Barry: Column that shames us all

Oct 21 2009 by Barry Gibson

REGULAR readers won’t be surprised to learn that I’m not a big fan of the Daily Mail.

As an open-minded, namby-pamby liberal I do read it now and again to broaden my world view.

I’m always impressed by its extensive reporting and its intelligent double-page feature pieces.

But its editorial line is not to my liking. I hate the obsession with asylum seekers and cures for cancer.

I’m bemused by the paper’s attitude to house prices. It’s a bad thing when they go up. And it’s a bad thing when they go down.

But what really gets me about the Daily Mail is the spite.

There was a prime example of this last week when columnist Jan Moir penned her now notorious piece for the paper on the death of Boyzone singer Stephen Gately.

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the last week, Ms Moir has caused a smidgen of offence with her view on the demise of the 33-year-old. There have been more than 22,000 complaints to the Press Complaints Commission about the piece – more than the PCC has received about everything else in the last five years.

Every columnist loves a response, but I think Ms Moir may not be too happy she’s generated such reader reaction.

What has she done to attract such fury? Well, metaphorically, she has spat on the unburied coffin of a decent, well-liked man because he happened to be gay.

In her column Ms Moir refused to accept that Mr Gately had died in Mallorca of an undiagnosed heart condition.

She insists there is more to the singer’s death on the grounds that “healthy and fit 33-year-old men do not just climb into their pyjamas and go to sleep on the sofa, never to wake up again.”

Except that, tragically, they do. Dozens of young people die in Britain every year of undiagnosed heart conditions. They appear to be the epitome of good health and then, in a moment, they are gone.