Originally Posted by
blueblade:
“In his own words "he's killed a couple of people, he'll get 12 years, be out in 6 for good behaviour" - "he's a lovely bloke" - "he's a good lad" "Last saw him about a year and a half ago when he was in Newcastle"
This isn't newspaper reporting. It's actually him speaking live on air - link”
You realise that none of that actually says he was a 'mate', don't you?
Sounds more someone he knew in passing, especially as he had not seen him for 18 months at the time of the interview.
That certainly does not scream 'mate' to me.
Like a lot of people you fall into the trap of believing he goes out looking for trouble and courts publicity...based largely on what you read in the notoriously unreliable and frankly extremely dubious press.
In years past it was usually only paparazzi that followed celebs around looking for something juicy they could make into a headline. And it was easily done, just a little provocation, a few sly insults to push them over the edge, taking endless photo's etc (witnessed it first hand many times).
Bottom line is, a photo of a person like Gazza posing and smiling nicely is not going to make the front page...but a photo of him throwing a punch, being drunk, aggressive etc is guaranteed to...hence its in the paparazzi's interest (especially financially) to engineer such pictures, and believe me they do.
In addition, the reason they take endless pics of celebrities is so they have just the right photo with the desired expression that suits whatever story is written about them. Fergie was one of the worst victims of this, stories always accompanied with her having a stupid grin or expression. So much so that most people believed she was kind of stupid.
But now with social media, the public can take photos and videos and upload them, and tweet endlessly...then you have the tail wagging the dog, as the media pick up on this and make a story about it. And as far as I can see something like 5 - 10 comments on twitter seems to qualify as a 'twitterstorm' or 'twitter going into meltdown' etc.
Gazza has some issues, that's clear. But like with him and many others who seem to suffer this sort of treatment from both the media and the public, frankly I believe very little of any of it.