reddwarfslash | OT, but probably of interest

Craig Charles: crack addict?

Bloody Hell, I opened up the paper today and was confronted with a full page spread on how Craig Charles was caught doing crack cocaine and reading porno mags while being driven around.

The original article is here: Though it's from the Mirror, a red top shock-tabloid with intent to find the most slanderous gossip about soap stars possible.

The exclusive snaps show Charles on a four-hour bender in the back of a car travelling from London to Manchester after he completed his stint as host of a funk show for the BBC digital radio channel Six Music.

Evening Standard (where I found it) says this:

The grainy images show the Liverpool-born actor making a makeshift crack pipe from empty beer cans. He becomes gradually more wild-eyed and dishevelled and eventually slumps down across the car seats.

And the BBC site says:

And the BBC said Charles would not host his radio show on 6 Music while managers talk to him about the claims.

I'm not quite sure what to make of it. the poor guy, he's screwed himself over royally.

xposted to my journal

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Really, its his life, and I don't see it being anyones business. But of course, if he has done something illegal he needs to take the rap for it, celebrity or not. First and foremost, extremely stupid, knowing what kind of scrutiny his life is under.
Something in the BBC article made me curious and I just have to ask if anyone knows more about this: someone I know once told me that one of the RD actors had been accused of raping a woman, and that this was ridiculous because the actor in question was gay and he was therefore cleared (not that rape has anything to do with sex). The article says this was Craig? Wouldn't that have been all over the tabloids?

It was Craig, and it probably was, at the time. He was cleared, but not because he was gay! I never heard that before...

Well, at the time I heard it, I didn't really have much idea who any of the actors was, had only seen a few episodes, and I just assumed this was general knowledge. At one point when I knew the series better, I thought about who of them it might be, but I have to admit as candidate for being gay, Craig was at the bottom of my list. Haven't thought about it for a long time and would never have asked around here if it hadn't been for the article hashing up the old story, and I just got so surprised I had to ask. You don't know what it was that cleared him? It must have been more than a mere accusation behind the charge if he spent months in jail.

I read up on it when I found out about it about - hm - a year ago, I suppose, but I can't remember if the articles I found said anything spesific.

You're not going to get cleared from a rape charge by either claiming to be or actually being gay. *shakes head* Price of tea in China?

Not in general, I agree, but it could help depending on the circumstances of the rape. Like claiming to be date raped by a man who never dates women, or pointing out the wrong guy, etc.

But that'd be a case of mistaken identity or outright lying. If a man goes out with a woman and go back to her place and she claims date rape, it'd be a severe miscarriage of justice for him to get out of it by just saying he's gay.

I have pretty strong (unrelated to each other) feelings on sexual identity and sex crimes, though. ;)

(FWIW, I'm in the camp that sees sexuality as a continuum with a fair bit of flexibility, which is why I write slash.)

Agree with that. And rape is not about sex anyway, so yes, being gay would not stop a man from raping a woman.
But I was not really arguing that it was a way to avoid a rape charge, only that the person relating it to me obviously thought that it was a wrongful accusation from a women who did not know the actor in question was gay. And the last seems rather unbelievable now that I know who it was (despite earlier discussions on the list, this is about the real life person).

It was Craig, and he was cleared of the rape charges. I don't know why, though.

Piecing together from various articles over the Internet (accuracy not garunteed)

Craig, a friend, John Peploe, and a third man, Roger (who was never traced) were accused of taking cocaine, indecent assault and the rape of Craig's ex-girlfriend (Esther Harman) at her Clapham flat in July 1994. Craig denied the charges, saying he had visited her, but on the spur of the moment after celebrating his fiancee's birthday, to get a bacon butty. He spent 3 months in Wandsworth Jail, where he suffered abuse from the other inmates. He was denied bail until he was attacked (but not injured) by an inmate using a homemade knife. He stayed with Liverpulian relatives until the time of the trial as part of the bail conditions. Snippets from tabloids say he was greeted by his girlfriend and taken off in a chaffeur driven limo. The two week trial was held on Feb 1995. They were cleared as no forensic evidence had been submitted for the rape, though he admitted to taking the cocaine she offered him. The jury took only 90 minutes to find him not guilty.

This website has newspaper articles about the trial itself, including one Craig wrote himself in the Guardian (5th down):
http://www.eskimo.com/~onan/tardis/SotRT_News_012.html

Here's the others I looked at.
http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/5849/rd/craigc.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3055859.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1999/08/99/edinburgh_festival_99/411618.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Charles
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/tv/british-comedy/general-faq/part3/
http://www.eskimo.com/~onan/tardis/SotRT_News_004.html

There's a bad joke here, but in deference to the gravity of the thread, I'm just going to swallow it. I will say that I'm damned if I'm going to let any of this ruin slash and enjoyment therefrom, however.

Absolutely!
No reason why it should. This is about the fandom, we can not expect everyone involved in it to be perfect, especially since nobody is perfect. (and who has not made a mistake in their life?)

*doesn't even want to think about the articles that would appear if self were being followed by yellow journalists*

OT, but probably of interest

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