RUINED BY THE RIPPER!
Dave faces bankruptcy as he’s forced to PULP 5,000 official Peter Sutcliffe calendars
WHEN a severe dose of COVID carried Peter Sutcliffe off to Hell, businessman Dave Parrot put his head in his hands and wept.
Not because he had sympathy for the serial killer or grieved his loss, you understand.
Dave wept because he knew the death of the Yorkshire Ripper meant RUIN for his speciality calendar business.
Dave explained: “Late last year we were contacted through a third party who asked if we’d be interested in publishing the Yorkshire Ripper 2021 official calendar.
“I was immediately dubious. We are a respectable family firm and I was reluctant to associate us with Peter Sutcliffe. As everyone knows, he was a severely bad egg.”
But news that Netflix was about to screen a groundbreaking new documentary about changed Dave’s mind.
He added: “I knew that interest in the Ripper would be at an all- time high and that the calendar would sell like hot cakes.
“There are many people out there who have an unhealthy interest in criminal depravity and they would be a lucrative market for us.
“Yes… I was driven by greed.”
For commercial reasons, Dave refused to reveal how much his Birmingham- based firm invested in the venture but said it was “enough to sink us if it went wrong”.
And wrong it went because when Sutcliffe died on November 13 he had not signed off on the calendar.
Dave revealed: “A contractual obligation meant that Sutcliffe himself had to give the
Ripper
final approval of the calendar before it went on sale.
“Without that approval in writing, I leave myself wide open to a world of legal pain – even if I sell just one.
“So I’m left with 5,000 Sutcliffe calendars and a hole in the company finances that, barring a miracle, will finish us off.”
Sutcliffe died at the University Hospital of North Durham after refusing treatment for COVID- 19.
He was serving a whole- life sentence for the murder of 13 women during a rampage in the north of England in the 1970s and early 80s.
The Netflix series about his antics begins on December 16.