22 February 2010

All hell let loose over the past two days as a result of the article in the Cambridge News. I have received calls directly or indirectly from The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail and the Sunday Times as well as calls from various BBC radio stations all requesting interviews. Whilst initially I acceded to the first request, that from The Daily Telegraph, ultimately realising how unhappy it was making ‘my lovely’ and my children, late last night, I rang the journalist and said I could not go ahead with the feature article. I have been too badly let down by the Cambridge News and whatever assurances she gave at the end of the day, with the best intentions in the world, she would not have complete control over the editorial substance or indeed sub-editing so I was not prepared to take that chance.

The problem is that there has been so much debate recently about the assisted suicide – almost every day someone confesses on the television at having ‘assisted’ a loved one ‘on their way’ because of unbearable pain or other – and the fact that very shortly a green paper will be published on the subject, has made this a hot issue and one which I suspect no national newspaper could ignore if I went ahead with a further interviews.

So, having given an undertaking to ‘my lovely’ and the children that that is the end of it, i.e no more media, I have weakened in one respect where one of the Nationals ‘were so excited about the blog’ that they have asked permission to publish some choice extracts with a promise of no accompanying editorial, other than a short introduction, and have offered to send me the precise extracts giving me complete freedom over any that I wish to delete (or indeed add) and control over the headline. I have said neither yes or no to this proposal but have promised ‘my lovely’ will have the final word, she will go through and decide on any deletions or addition. When she is completely happy I will also let the children see what is proposed and hear their views but I suspect they will agree with their mother.

What a business! I deeply regret having started with the anticipation of extending the readership of the blog to thousands more people, some of whom might have to derived some small comfort or pleasure from it and instead ending up with a great deal of aggravation.

Tags: media, news