Ray Gosling

Raymond Arthur Gosling (5 May 1939 – 19 November 2013) was an English broadcaster, journalist, author, and gay rights activist.

He wrote and presented several hundred television and radio documentaries and regional programmes for BBC Radio 4 and Granada Television from the 1960s to 1980s on quirky aspects of life in different British towns and cities. His later documentaries focused on his personal life and his emergence as a gay activist. He was described as "one of the most uniquely talented figures in the history of British broadcasting." but the claims were false and he was later given a suspended sentence for wasting police time.

Early life

Gosling was born in Northampton in 1939. in which members of the public, in a different town each week, confronted officialdom with their concerns and complaints. His 1974 Granada series Gosling's Travels was praised by the Sunday Telegraph and compared to documentaries by John Betjeman and Ian Nairn. He specialised in "the sideways look at such eclectic and quintessentially British institutions as the working classes... and faded seaside towns, the minutiae of life."

In many of his documentaries on BBC Radio he used his distinctively quirky writing style to point up the rich diversity of people and places in Britain. Some of his best-remembered radio programmes were personal portraits of a series of different towns. In 1982 he wrote and narrated an episode of the television series Great Little Railways for the BBC, featuring northern Portugal. His television documentaries also included Granada TV's The Human Jigsaw in 1984, and a series about football supporters, The People's Game, which he narrated.

In 2000 he returned to television in a series of documentaries about his personal life over recent years, including his bankruptcy.

Next came films on garden gnomes, statues, bus travel, OAP workers, frugal living, new arts buildings and windmills. His film on Joe Orton was part of a programme which won the RTS Midlands Best Regional programme in 2008.

His BBC Four documentary Ray Gosling OAP concerned his decision to move into sheltered accommodation. It won the Jonathan Gili Award For Most Entertaining Documentary Award at Grierson 2007 over tough competition from Alan Sugar's The Apprentice. It followed the highly acclaimed BBC Four documentaries Bankrupt and Pensioned Off. Other radio contributions included items on BBC Radio 4's You and Yours in 2008 and 2009.

The value of Gosling's work was recognised by Nottingham Trent University in 2005, when it stepped in to save "an amazing treasure trove of groundbreaking TV and radio work which was in danger of being lost forever". The veteran broadcaster's archive, which includes films, tapes, scripts, cuttings and background notes providing perspective on 40 years of social history, was within the School of Arts and Humanities, until 2025 when it was transferred to Manuscripts and Special Collections at the University of Nottingham.

Gay rights Gosling was an early pioneer of the modern British gay rights movement, first becoming involved in the 1950s, and working with Allan Horsfall in the North West Homosexual Law Reform Committee of the late 1960s, which later became the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE).

Personal life During the 1990s, his professional fortunes waned, and his long-term partner Bryn Allsopp was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Gosling nursed him until his death in November 1999. In an interview with LeftLion magazine in August 2013 Gosling stated that he had planned on writing his memoirs for a few years but had never quite got round to doing it. "Life is for living, not for writing," he said. He also talked about his lifelong relationship with alcohol: "I've been drinking since I was twelve. I drink brandy and wine now. In those days I drank ten pints a night. There were fifty pubs in my St Anns. I'd have a drink in every one."

False confession On Inside Out on 15 February 2010, Gosling said he had used a pillow to suffocate a former lover. Gosling said that the "young chap" was dying from AIDS and in "terrible, terrible pain", and did not say whether this had been agreed beforehand. On 16 February, The Daily Telegraph reported that officers from the Nottinghamshire Constabulary were to investigate. He was arrested on suspicion of murder on 17 February 2010, and released on police bail the following day without being charged.

Gosling was found to have fabricated the claim and had not been in the UK at the time of the death. On 20 August 2010, the Crown Prosecution Service announced that Gosling would be prosecuted because he had "caused wasteful employment of the police by knowingly making [...] a false report tending to show that an offence had been committed". On 14 September 2010, he was given a 90-day suspended sentence at Nottingham Magistrates' Court.

Publications 1960: Dream Boy. New Left Review, 3:30–34 1961: Lady Albemarle's Boys. London: Fabian Society (story of a youth club in Leicester) 1963: Sum Total. London: Faber. (Republished by Pomona in 2004 ) 1967: Saint Ann's. Nottingham Civic Society 1980: Personal Copy: a memoir of the sixties. London: Faber ; re-published 2010 Nottingham: Five Leaves Publications