ENDORSEMENT ENDERS!

Tiger Woods is not the only superstar to make millions off his talent and then to lose millions from excessive partying. Other stars that have had endorsements pulled include swimmer Michael Phelps and model Kate Moss.

Michael Phelps is still known as one of the greatest swimmers and Olympians of all time after he won 14 Olympic gold medals, the most by any Olympian. But in 2009, the British tabloid News of the World caught Phelps smoking marijuana and all hell broke loose.

What he lost? Besides his clean-cut image, Phelps lost a then very lucrative Kellogg deal, valued at $250 000. Many of Kellogg’s cereal boxes with Phelps’s picture on them disappeared after he was dropped and have since showed up on e-Bay as souvenirs.

Kate Moss is a British supermodel who has appeared on more than 300 magazine covers around the world. In 2004, The Daily Mirror ran a full pictorial spread showing the model snorting cocaine at a West London recording studio.

What she lost? Moss lost major modeling contracts with H&M, Chanel and Burberry, which was estimated at millions of pounds. Apparently the damage to her modeling career didn’t last though as in 2007 she came in second on the Forbes top-earning models list, earning an estimated £6,500,00 (approximately R66 million) in one year.

DOLLAR BILL

Bill Gates may once have had a mission to build a mighty empire and make more money than… Warren Buffet. But today, his mission is to lose his money and make other billionaires do the same. Over the past few years Bill and Melinda Gates have been on a secret campaign to encourage other billionaires to give up the majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes and charitable organizations of their choice, either during their lifetime or after their death. Currently the couple has succeeded in recruiting 40 top billionaires, including Paul Allen, Michael Bloomberg, George Lucas and David Rockefellar. And their message to the rest of the miser billionaires out there? If you have billions of dollars and you’re not on this list, then you’re not in the cool kids’ club. Get with it.

I PREDICT A RIOT

If you were walking along a fine street in Mayfair, London and saw that a mansion, once owned by the Earl of Sussex, was vacant would you rush home, gather up your belongings and move right in? Well, that’s what some “middle class” squatters did. After finding the £10m historic house unlocked they promptly moved in and then offered to renovate the mansion for the owner. Instead, the owner served them with an eviction notice. As a bizarre retaliatian, the squatters then put an open invitation to a party on facebook called ‘Night of Mayhem’. The invitation went viral and up to 2500 drunken facebook fans, squeezed themselves into the seven-story house. Party entertainment included drug stalls selling cocaine, ecstasy and cannabis, free spray paint so guests could graffiti the walls and marble fireplaces and stones to break windows. And the lavatories? Any available corner! Riot police were called in for fear the floors would collapse under the “guests” and the clean-up operation lasted many hours and saw one of London’s main thoroughfares closed to traffic. Moral of the story? Lock your doors.