Police quiz presenter on killing revelation

LONDON - Ray Gosling had spent the previous 24 hours in the full glare of the media spotlight, insisting he would not disclose any more details about his extraordinary on-air revelation that he had smothered his dying lover to death.

Yesterday, it was the turn of the police to try to persuade the 70-year-old television presenter to be more forthcoming.

The veteran broadcaster and gay rights campaigner was taken to Oxclose Lane Police Station near his home in sheltered accommodation in Nottingham, where he spent the day being quizzed by murder squad detectives investigating his apparent confession.

In a documentary, he told BBC viewers that he had killed the unnamed man during the final stages of an Aids-related illness.

His solicitor, Digby Johnson, told reporters that the investigation was at a "very, very early stage".

Among the problems faced by the detectives investigating the decades-old case is that Gosling did not reveal the identity of the dead man, nor exactly when the incident took place.

It is known that the man had Aids and that he died in the early days of the disease - which means the event occurred sometime in the 1980s. Close friends have confirmed that Gosling had spoken about it in the past and had been largely untroubled by his actions.

However, some newspapers challenged Gosling's version of events, claiming that in the original "confession" and resulting interviews he had appeared to contradict himself.

In the programme Inside Out, broadcast in the East Midlands, he described the pact he had made with the man who was his lover but not his partner.

Nottinghamshire Police declined to reveal any further details of the case, which has become a highly sensitive one for the force in terms of the investigation and the handling of the intense media interest. One murder squad detective said officers had to act.

"In a high-profile case like this, where a confession is made on national television, it is important that the police are seen to act and they would have waited until the immediate media attention died down before they made the arrest," he said.

Any decision made by the Crown Prosecution Service will be influenced by new guidance on when prosecutions should be brought for assisted suicide, due to be published next week.

- INDEPENDENT