Madeleine McCann: Sofa So Terrible As Lorraine Kelly Explains
MADELEINE McCann – Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann: Kate and Gerry McCann are on GMTV with Lorraine Kelly. The McCanns are talking. Their children Sean and Amelie are talking, too:
The Mail (front page): “Police have given up on Maddie says McCanns”
Page 11: “McCanns beg police to start again in the search for Madeleine”
Did they ever look to begin with – really look?
Leicestershire Police has carried out its own inquiries as has the taxpayer-funded Child Exploitation and On-Line Protection Centre. But neither is actively seeking the little girl.
But she has been looked for:
The three-year saga has already cost UK taxpayers nearly £500,000.
More can be done. Always more can be done because Our Maddie has not been found.What of the facts?
The couple, from Rothley, Leicestershire, told GMTV’s Lorraine Kelly it was ‘incredibly frustrating’ that police in Portugal and the UK are not doing more to find Maddie…
The Sun (front page): “We’ve finally told twins that Maddie was stolen”
Pages 14-15: It’s an exclusive with Lorraine Kelly.
“Mummy was a doctor but now her job is to find Madeleine – WHAT TWIN TOLD SCHOOLGIRL PAL”
Lorraine Kelly has already scored an interview with the McCanns on the GMTV sofa. Now she writes of that meeting.
KATE and Gerry McCann are making plans for their daughter’s seventh birthday – but the little girl will not be opening her presents or blowing out the candles on her cake.
They light the candles? Not that much light is shone on what happened to Our Maddie. On a brighter note, at least each birthday is marked in the national press. The missing child continues to feature. But what is the purpose of the article?
Kate told me: “Her birthday is actually much more difficult than May 3rd. It is a day when we should be celebrating Madeleine – and celebrating WITH Madeleine.”
This is pain exposed. But how does this help find the missing girl? We are staring at the parents. They are inviting us to stare. But we must be careful what we say. Kate and Gerry McCann are innocent. And they are also litigious. Still, Lorraine Kelly isn’t looking at the facts nor for the child – she too is watching the parents:
Kate is bone thin and looks very fragile and, while Gerry might appear to be coping well on the outside, you can clearly see the pain in his eyes.
They both have a haunted, strained look but somehow they manage to get through the day.
Well, they don’t always look like that. And while the stress has been manifest, Gerry McCann has always looked remarkably together and composed in front of the media. And Kate McCann look pretty good.
Time, now, for an anecdote:
Kate, a GP, said that one of Sean’s playmates had asked her “Are you a doctor?” She recalled: “Sean just came in and said, ‘Mummy was a doctor but her job now is to find Madeleine’. He was straight in there. So they understand that we have got a lot of support.”
The kids are now talking:
Kate said: “I think it was last year Amelie said to me, ‘Has Madeleine run away?’
“And she kept asking me in a public place so it was a bit tricky at first, and she said, ‘Because it’s not nice to run away’.“That really upset me because I thought I don’t want her to think that Madeleine is at fault. So, probably about the third time she asked when we were at home we just explained that someone had taken Madeleine.”
Who?
“But we tried to make them understand in as gentle a way as possible. It’s a bit like stealing, you know. That’s how they understand it. So they know someone has taken her and they know it is wrong.”
Try not to spread the fear in kids’ minds. You know, like thsoe adverts for Our Maddie before Shrek the Third. Whodunnit?
Gerry said: “They believe it was a man that took her. It was a naughty man and we need to try and find them. So part of what they say is that mummy is working to try and help find Madeleine.”
Such are the facts. Kelly says that the story of Our Maddie has “a dark side”. Yep, darker than a child going missing.
Kate and Gerry found themselves accused of being neglectful parents and even complicit in Madeleine’s disappearance.
Is that dark? But the story is not about the parents. It’s about finding the missing child, isn’t it? Can we speculate? Gerry McCann says we can:
“What I would say is people have got to put themselves in our position and ask what would you do if it was your daughter?”
Well… What would you do? Imagine if your child went missing. There for the grace of god, and all that. A child goes missing and we all get to play along. And the Government can join in, too:
In their ongoing campaign, Kate and Gerry would dearly love to see a full government review of the case.
Gerry said: “It is not right that an innocent, vulnerable British citizen is, essentially, given up on. We don’t think it is right that, as parents, we have to drive the search. Of course, we will but not everyone has the same resources that we have had.”
No word on Our Maddie in the Daily Star, Daily Express and Daily Mirror (which long ago dispensed with its yellow ribbon).
So much for the reporting. What of the actual case:
“The benefits of biometric systems… In the case of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann (2007), the UK police asked visitors at the Resort in Portugal in the two weeks prior to child’s disappearance to provide any photographs of passers-by for use in a biometric facial recognition system….”
Our Maddie – pictures:
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(Left to Right), Gerry McCann, Martin Houghton-Brown, Chief Executive Missing People, Kate McCann and Francis Herbert, Secretary General, Missing Children Europe at a Madeleine McCann fundraiser held at the Roof Gardens in London, exactly 1,000 days after their daughter Madeleine McCann went missing.
Posted: 28th, April 2010 | In: Madeleine McCann Comments (21) | TrackBack | Permalink
