Starsuckers is a 2009 British documentary film aiming to expose the "shams and deceit involved in creating a pernicious celebrity culture".
Directed by Chris Atkins, director of the 2007 documentary Taking Liberties, it shows the production team planting a variety of celebrity-related stories in the UK media, such as a claim that the singer Avril Lavigne had been seen asleep in a nightclub.
[2] On 23 October 2009, six days before the Starsuckers premiere, the makers reported that they had received an e-mail from the law firm Carter-Ruck, acting on behalf of controversial publicist Max Clifford and threatening them with an injunction.
[3][4] In December 2015, three City traders, James Hyde, Hamish Maclellan, and Phillip Jenkins, along with their accountant Terence Potter, were convicted of conspiring to cheat HM Revenue & Customs by falsifying documents to show that they had each actively worked 10 or more hours a week on the production of Starsuckers and were eligible for tax rebates.
[5] In June 2016, two further producers of Starsuckers, Christopher Walsh Atkins and Christina Slater, were convicted of the same charge of conspiring to cheat HM Revenue & Customs, and were jailed for 5 and 4 years respectively.