A while back I posted this about Ray Gosling, the broadcaster who claimed, in a BBC documentary, to have suffocated his lover in a "mercy killing". Turns out its not true. Says, Gosling, "I wasn't even in the country when he died". He has been convicted of wasting police time. It's a sad postscript to his career. In earlier days he was a doppleganger for a Room at the Top Laurence Harvey, Angry Young Man; the ascerbic professional Northerner role suited him well. His stories were gritty and realistic and tended to be made in Halifax, rather than Honolulu. And this was at a time when we were still used to the Mr Cholmondeley-Warner delivery for documentaries. When one reviews his material one can almost see a proto punk adrift among the milk bars of the early fifties, with his moody black suits and quiff. Even at the end of his career he does a good Johnny Rotten stare.
This is a recent clip of Ray Gosling in action, and early on there is a black and white flashback to the days when he looked cool and moody.
Some of us forget there is a difference between fantasy and reality. Clearly Ray did, but let us not forget, he was a one off in a sea of plastic nobodies.
1 comment:
He was in a programme on BBC4 last night WW. (' back to the North' or something similar).
It was all about 1960 last night and the smash hit film 'Saturday Night Sunday Morning' had just been released. It was the first film that let 'Northerners' talk like northeners and was about a working class hero who was bored working in a factory in Lancashire and tried to fight the system. Great film sets and location shots. Cobbled backstreets and noisy factories.
The streets are still there but all the factories have moved to Poland and the far east.
Gosling seems a bit creepy now. Wandering around a graveyard making up stories about murdering his gay lover just for 'dramatic effect'
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