What Really Happened When Ray Gosling ‘Killed’ A Man On BBC TV
RAY Gosling, the Nottinghamshire-based BBC TV presenter, told viewers of Inside Out that he had killed his terminally ill lover:
“I killed someone once. He was a young chap, he’d been my lover and he got Aids. I said to the doctor: ‘Leave me… just for a bit,’ and he went away. I picked up the pillow and smothered him until he was dead.”
Factual stuff. And good on Gosling for understanding that when a media worker says something controversial it is an easy media story. The power of the telly makes Gosling’s words worthy of their repeating. And thanks to the Celebrity Police Force, Gosling is arrested on suspicion of murder.
This will be a good story. We’ve got the cause. We’ve got an erudite man who’s comfortable on camera. And we’d got the media footage. Time, then, for a heated debate.
But then Gosling says he didn’t kill anyone. But because the CPF always get their celeb, Gosling is to be charged with wasting police time (do you think they watch the telly for fun, eh?).
Says Gosling in a qualified apology of sorts:
“I’m sorry if the police think they wasted their time.”
He then tells us of his alleged TV confession:
“It was a small item on a regional TV programme Inside Out, in my country (sic) the East Midlands, to my people, with whom I have had an intimate relationship.”
It’s a local killing for local people. Which is why he, er, repated the story on BBC Breakfast the next morning? And then he told Sky News?
Gosling will get his day in court – a local court for local people. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said Mr Gosling had been summonsed to appear before Nottingham magistrates on 14 September.
Helen Allen, senior lawyer in the Special Crime Division of the CPS,, tells us:
“The police established that there was sufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of proving that Mr Gosling’s confession was false and asked the CPS to consider whether he should be prosecuted for wasting police time, given the amount of work they had to carry out to establish what had happened. After careful consideration of all the evidence I decided that Mr Gosling should be prosecuted for wasting police time and advised the police to obtain a summons to that effect.”
What says Gosling now?
“I know what some people say, that I said what I did for publicity to promote a book I’m writing.”
A book? Who mentioned any book? What’s this book about then?
“That is absolutely not true, I haven’t finished the book yet.”
Again with the book. Time, perhaps, to add a new anecdote to this book?
“Some people say I did it to revive a dying career. I didn’t. I said it out of my heart, out of my feeling for people who had told me their intimate private stories and it got out of hand and I’m sorry.”
Mr Gosling, you said you had killed a man. And it now seems that you made it up to empathise with people who had been placed in desperately trying circumstances by a very ill loved one. Maybe you made it up to be part of a campaign to help these people, both the ill and the carer? Such is the power of the TV that when a presenter speaks people listen and other media workers eager for content tuck in. But Gosling says he will not be part of any cause. So no big debate on euthanasia or assisted suicide, then.
But Gosling will go on the TV news and turn a man’s death into a show in which fact and fiction are indistinguishable. Will Gosling now react to other conversations with a TV confession? Will a chat with a rape victim result in Ray saying that he was raped? Will the BBC news go:
Today at the BBC, one presenter was killed in a suicide bomb in Tel Aviv; two presenters, both jihadis, planted a bomb in Kabul; our sports reporter scored the winner in the FA Cup final; and the weatherman lost 34 cattle when a twister hit his Texas ranch…
Says Gosling’s solicitor, Digby Johnson:
“We are delighted that nobody has been killed, secondly that he has not been charged with murder and thirdly that the pressure of the uncertainty has come to an end. When all is said and done, when you watch him [Ray Gosling] walk, he is not in the best of health and, however much he may be the author of his own misfortune, he certainly hasn’t benefited from this.”
That’s RAY G.O.S.L.I.N.G..
Posted: 20th, August 2010 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
