Ray Gosling

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This article is about the television journalist and author. For the scientist, see Raymond Gosling.

Ray Gosling
Ray Gosling at a meeting of Croydon Area Gay Society
Gosling speaking to the Croydon Area Gay Society, 2 December 2008
Born
Raymond Arthur Gosling

5 May 1939
Northampton, England
Died (aged 74)
Nottingham, England
NationalityBritish
Occupation(s)Journalist, author, broadcaster

Raymond Arthur Gosling (5 May 1939 – 19 November 2013) was an English broadcaster, journalist, author, and gay rights activist.

He wrote and presented several hundred television and radio documentaries and regional programmes for BBC Radio 4 and Granada Television from the 1960s to 1980s on quirky aspects of life in different British towns and cities. His later documentaries focused on his personal life and his emergence as a gay activist. He was described as "one of the most uniquely talented figures in the history of British broadcasting."[1]

In February 2010, he claimed during a local BBC television programme to have killed a lover in an act of euthanasia. He was briefly arrested,[2] but the claims were false and he was later given a suspended sentence for wasting police time.[3]

Early life

Gosling was born in

Northampton Grammar School and the University of Leicester, and also briefly worked as a railway signalman, before dropping out to become the manager of a band, and then working in a factory in London and as a youth worker in Leicester.[4][5]

He moved to Nottingham while in his twenties, and became a detached outreach youth worker in the St Ann's district.[1] At the age of 23 he wrote an autobiographical account of this work, Sum Total, which was later republished.[4] Gosling always maintained a home in Nottingham, whilst being based in Manchester for much of his broadcasting work.

Broadcasting career

He first worked in radio when he was interviewed as a campaigner for tenants' rights in Nottingham. He was then commissioned to record a series of talks, mostly interviews with what were called "ordinary people", broadcast during intermissions of classical musical recitals on

BBC radio.[1]

Over the years Gosling wrote and presented more than a hundred television documentaries, as well as several hundred radio documentaries. In the 1960s and 1970s he was one of the best known faces in television documentary programming. In this period he also hosted a weekly North-West regional programme on

Sunday Telegraph and compared to documentaries by John Betjeman and Ian Nairn. He specialised in "the sideways look at such eclectic and quintessentially British institutions as the working classes... and faded seaside towns, the minutiae of life."[5]

In many of his documentaries on

Granada TV's The Human Jigsaw in 1984, and a series about football supporters, The People's Game, which he narrated.[10]

In 2000 he returned to television in a series of documentaries about his personal life over recent years, including his bankruptcy.[4] This led to him being taken on by BBC East Midlands in 2004 as a regular presenter on Inside Out, where he reported in his own individual style. His first film for Inside Out revisited his first TV documentary, Two Town Mad, made for the BBC in 1962. It was a comparison between Leicester and Nottingham and Gosling went back to the places and the people in the original film.[11]

Next came films on garden gnomes, statues, bus travel,[12] OAP workers, frugal living, new arts buildings and windmills.[13] His film on Joe Orton was part of a programme which won the RTS Midlands Best Regional programme in 2008.

His

sheltered accommodation. It won the Jonathan Gili Award For Most Entertaining Documentary Award at Grierson 2007 over tough competition from Alan Sugar's The Apprentice. It followed the highly acclaimed BBC Four documentaries Bankrupt[14] and Pensioned Off.[15] Other radio contributions included items on BBC Radio 4's You and Yours
in 2008 and 2009.

The value of Gosling's work was recognised by Nottingham Trent University in 2005, when it stepped in to save "an amazing treasure trove of groundbreaking TV and radio work which was in danger of being lost forever". The veteran broadcaster's archive, which includes films, tapes, scripts, cuttings and background notes providing perspective on 40 years of social history, is now safely preserved within the School of Arts and Humanities.

Gay rights

Gosling was an early pioneer of the modern British gay rights movement, first becoming involved in the 1950s, and working with Allan Horsfall in the North West Homosexual Law Reform Committee of the late 1960s, which later became the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE).[4] Horsfall and Gosling ran a website together called Gay Monitor which is partly a history of CHE and partly an account of more recent cases of discrimination against gay men.

Gosling's background in grass-roots activism chimed with CHE's stated attempt to forge a democratic mass movement in which gay people were encouraged to take control of their own lives and fight for their rights. This was in contrast to much pre-1967 work by, in particular, the London-based

A.E. Dyson and long-time HLRS Secretary Antony Grey were both gay, but never said so at the time). Thus, at a CHE rally in Trafalgar Square, London, on 23 November 1975, Gosling said: "Last time it was done by an elite, who did it by stealth ... This time it has to be done by us, brothers and sisters".[16]

Personal life

During the 1990s, his professional fortunes waned, and his long-term partner Bryn Allsopp was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Gosling nursed him until his death in November 1999.[10] He was declared bankrupt in 2000,[4] and was stated to be living in poverty in 2002.[17] In an interview with LeftLion magazine[18] in August 2013 Gosling stated that he had planned on writing his memoirs for a few years but had never quite got round to doing it. "Life is for living, not for writing," he said. He also talked about his lifelong relationship with alcohol: "I've been drinking since I was twelve. I drink brandy and wine now. In those days I drank ten pints a night. There were fifty pubs in my St Anns. I'd have a drink in every one."

False confession

On

Nottinghamshire Constabulary were to investigate.[20] He was arrested on suspicion of murder on 17 February 2010,[21]
and released on police bail the following day without being charged.

Gosling was found to have fabricated the claim and had not been in the UK at the time of the death.[22][23] On 20 August 2010, the Crown Prosecution Service announced that Gosling would be prosecuted because he had "caused wasteful employment of the police by knowingly making [...] a false report tending to show that an offence had been committed".[24] On 14 September 2010, he was given a 90-day suspended sentence at Nottingham Magistrates' Court.[3]

Death

Gosling died, aged 74, at the Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham on 19 November 2013.[4]

Publications

  • 1960: Dream Boy. New Left Review, 3:30–34
  • 1961: Lady Albemarle's Boys. London: Fabian Society (story of a youth club in Leicester)
  • 1963: Sum Total. London: Faber. (Republished by Pomona in 2004
    ISBN 1-904590-05-5
    )
  • 1967: Saint Ann's. Nottingham Civic Society
  • 1980: Personal Copy: a memoir of the sixties. London: Faber
    ISBN 978-1-905512-99-7

Notes

  1. ^ Some sources give his place of birth as Chester, but primary sources suggest Brixworth, near Northampton.

References

  1. ^ a b c d Robert Chalmers, "Ray Gosling: The outcast", The Independent, 30 September 2012. Retrieved 20 November 2013
  2. ^ Robert Booth "Ray Gosling arrested on suspicion of murder after televised revelations", The Guardian, 17 February 2010
  3. ^ a b "BBC's Ray Gosling sentenced for wasting police time". BBC. 14 September 2010. Retrieved 14 September 2010.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Ben Quinn, "Ray Gosling, broadcaster and gay rights activist, dies aged 74", The Guardian, 19 November 2013. Retrieved 20 November 2013
  5. ^ a b "Ray Gosling – Obituary", The Telegraph, 20 November 2013. Retrieved 21 November 2013
  6. ^ "Television". Ray Gosling. Retrieved 3 March 2020.
  7. ^ Dunham, Tasker. "Ray Gosling's Goole". Retrieved 3 March 2020.
  8. ^ "IBA Independent Broadcasting Authority Annual Report and Accounts 1975–76" (PDF). Retrieved 3 March 2020.
  9. ^ Great Little Railways, 15 February 1983, retrieved 3 March 2020
  10. ^ a b Manchester Television, Film, Media & Broadcasting: Ray Gosling Archived 5 May 2016 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 20 November 2013
  11. ^ Two Town Mad BBC Inside Out East Midlands
  12. ^ Series 11 BBC Inside Out East Midlands
  13. ^ Marie Ashby (12 October 2009). "BBC Inside Out East Midlands 12 October 2009". Bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 5 December 2013.
  14. ^ Bankrupt BBC Four
  15. ^ Pensioned Off BBC Four
  16. ISBN 1-85619-136-2
  17. ^ Collinson, Patrick (6 April 2002). "When it can't go lower than this". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 1 February 2010.
  18. ^ "Ray Gosling – Nottingham Culture". LeftLion.co.uk. 22 August 2013. Retrieved 2 November 2013.
  19. ^ a b BBC man Ray Gosling admits killing Aids-suffering lover, BBC website, 16 February 2010
  20. ^ "Police to investigate BBC presenter Ray Gosling over mercy killing of lover", The Daily Telegraph, 16 February 2010
  21. ^ Murder arrest over Ray Gosling's BBC confession, BBC website, 17 February 2010
  22. ^ "AFP: BBC presenter avoids jail for false AIDS killing claim". 14 September 2010. Retrieved 2 November 2013.
  23. ^ Robert Booth "Ray Gosling released on police bail in murder inquiry", The Guardian, 18 February 2010
  24. ^ "BBC's Ray Gosling faces wasting police time charge". Bbc.co.uk. 20 August 2010. Retrieved 5 December 2013.

External links

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