MISSING LINKS

HOW two figures in the news are joined by a series of unexpected connections.

DAVID DICKINSON

… is quitting his ITV show, Dickinson’s Real Deal, after 17 years to spend more time with his wife. At 19, Dickinson was sentenced to four years in jail for mail-order fraud – which he said ‘put the fear of God’ into him, forcing him to mend his ways. Another star with a fraud conviction is…

STEPHEN FRY

… who, at 17, spent three months in prison on remand after stealing a coat from a pub, then using the credit card he found in its pocket. Fry’s first screen appearance was as an extra in Chariots Of Fire (as was Kenneth Branagh’s) and he was the third person in the UK to buy an Apple Mac computer in 1984. The first, in the queue ahead of him, was his friend…

DOUGLAS ADAMS

… who created The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. Adams was also an amateur guitarist, who played with the The Rock Bottom Remainders – a supergroup made up of authors, most prominently featuring…

STEPHEN KING

… also on guitar. The author is triskaidekaphobic, with such a morbid fear of the number 13 that he won’t stop writing on a page number that’s any multiple of it, so he can quickly get to a ‘safe’ number. Aptly enough for the king of horror, King worked as a gravedigger in his youth, as did…

ROD STEWART

… though his time in London’s Highgate Cemetery lasted just a couple of days. The rocker, above, is also a model train enthusiast (cue many an ‘I am railing…’ headline) who spent £70,000 shipping his collection between his homes in Malibu and Essex. Other model railway buffs include…

EDDIE IZZARD

… who donated an old family set to the Bexhill Museum in East Sussex. The comedian and Labour activist, who recently adopted the name Suzy, is a keen Crystal Palace supporter, just like…

LIAM NEESON

The Taken star last week found out he was the Duchess of York’s celebrity crush. Sarah Ferguson was asked about ‘going on the pull’ in a radio interview and replied: ‘Is Liam Neeson single?’