Waiting to Exhale

There are a good number of addicts within our lists this year, but only the one person had Whitney Houston.  Congrats to Claire for bagging a near maximum 10 pointer for the 48 year old, as well as notching 5 bonus points for having her as a unique selection.

In typical US style they will probably now spend weeks fighting over the cause of death so we'll leave the "unnatural causes" award pending, although I'm assuming a body ravaged with years of drugs and alcohol abuse was gonna give up the ghost eventually without much extra help.  I don't think a bodyguard would have helped anyway.

This raises a point I argued about with one of our members at the start of the year though - does a long-term junkie dying of their final hit count as "unnatural causes" for an overdose?  I didn't award the points to Amy Winehouse last year as felt that someone like that it was more about the long term damage taking it's toll rather than a one off - like an alcoholic dying of liver failure.  The straw that broke the camels back if you will.

Obviously if someone like David Beckham or David Cameron suddenly keeled over having eaten a bottle of sleeping pills then that would be a slam dunk.

Let me know what you think.