The Execution of Gary Glitter - online debate

A thought provoking debate but completely hampered by some of the worst acting since Prisoner Cell Block H (ironically). If hanging was still on the staute books the producers and directors could find themselves looking at a short length of rope.

He should be hanged, pitty it is only a drama programme. if anyone interfered with my children, i would gladly hang them myself!

That was the most sick and disgusting ficticious effort of entertainment ever available! I am disgusted beyond belief that Channel 4 allowed it to be shown!

Strong Stuff, I felt myself feeling sorry for a man who does not deserve our pity. Non-the-less I would not advocate hanging.

I can't believe that 54% of british people want the death penalty brought back! the law is a farce and we could end up hanging innocent people( which is why they abolished it in the first place) If we could trust the law( the best lawyer will always win) then we could make this desicion- but not as the law stands at the moment. We have already incarcerated innocent people and we abolished the death penaltiy for the same reason- we hung innocent people. certainly vote against the death penaltiy. The program was not at all entertaining!It was quite alarming

This should be banned- we don't want the lynch mob to be getting ideas. as for Garry Glitter keep him out of Britain or keep him in jail

at last, if only! paul gadd should swing! this country should be looking after its children! ch 4, well done!

There are several reasons why this programme was appalling and morally reprehensible:
1 Giving further publicity to a publicity loving paedophile.
2 Irresponsible mixture of documentary and drama.
3 Factual inaccuracies of police and court procedure.
I could go on.....Sack the Producer!

Channel 4 wants ist arse kicking I hope Paul Gadd AKA Gary Glitter takes them for all he can. I know hes dome wrong but I was a fan of his in the 70s, Well Gary you go for it and sue the pants off channel 4.

I thought it was an interesting film. On the other hand, I found it heart wrenching to see something like that; it's inhumain. It's wrong.

i was sick to c that us a great nation in favour of hanging.ok what gary did was wrong i agree but that does not give us the right to play god or take a life,what ever are crime. we tread a very dangerouse line here, what about misscarriage of justice to late to say sorry when you took a life, surely we can find harder punishments than this,NO TO HANGING.

I'm sorry to say but i feel the Gary Glitter execution film i just watched is probably the most crass bit of TV that i have ever seen. Whether you like what he did in real life (and i didn't) or not you have no right to promote the "Bring back hanging lobby" in this manner and i hope Paul Gadd is allowed to sue your company into non existence.Although Mr Gadd has "served" his time and is on the sex offenders list, and i do believe he should have got a longer sentence, your action of showing this "film/Documentry" smacks of "Murdochism" gutter press. Maybe the report by the Mail re Stephen Gately should be your next target!! Channel RIP.

if he has children of his own why would he want to look at imiges like that how would he fel if they were his children on peoples computers , sorry this type of this makes me sick and people like him that do that to any children need the death penaulty , children need to be children to laugh and play and grow and have a what we had as children, not pervs like that to touch them up and prey on them ,they need to be safe

There is no way today's forensics could hang an innocent. Execution is not murder: murder is unlawful killing whereas execution is lawful. Hanging was never meant as a deterrent offered to society but as a method of removing from society those that have no right to be here. Murderers, rapists, paedophiles etc are not human beings Fact. Just because you wear clothes and drive a car etc it does not make you a human being. It is respecting life that makes you human. Executing someone who unlawfully destroys life is - paradoxically - protecting and also serving life. Those that kill and commit the crimes are - in effect - dead on the inside. Why do you think it justice to allow these creatures to live? Is it because you are actually on of them? Are you simply defending one of your own? It certainly seems so. The death penalty must be reinstated to Britain. It is ignorance to say no.

Hang tem hang them all. All the child killers, child rapists, murderers etc. £250,000 per year from my tax paying to pay for ONE life sentanced prisoner. Just think of the increase in Health Service and other amenities if we saved all this money. Those bleeding heart do-gooding liberals have obviously never had anyone of their children or relatives brutally raped or murdererd. Please put me down for the Chief Executioners job. I'd do it for free!

95,000 votes within 12 hours of the programme, 87,500 + FOR THE DEATH PENALTY. Wake up and smell the roses you people living in the 'perfect' world where bad things don't happen to you or your families!

There are many ways in which modern forensics could convict an innocent. But that aside, this was a dreadful piece of schlock shock TV and actually rather distateful.

I also felt the program was a disgrace. The worst in sensationalism and I agree with a previous person gutter press programming. I dont believe in the death penalty and what Gary Glitter did was an absolute disgrace but to use him in this manner for pure sensationalism was a disgrace.

I do not think that hanging should be applied to any other than a proved murderer. Other offenses should have proportional punishments according to the crime. I am fully against prison as a punishment for all crimes.
I feel strongly that the death penalty should be re-introduced to Britain but only for deliberate murder.

what punishment would you suggest for the criminal if it would happen to your child? i know people sometimes feel sympathy for a criminal but feel empathy for the victim. death penalty does not mean only to hang to death for committing a crime, but it also mean to fear people from committing such a humiliating offence.

great TV drama, well acted.
enjoyable, disturbing also.

Reading these comments it seems your country is becoming more and more like America every day. Welcome to the fold, my brothers. With any luck you'll be executing the mentally handicapped by 2020.

We need a deterrent - the crimes in this country just get worse week by week. Criminals are not scared off committing crime as prisons are plush pads with playstations, internet access, plasma tvs and gyms. Time we brought back the victorian prisons and make them a place to fear going to and public hanging to shock the populace and shame the families of perverts and murderers then maybe they would think twice. Besides there is also the argument that it will save money which should please the politicians who have wasted so much of it on illegal immigrants sucking the nhs and dhss dry for the last 50 years.

In reference to the above named - I don't think he should be hung by the neck until dead... as another appendage seems far more appropriate... In my opinion [for what it's worth] these people, are incurable recidivist miscreants... they consider their actions to be 'natural' 'loving' 'caring' - many associative people within the 'Glam' fold must surely have been aware of the said individuals distorted relationships with young people and children... I am as ever, appalled and disgusted by such activities... there are, as one is led to believe, specific isolation wards in special hospitals where individuals with libidos bent on impregnating anything that moves are kept... maybe in the case of repeat offender paedophiles - this is where they should be sent for permanent residence, as it may help them to understand what it is like to be on the recieving end of their own brand of a distorted and control led excuses for a relationship ...

It seems that both sides of the debate for or against capital punishment see the other side as the devil, and it comes down to one decision really: fear or love? Do you love life and your relatives (and that is all life on earth, however unpopular the victim is) or do you need to be defended from stars that people get jealous of? Let's choose love instead of terror! It was a good TV drama that showed both sides of the debate, and we all choose between being like Anne Widdecombe/Gary Bushell/Adolf Hitler (the fearing haters) or Jesus Christ/Mahatma Gandhi (the sympathetic lovers)? I choose love! It drives out fear!!!

Yep, next step will be stoning women who kill their feotuses and maybe some wipping for those single mothers who maintain psychologically incestuous relationships with their sons.

What Glitter did was an abomination. Children have to be protected from people like him, and if that means putting paedophiles to death then so be it.

while this debate regards the death penalty, it seems as tho previous respondents are stuck on the pedophilia aspect of the documentary. well, lets get that out of the way. ancient rome, pedophiles. victorian england, and not so long ago in the u.s, we were marrying off young girls in polite society. while i wanst there to witness, i can imagine that not all the girls went willingly to their marriage bed. some might argue that a lesser life span dictated the morals of the society, and i would agree if they were being married off to similar aged boys, but that was not the case. im not an advocate of pedophilia by any means, just offering a reason why i cant support a death penalty for pedo's. it is a shifting moral landscape which made it [rightly so] such a heinous crime, but my morals will not allow a death, nor allow me to believe that if i was a member of a jury that i would be comfortable even discussing it. treatment, mental hospital, even general population of a normal prison so the sodomy they gave out can be revisited on them is all good to me. but death? humans are fallible by definition, or we would be called gods, and fallible people have no rights to use death as a punishment. that being said, if you have a criminal on tape and beyond not just reasonable doubt, but beyond any doubts at all, guilt can be placed on a person who kills, then my moral stance enters a grey area where i would hope death was on the table but would be concerned i was asking for vengeance and not justice. a tough question indeed in an advanced society. i do not envy the people who are discussing this for real

All joking aside the death penatly is wrong, while being a peado is wrong it is not as bad as say murder or mutation of ones body. I think that the important thing is that both the peado's and the victim's rights are considered and that the focus is on life after one's trial not before hand.