A strange, lonely and troubling death . . .



Dead at 33: Stephen Gately

The news of Stephen Gately's death was deeply shocking. It was not just that another young star had died pointlessly.



Through the recent travails and sad ends of Michael Jackson, Heath Ledger and many others, fans know to expect the unexpected of their heroes - particularly if those idols live a life that is shadowed by dark appetites or fractured by private vice.



There are dozens of household names out there with secret and not-so-secret troubles, or damaging habits both past and present.



Robbie, Amy, Kate, Whitney, Britney; we all know who they are. And we are not being ghoulish to anticipate, or to be mentally braced for, their bad end: a long night, a mysterious stranger, an odd set of circumstances that herald a sudden death.



In the morning, a body has already turned cold before the first concerned hand reaches out to touch an icy celebrity shoulder. It is not exactly a new storyline, is it?

In fact, it is rather depressingly familiar. But somehow we never expected it of him. Never him. Not Stephen Gately.



In the cheerful environs of Boyzone, Gately was always charming, cute, polite and funny.

A founder member of Ireland's first boy band, he was the group's co-lead singer, even though he could barely carry a tune in a Louis Vuitton trunk.



He was the Posh Spice of Boyzone, a popular but largely decorous addition.



Gately came out as gay in 1999 after discovering that someone was planning to sell a story revealing his sexuality to a newspaper.



Although he was effectively smoked out of the closet, he has been hailed as a champion of gay rights, albeit a reluctant one.



At the time, Gately worried that the revelations might end his ultra-mainstream career as a pin-up, but he received an overwhelmingly positive response from fans. In fact, it only made them love him more.



In 2006, Gately entered into a civil union with internet businessman Andrew Cowles, who had been introduced to him by mutual friends Elton John and David Furnish.



Last week, the couple were enjoying a holiday together in their apartment in Mallorca before their world was capsized.

Boyzone: Gately and his bandmates had a hugely successful career and had recently reformed

All the official reports point to a natural death, with no suspicious circumstances. The Gately family are - perhaps understandably - keen to register their boy's demise on the national consciousness as nothing more than a tragic accident.



Even before the post-mortem and toxicology reports were released by the Spanish authorities, the Gatelys' lawyer reiterated that they believed his sudden death was due to natural causes.



But, hang on a minute. Something is terribly wrong with the way this incident has been shaped and spun into nothing more than an unfortunate mishap on a holiday weekend, like a broken teacup in the rented cottage.



Consider the way it has been largely reported, as if Gately had gently keeled over at the age of 90 in the grounds of the Bide-a-Wee rest home while hoeing the sweet pea patch.



The sugar coating on this fatality is so saccharine-thick that it obscures whatever bitter truth lies beneath. Healthy and fit 33-year-old men do not just climb into their pyjamas and go to sleep on the sofa, never to wake up again.

Whatever the cause of death is, it is not, by any yardstick, a natural one. Let us be absolutely clear about this. All that has been established so far is that Stephen Gately was not murdered.



And I think if we are going to be honest, we would have to admit that the circumstances surrounding his death are more than a little sleazy.



After a night of clubbing, Cowles and Gately took a young Bulgarian man back to their apartment. It is not disrespectful to assume that a game of canasta with 25-year-old Georgi Dochev was not what was on the cards.



Cowles and Dochev went to the bedroom together while Stephen remained alone in the living room.



Gately's civil partner, Andrew Cowles, left, and Bulgarian student Georgi Dochev, right, were at the apartment on the night of the singer's death



What happened before they parted is known only to the two men still alive. What happened afterwards is anyone's guess.



A post-mortem revealed Stephen died from acute pulmonary oedema, a build-up of fluid on his lungs.



Gately's family have always maintained that drugs were not involved in the singer's death, but it has just been revealed that he at least smoked cannabis on the night he died.



Nevertheless, his mother is still insisting that her son died from a previously undetected heart condition that has plagued the family.



Another real sadness about Gately's death is that it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships.



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.



Badly dressed: Tara Palmer-Tomkinson

Tara's sheer audacity

The dress code for Tatler magazine's 300th birthday celebrations was Very Tatler.



Socialite Tara Palmer-Tomkinson chose to interpret this by wearing sheer lilac voile up top and boy-shorts down below, complete with matching curtains.



Good grief!



As blouses go, hers seems to have got up and gone.



It is certainly much more yoo-hoo! than peek-a-boo, wouldn't you agree?



Surely the only creature allowed to flash that much nipple in public is a nursing chihuahua?



Tara, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but you are too old for that look.



In fact, everyone is too old for that look, unless you happen to be Timmy the Tranny, the hat-check personage down at the My-Oh-My supper club in Brighton.







I'm in the mood for spanx pants



Heave-ho, me hearties! If we all pull together, we might just manage to get the Nolan Sisters into their matching girdles by curtain-up tonight.



Age has not withered the singing sisters, who have just reformed and embarked on a nationwide tour.



This week, Coleen, 44, Linda, 50, Maureen, 45, and Bernie, 48, were pictured squeezed into unfortunate, high-waisted matador pants and bulging sparkly tops at one of the first shows in Manchester.



Age has not withered them: The new-look Nolan sisters

A change of outfit featured black jackets with a white panel down the front which gave the illusion of the girls being nipped in at the waist. Or, in some cases, of actually having a waist.



While their comeback tour is a giant triumph of spirit over depleted oestrogen, all is not fun on the Nolan front.



Elder sisters Anne, 58, and Denise, 57, are fuming at being left out of the new line-up, but be fair, girls, please! There is only so much glittery fabric a nation's textile industry can supply at one time.



Still, it is fabulous to have them back and hear their music again. The Nolans' big hit, I'm In The Mood (For Dancing), has been reissued as I'm In The Mood (For A Nice Big Lunch), closely followed by And A Nap Afterwards.

The I'm In The Mood Again tour has been billed as the 'ultimate girls' night out' and features a combination of the Nolans' hits and doomed girly anthems such as It's Raining Men and Holding Out For A Hero.



Oh, my giddy Spanx power panties! Where can I get a ticket?



Raise a glass to glorious autumn



In praise of autumn: The season we Brits do best

Thank goodness the cool, crisp days of autumn are here at last. Don't complain about the temperature drop, for at heart we are an autumn nation.



We are not summer people. No way. We don't know quite what to do with ourselves in the still, dead heat of a long hot summer.



Not that we ever get a real scorcher, of course. Yet if we did, we would just carry on cremating barbecue sausages, leaving dogs and babies to sweat in locked cars and moaning about the heat while dressing very, very badly and burning our pale, northern European skins in the noon sun.

Come October, however, and we know exactly what to do. Now the shortening days have an invigorating chill, but the afternoons are still lit up by a lemon sun.



This is the season for freshly cracked-open books, rough-skinned English apples and woodsmoke; for piles of russet leaves and the smack of your big soled boots on a city pavement.



'Tis the time for a shot of whisky in a sparkling glass, the blip of venison stew on a low flame and cold, fresh air pouring through the bedroom window at midnight. It is also time to celebrate the non arrival of the swine flu pandemic, which was supposed to gather strength and take hold in September.



No, our barbecue summer never did materialise. But neither did swine flu. I reckon we are quits.

Pumpkin scones? Ugh!



I've just returned from a girls' weekend in Scotland. In years gone by, we would have been up to the Plimsoll Line in chilled white wine by 3pm and have terrorised every eligible bachelor within a ten-mile radius of our rented cottage.



Now it's all bobble hats, hearty walks and as many teashop stops and scone-eating opportunities as possible.



However, I am shocked at new developments in the scone world. For decades in the sconeland of my youth, there were only the Big Four: the plain, the sultana, the treacle and the cheese (the drop and the girdle are just different ways of cooking a basic scone).



Yet now there are myriad arriviste scones such as pumpkin, chocolate chip, blueberry, apple and even saffron. Ugh! Appalling.

That kind of desecration should be restricted to that mongrel upstart, the muffin.



Incidentally, a Scottish muffin is very different from an English muffin, while the one Americans call an English Muffin is what the Scots call a crumpet.



Elsewhere, Americans call a scone a biscuit, while our biscuits are their cookies.



Perhaps this baked goods confusion is what Lady Gaga is referring to in her her song Poker Face, when she sings about 'bluffin' with my muffin'. Just a Highland thought.

Excessive maternity leave hampers women in the workplace



Why has it taken so long for Labour's equal rights laws to blow up in their face?



It is clear to anyone with three brain cells that excessive amounts of maternity leave and gigantic sex discrimination payouts - of the kind shepherded through by Sir Harriet Harman - have not strengthened the position of women in the workplace.



If anything, they have hampered the prospects of many, particularly in a credit-crunched marketplace.



If you are a young, ambitious woman of child-bearing years, any employer is going to think once, twice, three times about you, lady.



Particularly small businesses, who are hammered out of all existence by discriminatory legislation and given no help to thrive.



This government, desperate to appease working mothers at any cost, has alienated employers, not encouraged them.



It goes on and on, but what is clear is that that great citadel of gender gelding, the Government Equalities Office, is doing more harm than good.



So netball and football are to be replaced as school sports by pastimes such as skateboarding and cheerleading. Pathetic. When are children going to learn that school sports are something to be endured, not enjoyed?



