By then, he says, he'd convinced himself that he had actually smothered Tony. The program was scheduled to air the night of Monday, February 15.

"On the Monday morning the phone rang, and it was BBC Breakfast-White City, London. They said, 'Can you come on the Breakfast show to talk about death tomorrow?' I got on the train to London and thought nothing of it. And then they showed the clip. And I thought, 'Oh f.u.c.k!'"

The "Oh f.u.c.k" was, he says, his realization that the BBC had "set me up." He believes BBC East Midlands had understood the power of the clip and given it to White City in the knowledge that it would generate ma.s.sive publicity, even if that meant a prison sentence for their star presenter.

"The BBC used me," he says. Had BBC East Midlands not told White City, n.o.body would ever have known about the confession. "It was a little local television piece in my own country, with my own people, who are very fond of me and have been so good to me. I have an intimate relationship with my people, a close, intimate relationship. They are absolutely gorgeous and bright and witty and strong and wonderful and they love you, and so you count your lucky stars. I fell in love with a bunch of beautiful, lovely, strong, brave people."

"I do think you possibly have excessive trust in the people of the East Midlands if you think none of them would spill the beans about a televised murder confession outside the region," I say.

"I didn't think of things as clever as that." He stares at me. "Come on! Shut up. Stop interrupting me."

"You can't really blame the BBC," I say. "You're the architect of your own misfortune. If nonfiction people walk a line between truth and storytelling, you really fell off the line."

"Go on, go on," Ray says sharply. "I've been in the magistrates' court. I've heard what the judges say. You're all ent.i.tled to your opinions."

I open my mouth to ask another question. "No, shut up, Jon," he says.

He pauses. "All right. I repeated the confession. Mea culpa mea culpa mea culpa ..."

When he says he "repeated the confession," he's talking about his day at White City. He did indeed repeat it-several times, in fact-first on BBC Breakfast and then in interviews all over the world. "They marched me from studio to studio to studio. Buenos dias, Madrid. Bonjour, Paris. h.e.l.lo, New York. h.e.l.lo, L.A."

That night, his landlady phoned and said, "Ray, you didn't do it! You were in France. Don't you remember?"

At that, he says, the spell was broken. And then, a few days later, Ray was arrested on suspicion of murder.

On his first night in the cell, he says, they let him have a notebook, which he filled up right away with "different stories, memories, reminiscences," covering the floor with piles of papers.

Although he'd told everyone he wouldn't reveal the ident.i.ty of his dead lover, "even under torture," he gave them Tony's name on day two, having been warned by his lawyer that if he didn't, he could be placed on remand for two years. Even though the police quickly proved he'd been in France at the time of Tony's death, they began investigating the possibility that he might be a serial smotherer of boyfriends. "They trawled through my love life, from Brighton to Plymouth to Blackpool to Bristol." He pauses. "No wonder I wasted eighteen hundred hours of police time."

Mid-afternoon, and Ray's friend Keith offers us the use of his house so we can talk quietly, away from the noisy pub. Things are turning quite chaotic. The man who was eloquent and funny on the train is getting drunker and more hostile.

"Have you read up about false memory syndrome?" I ask at one point.

"Go on. Go on. Go on," Ray snaps. "What's your degree in? Psychiatry? Are you a proper psychiatrist?"

And then, a few moments later, "Are you coming to me with clean hands, Jon? Have you ever been sued?"

I shake my head.

"You b.l.o.o.d.y white clean Daz clean brilliant white man," Ray says. "I'm human. I'm a human being." Then he gives me a look as if to say, "Are you human? Coming here asking me all these questions?"

I'm finding his position really annoying. I admire Ray enormously, but don't see why I shouldn't ask questions about what he did, or why being sued makes you more heroically human than not being sued. "I know some people's brains can be odd when it comes to memory," I say, "but surely you'd know for certain if you'd killed someone?"

"It was sixteen years ago," he says. "You were where? Jewish Lads' Brigade?"

"Yes, but if I'd killed someone in the Jewish Lads' Brigade, I'd remember," I say.

There's a silence. "You do seem to have a self-destructive streak," I say.

"Absolute b.o.l.l.o.c.ks!" Ray yells. "Absolute b.o.l.l.o.c.ks, that is. Do I f.u.c.k. You look at me with those London eyes. I know who you are. I know where you're coming from." And then, a few moments later, "You're not a pretty man. You're ugly."

There's a short silence. Everyone looks at one another, a bit stunned.

"Well, you certainly know how to ensure a good write-up," I say.

"One day, you'll have what I have," Ray says.

"A criminal record?" pipes up his boyfriend, Mark, from across the room.

"Oh, f.u.c.k off," Ray says to everyone.

Later, a friend of Ray's-the photographer Mary Stamm-Clarke-tells me that the heavy drinking, the nastiness, is new. It's all emerged since the conviction, she says. "It never crossed his mind that the mercy-killing story might backfire. I think he thought everyone would love him for it." She says the stress has taken a terrible toll, even if he doesn't know it. He looks very different from how he did six months ago: older, frailer.

As I wait for my taxi to arrive, I feel quite remorseful. Ray spent a lifetime beautifully doc.u.menting life's ordinariness, but then a generation of doc.u.mentary makers like me came along for whom ordinariness wasn't enough. We wanted to doc.u.ment life's extremes, and so his gentleness became pa.s.se and he unraveled into chaos. And now I've come along to doc.u.ment it.

"I've got to go and see the probation office on Monday," Ray says as my taxi pulls up. "They're going to ask me about my dependency on alcohol. Am I a fantasist? They're going to ask me all these terrible ..." He falls silent.

"Maybe you can see me as a dress rehearsal for that?" I say.

"I can do. Yeah," says Ray.

And I realize that, beneath the hostility, the unpleasantness, what he really is is embarra.s.sed.

I'm Loving Aliens Instead

On December 18, 2006, Robbie Williams played the last of fifty-nine stadium shows in a row, announced he was going to spend Christmas at his home in Los Angeles, and then basically disappeared. He was hardly seen at all in 2007. He briefly checked into rehab. He spent quite a bit of time hiking and playing soccer (he owns a soccer field on Mulholland Drive). Then he stopped doing that too. According to reports, he seemed to have retreated inside his house, the curtains closed. His record company announced he had no plans to release an alb.u.m in 2008.

Today he unexpectedly calls me to ask if I want to go with him to the desert in Nevada to meet UFO abductees.

"I've been spending so much time at home on the Internet on sites like AboveTopSecret.com," he says. "I want to do something. I want to go out there and meet these people. I want to be a part of this. I want to do something other than sit in my bed and watch the news. And it starts with the UFO conference."

I log on to the conference website. It's taking place at the quite down-at-heel-looking Aquarius Casino Resort. The conference slogan is "Educating the World One Person at a Time," which makes it sound as if there won't be many people attending. The speakers will include Ann Andrews, from Lincolnshire, who claims her son, Jason, has had "disturbing experiences at the hands of many different alien species," and a surgeon, Dr. Roger Leir, who claims he has extracted from patients fifteen metallic implants that are not of earthly metal.

"I wonder if he'll bring the implants along," I say.

"So you can see with your own eyes whether they're earthly or not?" Robbie asks.

"Yes," I say.

"According to Jon," Robbie says. "I don't want to hear any debunking because I want to believe."

I fly to Los Angeles. When Robbie comes to his door, I hardly recognize him. He's put on a lot of weight and has grown a very bushy beard. I stare at it. "OK," he says. "I'm piecing it together now. I've grown a beard and I'm going to Nevada to speak to people about UFOs. I think I should shave so I don't look so mad."