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Media
It’s fine to imagine Gary Glitter dead, says OfCom
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 19 July 2011
OfCom has dismissed a complaint made by Gary Glitter, real name Paul Gadd, about a 2009 TV drama which depicted the former singer being executed.
The hour long TV drama, ‘The Execution Of Gary Glitter’, imagined a Britain where capital punishment had been reintroduced for cases of serious child abuse, and focused on a fictional trial of the one time pop star. It saw Gadd, played by Hilton McRae, tried for child rape. Filmed in a documentary style, it also used real news footage from Gadd’s real life arrests and convictions of child abuse.
Gadd complained that the show had treated him unfairly, as its blend of fact and fiction may have led viewers to believe that he had committed “terrible crimes which have gone unpunished”.
Channel 4, which broadcast the programme, refuted all of Gadd’s claims. OfCom agreed, saying in a statement: “In reaching its conclusion, the Committee carefully weighed up all the circumstances of the case and the submissions by Channel 4 and the complainant, taking into consideration the signposting and the fact that viewers were informed a number of times that it was a fictional drama (albeit based on a real person) set in a fictional Britain where the death penalty had been reintroduced; as well as the particular background of Mr Gadd and his well-publicised reputation for child sex offences”.
Finally, OfCom said: “The Committee concluded that in these particular set of circumstances there was no unfairness to Mr Gadd in the programme as broadcast. Accordingly, Ofcom has not upheld Mr Gadd’s complaint of unfair treatment in the programme as broadcast”.
