TRIGGER WARNING FOR DISCUSSION OF RAPE AND SEXUAL ABUSE
I’d always thought Ken Barlow was just really, really boring and I’m not alone in that. However, a brief look over his multiple divorces, messy family life and constant proximity to massive scandals suggests otherwise. I’d always known the actor who played Ken, Bill Roache shared with his character a pretty fractured personal life. But his ability to be a million times more offensively scandalous makes Bill this weeks double handled wanker.
Sadly the voices didn’t stay silent
Tory boy Roache took to the airwaves of New Zealand’s “One News” show to defend his fellow Corrie star, Michael Le Vell (who plays Kevin Webster). Le Vell is currently facing multiple charges involing the sexual abuse of children. Far from attempting to deny Le Vell’s involvement in such things or distancing himself from his actor pal, Roache insisted we should be “totally forgiving” of famous men who sexually abuse children. Far from abusers, Roache suggested people like Jimmy Saville were “caught in a trap.”
If taking the side of perpetrators wasn’t enough for Roache he then decided to have another go at the victims by insisting:
If you accept that you are pure love, and if you know that you are pure love and therefore live that pure love, these things won’t happen to you.
Interviewer Garth Bray suggested it sounded like Roache was suggesting that victims were somehow to blame. Roache denied this, paused and then said
…yet I am, because everything that happens to us has been a result of what we have been in previous lives or whatever.
Now shocking as this is I couldn’t help but feel like there was a least a hint of shoddy journalism going on here. After all if you happen to be a member of a religion who believes in reincarnation then this is basically what you think. I’d consider it pretty bad form to put that question to some random Buddhist in an interview about something totally different so wasn‘t Roache just being led to say something stupid by a journalist?
After all Roache’s rather far out beliefs are well documented. A former Druid and now member of the Pure Love Movement, Roache has frequently bored us with nonsense about spirits, consciousness and love. The movement’s vague ideology is the usual mix of “love can cure suffering” and “gies yer money” that seems to so attract minor celebrities.
Roache split from Emma Jesson in 2012 to “explore a mystic message of love”
A self-confessed hole getter, Roache has previously said he has slept with over 1000 women. Roache stated he had repeatedly cheated on his ex-wife saying he “didn’t have any control” over his sex life. The married philanderer nonetheless sued News International in 1991 over a total non-story. While he officially won the initial case, he ended up much worse off after a 2nd related case found against him. Rumours the Corrie star has a Pure Love spirit brother with a suntan and a Scottish accent remain unconfirmed. Roache chose to express his “pure love” again in 2012 by separating from his latest much younger girlfriend because…it was 2012. He spent the latter part of last year waiting for the 12th December when he was convinced the world would move in to a “higher vibration.” Asking a man who thinks he’s living through a vibrating apocalypse leading questions about abuse was always going to end badly.
At least it’s not like Roache would volunteer to defend dodgy bastards in the real world now is it? Except of course he would. In 1997 when the Tories were engulfed in sleaze scandals it was left to Roache to be the only person in the world prepared to support the essentially pro-sleaze Tory candidate, Neil Hamilton. In 2004 he set up Ridings Publishing group. They publish glossy magazines about life in Yorkshire & Lancashire and lose millions in the process (current net worth -£822,246). Of course what with propping up the bar in the Rovers Return and blaming child victims of sexual abuse Roache is far too busy to run the company alone. His pal, former “It’s a Knockout” presenter and football pundit, Stuart Hall, is there to lend a hand. Hall is currently facing charges including 1 rape and 14 indecent assaults over a 19 year period between 1967 to 1986. The third important player in the company is owner of Blackpool FC, Owen Oyston. In 1995, Oyston was arrested and charged with rape. He served three years and was released on parole in 1999.
Roache’s Pal: Rapist Owen Oyston
It’s pretty clear that William Patrick Harry Roache MBE isn’t just overcome by flower power as some tabloids would have you believe. This is not some “love conquers all” outburst. These are the desperate words of a desperate man trying to salvage his failing business and defend his rapist pals. Wanker.
A Thousand Flowers 