20 languages. She also wrote books under the pseudonyms Catherine Marchant and a name derived from her childhood name, Katie McMullen. She remained the most borrowed author from public libraries in the UK for 17 years, up until four years after her death, losing the top spot to Jacqueline Wilson only in 2002.