Ben Lowry: There was hypocrisy in many of the reactions to the death of Caroline Flack

As a wise journalist once told me: “When someone kills themselves, only one person knows why, and that person is dead.”

It is striking that some of the people who are furious about the alleged harassing or ill treatment of Ms Flack are the same sort of people who would support the sweeping planned legal toughening up of criminal response to domestic abuse cases in Northern Ireland.

If so, how can they argue that charges against Ms Flack should not have been brought?

And as to alleged media intrusion there is a wider societal hypocrisy. Celebrity based on beauty or wealth or glamour is by its very essence kept alive by public curiosity.

If the media were uninterested in Harry and Meghan, for example, they would be leading anonymous lives and be unable to pronounce on issues that concern them or to make a living out of their fame.

Perhaps we would be better advising young people that celebrity is, as the great actor Paul Scofield once put it (when explaining why he spurned Hollywood), a “snare and a delusion”.

• Ben Lowry (@BenLowry2) is News Letter deputy editor

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