Stephen Gately: A Boy's Own Secret

Former Boyzone manager Louis Walsh has opened up about late '90s heartthrob Stephen Gately, saying he feared his career would be over if the public found out he was gay.

Kate Thornton, on her BBC radio show Paper Cuts, also quizzed the X Factorjudge on how he made Boyzone famous, and how he helped hide Gately's sexual orientation...

As a manager, he saw it as his job to cover up Stephen's sexuality, even telling the press he was in a relationship with Mariah Carey: "I married Stephen Gately off to so many people because Stephen didn't want anyone to know he was gay at the start.

"He was dreading all of his life that this was going to ruin his career... He was in the end [outed] by The Sun but it didn't matter, in fact it was the best thing for him, he was free then, he had nothing to him.

"At that time it wasn't cool to be gay and be in a boyband, because the girls had to like them." ...

Digital Spy.

The exchange below is interesting.

When I suggested at the time that Stephen had been outed by The Sun - and they'd blackmailed him into 'coming out' by saying they were going to run a story as part of Boyzone's entourage had sold them some photos of him canoodling with a man - their press officer got very angry and assured me this was nonsense.

His big coming out interview in The Sun was most odd - none of the quotes sounded like him, and bizarrely for such a big media event, they neglected to do a photo session.

Walsh: ‘He was dreading all of his life that this was going to ruin his career… He was in the end [outed] by The Sun but it didn’t matter, in fact it was the best thing for him, he was free then, he had nothing to hide.’

Thornton: ‘I remember getting a phone call from you when I was the editor of Smash Hits and you said “Is it OK if I tell the Daily Star that you’re going out with Stephen Gately because he’s gay?”

Walsh: ‘The next day I opened the papers and you had him with Mariah Carey – I phoned you up and said you could have gone with something more plausible! You said “No. It’s global.”‘

Paper Cuts, BBC Radio 2.

Of course, it wasn't Louis Walsh's decision to keep young Stephen in the closet.

And when did you come out exactly?

Jan Moir Watch: Oh Mr Sheen!

Daily Mail, natch.

Didn't see this coming!

From the woman who brought you; Stephen Gately: A Strange, Lonely And Troubling Death.

Stephen Gately: Moving

THE family of Stephen Gately have told of their “nightmare” at discovering that his husband has moved a new lover into the Spanish home where the Boyzone star died.

Andrew Cowles, 37, looked blissfully happy with boyfriend Rafael Romero at the £1million pad this week, just days after the sixth anniversary of Stephen’s death.

But his heartbroken sister-in-law Claire Gately fumed: “Why would you choose to live in the house where your husband died?

“I don’t know why he would want to stay in a place like that, let alone move someone else in.”

Claire spoke out for free after The Sun on Sunday approached her about pictures of Andrew and Rafael at the Mallorca apartment...

The Sun On Sunday. 

Sun buys photo, Sun makes up story.

It's been six years, dear, time to move on...

Stephen Gately: The Wages Of Sin

THE ex-male model who shared Stephen Gately’s final night has claimed that cops failed to quiz the Boyzone star’s husband about sex and drug-taking that took place.

Bulgarian Georgi Dochev, 30, said that vital information never emerged due to an “amateurish” Spanish police inquiry...

Georgi alleged that Andrew did not go into details about sex and drugs on the fatal night in October 2009 “as he knew Stephen was famous and probably did not want to embarrass his family”...

Georgi broke his silence after Stephen’s family told The Sun on Sunday they wanted a new probe into the singer’s death.

The waiter, who first met Stephen and Andrew hours before the tragedy, told for the first time how the three men headed to the Black Cat club in Majorca after meeting at a gay bar at 1am.

He said: “There are things that have never been made public about the night Stephen died like the fact I saw him going into a toilet cubicle at the Black Cat with three well-known local drug dealers.“I also saw him go into a room we called the ‘Dark Room’ where you could get up to anything you wanted.” 

The three then went to Stephen’s apartment at 5am where the star rolled and smoked a cannabis joint...

The ever-reliable The Sun On Sunday.

Giorgi: Hope they paid you well. 

Now, whilst Fagburn is not a forensic pathology expert, like that Amanda Burton off the telly, he is pretty sure you can't die from your boyfriend allegedly visting a back room, or from you smoking cannabis.

Nor can these be contributing factors to anything ever.

Still, it's this whole sordid gay lifestyle that surely caused this strange, lonely and troubling death, eh?

Stephen Gately: A Strange And Troubling Estate

BOYZONE star Stephen Gately’s family are to hire a private investigator for a fresh probe into his death.

The move comes as they battle his husband Andrew Cowles over the singer’s £1.5million estate.

Stephen, 33, died five years ago in Majorca.

His brother Tony, 32, told The Sun on Sunday they still have unanswered questions five years after the tragedy.

They are also embroiled in a dispute over how the star’s £1.5million estate is divided up.

Stephen was discovered slumped on a sofa while on holiday in Majorca with husband Andrew Cowles, 36.

Officials ruled that Gately had been killed by an undetected heart condition.

But bus driver Tony said: “Only two people really know what went on the night he died.

“They are his husband Andrew and a Bulgarian guy, Georgi, who was invited to their apartment. Neither of them have fully explained to me what happened.

“We are looking at getting a private investigator once his estate is settled.” ...

The Sun Sunday.

Only at the end do readers learn; 'Andrew could not be reached for comment at the time of going to press.'

Might it not have been an idea to wait until he had been?

Might be an idea for the Mail to keep out of this.

Lou Reed: He Wasn't Too Keen On Journalists...

Apparently the last portrait, taken earlier this month by Jean Baptiste Mondino.

Only saw two queer-specific articles about Lou in the British media, which seems rather odd considering his stunning impact on your actual gay culture, but doesn't really surprise me.
Here's Paris Lees on the Channel 4 News website on what he meant to trans people.
And Tom Robinson wrote for The Independent on his "implied bisexuality"...

Perhaps it was our own hunger for affirmation that led my generation to try and cast such a complex – and downright ornery – individual as Lou Reed in the role of Gay Figurehead. If ever an artist saw sexuality as a vast, diverse landscape with many bright wonders and dark private places – and if there was ever an artist unlikely to identify himself publicly with just one corner of that territory – it was Sister Lou.

An Independent reader replies...

And let's not forget the Daily Mail's moving eulogy to Uncle Lou...

A VERY debauched walk on the wild side: He did more than any other rock star to give drugs a false and dangerous glamor. Now, after a liver transplant in May, Lou Reed's own excesses have finally caught up with him

Remember, the life of this rapacious, proselytizing drug-taking pervert was cruelly cut short at the age of just 71.

Just say no, kids!

Update: In Wednesday's Mail Jan Moir writes on Lou Reed and our "dysfunctional relationship with celebrity death."
Yes, that's the same Jan Moir who infamously wrote about Stephen Gately's Strange, Lonely And Troubling Death!

PCC: How Not To Make A Complaint

The Press Complaints Commission (PCC) is to launch an inquiry into the Observer’s decision to publish a transphobic article by Julie Burchill.
The commission acted after receiving 800 complaints from members of the public in relation to the article, which was eventually removed from guardian.co.uk, the website of the Observer’s sister paper.
In a piece headed “Transsexuals should cut it out”, Burchill described trans people as “shims”, “shemales” and “bed-wetters in bad wigs”...

Pink News.

Good.
I'm not sure anything will actually come of this "investigation", but good.
The PCC can’t and won’t do anything here.
They only consider complaints from individuals who've been directly mentioned/affected, not social groups, or people who feel angry, aggrieved or insulted.*
The PCC received a record-breaking 25,000 complaints over Jan Moir’s article in the Mail about the death of Boyzone's Stephen Gately.
They only considered one - from Stephen’s partner, Andrew Cowles.
And even that was ultimately rejected by them.

I think the Gately/Moir row made a real and important difference to press behaviour by showing the depth of people's outrage and anger, and I hope this will, too, and that it marks a turning point in how the British media treat trans people.
But it’s naive to think the PCC will act on these complaints.
Post-Leveson Report nothing will change.
Though I'm not sure what they're meant to do; say newspapers can't publish nasty things?
Those angered by this awful episode are right to concentrate on shaming The Observer over their decision to publish Julie Burchill's shitty little piece in the first place.

* See the PCC Editor's Code of Practice.

PS Statement from The Observer readers' editor, Stephen Pritchard. Summary: "We really fucked up on this one." You may want to compare it to the Guardian's grovelling apology for publishing a transphobic piece by Julie Bindel in 2004...

PPS The Unholy Trinity: Burchill, Bindel and Moore, Christopher Bryant, Polari magazine.
Great piece. 
The image above has been shamelessly stolen from Polari's site.

Daily Mail: Compare And Contrast

Interesting infographic on The Media Blog.
Comparing the number of complaints to the Press Complaints Commission about Jan Moir's article about Stephen Gately in the Mail with the number of complaints to Ofcom about Channel 4's Big Fat Quiz Of The Year - which has driven the Daily Mail into a predictable bat shit frenzy of manufactured outrage.
When the Mail decided this was front page news - Outrage after drunken British comedians guzzle wine and trade obscene jokes about Obama, the Queen and Susan Boyle - Ofcom had been deluged with five complaints. 
For more on this hypocritical silliness go here.

Leveson Inquiry: Stephen Gately

'Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre has admitted that the timing of Jan Moir’s Daily Mail column about the death of singer Stephen Gately was regrettable.

'But he said he would “die in a ditch” to defend her right to express her opinion.

'The Moir piece attracted a record 25,000 complaints to the Press Complaints Commission and was later cleared of breaching the Editors’ Code. *

'The piece appeared in the Mail on 16 October 2009 and was headed: "Why there was nothing ‘natural' about Stephen Gately's death". It suggested there was something "sleazy" about the tragedy and also said the truth had yet to emerge about the exact circumstances of Gately's "strange and lonely death".

'Under questioning about the piece, Dacre said: “My view is that perhaps the timing was a little regrettable, I think the column could have benefitted from a little judicious sub-editing. But I would die in a ditch to defend a columnist’s right to have her views." He added: "There isn’t a homophobic bone in Jan Moir’s body.”

'On the huge number of complaints about the piece, Dacre said: “These were online complaints and an example of how twittering can create a firestorm…Most people complaining admitted that they hadn’t read the piece.”

'Dacre did admit that there were certain words he would have removed from the piece. He said that usually he doesn’t leave the office before 10pm, but he said that on the night in question when the Moir piece went to press he was on a rare night off taking his wife on a birthday trip to the opera.'

Press Gazette.

This was followed by a story filed later; Paul Dacre: Bad journalists should be 'struck off'
You couldn't make it up.

Here's an amusing/depressing account of Dacre's appearance on The Media Blog.
Best line: When asked whether the Mail preys upon its readers' "fears and prejudices":
"Anxieties" rather than "prejudices", is the word I'd use..."

* And the chair of the Press Complaints Commission Code Committee is... Paul Dacre!

Beautiful: A Tsunami Of Sentimental Vomit

Now I don't care about you, but when I want to know what press releases have been released to the gay press recently I turn straight to Pinkpaper.com.
Yesterday's lead story?
'Christina Aguilera's Beautiful Named Most-empowering Gay Anthem Of The Decade'
"Christina Aguilera’s smash-hit song Beautiful was the most empowering pop song of the last decade for lesbian, gay and bisexual people, according to Stonewall’s latest social media poll."
And here's the Stonewall press release they lifted that from; ''Christina Aguilera’s Beautiful was the most empowering pop song of the last decade for lesbian, gay and bisexual people, according to Stonewall’s latest social media poll.'
Please note the hard-working journalist at the Pink Paper has added the word "smash-hit".
Let's check the small print.
It wasn't a survey, Stonewall stressed it was a "multiple-choice, light-hearted poll", conducted online.
Visitors to their website could only choose between five (5) songs, "Who gives a fuck?", "None of the above" and Cruising by Hunx And His Punx were not options.
A massive 1,007 people could be arsed to click a button.
So what did Christina's tsunami of sentimental vomit actually beat?
In second place was Better by Boyzone, a record I doubt even Boyzone remember, but I guess got the Diana Vote (ie It features a dead person of whom we can speak no ill).
Third was the incomprehensible, patronising racketfest Born This Way by Lady Gaga.
In fourth the token Indie track, Standing In The Way of Control by (the) Gossip.
Beth Ditto says the song is about the Republican Party's war on "gay marriage", but I will give £500 in cash to anyone who can explain in what possible fucking way the song is about that, or indeed anything.
And five is Katy Perry with UR So Gay Fireworks - cause it had some gayers in the video or something.
Wow!
Both The Pink Paper and Stonewall offer a quote from Christina; "I’m delighted to have been voted the most inspirational pop act by Stonewall’s supporters – my gay fan base is so important to me and this continues my special relationship with them."
Really!?
If that wasn't written by someone in her press office then I'm Justin Bieber.
Apart from all that - what a great fucking story!

The Daily Star: Telling Lies For A Living

"It is an interesting quirk of the English legal system that you can't libel the dead. Very handy if you're a tabloid news editor, at say, the Sun, and you publish an article about 23-year-old Julian Brooker from Brighton becoming a 'human fireball' after touching a railway line while crawling around pretending to be Gollum from Lord of the Rings. The shop assistant was drunk, the red top behemoth informed its readers in 2005, because it was 23 October and Julian was obsessed with the number 23. A great tabloid exclusive. Were an iota of it true, that is.
"In the last 24 hours the Sun's subsequent apology to the late Julian ('His parents have asked us to make clear he was not turned into a fireball, was not obsessed with the number 23 and didn't go drinking on that date every month. We apologise for the distress this has caused Julian's family and friends') has resurfaced across the Twittersphere to howls of derision. Some unacquainted with the idiosyncrasies of Britain's newspaper industry have questioned whether the whole thing is in fact a hoax. Sadly, it's not. Far from being an exception, such cases stray dangerously close to being a rule.
"I make that claim with authority because during the two years I worked at the Daily Star I wrote similar, arguably worse, yarns. When Boyzone star Stephen Gately died in October 2009, I was dispatched to Mallorca to investigate. Beneath my byline in the days that followed were lurid revelations of heavy drinking, drugs he may have taken, and gay orgies he may have been part of.
"We tabloid reporters knew little, but under pressure to deliver much, the hotel bar soon swirled with speculation. Thoughts morphed into theories, theories shifted into fact. After all, you can't libel the dead.
"The same month Kevin McGee, former husband of Little Britain star Matt Lucas, committed suicide. At the Daily Star I picked up the phone to a reader who claimed he knew the couple and the story behind the tragedy. "How much is that worth?" He asked. I told him we needed to meet first. He replied that he was out of town.
"'Sod it, you can't libel the dead," someone proffered. That afternoon I wrote the story: "LUCAS EX BLEW £2 MILLION ON DRUGS AND BOOZE." The tabloid news cycle, unrelenting, waits for no man..."

Riichard Peppiatt, who resigned from The Daily Star earlier this month - writing a devastating J'accuse letter about its scummy editorial (non) standards - offers some more insight into the workings of the British tabloid press, from The Guardian's Comment Is Free.
Lucas won undisclosed damages and a public apology over the above and other stories the Star published after McGee's death.
Here's an example of Peppiatt's "sex and drugs" stories about Gately - which is still online.
Interesting to note that both the examples he cites involved recently bereaved gay men.
Charming.
Peppiatt calls himself a "whistleblower", but he was happy enough to collude in all this crap for several years, so he's hardly Bradley Manning.

Phone Hacking: An Aid To Outing?

Nick Brown MP, former Labour chief whip, is quoted in The Independent today as saying he feels certain his telephone landline was being crudely tapped around the time he was outed by The News Of The World in 1998.
"I picked up a landline telephone very quickly… to make another call straight away.
“And the line clicked and then I heard my last conversation played back to me, which was quite eerie. I got on to British Telecom straight away… They said the line showed every signs of having been intercepted manually, not through scanners. It was an amateurish attempt involving the physical intervention of the line with a recording device.”
Interesting - did illegal phone taps and hacking play a part in the outing of other public figures by the tabloids, such as Stephen Gately's in The Sun back when Andy Coulson was editor in 1999?
Of course, the Murdoch press don't need to tap gay mens' phones.
As Lib Dem deputy leader Simon Hughes found out in 2006, they can just go through your bins, dig out an old phone bill and blackmail you by saying they have proof you phoned a gay chat line.

Andy Coulson: Don't Call Us

As Andy Coulson finally quits as David Cameron's communications chief, Fagburn remembers another problem Mr Coulson had involving mobile phones back when he was the editor of The News Of The World.
When he was at The Sun arguably Coulson's biggest gay scalp was the outing of Stephen Gately in 1999.
Lest we forget, Mr Coulson's job used to be ruining lives for a living.
How very ironic that he went to work for this life-destroying Tory government.
Good riddance, Mr Rubbish.

Daily Mail: Matt Lucas - An Apology

An article (March 1) ‘How Matt Lucas learned to laugh again’ caused great upset to Mr Lucas which we did not intend and regret.
The article on Mr Lucas’ return to public life following the tragic death of Kevin McGee suggested he had ignored Kevin’s calls, became a virtual recluse, and hosted a birthday party to ‘move on’.
We accept this was not the case and apologise to Mr Lucas.
From The Daily Mail today.

This isn't much of an apology - barely 70 words long, it's hidden away on page 20, a left-hand page.
Matt Lucas was also awarded "substantial" undisclosed damages from the Mail.
He sued for invasion of privacy over an article which appeared in March – five months after the suicide of his former civil partner Kevin McGee.
Matt Lucas said in a statement;
"This has been and continues to be a very difficult time for me and all those who loved Kevin.
"My deep pain and sorrow have been made even greater by the intrusive and defamatory stories made about my private life in the Daily Mail.
"I had no choice but to bring these proceedings to protect my private life and my right to grieve in peace.
"I'd like to add that I take no pleasure or sense of triumph in this settlement. I am just relieved that this case has been resolved and I sincerely hope this sort of intrusive reporting will now end."
One year on from Jan Moir's disgraceful attack on Stephen Gately, The Daily Mail has clearly learned nothing - not even basic tact, or how disgusting it is to dance on a man's fresh grave, even if he's a gay man.
The article has been cached here; 'How Matt Lucas learnt to laugh again; He's lost three stone and still blames himself for his partner's suicide. But now the Little Britain star's stepping back into the limelight.'
Lucas won damages from The Daily Star in May for invasion of privacy over a story they had run following Kevin McGee's suicide.
In 2008 Lucas and David Walliams won damages from the Star after it claimed Little Britain USA had angered an American gay group - which didn't actually exist.

Julie Burchill: Hating Stephen Fry

It was perhaps inevitable that Julie Burchill would wade in and use her piss-poor column in The Independent to turn her guns on Stephen Fry.
'Gay man lays into women, fine. But when it's the other way around...'
She then promptly proceeds to lay into various gay men.
Poor Julie - verily she is the stupid person's idea of a newspaper columnist.
She's always all over the place, as per.
Is she a homophile or a homophobe, lesbian or straight, Stalinist or Thatcherite, Jew or non-believer?
Why, it's almost as if La Burchill is making it all up as she goes along.
Or drunk.
Or she gets someone else to write chunks of it.
So what is Julie saying today?
I'm damned if I know - why not have a go yourself?
Blah blah blah. Graham Norton is "hideous". Gok Wan is "vile".
But for why? "Gay men seem to think that because they sometimes call each other 'she', they are honorary women and thus can chuck the gynophobic abuse around like there's no tomorrow.
"But let one woman – the real kind, not the pretendy drag-queen kind – pass a comment on gay male sexuality, as the journalist Jan Moir did on the death of Stephen Gately, and seven sorts of hell break loose. Indeed, Fry himself spat: 'I gather a repulsive nobody writing in a paper no one of any decency would be seen dead with has written something loathsome and inhumane.'
"I quip, he bitches, she makes a full-on hate-attack upon a persecuted minority and I'm going to report you to the Press Complaints Commission, so there! This seems to be the current attitude of a certain section of gay men to the tricky business of name-calling, and I can't begin to express what half-witted hypocrites it makes them look. A word of warning, boyz – you're still men, even though you're gay. If you insist on telling women what they are or what they want, be prepared to be judged right back in return by us. BTW, this wasn't an attack – think of it as a warning nip. If you can't stand the heat, get out of the bitching."
Silly old cow.

Stephen Fry: Hated By The Daily Mail

Not that they're obsessed or anything, but The Daily Mail have splashed the Stephen Fry story across their front page today.
It's rather odd as they haven't really got anything new to add - but seem so keen to bash him they're pushing a reprint of Yasmin Alibhai-Brown's unbelievably shitty article from The Independent.
This has been re-titled for emphasis; 'Your problem, Stephen Fry, is that you just don't understand women (or like them very much)'.
It's one of three (!) articles, a second is a rehash by Rosie Boycott, who was quoted at length in The Observer article that kickstarted this Hate Week, asking 'So Is Sex Less Important To Women?'
It's not, in case you were wondering.
And Charlotte Metcalf writes a piece that's actually in agreement with what Stephen Fry actually said in the Attitude interview; "Women are driven by a ­different imperative, not by our libidos, to the extent that we’re willing to make fools of ourselves to satisfy men, which I think is the point Stephen Fry was trying to make."
Quite.
It must be hard for The Daily Mail to know how to treat Stephen Fry.
Many of their readers adore Fry the "National Treasure"; the witty posh clever clogs from the middle England comfort zones of QI, Jeeves & Wooster and the Twining tea ads.
And any friend of Charles and Camilla...
But he's also a naughty little bugger - who is quite vocal about hating The Daily Mail and all it stands for.
He was last on the front page of the Mail in September; 'What An Unholy Welcome To Britain - As Pope flies in for historic visit, Vatican aide brands UK a Third World country fuelling atheist hate campaign led by Stephen Fry'.
Fry blogged at the time; "Today’s headline and the leader inside however actually made me genuinely guffaw and wriggle with delight. It is the final proof, if proof were needed, that the Daily Mail is not just actually wicked (intentionally, knowingly lying) but actually now quite, quite mad. In the name (it must suppose) of morality, spirituality, goodness, kindness, sweetness and honesty it intentionally, knowingly twists, distorts, misrepresents, smears and calumniates. Will their editor and subeditors go to heaven? Is god pleased with them? Have they done a good deed? Is this their advertisement for the religious way? To lie?"
And - lest we forget - a year ago it was Fry who spearheaded the campaign against Jan Moir's odious Daily Mail column about the death of Stephen Gately.
He memorably tweeted; "I gather a repulsive nobody writing in a paper no one of any decency would be seen dead with has written something loathsome and inhumane."
Is it any wonder they're giving Mr Fry such a damned good kicking over this?

Stonewall Awards: All Must Have Prizes

Can there be a more thrilling event in the homosexualist calendar than the Stonewall Awards?
All those famous people from off the telly, posh queens, the fagerati and that - imagine!
Fagburn thinks they are basically A Good Thing, and admires its intent of shining a light on those who have been very, very good or very, very bad to The Gays.
But it sometimes seems a bit like the Caucus race in Alice In Wonderland; "Everybody has won, and all must have prizes."
Last year Boyzone's Stephen Gately won an award.
Presumably for dying.
The awards for writer, journalist and publication of the year in particular are an exercise in plate-spinning, trying to keep everyone and anyone happy so they carry on giving Stonewall good press.
Is there a national lesbian and/or gay publication that hasn't been nominated?
In 2008 they even shortlisted the homophobic and transphobic loon Julie Bindel for the Hero award for fuck's sake.
Today Stonewall announced the shortlists for Bigot of the Year and Hero of the Year.
Their heroes this year? Claire Balding, Kath Gillespie Sells of LGBT disability camapigning group Regard, Dr Jeffrey John (Is it just Fagburn's memory playing tricks or does the Dean of St Albans get nominated every year?), Gareth Thomas, and Joe McElderry.
Though one could argue that whoever outed Joe by hacking into his Twitter account is more deserving of the award.
Bigots? They got 'em. Frederick Forsyth, AA Gill, Chris Grayling, Rev Arthur Roche from adoption agency Catholic Care, and Susanne Wilkinson, a bigoted B&B owner from Berkshire.
Good choices all - though AA Gill isn't really homophobic, he's just a sneering posh git, and sadly he'll most likely wallow in being nominated.
But the really good news is that tickets to the awards ceremony are a snip at just £150!
Some gay people are filthy rich - get over it!

• Frederick Forsyth - a man so right-wing he seems sectionable - was nominated for a predictably shitty Daily Express column written about the gay asylum ruling in July. I'd provide a link to it, but it appears to have been removed from the Express website...

Clare Balding: "Dyke On Bike" Complaint Upheld

"Writer AA Gill has been censured by the press watchdog after he called TV presenter Clare Balding a "dyke on a bike" in his column in the Sunday Times," Media Guardian reports.
The PCC's statement is here: "In this case, the Commission considered that the use of the word “dyke” in the article – whether or not it was intended to be humorous – was a pejorative synonym relating to the complainant’s sexuality. The context was not that the reviewer was seeking positively to “reclaim” the term, but rather to use it to refer to the complainant’s sexuality in a demeaning and gratuitous way. This was an editorial lapse which represented a breach of the Code, and the newspaper should have apologised at the first possible opportunity."
It seems it was The Sunday Times' editor, John Witherow, sniffy reply to a letter from Balding compounding the insult that swayed the PCC's decision.
You may want to compare it to the PCC's ruling on Jan Moir's infamous article about Stephen Gately, brought by his boyfriend Andy Cowles, which was not upheld.
In July, the PCC refused to consider a complaint against The Sun - for calling Louie Spence a "bender" in a headline - as it was brought by third parties.
Do the PCC's rulings seem a bit random?
You betcha!
More on this later...

Stephen Fry: How Very Interesting

The Daily Mail has got the scoop that Stephen Fry has left his lover of 14 years, Daniel Cohen, and is now stepping out with one Steven Webb.
"Stephen Fry dumps long-term partner for young actor as love life becomes Quite Interesting"
He didn't actually "dump" him for someone else, they' already split up, but let us proceed.
"...According to pals, Fry has made no secret of the collapse of their romance and has, I gather, been spending a lot of time with ­aspiring young actor Steven Webb, 26, who appeared in Alan ­Bennett’s acclaimed play The History Boys at the National Theatre."
Bless.
The Mail must feel rather - as our American friends might say - conflicted about this story.
Their - mostly female - readership are probably quite keen on a bit of top-notch showbiz gossip like this, and want to hear about the blossoming romance, especially involving as it does a man many Mail readers regard as "a national treasure".
So it's nice to see it broke the news gently and reported it so matter-of-factly - it's even possible the story has been placed with Fry's consent.
Or is it?
Stephen Fry led the Twitter campaign last year complaining about Jan Moir's now infamous piece in the Mail about Stephen Gately; 'A Strange, Lonely and Troubling Death...'
Fry called it "a beastly article" an "epically ill-judged piece of gutter journalism" full of "malice, stupidity, incoherent illogicality and crass insensitivity."
Fry had helped unleash what he himself eloquently described as a "shitstorm that howled about the head of Jan Moir."
Good for him.
Moir's piece argued that Stephen Gately's death told us something was rotten in the heart of all gay relationships.
Do you remember?
"Another real sadness about Gately's death is that it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships," she wrote.
"Gay activists are always calling for tolerance and understanding about same-sex relationships, arguing that they are just the same as heterosexual marriages. Not everyone, they say, is like George Michael.
"Of course, in many cases this may be true. Yet the recent death of Kevin McGee, the former husband of Little Britain star Matt Lucas, and now the dubious events of Gately's last night raise troubling questions about what happened.
"It is important that the truth comes out about the exact circumstances of his strange and lonely death.
"As a gay rights champion, I am sure he would want to set an example to any impressionable young men who may want to emulate what they might see as his glamorous routine.
"For once again, under the carapace of glittering, hedonistic celebrity, the ooze of a very different and more dangerous lifestyle has seeped out for all to see."
The Press Complaints Committee received a record number of complaints, 25,000.
And Jan Moir became a hate figure overnight, a synonym for mean-spiritedness and anti-gay prejudice.
I know - how unlike a Daily Mail columnist.
She was even given a special Stonewall Award for Bigot of the Year "following unprecedented requests from Stonewall supporters".
Perhaps The Daily Mail article today on Stephen Fry's new friend is a sign that the newspaper may have learned a lesson from the Jan Moir shitstorm.
Perhaps we are witnessing Stephen Gately's revenge?