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'Jan Moir's column has never been published in the Irish Daily Mail', it says. Now, maybe it never will be
The Daily Mail
Irish Daily Mail abandons Moir, complaints now total 25,000
The Irish Daily Mail has disowned Jan Moir's controversial column about the death of Stephen Gately, by stressing it is "independent" of the UK edition of the paper.
Moir's column was not published in Friday's Irish Daily Mail, and yesterday the paper printed a disclaimer, as had the Irish Mail on Sunday: "Comments made by journalist Jan Moir about Stephen Gately in her newspaper column caused controversy on Friday. Jan Moir's column has never been published in the Irish Daily Mail which, like the Irish Mail on Sunday, is edited and printed entirely in Ireland - independent of the UK titles - and does not have an online presence."
By lunchtime today the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) had received over 25,000 complaints about Moir's column and on Monday, when the figure had reached 21,000, said they "represent by far the highest number of complaints ever received about a single article in the history of the commission".
The unprecedented outrage Moir's article provoked on the web and the demands by companies such as Marks and Spencer and Nestle that their advertising be removed from the online page on which her piece was published was accompanied by the Mail changing the headline from "Why there was nothing 'natural' about Stephen Gately's death" to "A strange, lonely and troubling death" for the print edition.
Moir's article, published the day before Gately's funeral in Dublin, said his death "strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships", called for "the truth" to emerge "about the exact circumstances of his strange and lonely death" and said: "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."
"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," she wrote. "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." She also compared Gately's death to that of Kevin McGee, the former civil partner of Matt Lucas, despite the fact that Gately's was due to natural causes and McGee committed suicide.
She issued a statement late on Friday defending her column, blaming a "heavily orchestrated internet campaign" for the media storm and saying that it was "mischievous in the extreme to suggest that my article has homophobic and bigoted undertones".
