The Strange Case of the Stiff Sweep

 The Stiff Sweep was an internally held Fundraising event at a place that I used to work in the early 2000s. Too tasteless to be used on the general public, it however somehow suited the leftfield and sometimes almost anarchic way that this group operated. It was the group leader's idea, a person with "no filter" to use modern parlance,  a character without empathy or sympathy for anyone. Here's how it worked:

A selection of elderly or ill celebrities was selected and turned into a chart. This was  circulated among the participants,  previously vetted for how they would take the idea. The gambler selected the celebrity from the list that they thought was most likely to die next. They paid a pound into the pot. Then, when a purchased celebrity died, the participant who had purchased that name won half of the pounds that had been paid in. The other half was donated to the group and the whole thing started again. 

This was before social media - it made watching the 6 o clock news quite exciting.

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