FRIENDS OF Ray Gosling, the TV presenter questioned yesterday by detectives about his claim that he had smothered a lover dying from Aids, have said that he told them a decade ago of his action, but they did not tell the police because they believed he had assisted the suicide of a loved one.
One friend, Alan Horsfall, who has known Mr Gosling for 40 years, said: “He told me about it a long time ago. It came up in passing, he told me about it and that was that. He did not make a big issue about it. It was some years after the event that he told me. I accepted it as assisted suicide. It was an act of great bravery, especially as he did it in a public place.
“I know the guy was in a bad state and Ray said they had a previous pact that if either of them was in a bad situation the other would do it. He isn’t a natural killer. It never occurred to me it was a crime,” he told the Guardian last night. However, it is not clear if Mr Horsfall knew the man who died.
Detectives will face a tough task to put together a prosecution given that Mr Gosling is refusing to say who the man was, or where it happened, but it seems likely that those friends who claim that they were told will now also be questioned, and also that they now face the threat of prosecution if they refused to co-operate with a police investigation.
Mr Gosling was arrested at the sheltered accommodation where he lives shortly after dawn and interviewed for more than nine hours by Nottinghamshire police.
The BBC has once again defended its actions, and said it had no legal obligation in the matter to report it to police.
So far, no evidence has been put forward to prove that the incident happened, and Gosling insisted before his arrest that he would not give any information to police if they chose to detain him.
Gosling’s declaration, made during a BBC Midlands programme on Tuesday, was filmed in early December.
The broadcaster said he was provoked to reveal his secret after he had interviewed a number of people who were dying and those who were caring for them, and witnessed the suffering they had to endure.
The details were given as he stood in Wilford Hill Cemetery overlooking Nottingham, where his partner of three decades, Bryn Allsop, who died after a long illness, was buried in 1999.
By all accounts, Gosling, who claimed that the unnamed lover he allegedly smothered over two decades ago was his “bit on the side”, cared superbly for Mr Allsop during his long illness.