Amanda Knox and Sollecito guilty of Kercher murder

The trial's taken nigh-on a year and the verdict's finally in: and thank God it's over - Amanda Knox and Sollecito guilty of Kercher murder.

We can sit here all day and debate whether justice has been done or how attractive Knox is, but frankly the important thing is that it looks like we've thankfully been spared yet another round of, *cough*,  'penetrating interview'-wrapped-in-sympathy-fest on Oprah and Larry fucking King.

Thank you Italy! Berlusconi may be a global joke, but today you did the world a service!

Amanda Knox and Sollecito guilty of Kercher murder

Stephen Fry ponders leaving Twitter

Just read this story on the Beeb website: Stephen Fry ponders leaving Twitter site 

Now at first glance, Fry's (now blocked) protagonist didn't appear to be being unduly aggressive or deliberately intimidating - although perhaps a little rude - in his "I admire and adore" Mr Fry, but that he found his tweets "a bit... boring... (sorry Stephen)" comment. 

The problem comes when you apply or direct what, to most of us, would ordinarily be a throwaway comment to someone with Fry's broadly publicised condition of Manic Depression (what in the US is called Bipolar Disorder). 

And as anyone who watched Fry's excellent and very frank two-part BBC programme on its effect on him and others will know, there's no use at all in thinking or requesting that Fry simply pull himself together, as might be the automatic response by some - it's not merely a case of  "Oh, is the poor luvvie in a strop? Wanting attention?" When the black dog of depression descends on its victims, no amount of 'trying to cheer them up' will work. Not that I'm a sufferer, thankfully, but I do know others who are, and it's an utter bitch to see people you love so circumscribed by an inability to 'snap out of it'.

As for Twitter, whilst I use it occasionally, I have seen some celebrities who simply camp on the damned thing and 'Tweet' just about every thought and momentary activity in their day - including their visiting the loo. 

The tragedy is, as Fry found out to his cost, that if you "put yourself out there" (to lapse into the naked parlance of Californian psychobabble for a second) there is a price to pay. I know through experience, through close friends who've 'made it', in 'the Biz', that you do, in our celeb-obsessed culture, give up the right to a certain amount of that which you once, as an unknown civvie, valued like a prized possession: the freedom of your former anonymity.

Stephen Fry ponders leaving Twitter