Did you get involved with the press at all?

No I didn’t. I think they contacted my mum and she gave an interview. And oh and we drafted the article, the sort of in memoria article. And the local paper was very good. They allowed us to draft it. And they allowed us to choose a photograph and put that in, which, which was really important to us because we felt that there were a lot of people who wouldn’t have known. And we wanted everyone to have an opportunity to come [to the funeral] if they wanted to.

This was before the funeral?

Yes. And so we were able to say in that and in the funeral announcement a week later that we would like people to come and we would like to share memories with them.

After Shirley had died we were approached in court in the January by a magazine, asking us to do an interview. And we said, No, you know, We don’t want to do that. And one of the liaison officers said to us, You’d be better off [doing an interview]. He said, I’ll check them out for you.

And he came back the next day and he said, They’re legitimate. You know. I really think you should talk to him. And I was like, But we don’t want to. He said, But, he said, Newspaper people are worse than coppers, they’ll find you. He said, And they’ll just harass you until one of them gets your story. He said, So you might as well do it with these and do it, you know, do that like that. So in the end we gave them an interview. And from the money that they gave us for it, we got the headstone done and we paid what was owing on Shirley’s funeral.

One thing we haven’t discussed at all is the press. Did the newspapers ?

Well we went the other way round it, because I was collecting for, for this trust fund for Kevin, and it was important for me to contact the press so I did it the other way around and I invited one particular newspaper, local newspaper to do the story which of course they leapt at. But the agreement was is they had to put the piece up about our campaign, Climbing for Positive Change. So I did that. And I also did it with a magazine as well.

Although it was more focused on my daughter and the tragedy between the, the, the, the brother and the sister link. But any donations that come from that will go to his charity.

Did you get a chance to write what you wanted?

Yes. Yes we, we were I mean some of it was glamorised a little bit. There were, there were a couple of things, especially in the magazine that you know was there for full effect; that I didn’t say or didn’t do. But you kind of know that they sensationalise things. And it was a way that viewers will, you know, send cheques to the hospital for a good cause.

I mean, that’s the reason that I did it. But I suppose any other way I’m not quite sure, I suppose that’s what your family liaison officer’s for.

Would be to shield you and when you come out of court you can go the back way if you’ve got press out the front. And you, you do get, you, you get inundated; you get letters coming to you.

…but then like I say, it never made national news because there was a lot going on with the war in Iraq and stuff, and so it didn’t really make national news, and now as far as the campaign goes, and things, I have real support from the press. If I ever want the local gazette to print anything, they all print it, and if I ever, if I ever want the BBC to come and do something they will quite often agree to it, I quite often go on the local BBC radio.

That’s good.

Local ITV West they do a lot as well.

And they often keep in touch with me as well as me keeping in touch with them, to see what’s happening and whether there’s anything they can do to help. So I have so much support from so many different people, including the media. And they’ve never, not once has the media let me down in terms of said something, or printed something that I didn’t, that I’ve asked them not to print, they’ve never done that to me, and that’s why I will never, that’s why I never mind talking to the press, I don’t mind talking to people because generally speaking I’ve not had that experience of being screwed over, if you know what I mean.

You know because some people have that experience, don’t they? And they think, I hate the press, because you know they, you know print this, that and the other, but I think what they’re really thinking of is celebrity paparazzi people who will ignore your wishes, but they’re all very good, and they’re all very sensitive.

And finally, you haven’t said anything about the press. Did they get involved?

Yes. On the very first day on the night at the hospital I actually said to the policeman who was there, Can you keep this out of the papers?, because at the time I thought, at the time I was thinking this dreadful thing had happened, I don’t want my children opening a newspaper and reading about it. And he said, That’s not possible you will find that there’ll be reporters on your door wanting to know about it, and he actually advised us, he said, The thing to do is to prepare a statement, if you don’t want to be part of all of this, and you don’t want the press. And so what we did was, that very first morning when we woke up the next morning, we actually wrote a thing that said something like, something very simple about, you know this has happened and the family want to be left alone to deal with it. And so when the press did turn up on the doorstep one of the sons just went and handed out this piece of paper that just said, He was a quiet and gentle man, we want to, we’ll miss him and we want to be able to be left alone, and to be fair, that actually was fine.

But what we didn’t, I didn’t realise when I spoke to the policeman, because I was there on my own at the hospital, that time when the other children hadn’t arrived, was that actually they were practically obsessed by looking at what the papers said, and they cut out and kept every article, every photograph, there was a lot of stuff in the commercial, in the specialist press as well, which they’ve collected and kept, so there is a file there, but I think that was the first sign of what developed into this obsessive need to know absolutely everything about what had happened in the accident.

So did the press bother you again after that?

After, no after that, nobody else came near us.

Not individually.

Not individually, the only other time was after the inquest, there was a reporter at the inquest.

Generally though I think the press, you know, the press is insensitive at the wrong times. I mean after it happened they were hanging around, loads, all of them were hanging around the main hospitals in London waiting to see whether they could talk to anybody who might possibly, possibly be bereaved. I think the other thing that, I think it was the day that there was, when they had the two minute silence, I can’t remember we weren’t in London at the time I don’t think, or the same month there were a lot of people in Trafalgar Square and they just happened, my niece whos a pretty little blond, she was about 17 at the time, they took a photograph of her when she was crying and it was in the paper and I just opened The Metro and there was a picture of her crying, you know, and you think, This is awful, you don’t know how traumatic this has been for her and it was just, I mean it was a good picture I suppose if you want, you know, grief and all the rest of it, that kind of thing, it’s intrusive and all the things that we all know about. But possibly I think initially it was worse than I imagined, I still find it very difficult to understand how people can really, I’ll not say job, I mean really, really trade in other people’s pain and grief, I just find that, you know, totally repellent.

The media are horrible. I did occasionally [talk to them] and, you know, they’re sensationalist and they’re selective. it’s possible to sort of play them at their own game if you like, but they’re good if they want to get a story out of you, but they’re, they hound you. They’ll only hear what they want to hear.

You know you can say something to them which in context is perfectly reasonable but they’ll, they’ll edit it and they’ll bite chunks out of it, and it’ll tell you what they want to tell you, and that has been a little bit annoying. But I think you, you deal with them with caution, and probably through a spokesperson if you, if you’re really concerned to get your story out for whatever reason you want to do that, and you’re probably better doing it either in writing, or through a third person who can be dispassionate about it. And perhaps be a little bit more lucid, and less emotive.

Do you still get bothered with journalists?

Not really. Occasionally, I did when the executions took place a few weeks ago.

But you know they’re not interested in my, I wish they hadn’t been killed they’re interested in, they’re dead and I’m pleased kind of stories, which is purely to sell papers.