'Cocaine Overdose Kills Ike Turner'...he was 76 years old, for heaven's sake...
This has been just one of a number of pretty grubby celebrity stories recently, a lot of taking drugs and dying going on. I remember in the past these kind of things would have rather passed me by, as my field of interest had self-imposed limits. But now, surfing through news sites, everything is of interest, anything might be ripe to be made into a question.
It can be interesting to see what people find acceptable and what people don't - generally you can pick an audience that'll enjoy a risque question and raise noises of mock-horror while you can tell when to steer clear. Personally, perhaps being a relative coward, I steer fairly clear of anything people might disapprove of when delivering quizzes but will write questions about most things if required.
It can be pretty surprising where the line will be drawn. We were writing a large batch of questions for a company to send out to venues, and I wrote a question along the lines of 'Which member of the 1966 World Cup team went on to manage Man city and southampton?' about a month or two after Alan Ball's death (they wouldn't have gone out into the venues till a few months later) only to be told it was 'too soon'. Too soon for what? Who would find that offensive? Would audiences collapse in tears and cry ' how can they even mention bally at a time like this?'
'Have they no respect?'
so, you can be a bit risque sometimes, create a mild frission, but, you know we're not comedians, we're not artists, we're not seeking to 'confront' or 'challenge' an audience, we're trying to help a group of people to entertain themselves, so there may be a question about Ike Turner, but it's unlikely to raise the temperature too much.