THE RAPACIOUS ESTABLISHMENT AND THE REHABILITATION OF MICHAEL BARRYMORE

For those who do not know who he is - and most outside of Britain will not - Michael Barrymore was a generally well-loved television presenter and game show host in the 1980s and '90s, particularly by elderly women. In 1995, Barrymore publicly came out as homosexual after having led a double life away from his nineteen-year marriage to Cheryl, who was also his manager. The other Michael, who the public never saw, was a drug addict and alcoholic who had previously assaulted his wife, the police putting her on the at risk register. I still maintain that one of the causes of homosexuality is mind-altering drug use. After coming out, every on-camera joke and remark became about 'being gay', as it consumed his life, just as 99% of homosexuals become singularly consumed by this lifestyle choice. Everything was camped-up and over-the-top. Cheryl was repeatedly publicly embarrassed and an acrimonious divorce ensued. People began to switch off. Ratings dropped and his show Barrymore was eventually cancelled. Yet strangely, in spite of his drop in popularity, new vehicles were always found for him and he consistently won the National Television Award for Most Popular Entertainment Presenter until his depraved lifestyle got the better of him and public outrage ensured awarding him the prize was no longer justifiable.

 

 

The depraved lifestyle was exposed in 2001 after heterosexual family man Stuart Lubbock was found drowned in Barrymore's pool during a party that involved drug use. He had sustained injuries consistent with anal rape, and cocaine and ecstacy were found in his system, as well as alcohol. Barrymore had fled the scene when the ambulance arrived. A pathologist who examined the body, Professor Jack Crane stated that the wounds were 'indicative of a serious sexual assault' and that Stuart was 'likely to have been forcibly restrained during the attack.' Barrymore, his then boyfriend Jonathan Kenney and other homosexual friends had lured the handsome Lubbock and others back to Barrymore's bungalow for extra drinks after encountering them in the Millennium Nightclub in Harlow, where Barrymore served them cocaine. Lubbock would have no doubt been pleased to have been invited to a television star's home, something to tell the workmates at the meat factory where he worked as an inspector. Did Barrymore have anything to do with the rape and murder? Only he knows, but it is clear that he knows whoever did it, even if he did not do it himself. These are the kind of people he associates himself with. Not only this, but Barrymore and previous boyfriend Shaun Davis had been planning to adopt a child together, which shows just how perverse they are. One can only wonder what would have happened to that poor child.

 

Why am I bringing all this up now? There have been numerous attempts to rehabilitate Michael Barrymore over the years and serve him back up to the masses whenever the establishment think the masses have forgiven or forgotten. This is such a time. Barrymore became a detested figure in Britain and left for New Zealand in the new year of 2004, where he lived with Shaun Davis again. He re-emerged in January 2006 as a housemate in Celebrity Big Brother, which apparently earned him £150,000. He then released an autobiography, having waited for his ex-wife's death so he could lay the blame for all his misfortunes on her doorstep, calling her a control freak whose behaviour had led to him finding comfort in drugs, alcohol and men. He has made numerous publicity stunts and announcements over the years, but was always haunted by the spectre of Stuart Lubbock and, more specifically, his former audience's awareness that he never showed one shred of remorse. Then, suddenly, a few days ago, he turned up on Piers Morgan's Life Stories (see video below) and then again on Good Morning Britain, also hosted by Piers Morgan, half-heartedly pleading remorse, but reserving true sympathy for himself and not for the true victim, Stuart Lubbock.

 

Everyone ought to be able to see through his shameless act; the whole programme is set up for us to sympathise with Barrymore, his friend weeping 'uncontrolably' as he talks about him being 'on suicide watch'. In the video below, Barrymore says he 'did not flee the house' (@5:25), yet immediately states that he left the house. And why did he phone his P.A. straight away, the man who handles his publicity? And when he reads out the letter from the Crown Prosecution Service, what does that prove? That each of the three men arrested for the murder and one other man provided each other with alibis. Equally, what was odd about the night Lubbock was killed was that no murder investigation took place until June, by which time forensic evidence at the scene had been lost. A man drowns in a swimming pool and no one asks how that is possible when there are so many in attendance? Indeed, the whole investigation was so farcical that the case was reopened in 2006, even though the Lubbock family had been denied an application for a private prosecution against Barrymore a year earlier, and there followed an inquiry by the Independent Police Complaints Commission from 2007 to 2009.

 

One notes too in the video how the studio audience have been prompted to applaud as soon as Barrymore says the obviously well-rehearsed line, 'I am entitled to walk around with my head held high.' But the very fact he is being acknowledged at all by those in control of the media demonstrates his reintegration. As I have mentioned before, media discourse is framed by what is included and omitted, which shapes popular opinion. This also applies to people. Why are intelligent and articulate members of the so-called 'far Right' (also a propagandist media term) so rarely interviewed on television, even though they are dishonestly discussed within the studio by their political enemies? Barrymore, one notes, is within the studio and is the object of sympathy. One also has to ask the question: why is Michael Barrymore so important to the media establishment? Why have there been so many attempts to bring him back, which have as yet been thwarted by public opinion? And one notes here the attempt at changing that opinion. We are of course becoming all too aware of the culture of sexual abuse in the political and media spheres, and how the police often cover it up. Is this another instance? Their erosion of our sensibilites provided by our natural instincts is telling. There is only one victim here, and that is Stuart Lubbock.