Didier Baptiste was a fictional football player who appeared in Season 3 and 4 of the British Sky One

Sky One

Sky1 is the flagship BSkyB entertainment channel available in the United Kingdom and Ireland.The channel first launched on 26 April 1982 as Satellite Television, and is the fourth-oldest TV channel in the United Kingdom, behind BBC One , ITV and BBC Two...

 drama

Drama

Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...

 Dream Team

Dream Team (TV series)

Dream Team is a British television series produced by Hewland International which aired on Sky1 and Sky3 from 1997 to 2007; it chronicled the on-field and off-field affairs of the fictional Harchester United Football Club....

, about the equally fictitious Harchester United

Harchester United F.C.

Harchester United Football Club was a fictional Premier League football club from the Midlands, featured in the television series Dream Team...

. He was played by the late Sacha Grunpeter (credited as Tom Redhill), who died in 2005.
According to the character's backstory, Baptiste was signed from A.S. Monaco in October 1999.

After 44 appearances and 5 goals, in November 2000 the character was shown leaving the club in disgrace (he was transferred to Olympique de Marseille

Olympique de Marseille

Olympique de Marseille is a French association football club based in Marseille. Founded in 1899, the club plays in Ligue 1 and have spent most of its history in the top tier of French football. Marseille have been French champions nine times and have won the Coupe de France a record ten times. In...

) after he attempted to fix a vital game at the end of the season. Harchester were facing relegation and he deliberately missed a last-minute penalty, but the club still managed to stay up.

Didier's estranged wife

Estrangement

Estrangement is the sixth album by Ukrainian black metal band Drudkh, released in August 2007. The album was previously known under the title River of Tears, but then had a name change. Its songs have a minimalistic influence and also features the band's first prominent use of blast beats since...

, Victoria Baptiste, was played by Sarah Matravers

Sarah Matravers

Sarah Matravers is an English model and actress. Born in the New Forest, Hampshire and brought up in Kent, she lives in Fulham, London.She first came to public attention when she won The Great British Beauty Competition on ITV's This Morning television show. She also appeared in the 90's revival of...

; the character of Victoria remained in Dream Team long after Grunpeter departed the show.

Hoax

In the real world, in November 1999 both The News of The World and The Times

The Times

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

 were duped into printing an "exclusive" stating that Liverpool

Liverpool F.C.

Liverpool Football Club is an English Premier League football club based in Liverpool, Merseyside. Liverpool has won eighteen League titles, second most in English football, seven FA Cups and a record seven League Cups...

 were keen on signing the Frenchman for £3.5m. The hoax stemmed from a story invented by Arsenal fan site, ArsenalShorts, which was then picked up by various sports websites. The Guardian

The Guardian

The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

was also duped into printing the rumour, although they only valued Baptiste at £1m.