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Michael Barrymore

Could he return to our screens? (August 2018)

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SP
Steve in Pudsey
I wasn't suggesting any equivalence between Bacon and Barrymore, just that the drugs episode that got him sacked from BP was not the end of his career, and did not prevent him from getting a gig on a daytime show that was (partially) aimed at kids.
WH
Whataday Founding member
Rich Tea posted:
Steve in Pudsey posted:
I think you need to look at the wider picture with Barrymore . If Richard Bacon, who was sacked from kids TV after a drugs scandal, can get a job in family friendly breakfast telly then I don't think you can blame the demise of his career on that alone.


Disgraceful to even feel I've got to say it in this day and age but there's definitely a homophobic undercurrent in part to Barrymore being shunned I believe.


I have to say, I feel there's small trace of truth to this. The fact that homosexuality was involved added to the scandal and made it less "family friendly" than if he had been heterosexual. That perhaps made it more difficult to recover from.

Having said that, I feel Steve is referring to the rumour that Barrymore was very difficult to work with and that would also have been a factor in him getting the boot.

I'd argue with the point that Barrymore's act was becoming outdated. His shows were early forerunners in reality TV and the sort of stuff that gets lapped up these days.
DA
davidhorman
Whataday posted:
I have to say, I feel there's small trace of truth to this. The fact that homosexuality was involved added to the scandal and made it less "family friendly" than if he had been heterosexual. That perhaps made it more difficult to recover from.


At the time, yes, except for the fact that it involved a death, which pretty much trumps any homophobia as far as scandals go, I think.

Nowadays I don't think sexuality factors into Barrymore's troubles at all.
SP
Steve in Pudsey
Indeed, I was not implying any issue relating to his sexuality. There was a public backlash against him (rightly or wrongly) fuelled by the newspaper coverage, making him toxic to any prospective employer. There is a series of Kids Say the Funniest Things in the can which was never broadcast.
JM
JamesM0984
Rich Tea posted:
Steve in Pudsey posted:
I think you need to look at the wider picture with Barrymore . If Richard Bacon, who was sacked from kids TV after a drugs scandal, can get a job in family friendly breakfast telly then I don't think you can blame the demise of his career on that alone.


Disgraceful to even feel I've got to say it in this day and age but there's definitely a homophobic undercurrent in part to Barrymore being shunned I believe.


I think the circumstances in which Lubbock died, and the injuries he was alleged to have (and where those injuries were alleged to be on his body in particular) will always mean that undercurrent is there. Not that that makes it any better in this day and age like you say.
SP
Spencer
Whataday posted:
Rich Tea posted:
Steve in Pudsey posted:
I think you need to look at the wider picture with Barrymore . If Richard Bacon, who was sacked from kids TV after a drugs scandal, can get a job in family friendly breakfast telly then I don't think you can blame the demise of his career on that alone.


Disgraceful to even feel I've got to say it in this day and age but there's definitely a homophobic undercurrent in part to Barrymore being shunned I believe.


I have to say, I feel there's small trace of truth to this. The fact that homosexuality was involved added to the scandal and made it less "family friendly" than if he had been heterosexual. That perhaps made it more difficult to recover from.


There was undoubtedly a homophobic tone to much of the reporting of the case, particularly from the tabloids. Although the tide was very much turning, at the time in 2001, being gay was not as widely accepted as it is now, with Section 28 still in force, no civil partnerships or gay adoption, and the age of consent was only made equal in that year.

We’ve had a list of current openly gay mainstream TV presenters in this thread. If you go back to 2001, this list would have been considerably smaller verging on non-existent. You generally had to look towards late night Channel 4 to see an openly gay presenter. So I think the idea that Barrymore might not have been considered an appropriate host for a prime time family show back then is perfectly valid.

17 years later and thankfully attitudes have changed. I don’t believe for a minute that any TV exec would say nowadays that they wouldn’t employ Barrymore because he’s gay. The simple reason is he’s still seen as damaged goods following the death of Stuart Lubbock, and (possibly unfairly) is still closely associated in people’s minds with that. His sexuality and past drug use are mostly forgotten side-issues.
Whataday and davidhorman gave kudos
LO
lobster
I think this article pretty much sums up the fishyness of the whole incident :

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/25/michael-barrymore-paid-two-witnesses-not-give-evidence-pool/amp/

So unlike most people who would be absolutely mortified that some poor person died on their property, at their own party, Barrymore basically does a runner - the police suspect that he tried to get rid of something, we will never know.

If the allegation that Barrymore did indeed pay off witnesses is true, I think we can just say that is a very strange thing to do.

Refreshing one's memory with some of those articles, it's fair to say, homophobic undertones aside, Barrymore's behaviour that night, certainly shows a complete disregard for the man who died, his family, and worse, that he was trying to hide "something".

The article above is pretty recent, it seems like the suspicion still hasn't completely gone away...
tightrope78 and all new Phil gave kudos
TT
ttt
Neil Jones posted:
623058 posted:
Going by the DS post, there would have been NO way anyone could have manipulated the screens, the IBA/ITC would have had a fit and ITV would have entered second scandal like to the one from the 50s/60s. I think that alone would have lost Thames is franchise., maybe not straight away but at the next round...


I don't believe ITV itself was affected by the Twenty One scandal. The original format was heavily tainted in the US but by the time that came out the show had ended over here anyway. Twenty One was effectively dramatised from head to foot and the entire charade in that show was scripted, the reactions, the questions, the outcome, the entire saga was planned. It affected the entire quiz show format both in America and over here when the truth came out.

Of course on the issue of integrity of Strike It Lucky, its probably more than the job of the producer, and Thames as a whole, was worth to blatantly fix the show. It would have been common practice to tip the balance in the favour of the show, otherwise everything would get given away and cost Central/Thames/LWT or whoever a fortune and you wouldn't tune in to see if Fred and Daphne are going to win the car on Bullseye this week. But that's different from "fixing".

I suppose there were any suspicions the IBA would have said something to Thames at the time. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. It may have been all above board and totally random. After all if the regulator of the time, which was far more hands on than anything that's replaced it since, wasn't happy the show wouldn't have stayed on the air in that form surely?


Strange how things come around. Strike it Rich was produced in the States by Richard Kline, a guy who had spent the best part of 20 years working for Barry and Enright, the producers of 21. The computers on SiR were even based on the programming of B/E's 1978 remake of Tic Tac Dough, a game also implicated in the 1950s scandals.

That is not to say that Kline was anything other than as straight as a die, as indeed B/E had been post-scandals.
WH
Whataday Founding member
By the time it got to Strike It RIch I think they were using a more modern system?
TT
ttt
Whataday posted:
By the time it got to Strike It RIch I think they were using a more modern system?


Not in the States (bear in mind I'm talking about the US original here from 1986 which was called Strike it Rich). Same Apple-II based system that TTD used. Was confirmed by a Kline and Friends staffer on a US gameshow forum some years ago. The UK version almost certainly was a more modern system even in 1987.

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