Michael Barrymore: V For Vendetta

From false allegations of sexual assault to the lurid coverage of the death of Stuart Lubbock in his swimming pool, the comedian has been the subject of an extraordinary volume of negative headlines. Looking back, he believes he was the victim of a press vendetta partly motivated by his aloofness towards the redtops (he rarely gave interviews) – and partly orchestrated by his former wife and manager, Cheryl, whom he acrimoniously divorced in 1998.He also suspects that newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch's News International, whose parent company News Corp controls the rival Sky TV network, had a commercial motive in targeting him. "It smacks me that there was a definite conspiracy to destroy ITV's main brand at the time: 'We want to get rid of anything that works for them'.
"I never shy away from the fact that I'm an alcoholic and that I have had my problems, but I've never murdered anybody. I've never got up in the morning and thought I'll harm someone. I've just had an extraordinary sequence of events that have been on public display, that I've had no control over."
He adds: "[The press] killed Michael Barrymore. My [real] name is Michael Parker, but Michael Barrymore is dead. Although I have been a couple of times to the jumping-off point, I didn't kill myself. If I had, it would have completed the story."

Michael Barrymore profiled in the Independent - his first national newspaper interview in a decade, they claim.

There is much that is interesting/frightening in this article about what sounds like collusion between the Met and the News of the World after Stuart Lubbock's death - which post-Hackgate shouldn't surprise anyone.

I've always suspected they were just out to get Michael Barrymore whatever - though I think homophobia was the main spur, not TV rivalry.
It wasn't just the Murdoch titles that were hoping Barrymore's sorry story would have a really unhappy ending, and went in for the kill.
Michael's downfall, in a scandal that involved celebrity, gay sex, drugs and death, was too good for any of the tabloids to let go of.
Note: "On 22 September 2002, the Sunday Mirror pictured Barrymore on the front page next to the headline: You Are a Killer, without even the customary quotation marks."
Might I suggest a title for a TV documentary about all this - You've Been Framed.
The poor sod.