Stephen Gately of Boyzone RIP

Whoa.

very sad. this knocked me out, i have to say. a fine man, and will be missed.

OMG! So sad! Thanks for posting this, Ned.

RIP

Blimey.

Sad news. 33 years old...

Oh my, not going to pretend I was a fan but this has really shook me. 33, ffs.

RIP

whats the cause of death?

No-one's saying yet.

The recounting of events said he'd been out partying all night, passed out in his room and never woke up. That's all they're revealing so far.

rip

Just heard this on the radio, so sad. RIP

my DAB radio is my alarm and so i woke at 6am to the news of Stephen Gately's death. I remember being in primary school and the other boys and I would tease girls whose favourite member of Boyzone was Stephen Gately because he was "a wee poof". 33 is very, very young. Sad news.

Terribly sad, yes. Props to BBC News earlier for playing that clip of Boyzone on the Gay Byrne show though rather than endless re-runs of No Matter What.

Was in the pub discussing this earlier with my mates, and everyone admitted to being oddly knocked for six, despite none of us ever being Boyzone fans! RIP.

Way too early of course.

Never been that much of a fan of the boy band genre, but Boyzone had the best vocal harmonies of the lot, which was kind of nice, and I believe Gately was perhaps more than any of the others the main man to thank for that.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/10/11/article-0-06B785E8000005DC-306_468x563.jpg

If someone takes a photo of me looking like this a week before I die, I'll die happy.

aw he looks adorable there. Ronan Keating looks... greasy. 33 is much too young.

I remember being in primary school and the other boys and I would tease girls whose favourite member of Boyzone was Stephen Gately because he was "a wee poof".

heh I made fun of one of my high school friends rather mercilessly too when he came out as she was soo in love with him, but I secretly thought it was pretty cool that he did, even though I wasn't a Boyzone fan (liked a lot of others though). So many other boybands were downright defensive whenever asked about their rather significant gay male fanbase - well, apart from the Backstreet Boys who from very early on never minded doing interviews with gay publications.

BOYZONE'S Stephen Gately died after a wild eight-hour binge, The Sun can reveal.

The 33-year-old, who rarely drank, was "totally trashed" during a night at a gay club on Majorca with civil partner Andy Cowles.

They were seen downing potent cocktails and white wine before meeting up with a 25-year-old Bulgarian and returning to their £1million apartment where they continued boozing.

Andy discovered Stephen dead next morning. Police believe he had choked on his vomit.

one of the rare cases where i believe more in the sun than in the account of the family.

Oddly enough this also seems to be the only Boyzone thread on ILM -- at least I couldn't find any other one when I started this.

i didn't even know they ever existed before this thread...

during a night at a gay club

GAY HE WAS GAY

POTENT COCKtails

Had a drink at lunchtime and more at 5pm onwards = 8 hour binge..

OK Mark so that was your sunday, but what about this Gateley fellow?

"potent cocktails and white wine" = really straining for some hedonism shock effect there. not white wine!

sad story, tho.

Jeez, what bad luck. It's not like getting wrecked is at all uncommon, you don't expect to die from it. Poor fellow.

"before meeting up with a 25-year-old Bulgarian"

gay rentboy amirite, guys?

I mean seriously, I know The Sun isn't exactly a bastion of journalistic integrity but this is just gross. Can we give the poor man a bit of dignity?

Like...I'd be hard-pressed to stuff in more tenuous and awful insinuations per square inch.

"before meeting up with a 25-year-old Bulgarian"

gay rentboy amirite, guys?

TBH I would say that there's a legitimate amount of relevancy to putting that in the story - by the sound of it he's one of two witnesses at a scene where someone's drunk enough to lead to their death

*drank not drunk

Yeah, I'm inclined to give the Sun as little benefit of the doubt as anyone else but don't think that's a completely irrelevant detail.

An "marathon drinking binge"... of 8 hours? I'm amazed any of us are still alive.

an 8 hr binge on 'white wine' is likely or unlikely to end up with you choking on your own vomit? Anybody know? It seems really unlikey to me, after spending my teenage years doing 8 hr binges on white vodka, but i'm not an expert and he could have just been unlucky?

Well, it does rather depend on how much white wine you're drinking in that 8 hours. If I drank a bottle an hour I doubt I'd manage 8 hours without vomiting tbh.

maybe he wasn't used to it. i suspect it had to do more with the "potent cocktails" than with the white wine. if they included tequila i wouldn't be surprised.

As a friend of mine said, it's not like there was a 12.30 kick off that day or anything

'vomiting' != 'choking on your own vomit'. kinda next-level there.

Depends on the position in which one falls asleep/passes out, I guess.

Sky News going completely overboard with this tonight.

He wasn't a publicity seeking freak like Michael Jackson, ffs.

Illuminati conspiracy theorists weigh in: http://www.davidicke.com/forum/showthread.php?t=86041

(really gets going four pages in or so)

He was 33... (Jesus's age - ritual - or may be I'm just a crazy conspiracy theorist)

Yes, maybe

Ritual sacrifice and of course 33 is the highest initiate level of Scottish Rite Freemasonry.

I somehow don't think Scottish freemasons were involved - involved in denying Shaun Maloney a penalty in the last Old Firm game, yes, but not in the ritual sacrifice of Stephen Gately

The mystery continues. According to the autopsy he died a "natural death":

An autopsy on Boyzone singer Stephen Gately revealed that he died due to excess fluid in his lungs, a court spokeswoman on the Spanish island of Majorca said Tuesday.

"He died a natural death of acute pulmonary oedema" which had nothing to do with any consumption of alcohol or drugs, said the spokeswoman in the Majorcan capital of Palma.

A pulmonary oedema, or water on the lungs, can be due to either the failure of the heart to remove fluid from the lungs or direct damage to the lung tissue.

(AFP)

Where's the mystery?

yeah also this came out last week. Basically he had a heart defect and it killed him suddenly and that kind of thing happens all the time. Mystery solved.

hat kind of thing happens all the time

And sometimes they don't, so why should this be any different?

Look at the RUNNING WILL KILL YOU thread, Alex; people with undiagnosed heart conditions seem to be dying every day.

Even gay guys who've been out for a tipple or two with a Bulgarian

"Oddly enough this also seems to be the only Boyzone thread on ILM"

no boyzone at the boyzone

The remaining four members of Boyzone have told Sky News they will release a new album featuring Stephen Gately as a tribute to the singer.

Is Alex in Mainhattan a Jan Moir sockpuppet?

It appears there are certain people who are determined to keep the seedier aspects of this unfortunate incident to the fore.

Yes, it's possible that his activities that night put undue strain on a heart condition he didn't know he had - and it's just as possible that they had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

I have hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (one of the conditions that may have caused this death) but I'm lucky. It's been diagnosed and I have a device implanted in my chest to protect me.

My brother wasn't so lucky - he died when he was 21. His sexuality (straight, as it happens) had nothing to do with it. He hadn't been partying. He didn't smoke. He just dropped down dead in a shop.

There are too many people in this world who like the sound of their own typing.

And too many people whos prejudices must never be restrained by facts (or the eventual realisation of them)...

moir article defended by stephen glover on the mail website. not linking to it because fuck 'em they don't deserve the clickthroughs. rest assured its every bit as morally fuck-knuckled as moir's original piece. sickening.