Neighbours were surprised when they heard Fred had narrated multiple murder stories.
He was a quiet bloke and kept himself to himself, said one cliché. Sometimes he’d use the native American greeting ‘How?’
Rumour had it he was once a children’s TV presenter.
Locals knew there was a TV production company in their midst. But nobody in their wildest dreams could imagine what they were capable of.
Serial voyeurism. Obsession with mass murderers. Fascination with the details of horrific cases of homicide. Not with the professional detachment of a coroner. But with the enthusiasm of pundits discussing the latest game under the lights of a TV studio.
Were they indifferent to the suffering of the victims? Did they forget that these programmes would open up old wounds for all victims of violence? Did they care?
When investigators looked at the TV schedules they discovered a mass ‘schedule’ of grisly shows on Channel 5, Five Star, Sky and other flipover channels. The same production companies kept popping up.
Then there were the crime dramas on BBC and ITV, which competed to dream up the most horrific circumstances under which women and children could be killed. Their modus operandi also included moral posting. But in an ironic twist, they hired luvvie actors to look aghast at the cruelty of man – while ignoring the fact that these fantasy murders were the product of their own scriptwriters’ imaginations.
And they were to get away with it, time and again. Sometimes they even got BAFTAs for these horrifying snuff movies.
Soon, you began to wonder if Fred and his studio experts were not enjoying all these murders a little too much. It was the TV equivalent of those regulars who stand outside a law court and bang the police van as a killer is taken off to jail.
While the TV pundits pretended to be outraged, they were creating their own killer content. Their fake inquests posed no new questions and seemed to dwell too much on the goriest details of violent murders, rapes and assaults.
How do we get inside the mind of a celebrity murder pundit? That’s the sort of cosmetic question they would pose to make it sound like an academic exercise. Rather than an act of voyeurism.
Scratch the surface and you find that these ‘documentaries’ never reveal anything we didn’t know about Dennis Nilsen or Peter Sutcliffe.
Many of us would desperately like to know why Channel 5, Sky and Netflix seem to be celebrating the deeds of killers and remorselessly exploiting the pain of those who lost loved ones.
What makes any man or woman make such despicable shows? What turns a normal-looking person into making Killer Content?
Why do psychologists want to give quotes to TV hucksters? Do they know that these ‘producers’ will turn mass murder into entertainment?
Are there any depths to which a TV executive will not lower themselves?
Find out soon on Britain’s Most Shameless Programme Makers.
