Broadcaster and gay rights campaigner Ray Gosling dies, aged 74
The journalist, broadcaster and gay rights campaigner, Ray Gosling, has died.
Throughout his career Gosling presented more than 100 television documentaries and many more radio programmes.
He first became involved in gay rights during the 1950s and was a key member of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE) in the 1960s, one of the oldest gay rights organisations in UK.
In later years, he set up a website, Gay Monitor, with Allan Horsfall, the co-founder of CHE. Horsfall died in August 2012.
In 2004, Gosling became a regular presenter on Inside Out East Midlands, a BBC regional current affairs programme.
During one of the programmes, broadcast on 15 February 2010, he claimed that he had killed his lover.
“I killed someone once,” he said. “He was a young chap, he’d been my lover and he got AIDs.
“I picked up the pillow and smothered him until he was dead.”
Gosling was interviewed on BBC Breakfast the day after the Inside Out broadcast and was asked about his claims. He again confessed to the killing.
He was arrested on suspicion of murder but charged with wasting police time after the confession was determined to be false.
Friends and colleagues of Gosling expressed their dismay over the ordeal.
Tony Roe, a BBC editor and friend of Gosling, at the time said: “After his arrest he was bailed to my house to avoid the media scrum. When he told the truth I was at first angry inside, and then sad.
“He was sitting in front of me, his career over. For once no straight answer as to why he had done it. But that night did see an explanation of sorts.
“At his friend’s funeral he said he was harangued for not ending the suffering sooner. So for the next 30 years he told himself and believed himself that he had.
“He had wanted to do the right thing and to have been seen to do the right thing.”
Poet and artist Dave Bishop, who was with Gosling in hospital on Tuesday, said people should remember him for his TV and radio work.
“He was different from all other broadcasters,” he said.
“He was curious about the world and used to go to places that no-one else bothered with.
“Ray knew how to talk to people and he liked to mix with the working class, and talk to them.
“He didn’t like programmes like Shameless and EastEnders because he thought they misrepresented the working class.”
Nottingham University NHS Trust said Gosling died at the Queen’s Medical Centre on Tuesday.
