Beware the awful legacy of suicide

In spite of inquests and judicial inquiries and thousands of words from newspapers, it will never be known what happened in the mind of David Kelly as he paced through the woods to his death.

He was only two miles away from a wife and family who adored him, work that interested him, friends who liked him, and an abundant life, in which his talents were used to the full. The metaphor about the balance of a man's mind being disturbed would really seem in this case to be true. It takes so little to tip someone over the edge.

Those of us who have known mental anguish and depression, even in a minor form, know that it is a disease. The worries and pains get totally out of proportion. The suffering appears intolerable. The dark is absolute. "David - don't do it - think of your wife! Think of your children! No calamity in your professional life can be so terrible as to be worth torturing your beloved family for ever."

These words, if said by some non-existent angel in the woods, might have saved David Kelly's life, but it is possible that he was already deaf to such sunny common sense. That is the nature of mental desolation.

It is understandable that Kelly's family should lash out against the Government, the parliamentary committee, the BBC and the press. But for others to do so is absurd. A robust mind could have seen that journalists want to tell a story, politicians want to cover their tracks, and others want to get at the truth.

David Kelly was the unfortunate person who actually knew something, and who did not, so far as we know, have an axe to grind. But had he been in a different frame of mind, he would not have been driven to despair.

What killed him was the capacity, which we nearly all share, for desperation. Suddenly, we find ourselves alone with overpowering sorrow. It is the most terrible of all feelings, and when it gets out of control, men and women destroy themselves, leaving waves of misery behind them. Only hours before, he was sending emails which suggested that he wanted to go back to Baghdad or confront his critics. Then he entered this terrible, dark place.

Some of us have been there briefly, or peeped into that pit ourselves. Such stories as this should remind us to snap out of such selfish thoughts and remember how utterly desolating suicide always is. Blaming people - either David Kelly himself, or those who supposedly hounded him to his death - does not help. Remembering the utterly destructive effects of suicide, we should all resolve - I will not do that, to my child, to my partner, or to my friends.

Paradoxical puritan

I shall enormously miss my friend and colleague Alexander Walker. Almost all journalists, however punctilious, have their off days, but I never read a dud piece of criticism by Alex. His exacting standards were never relaxed and his work was flawless.

Like many great journalists, he was a Presbyterian. The paradox at the heart of his nature was that he was a Bible puritan who did not believe in the Bible. His zeal for hard work and moral purity were transferred to an area of life that a true Bible puritan would have regarded as frivolity - namely the cinema.

He could be frighteningly stern and buttoned-up, but he was also an extremely affectionate man, the only one of my lunching companions who would pen fulsome letters about the meals the next day. I hope someone took notes of his table talk, since he was an encyclopaedia of gossip about the film world, and this newspaper and its characters.

Gladiatorial ratings war shows a taste for cruelty

Nigel Williams mourns. His show Fortysomething was moved from peak time after losing 1.9 million viewers in one week. He claims that TV bosses panic in their lust for ratings.

They are apparently making a show called Hercules, in which ape-like gladiators wrestle in an arena. It is somehow apt that our society in its terminal decline should echo the decadence of ancient Rome. The newspapers and TV shows designed for the plebs are just as cruel and destructive as the old blood and guts shows in Roman amphitheatres.

Of course, these ratings wars guarantee that no civilised people will want to watch TV except for the news. The TV bosses have miscalculated, of course. In spite of appearances, the civilised are still in a majority. The majority would still prefer to watch shows as funny as Dad's Army or Fawlty Towers if writers with sufficient talent could be found to produce them.

Love rat

James Hewitt says that he wants to sell his love letters from Princess Diana in order to support the work of charities in Africa. How foolish of us not to have realised this before.

This great philanthropist has all along been trying to help the human race. The caddish impression of his character was, we must assume, the invention of the Mee-jah.

Enough of this heterosexuality

When I trained for the priesthood 30 years ago, the trainee vicars in our seminary who were suspected of being heterosexual were known as "perverts". The New Testament is quite clear in its condemnation of "looking after a woman to lust after her", but it never occurred to us that there were very many of these sad individuals at large among the ranks of the clergy.

The Church of England is a broad church, and however little it might like or approve of heterosexual goings-on, it tries not to be heterophobic. But a newspaper yesterday suggested that there are far more heterosexuals in the church than was previously recognised.

There is a story of Rowan Williams, while Archbishop of Wales, having knowingly ordained heterosexuals, and even appointing a heterosexual canon to a job in Monmouthshire in spite of a known incident with a woman in Bangor.

It is easy to exaggerate these things, of course. In the London diocese, there would seem to be almost no heterosexuality. But it is different in other parts of the Anglican communion, which have perhaps a very different culture. The Observer suggests in an editorial that if it were to spread, and openly heterosexual bishops, for example, started to be appointed, we might have reached the dividing point in the road. Many Anglicans would search their consciences and feel that enough was enough.