The BBC presenter who told TV viewers he carried out a mercy killing on a former lover has today been arrested on suspicion of murder.
Ray Gosling, 70, was detained by police after he told viewers of BBC East Midlands’ Inside Out current affairs programme that he smothered the unnamed partner as he lay in hospital suffering from Aids.
A police spokeswoman said: “Nottinghamshire Police has this morning arrested a 70-year-old Nottingham man on suspicion of murder following comments on the BBC’s Inside Out programme on Monday evening.”
During the programme, Gosling said he smothered his partner as he was “in terrible, terrible pain”.
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Strolling through a graveyard for a segment of the 30-minute show about death, he broke down as he recalled the day he took his lover’s life.
Gosling told viewers: “Maybe this is the time to share a secret that I have kept for quite a long time. I killed someone once. He was a young chap, he’d been my lover and he got Aids.
“In a hospital one hot afternoon, the doctor said ‘There’s nothing we can do’, and he was in terrible, terrible pain. I said to the doctor ‘Leave me just for a bit’ and he went away. I picked up the pillow and smothered him until he was dead. The doctor came back and I said ‘He’s gone’. Nothing more was ever said.”
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Gosling, a freelance presenter of hundreds of radio and TV documentaries, said he had no regrets about his actions, adding: “When you love someone, it is difficult to see them suffer.”
Mr Gosling later said he was not “making a cause” of assisted dying but said there was a case for changing the law.
Speaking on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, he said: “Sometimes doctors do it on their own. Sometimes people do it on their own. And if it happens to a lover or friend of yours, a husband, a wife, and I hope it doesn’t, but when it does sometimes you have to do brave things and you have to say – to use Nottingham language – bugger the law.”
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