It's hard to believe that a year has gone by since Tiger Woods had that run-in with a fire hydrant outside his Florida mansion, an incident that instantly reduced one of the world's most revered athletes into a late-night talk show punchline.
Since then, scandal-watchers have been treated to a seemingly unprecedented number of salacious antics involving underage prostitutes, text-messaged crotch shots and life-size Kama Sutra sculptures, which have turned the lives of some of the biggest names in sport and showbiz, and one second-rate royal, into tabloid headlines.
In case you missed the voice mail tirades, cocaine binges or strippers named Bombshell McGee, here is a recap of what we here at CTV.ca are calling Anno puer male, the Year of the Bad Boy.
The ‘Worst Nude Scene Award' goes to… Brett Favre
Not long after aging quarterback and married grandfather Brett Favre completed his annual will-I-or-won't-I retirement dance by rejoining the Minnesota Vikings, sports gossip website Deadspin.com published a story alleging that the 40-year-old sent inappropriate voice mails and lewd text messages to New York Jets game hostess Jennifer Sterger when he played for the team in 2008.
In October, the site posted several voice mails in which a man, purportedly Favre, repeatedly suggests to Sterger that the two get together. Several lewd photographs allegedly sent from Favre to Sterger were also published, including close-up crotch shots that spawned numerous fourth-and-short jokes. Other photos showed a man naked from the waist down wearing, wait for it, purple crocs, leaving Jets fans yearning for the days when their football heroes wore fur coats but guaranteed Super Bowl wins.
Favre has remained mum on the scandal as he and the Vikings stumble out of playoff contention in a season that also saw his iron-man streak end at 297 games.
For her part, Sterger, who has said she was not the one to give the material to Deadspin, has reportedly co-operated with the National Football League's investigation into the allegations. The results should be released in early 2011. Hopefully by then, Favre will have committed to a life of permanent retirement in Mississippi, puttering around the garden in his crocs.
The ‘Torpedoing Your World Cup Chances with Cheating Award' goes to… the French and English soccer teams
This category poses the biggest challenge because there are just so many soccer stars who seem to think the world is their oyster (i.e. their own personal brothel). Many of this year's "footie scandals" broke mere months before the World Cup. First, after a judge lifted a gag order on the story, tabloids in the U.K. went wild over allegations that England soccer captain John Terry had hopped into the sack with Chelsea teammate and best friend Wayne Bridge's former girlfriend, Vanessa Perroncel.
No one believed Perroncel's denials in a magazine interview months later, least of all Bridge it seemed, who withdrew his name for consideration for England's World Cup squad to avoid taking the pitch with Terry. English scribes bemoaned their team's chances at the tournament in the wake of the scandal, and their worst fears came true: they bowed out in the round of 16.
Not to be outdone, the French squad had its own cheating scandal but with a particularly salacious twist, as it had ties to a police investigation into a prostitution ring at a high-end Parisian nightclub.
Worse yet, it emerged that French national team star Franck Ribery and teammates Karim Benzema and Sidney Gouvou had been paying $3,000 for prostitute Zahia Dahar, who was not yet 18.
A lawyer for the married Ribery claimed his client was merely helping police with their investigation. But police sources have said that Ribery confessed to his dalliances with Dahar but denied knowing her true age, a claim Dahar herself corroborates.
It would seem that sex scandals don't bode well for World Cup hopes, as the French also embarrassed themselves by failing to make it past the round-robin.
The ‘Best Hollywood Villain Award' goes to… Jesse James
Men in Hollywood have also been hard at work, burnishing their bad-boy images with hijinks that would make even a soccer star blush.
The biggest and baddest of them all was biker Jesse James, who for reasons unknown decided to blow-up his marriage to Sandra Bullock, Julia Roberts's heir to the America's Sweetheart throne.
Mere weeks after Bullock won an Academy Award for her role in "The Blind Side," and spent awards season gushing about a hubby who "has my back," a heavily tattooed stripper named Bombshell McGee came forward with allegations she had slept with James while his wife was away filming.
Shots of McGee stripping in a Nazi costume and then of James himself giving the Nazi salute seemed to put the final nail in the marriage's coffin, as Bullock filed for divorce, despite James's trip to rehab for reported sex addiction and his claims to want to rescue the union.
While James eventually began publicly stepping out with other women, including another heavily tattooed bad-girl, "L.A. Ink" star Kat Von D, Bullock bought a new house in New Orleans and adopted a baby boy named Louis as a single parent, carrying on with class and graciously saying her ex's behaviour was not indicative of the man she married.
The ‘Pious Catholic by Day, Raging Lunatic the Rest of the Time Award' goes to… Mel Gibson
Mel was once one of Hollywood's hottest hunks and a huge box-office draw thanks to his action-hero roles in Mad Max and the Lethal Weapon series, and comedies like What Women Want.
And after Braveheart secured his reputation as a director, Gibson seemed to have it all going for him. Until July 2006, that is, when he effectively ruined his career in one night by getting himself arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol, calling a female cop on the scene "sugar t*&s" and blaming the world's problems on Jews.
But if it seemed Mel had hit rock bottom on that night, things got much worse this year when his relationship with his Russian baby-mama, Oksana Grigorieva, fell apart. Gibson's career may be quite finished after audiotapes surfaced this summer in which he can be heard insulting and threatening Grigorieva, panting like a wild animal.
Most of what he said can't be published here, but imagine every despicable name for a woman and yup, they're there. Gibson also accuses her of dressing "like a pig in heat," and says it will be her fault if she is raped. He then uses a racial epithet to describe her would-be rapists.
The tapes are now part of an ongoing custody battle over their baby daughter, Lucia.
As for Gibson's career, his latest movie, in which he plays a stressed-out executive who talks to a hand puppet as a form of therapy, has been repeatedly delayed. "The Beaver," directed by Gibson's pal Jodie Foster, now has a rather vague Spring 2011 release date.
The ‘I Want to Watch Myself Having Sex All the Time Award' goes to… Prince Jefri of Brunei
Not long ago, few people could probably claim to know who exactly Prince Jefri Bolkiah is and what country, exactly, he is prince of.
But the youngest brother of the Sultan of Brunei gained notoriety this year when his lavish, and downright bizarre, lifestyle was revealed after a lawsuit he filed against two former employees wound its way through the New York court system.
To catch up: in 2004, the prince hired a British husband-and-wife legal team to help him combat efforts by his brother to have him surrender assets on accusations he had embezzled as much as $16 billion from government coffers.
But in 2006, the prince fired Faith Zaman Derbyshire and Thomas Derbyshire, accusing them of taking millions of dollars from him and using their considerable power over his business affairs to secure other economic benefits (they denied any wrongdoing).
But it was the details of the prince's lifestyle that were revealed in the lead-up to the court case that cement his status as one of our bad boys of the year.
In addition to owning some 600 properties and 2,000 cars, the prince, who has four wives, 17 children and countless mistresses, apparently can't live without such necessities as gold hot tubs and gilded toilet-paper holders.
On top of all that, though, is the highlight of the revelations: the prince's personal, and we mean personal, porn collection. As lawyers for both sides duked it out before going to trial, details emerged that Jefri had commissioned life-sized sexually explicit statues that depict him having sex with one of his then-fiancees.
While his lawyers successfully argued against letting the jury see the statues, pictures of them flooded the Internet, embarrassing even his lawyers "I'll tell you what," one of them told the court. "They make me blush."
