- Found hanging from the cord of an electric kettle in a shower stall next to his cell. Topaz had been in prison since his arrest May 31, accused of ordering the beating of two television executives who had rebuffed his ideas for new shows, and the agent who had abandoned Topaz's comeback bid.
- Dudu Topaz studied acting in London. Upon his return, he performed with the Haifa Theatre and appeared in entertainment shows around the country.
- His first job in television was as an English teacher in the Israeli Educational Television.
- Topaz was an Israeli TV personality, comedian, actor, screenwriter, playwright, author and radio and television host.
- He attempted suicide in his prison cell at the Abu Kabir Detention Center in Tel Aviv on July 3, 2009, after taking an overdose of insulin, used to control his diabetes. He was briefly hospitalized.
- He was charged in 2003 with the sexual harassment of two young women, one a security guard at the studios where his show was filmed, the other an employee of the channel who claimed that Topaz put his tongue in her ear. He claimed the incidents were "innocent expressions of affection common in the entertainment industry" but although the cases collapsed because of a lack of evidence, the suspicion remained.
- Topaz was a television host in the Israeli public TV Channel 1 in the eighties and early nineties, as well as running some successful sketch comedy shows on stage.
- Topaz, who was arrested confessed to ordering brutal attacks on TV executives Avi Nir and Shira Margalit and on actors' agent Boaz Ben-Zion in order to get back at them for the decline in his career on television. Topaz is believed to have paid NIS 50,000 (about $12,614) for each attack.
- In May 2007 he announced that he would no longer host TV shows, but would pursue other careers such as acting and documentary film making.
- Unable to cope with his decline, he began to pester industry insiders. Growing increasingly desperate, he took to leaving long, rambling messages for television honchos, detailing new shows and concepts that were ostensibly the same as everything he had done before.
- He was granted a good deal of slack, so many of his indiscretions were overlooked. In 1995, he broke the glasses of a television critic following an adverse review, and two years later was the subject of newspaper allegations that, as a gameshow host, he had helped to rig the competition.
- His unsophisticated style was mocked by the intelligentsia, but to many others he was a hero. Such was his influence that during one broadcast he asked viewers to turn off their lights, and the whole country went dark. On another occasion, he claimed to viewers that he would present aliens live on air, drawing a record-breaking audience comprising 51% of the country's homes.
- In May 2009, Topaz was arrested on suspicion of ordering, organizing and paying for a series of attacks on top-level TV executives Avi Nir and Shira Margalit and showbiz agent Boaz Ben-Zion. The three were beaten by assailants and sustained serious injuries.
- No one, was prepared for how dramatically Topaz's star would fall. Usurped by younger presenters and the imported formats of reality television, Topaz still refused to alter his style despite plummeting ratings. When his show was finally axed in 2004, he quickly found work at a cable channel, but when that too was cancelled, he was distraught.
- Public sympathy for his antics began to evaporate in the early part of the new decade. Hosting a show in the immediate aftermath of a deadly suicide bomb attack, he pressurised one of the wounded into agreeing that sufficient time had passed since the blast for him to begin his lighthearted routine. In a country struggling at that time with the realities of the second intifada, this was too much.
- In the early eighties Topaz began to direct television game shows in Channel 1. The most successful of those was the game show "Play It".
- He built his reputation in the 1970s, initially as a stand-up comic, and the merciless way in which he mocked aspects of Israeli society and culture was in perfect step with a society now confident enough to laugh at itself.
- In 2002, his reputation was damaged further when during a live show he inexplicably bit the arm of Natalia Oreiro, an Argentinian soap star. Despite a national outcry, he remained unapologetic: "The criticism comes from evil and stupidity, mostly jealousy . . . weep for the self-righteous feminist organisations. If there's anything I regret, it's not biting the other arm.".
- Topaz was later also indicted for drug possession, due to allegations that for the previous three years, Topaz had purchased cocaine from Ofir Sasportas, one of the other suspects in the case.
- Topaz was also accused of planning attacks against television figures Zvika Hadar, Erez Tal, and Avri Gilad, Israel Hayom editor-in-chief Amos Regev, his ex-wife Roni Chen, and her husband Haim Zenati, as well as a second assault against Ben-Zion after judging that the first had not been severe enough. Topaz allegedly went on this revenge spree because his show was taken off the air, and because he was rejected by rival channels and newspapers for which he offered to write guest columns.
- He moved to a high security cell in Ramla's Nitzan Prison, for prisoners likely to pose a danger to themselves. His cell was supervised by two security cameras but for reasons of privacy there were none in the shower, and it was here that he was found hanged.
- He was no master criminal and once the police had uncovered the clues that he had left behind, he admitted that "they didn't want me on television and I decided to take revenge.".
- In the nineties he was the host of popular show "Rashut Habidur" (The Entertainment Authority), later renamed "Ha'Rishon Ba'Bidur" (The First at entertainment), that aired for 11 seasons between 1994-2004 on Channel 2 commercial channel, and is one of the highest rated shows ever aired on commercial TV in Israel.
- In 1981, Topaz gained notoriety from comments he made during an Israeli Labor Party political rally in Tel Aviv's Malchei Yisrael Square (later renamed Rabin Square) when he said: "It's a pleasure to see the crowd here, and it's a pleasure to see that there are no chahchahim (derogatory slang word alluding to Israeli Jews of Middle Eastern background) who ruin election gatherings.
- Born David Goldenberg in Haifa in 1946, Topaz changed his name in order to sound less formal and more glamorous.
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