The Ultimate Heroes and Villains Quiz | Mixed People

Answer: Guy Fawkes

Guy Fawkes was born in York in the late sixteenth century. He was active (on the Spanish side) in the Dutch War of Independence and then ventured to Spain in an attempt to get support for a Catholic rebellion in England, but to no avail. He then got involved in the Gunpowder Plot to kill King James I and put a Catholic monarch (Elisabeth Stuart) on the throne. The plot was thwarted after an anonymous tip-off led to Fawkes being caught red-handed in charge of the gunpowder. He was tortured and eventually grassed up his co-conspirators.

Fawkes was sentenced to be hanged, dragged behind a horse, have his genitals cut off, his bowels torn out and burnt. His head was then to be cut off and his body parts were to be put on view for the public. Fawkes didn't fancy this, so he jumped off the scaffold and broke his neck.

In Britain today, the fifth of November is celebrated with fireworks and a bonfire, on which a "guy" (old clothes stuffed with newspaper by children) is burnt.

Guy de Maupassant was a 19th century French writer, best known as a brilliant short-story writer.

Guy Burgess was a British-born Soviet spy.

Guy Debord was a founder member of Situationist International, a Marxist group of revolutionaries who were closely connected to the arts.

Answer: Marcel Duchamp

"Fountain" was actually a urinal which had been turned 90 degrees and signed "R. Mutt". It's undoubtedly one of the most renowned so-called "readymade" pieces of art ever made despite the fact that nobody can really authenticate it ever existed as it was never exhibited and quickly disappeared. Numerous copies (if the concept of copies of "readymades" is valid) were authorized by Duchamp himself, one of which is in London's Tate Gallery's collection.

French-born Duchamp ran the gamut with artistic styles. He produced work that can be linked to Post Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism and Kinetic Art, but it was his involvement in Dada that he really changed the world of art.

Marcello Mastroianni was an Italian actor, most famous for his lead role in "La Dolce Vita".

Marcelo Caetano was a Portuguese politician who was in office as Prime Minister at the time of the Carnation Revolution that overthrew the right-wing regime of Estado Novo in 1974.

Marcel Desailly is a retired Ghanian-born French footballer. He was part of the 1998 World Cup winning squad.

Answer: Jimmy Savile

Jimmy Savile presented both the first ever "Top of the Pops" televison programme, which was broadcast in 1964, and the last "Top of the Pops", broadcast in 2006. He also appeared on a myriad of other TV and Radio shows, the best-known of which was "Jim'll Fix It" which ran from 1974 to 1994. The concept of "Jim'll Fix It" was that kids wrote to Jimmy expressing a wish, and every week several of them were chosen, and Jim fixed it for them to have their wishes met. Sometimes adults also had their wishes granted, but it was mostly kids.

Although whilst Savile was still alive he was investigated by the police regarding sexual abuse claims, he was never charged. However, in 2012 (one year after his death), a TV programme (not made by the BBC) called "Exposure" was broadcast, and all hell broke loose. Since then, Savile has been stripped of many of the awards he had received, buildings named in his honour were renamed, and charities set up in his name renamed. His family even had his tombstone removed and smashed to pieces.

Jimmy Somerville was lead singer in pop bands The Communards and Bronski Beat.

Jimmy Page is a rock guitarist, best known for playing lead guitar in Led Zeppelin.

Jimmy Valmer is a character in the irreverent TV cartoon show "South Park".

Answer: Ice T

Ice T's first major label album release was "Rhyme Pays", released in 1987, which is often cited as a cornerstone of gangsta rap. He really made his mark outside of the genre in 1991 when he released "O.G. Original Gangster", another watershed album. A year later, his heavy metal side-project Body Count included "Cop Killer" on their eponymous album. The song upset so many people that Ice T rereleased the album without the track stating that its infamy had overshadowed the song's original intent, which was a protest against perceived police brutality.

Ice T has been acting in films and TV since the mid-1980s. He took on the role of Detective Fin Tutuola in the TV series "Law and Order" in 2000. The show revolves around a special unit of the New York Police Department who investigate sex crimes.

Ice Cube is a rapper best known for being a member of seminal rap act N.W.A. and as a solo artist. He has also enjoyed a film career.

Vanilla Ice is a rapper from Texas whose career has been characterized by peaks and troughs.

Ice Box Chamberlain was an ambidextrous baseball pitcher born in 1867. He played for several teams.

Answer: Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu

Albanian-born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, aka Mother Teresa, was the founder of Roman Catholic Missionaries of Charity, which, at the time of her death in 1997, was a worldwide organisation that had over 600 centres. While alive, Agnes won the Nobel Peace Prize (1979) amongst other accolades, and after her death she was beatified by the Roman Catholic Church, without the usual minimum waiting period of five years.

However, the charity's work has been heavily criticized by reputable members of the medical community as evidence of poor medical care, often of life-threatening proportions, was reported at some of the missions. Even basic hygiene has been reported as not being up to scratch, with practices such as reusing hypodermic needles allegedly being commonplace. The administration of painkillers has often been seen as less important than the tender loving care of the sisters.

It has also been revealed that although huge donations have poured into the organization, centres have always run at poverty levels. Whilst no kind of corruption for personal gain has ever been hinted at, the fact that money donated to help the much publicized "hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers" has gone straight into the coffers of the Catholic Church.

Bojaxhiu was never anything but open about the work of her Missionaries, which was to bring sufferers closer to Jesus through painful suffering. She seems to have used the attention that her charity work brought as a platform to crusade against her pet hates: abortion and contraception.

As regards her consorting with crooks and dictators, Bojaxhiu gladly accepted money from Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier (aka Bébé Doc) and American savings-and-loan scandal crook Charles Keating. Whilst her defenders claim that she was too naïve to be aware of these people's wrongdoing, she was contacted by a District Attorney involved in the Keating case, Paul Turley, who requested she return the money received from Keating to its rightful owners. His pleas fell on deaf ears.

For a more detailed account of Mother Teresa's image-tarnishing shenanigans, see the late Christopher Hitchens' damning polemic "The Missionary Position".

Answer: Fanny Hill

John Cleland wrote "Fanny Hill" while he was in Fleet Prison for debt. The prison had a fearsome reputation, so no doubt Cleland's swift repudiation of his artistic creation was influenced by his experiences there which he had no wish to repeat!

The book made its first Stateside appearance in 1821 and was banned for obscenity posthaste. It was published in the US again in 1963, and was once again banned. However, this time the publisher appealed and in a historic decision, "Fanny Hill" was deemed to contain enough "social value" to be suitable reading. "Fanny Hill" is often cited as the last book to have been banned in the USA.

In the UK, "Fanny Hill" was published again in 1963, but was banned. The publisher didn't appeal and it wasn't legally available until 1970.

The book is saucy, and even viewed in the context of modern licentious entertainment, it's still actually rather racy. 15-year-old Frances "Fanny" Hill moves to London and ends up a prostitute, and her sexual awareness develops. She falls in love, runs away from the house of ill repute, and gets pregnant, but when her knight in shining armour disappears, she falls back into whoredom. She winds up realizing that sex can be a pleasure sans love, and the reader is witness to a series of sexual escapades. An elderly man falls in love with Fanny, now eighteen, and when he dies she inherits all his wealth. She tries to track down the love of her life, does so, and the pair live happily ever after.

Fanny Ekdahl was one of the lead characters in "Fanny and Alexander", an Ingmar Bergman film.

Fanny Adams was an eight-year-old girl who was brutally murdered in 1867. Her name lends itself to the phrase "sweet Fanny Adams", meaning nothing at all.

"Fanny by Gaslight" is a novel about prostitution by Michael Sadleir. It was made into a film in 1944. Thanks to the Hays Purity Code, it was drastically cut in the US.

Answer: Don Revie

Donald 'Don' Revie became player-manager for Leeds United in 1961 and revolutionized the club's ethos. Although his start was a bit slow, by 1964 Leeds were on a roll after getting promotion to the First Division and straight into the FA Cup final in 1965, even though they lost it to Liverpool. They went on to win the league in both 1969 and 1974, and the FA Cup in 1972. Revie left the job on a high in 1974.

Revie was replaced by Brian Clough, an odd choice since Clough had been the most outspoken critic of Revie's style of play which was dubbed "dirty". The slightly unfair epithet still hangs over the club to the extent that fans even sarcastically refer to themselves as "dirty scum". Clough only lasted 44 days and although he is widely revered by football fans, his reputation amongst Leeds United fans is rock bottom.

Revie's legacy is something of the antithesis of Clough's as he is almost universally talked about with contempt by English football fans due to his less-than-brilliant stint as England manager, whereas Leeds fans pooled money together for a statue of him that was unveiled outside Leeds' ground, Elland Road, in 2012.

Don Dokken is an American heavy metal vocalist best-known for his work as leader of his band Dokken.

Don Giovanni is an opera by Mozart.

Doncaster is a Yorkshire town. I have no knowledge of anybody called Don Caster.

Answer: Robert Knox

The only problem was that Burke and Hare were actually murdering folk in order to get enough fresh supplies for Knox!

In 1828, Irish immigrant Burke met Margaret Hare, who ran a guest house and was married to fellow Irishman William Hare, and when an old decrepit tenant passed away, the pair decided to flog the corpse rather than bury it. The next victim was a sick old tenant whom they murdered, and whose body they sold. They then branched out into luring victims to the guest house and killing them. They are believed to have killed at least seventeen people, all sold on to Knox for dissection. Once caught, the pair were tried, found guilty of murder, and hanged.

In a rather gruesome way the Burke and Hare murders helped medical science as they led to the Anatomy Act of 1832 that allowed corpses to be dissected for medical research and teaching. Prior to that, only the corpses of those convicted of murderer who had been executed had been available for dissection, as stipulated in the Murder Act of 1751.

Controversially, Knox was never prosecuted although he is believed to have been aware of how Burke and Hare were getting hold of so many bodies. His career was over, however.

Robert Mugabe is a controversial Zimbabwean politician who has been both Prime Minister and President of the country.

Robert the Bruce was King of Scots in the 14th century.

Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist whose novella "The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" is amongst his world-famous works.

Answer: Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Rainer Werner Fassbinder certainly courted controversy in his fatherland, Germany, through enigmatic performances in TV interviews as much as in the topics he chose to base his films on. His films were generally received badly in Germany, although when accolades started to fall upon his work from elsewhere, his reputation at home improved. Due to his lifestyle, which was deemed excessive, he was often talked about in the popular press.

Feminists attacked much of his work, but "Women's Picture" was what really got their goat. The main complaint seemed to be that he portrayed women as partly responsible for their own repression in contemporary society, a theme that was touched upon in many of his films. However, this idea wasn't limited to women. Although openly gay himself, Fassbinder was often criticized by the gay community. Furthermore, Marxists claimed he's sold them down the river, he was accused of anti-Semitism, and conservatives just found his work downright obscene.

However, Fassbinder's contribution to cinema is so indisputable that some critics see his death (from a lethal concoction of pills and cocaine) as the end of an era in German cinema, and his influence is vast with people such as Pedro Almodovar and John Waters citing him as an influence.

Getting away from all that hoohah, his films are a delightful diversion from the cliché-ridden mainstream, and, although sometimes somewhat contrived, are an insightful look into the mind of a very interesting man.

Rainer Wolfcastle is a character from The Simpsons TV show.

Rainer Maria Rilke was a Prague-born poet.

Rainier Louis Henri Maxence Bertrand Grimaldi was Rainier III, Prince of Monaco's full name.

Answer: Franz de le Boë

Franz de le Boë, aka Franciscus Sylvius, was a Dutch scientist whose advocacy of the theory of blood circulation was highly controversial but ultimately spot on. He became Professor of Medicine at the University of Leiden in 1658, and in 1669 he set up the first academic chemical laboratory in the world.

Gin was originally supposed to help medical disorders such as lumbago, kidney and stomach ailments, gallstones, and gout. It sparked off a huge debate and became a hot political issue in England in the 18th century when various political and economic manouevers led to what is historically known as "The Gin Craze", a period in which gin became the favoured drink amongst the lower classes. This craze, fuelled by the low prices and wide availability, led to wanton drunkenness and many social problems. The drink became known as "mother's ruin", a name it retains today, as it was seen as leading women to neglect their duties. The whole saga is full of twists and turns and political intrigue involving big cheeses of British culture such as Henry Fielding, all brilliantly documented in Jessica Walker's book "Craze: Gin and Debauchery in an Age of Reason". For a more immediate impression of the era, William Hogarth's pair of prints "Beer Street" and "Gin Lane".

Franz Beckenbauer won the FIFA World Cup and the UEFA European Football Championship with the West German national football team in 1974 and 1972 respectively.

Franz Ferdinand was an Austrian nobleman whose assassination sparked off World War I.

Franz Kafka was a Prague-born writer whose idiosyncratic work lends its name to the term Kafkaesque.