The one compelling question a tearful killer was never asked
At LEASt Elton John was honest. During the course of having his colossal ego tickled for an hour by Graham Norton on BBC1 last week, the ex-glam rocker admitted that his appalling behaviour in the Seventies and Eighties was fuelled by lorryloads of cocaine.
Shotgun killer Anthony Powell, searching for excuses on What Makes A Murderer (C4), was less honest. Drugs crime was his life, until he was sent away for 20 years. But he volunteered nothing about the effects that drug use had on his personality.
Powell cuffed a tear from his eye as he described the moment he pulled the trigger and took another man’s life in 1993. then he had to rush outside, where he was coaxed and comforted by members of the production crew.
Quizzed about what drove him to murder by psychologists, Powell tortured himself for answers.
‘Could it be my genes, could it be my blood?’ he asked.
Criminologist Professor Adrian Raine gave Powell a brain scan and discovered ‘wrinkles’ that, he said, suggested an ‘absence of fear’ and ‘short attention span’.
Psychologist Dr Vicky thakordas-Desai was horrified to learn that Powell, who is black, overheard
WINTER STRATEGY OF THE WEEK:
Hilarious bank heist drama A Very Scandi Scandal arrives on the All4 site today, with Swedish cop thriller Alex returning to C4 on Sunday — starting a Scandinoir season running till March. Curl up and hibernate with a TV!
racist language on the streets of Brixton when he was growing up in the Seventies.
Prof Adrian shook his head sadly. ‘For some kids, the dice are loaded early in life,’ he lamented.
In fact, when the 21-year- old gangland enforcer Powell took a loaded, sawn-off shotgun to collect a debt, he had been steeped in drugs crime for at least seven years.
We don’t know whether Powell used cocaine or cannabis himself while living as a gangster. He admitted to dealing drugs as a teenager, but if he took illegal substances himself, he didn’t say.
Prof Adrian and Dr Vicky certainly didn’t ask. the matter was never raised. they were very interested to know whether he had trouble concentrating in class as a boy, and they wrung their hands as he proclaimed he’d been sexually abused as a child. But drugs? Never mentioned. to me, that invalidates the whole investigation. Cannabis use, even infrequent, has been linked to bouts of mental illness, including paranoia. Cocaine is proven to have serious negative behavioural effects — just ask Sir Elton. And it seems a waste of time to scan a felon’s brain for damaged areas without establishing whether hard drugs could be a factor.
One 2012 study, cited in the journal Nature, showed that cocaine doubles the speed at which brain cells die. there was no need to ask about school and family. Everything that led to murder might be summed up in one word: drugs. Ignore that, and the programme is pointless.
there hasn’t been much point either to Inside The Supermarket (BBC1), a six-part documentary series that amounts to a primetime advert for Sainsbury’s. this time, the ‘creatives’ were scrabbling to find ideas for their real ad, the Christmas one.
the ‘ brainstorming’ session was as excruciating as you might imagine — a tableful of vacuous young execs, hoping that if they use buzzwords with enough fervour, no one will realise they haven’t half a clue how to guarantee a festive moneyspinner.
they should take a tip from the Joneses, who run Hafod Hardware in Rhayader, Mid Wales, and whose own Christmas video on Youtube featured in the Mail on Wednesday.
Made for just £100, it stars the family’s adorable two-year- old, Arthur, minding the ironmongers like a mini Ronnie Barker in Open All Hours. the lad is a natural.