Posted on 03/04/2006 1:29:16 PM PST by river rat
He was a family favourite, a harmless if over-the-top entertainer. Now he is a pariah who will spend the next few months in a filthy jail
WANNA be in my gang? Gary Glitter sang in the 1970s, as thousands of children chanted their agreement. Yesterday, the once-adored glam rock star began a three-year prison sentence in Vietnam for molesting two underage girls, his glitter utterly tarnished by sordid sex crimes against children. Today that invitation to join Glitter’s gang seems to carry grim sexual overtones. In the annals of celebrity scandal, there has never been anything quite like Glitter’s passage from failed pub singer to pop superstar to paedophile pariah.
Sentencing Glitter (whose real name is Paul Francis Gadd) for “obscene acts” with two girls aged 10 and 11 at his rented villa in the southern Vietnamese town of Vung Tau, the judge in the case described the former singer as “disgusting and sick”.
With time served, Glitter will eligible for parole in eight months, and could be deported back to this country before the end of the year, his lawyer said.
Glitter was first jailed for sex offences in November 1999, after admitting possession of thousands of photographs of children being sexually abused. If he returns to Britain, and new evidence comes to light, he could face charges under the 2003 Sexual Offences Act covering sex tourism.
Glitter, 61, continued to protest his innocence yesterday. “I haven’t done anything. I’m innocent. It’s a conspiracy,” he declared, words that suggested the theatrical make-believe that was always key to his stage act was still part of his personality.
Gone are the platform shoes and wigs; the man led away yesterday, with his white goatee beard and bald head, looked more like an ageing hippy. Yet Glitter, the man who sang Hello Hello I’m back again, has always been adapt at changing his image and his name.
For many Britons, Glitter’s perversions seem doubly shocking given that, in his heyday, he was the least threatening of pop stars. Glitter was a figure from Christmas panto, all spangles, snarls and chest hair; he sang meaningless anthems that were played loud as he stomped around the stage. Grandmother could hum them, and American football teams used them as half-time jingles.
Glam rock fell between the genuine rebellions of the Beatles and punk. It was a benign, high-camp fake, and Glitter was laughed at and trusted. His songs were safe to play at the school disco. Glitter occupied a peculiar niche in British culture, and the anger over his sex crimes has perhaps been heightened by a sense of betrayal. Glitter’s offences were not merely sexual; he also offended the British sense of nostalgia.
The man who spent the past few years flitting from one South-East Asian bolthole to another was forever changing his masks. Before he was Glitter, he was Paul Russell, Paul Raven and Rubber Bucket. He toyed with calling himself Terry Tinsel, Stanley Sparkle and Vicky Vomit. And before that, he was born Paul Gadd, in Banbury, Oxfordshire. He never knew his father and was taken into care at the age of 10.
He graduated from nightclub crooner to become the warm-up man for the pop show Ready Steady Go, and his first single, Alone in the Night, was released in January 1960. Glitter’s chance came in the early 1970s with glam rock, a fusion of variety show posturing and rock music.
Glitter’s Rock ‘n’ Roll (Parts 1 and 2) reached No 2 in 1972 and even entered the US charts. By 1975 he had sold 20 million records, with 12 consecutive Top Ten singles, but it was the look that made him famous as much as the music: platform boots, arched and painted eyebrows, wild wigs - a clever mixture of absurdity and androgyny. At his height, challenging the Sweet, Slade and T. Rex for glam dominance of Top of the Pops, he owned 30 glittered jumpsuits and 50 pairs of silver platform boots. Then came the predictable rock’n’roll slump: drink, drugs, a failed marriage, bankruptcy and hints of attempted suicide.
In 1984 he staged a comeback of sorts, with Another Rock and Roll Christmas, and by the early 1990s he had been adopted, with heavy irony, by a new generation of students. He was used to advertise Heinz soup and British Rail. Oasis paid tribute to him on their second album, and he bought a yacht with the resulting royalties. He performed at the Atlanta Olympics.
Glitter seemed destined to enjoy a late-blooming career as a B-list Elton John, a sequinned national treasure and staple of the quiz show and variety circuit.
But in 1997 he took his computer to be mended, and was found to have assembled an horrific library of child pornography from the internet; 4,000 images “of the very, very worst possible type”, according to the judge in the resulting court case.
The man who had strutted and preened with fake menace on stage was, it emerged, a genuine sexual menace.
His reputation went into immediate, terminal freefall. British shops stopped carrying his records, concerts were cancelled and his parents legally changed their surname. He had recorded a segment in the Spice Girls’ film, Spiceworld. It was edited out.
Glitter had never been big in the US, but Rock and Roll (Part Two) had become a popular sports anthem in North America, used to celebrate goals. After Glitter was convicted of downloading child pornography, several sports teams dropped the chant.
The PR agent Max Clifford, who knew Glitter for many years, said: “He was an established part of the British rock culture, so at his height he was a major name. He’s gone from adoration to repulsion. “Once synonymous with good times, rock’n’roll, the leader of the gang and all that, now people have forgotten about the music and he’s just a pervert. Obviously he’s a sick man and the problem is, he’s a danger. He can’t stop himself.”
On his release from prison in 1999, after serving half his four-month sentence, Glitter insisted otherwise: “I have served my time. I want to put it all behind me and live my life.” That life took him to countries known as centres of the child prostitution industry. The odyssey of Gary Glitter began, first to Cuba, and then onwards to South-East Asia.
In 2002, he was permanently expelled from Cambodia for allegedly trawling for underage sex, although no charges were filed. He moved on to Vietnam, and rented a villa in Vung Tau. It was there that Glitter, allegedly living with a 15-year-old girl, was tracked down by a British newspaper.
In November last year he was arrested while trying to leave the country. He blamed his fame for his arrest, but never himself. “I hate the name Gary Glitter,” he reportedly told the immigration officer who recognised and stopped him at Tan Son Nhat airport. “Because of it, I draw too much attention.” Police confiscated his laptop, which they said contained hundreds of pornographic images.
This week, as he prepared to face the press assembled outside the courthouse in Vung Tau, Glitter showed a lingering taste for the limelight, despite the wreckage of his reputation. “I need to look very good because there will be many journalists when I appear in court,” he told his lawyer.
Reading out the verdict after the two-day trial, Judge Hoang Thanh Tung declared: “He sexually abused and committed obscene acts with children many times in a disgusting and sick manner.”
Glitter was the first foreigner to face trial for sex crimes in postwar Vietnam, and the verdict was applauded by children’s charities in Britain, although some argued that Glitter should have received the maximum sentence. That view was echoed by Mr Clifford. “I suppose he almost got justice, although justice would have meant a far longer custodial sentence,” he said.
“He has been going to poor countries where he can buy his way out and hide under the protection that his money gives him in these very poor places.”
Christine Beddoe, of the charity End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for sexual purposes said that Glitter could be prosecuted if he were deported to Britain, where he is a registered sex offender. “We hope that the British authorities will take time to investigate other allegations that could lead to charges when he returns,” she said.
Under the Sexual Offences Act, anyone on the sex offenders register who wants to travel abroad for more than three days has to inform the authorities, and any Briton who commits a sex crime abroad can be tried and prosecuted in Britain.
The rise and continued fall of Gary Glitter stands as a testament to the strange fantasy world of celebrity culture. Glitter made a fortune pretending to be weird and dangerous, with his bouffant hair and stomping chants.
Remember me this way, he sang in 1973. And the world would probably have done just that, had not the real Gary Glitter been exposed. The truly weird and dangerous man was the one beneath the make-up.
He's going to be REAL popular in prison.... He's going to get all the sex he can stand.....
Semper Fi
Three years in a Vietnamese prison no less...
Glitter’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Part 1, played at nearly every professional football game in the world. Probably one of the most played songs ever.
Sheesh, he threw it all away.
What a cryin shame.
Yeah but only for 8 months. Freggin` 8 months for raping not one but TWO, and this is a guy who has a history of collecting thousands of pics of kids getting raped. What the hell is 8 months? Since when did Vietnam go liberal?
Three years in a Vietnamese prison is going to be like 30 in a Western prison. It'll be a toss up as to whether on any given day it's the inmates who are kicking the crap out of him or the guards.
Look at this, I just check out his bio....
"Deported from Cambodia "in the best interest of the children", according to Cambodian authorities. This in response to his 1999 criminal conviction for possession of child pornography."
What the hell!! Why was he let back in?? And still he will be up for parole in 8 months! Too bad this wasn`t Singapore, he`d be drawn and quartered by now.
I don't remember this guy. Any pics out there?
Wow! I had to read that one twice...
It isn`t 3 years, look what his lawyer says;
"With time served, Glitter will eligible for parole in eight months, and could be deported back to this country before the end of the year, his lawyer said."
Freggin` 8 months parole is what you get for writing bad checks or something, not child rape!
I guess that cute little pony-tail and goatee, will be used as a handle by his many new found boyfriends....
One for use from each direction... How considerate of him...
Semper Fi
Does anyone know what the term "bolthole" means to the Brits?
Semper Fi
He should have been put away for decades, not a few months.
I think Part 2 is the football anthem.
I guess you can be a pedophile with everyone's blessing if you are in the entertainment field.
Yeah, you`re right.. You ever see that website Ogrish.com? Last year they had photos of what happened to this pedophile in a prison in Brazil (I think it was Brazil)...If you haven`t seen it, let`s just say the guy was literally torn to pieces with his thing the first to go and his head last. If you stand it look it up, they might still have it up. They show everything, the guys body is literally in pieces and the jail cell is just flooded with blood.
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