January 13th 2003 - January 19th 2003
Sunday Arundel/Ore
Saturday Rebekah from Wapping
Friday Abusive
Thursday Swanning about
Wednesday More Barrymore
Tuesday Asylum statistics
Monday Grassed up
Sunday 19th January 2003
London is abuzz with rumour as the grapevine tries to track down the identities of the unnamed luminaries supposedly suspected of being associated with police investigations into child pornography.
It's a game we all can play - but, as we do, it's important to emphasise the distinction between two separate investigations, Operation Arundel and Operation Ore.
Operation Ore, as detailed in several lengthy articles this weekend, is the investigation into the thousands of people who logged into a pay-per-view child-porn site run by American, Thomas Reedy. This is the investigation that resulted in the public degradation of Pete Townshend this week.
Operation Arundel, by contrast, is investigating claims (dating back to the 1970s) that a group of gay men successfully propositioned under-age boys in a Walton-on-Thames discotheque. Arundel is the investigation that has already jailed Jonathan King and last week focussed on Matthew Kelly and Bay City Rollers manager Tam Paton.
The accident(?) of timing that has led to headlines from both operations appearing on subsequent days is perpetuating a dangerous confusion between the two types of 'paedophilia' under investigation.
In the one case (Ore) we seem to be talking about a fairly classic case of men (and it is mostly men) who get sexual satisfaction from looking at pictures of children. I don't know the ages of the children concerned, but I'd guess that we're talking primarily about pre-puberty, say 10 to 14.
In the other case (Arundel), it appears that the boys in question were primarily in their late teens, many of them only a few years younger than their so-called assailants.
Now, as it happens, I once worked with one of the radio DJs whose name I've heard bandied about as a suspect over the weekend. We worked on a video shoot together, at a location in the country where we stayed overnight. The DJ was accompanied by a very cute young Australian whom everyone referred to as his personal assistant and whom none of us were in any doubt he was shagging.
Although the Australian was probably of a legal age - still 21 in those days - he was noticeably younger than the DJ. But none of us batted an eyelid at the disparity: the DJ was famous, he could pick and choose who he slept with, he chose to sleep with someone younger and cuter (as, I imagine, would many straight men and women, given half a chance.)
More to the point, no-one thought to feel sympathy for the young Australian, who plainly knew what he was doing, and plainly enjoyed doing it.
So I find myself uncharacteristically applauding Janet Street-Porter's article in the Independent today:
In the early Seventies Matthew Kelly would have been in his early 20s - I don't believe he was a Catholic priest at the time, either. If the "young" boys in question turn out to have been 16, will this whole affair have merited the miles of column inches it has produced?
God bless the Independent for having the courage to stand above the cheap furore in which the rest of Fleet Street is indulging itself: check out these three other articles for further examples of some long overdue rational and informed debate.
And in the meantime, remember: there's a distinction to be made between sex with unwilling or unwitting children (Ore) and sex with technically under-aged prematurely aware young adults (Arundel) - one is paedophilia in the worst sense of the word. And one isn't.
Saturday 18th January 2003
Paedophile-scourge Rebekah Wade, newly returned to The Sun as its first female editor, was notorious in her earlier days at the paper for her opposition to the infamous Page 3 nudes - so much so that her co-workers delighted in attributing one picture to the luscious "Rebekah from Wapping".
Any fears that Ms Wade would stick by her feminist principles were swiftly allayed by her first Page 3, dominated by a large naked woman dressed only in snakeskin boots and billed as: Rebekah from Wapping.
Friday 17th January 2003
After days of steamy nonsense about (the palpably innocent) Pete Townshend, when you see a tabloid headline that says Matthew Kelly arrested for child sex you might be forgiven for thinking that, hmm, maybe there is a God after all.
But sadly this turns out to be yet another tune from the Jonathan King songbook.
Kelly is 52 now and the offences under investigation date back to the 70s - at which time he would have been a relatively innocent twenty-something unknown actor rather then a rich fat succesful purveyor of television twatterie. We don't yet know the age of his 'victims' - but I'm prepared to bet that they'll turn out to have been in their late teens themselves.
Sounds like yet another tabloid sting to me. Anyone want to bet on at least one 'How TV star put his hand on my thigh" splash in this Sunday's papers?
For some serious insight into the whole mucky question of paedophilia read this column by the Independent's Johann Hari:
Every time a child abuse story is thrust on to our front pages, I search fruitlessly for coverage that will answer basic questions about paedophiles.
And every time I am shocked to realise that, in all the rotting acres of newsprint expended on this topic, there has been almost no discussion of such serious questions as: Can paedophiles be treated?..
[Right-wingers] want straightforward evil; to condemn, not understand. But there is a hard truth that we on the left will have to accept, too: paedophilia is an intractable sexual orientation, like heterosexuality or homosexuality, that cannot be "trained out" of a person.
We cannot hope for a cure - that is not realistic, and paedophiles can never be released from the hell of being attracted to people who are incapable of reciprocating.
Instead of driving them underground as we do at present, where their only source of friendship and comfort is to get involved with on-line paedophile rings, we need to draw them out into an environment where they can be supported in their efforts not to offend.
The point being (well, my point, anyway) that for as long as we shy away from staring paedophilia in the face and brace ourselves to acknowledge that there are all sorts and manners of ways in which children's sexuality can be abused - ranging from the rape and murder of ten-year-olds through to looking at pictures of naked teenagers - our reactions to any paedophile accusation will be reduced to the level of a tabloid witch-hunt.
We need a rational and informed debate about the whole issue of childhood, power and sexuality.
If we owe our children anything, we owe them that.
Thursday 16th January 2003
I know, I know: I spend way too many words banging on here about The White Swan in general, and the Amateur Strip Night in particular.
And nobody, but nobody, believes me when I claim that there is a fascination to the latter that extends well above and beyond the possibility of watching fit men get their kit off.
So it was with considerable foreboding that I found myself attempting to persuade a visiting American friend that, straight after going to the National to see Anything Goes, he should conclude his current visit to our country by joining me in a drunken plunge into the Essex-ridden ambience of the East End.What if some addled ruffian should spill beer all down him? What if the only people I knew there turned out to be the toothless madmen? What (worse) if the place turned out to be completely empty?
I shouldn't have worried: Gregory got to experience one of the best nights I've had at The Swan lately: full, cheerful, drunken, friendly - complete with a seventy-five-year-old contestant who, having taken his clothes off, refused to leave the stage and who, were it not for the compere's (riotously derided) decision to over-ride the crowd's jocular acclaim, would have won the contest by a considerable margin.
Wednesday 15th January 2003
Speaking of witch-hunts, note that the authorities plan to re-open their investigation into the death of Stuart Lubbock in Michael Barrymore's swimming pool.
Note that this move appears to have been motivated by suggestions that Lubbok's anal injuries may have been incurred after he was taken to hospital.
Note that we may, at last, be able to get past the implicit assumption that, simply because Barrymore had the nerve to out himself long and loud, he is automatically guilty of a desire to perform a violent drug-fuelled assault on a young man's anus.
Tuesday 14th January 2003
Left wing commentators have successfully defused much of the anti-immigration rhetoric surrounding foreign influx to these shores by concentrating on those that arrive here seeking asylum from abuse.
Sadly, that switch in emphasis has all too easily allowed the right-wing press to create a facile ellision that brands all asylum-seekers as potential terrorists.
Bear in mind these three statistics:
Number of foreigners arriving annually in Britain:
90,000,000+
Number of asylum-seekers:
72,000+
Number of people held under Anti-Terrorism Act:
15
Monday 13th January 2003
Yeah, well, me and my mate Zach were on holiday, and we got chattin' to these two girls, very fit, and then it turned out they were still doin' their A-levels, right? And me and Zach were talking about it over breakfast, and going', like, hmmm and sayin' as how we, y'know, wouldn't...but...well, we might have but..we shouldn't. Nah. And Zach goes, 'Well, you know what they say in footie, mate' and I goes 'No, what?' and he says 'If there's grass on the pitch, play on!'
......previous week