Heroes & Villains: The IoS picks its top 100

Like them or loathe them, some people have firmly stamped their personalities on the past 10 years. Here, we offer you our very own Noughty List

Click
here or on the image to the right to launch the IoS Top 100 Heroes and Villains.

Falling stars: The year 2000 already seems like a more innocent age

Ah, 2000. A solid year, with lots of pleasing 0s, when the most threatening presence on the global stage was the thought that Christine and Neil Hamilton might take a holiday abroad. Perhaps that's why their names and others that we have nearly forgotten from those cuddly, new millennium days before 9/11 sound about as cutting edge as a fax. Do you remember seeing pictures of the Blairs with baby Leo on the doorstep of No 10 and thinking – please, no – they looked quite sweet? Or thinking that Nasty Nick genuinely was the nastiest thing we'd see on Big Brother. When Ron Atkinson was a roguish old throwback rather than a racist old throwback? I bet you could have had a decent stab at naming Prince Edward's wife? Come on, they only married in 1999. No? Sophie Rhys-Jones. And what does the name David Shayler mean to you? Now: an ageing transvestite claiming to be the son of God. Then: brave whistle-blower taking on the secret service. What a difference a decade makes...

Just ask Michael Barrymore, last seen, according to The Sun, working as an odd job man in Epping. Then, he was out, divorced and dusting off his Britain's funniest light entertainer crown (the Stuart Lubbock affair? Never heard of it.)

And when was the last time you thought you simply must download Badly Drawn Boy's latest album, or catch up with Wolfgang Tillmans' latest exhibition? But that's unfair. The Mercury Music Prize and the Turner Prize are perennial career killers, and the winners in 2000 deserved better than honourable mentions in the where-are-they-now dossier. And can you name your Teletubbies? Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa and Po were in their pomp 10 years ago. As was Stephen Hendry: he was gunning for his eighth world title – but it was not to be, either in 2000 or since. And is it me or was snooker still, er, cool?

Mike Higgins

Rising stars: Who's next in the sausage machine of fame?

The sausage machine of fame will have its gristle – so which unfortunates are going to be fed into its maw over the coming decade? Would that we knew. But one celeb fact is certain: there's always another Jagger. Assisi, daughter of Jade, is already clagging up the gossip pages, and if she reproduces as swiftly as her mother, she'll make a great-grandfather of Mick. Then – surprise! – there's Leo Blair. He had a low-profile Noughties but that doesn't mean the pubescent afterthought of Tony and Cherie won't fire up some hormonally charged headlines over the next few years: our bet's on a sixth-form Palestinian support group, or an "I - Gordon" Facebook page.

The hideously precocious offspring file is never thin, but we say the fairy dust glitters brightest around Martha West, daughter of Dominic, star of The Wire. At the age of 10 she has already made her cinema debut, as a daughter of Charles Darwin in Creation. The starlets can look after themselves, but who will take over from Nicholas Hytner at the National Theatre and be forced on to Newsnight to fight their corner for cash and/or the right to put on very rude productions? Stick a tenner on Thea Sharrock and hedge with a fiver on Rupert Goold.

Another decade, another Bond: how about some synergy between Britfilm's cash cow and British broadcasting's greatest franchise ( Doctor Who): Matt Smith for 007, though he'll need to hit the creatine. Unlike Channing Tatum, the multiplex beefcake jostling to be the next Russell Crowe: he's even lined up some sword and sandals action in The Eagle of the Ninth.

Andy Murray can't shoulder the burden of going out in the semis at Wimbledon on his own: Laura Robson, this is your moment. The talented teenager can spend the next few years deciding whether she's the new Virginia Wade or Annabel Croft. Another delicious sporting prospect for the 2010s: the sight of an English bowler giving the Aussies a taste of leg-spin medicine. Step forward the Bradford Shane Warne, Adil Rashid!

Mike Higgins

Contributors: Brian Brady, Sarah Clark, Emily Dugan, Katy Guest, Clare Kane, Nina Lakhani, Jane Merrick, Marc Padgett, David Randall, John Rentoul

Have we missed anyone out? Let us know below or email sundayletters@independent.co.uk