An admission by a former North West TV presenter Ray Gosling that he killed a former partner who was terminally is being investigated by police.
Gosling, 70, told a BBC documentary programme he had agreed to smother his lover, who was dying from AIDS, if his suffering became too intense to bear.
The broadcaster told how his partner was in hospital and in "terrible pain" when a doctor said there was nothing more that could be done for him.
He later told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme that he asked the doctor to leave them alone and then "picked up the pillow and smothered him until he was dead".
But Gosling also added on the Today interview "It was my decision" and it is this comment that could prove most damning in the eyes of the law. Asked whether the doctor's knew what he had done Gosling said: "Of course they knew".
Gosling first found fame in the 1960s when he appeared on Granada TV on "Ray Gosling's Soapbox" - a live broadcast topical debate programme.
His admissions about the alleged mercy killing came in a in BBC East Midlands Inside Out programme "Ray Gosling contemplates mortality – his own and everyone else's. Just how does he want to die and be remembered?"
Walking through a graveyard as he delivered a piece to camera, Gosling said: "Maybe this is the time to share a secret that I've kept for quite a long time. I killed someone once," he said. "He'd been my lover and he got AIDS."
Asked by Inside Out presenter Marie Ashby if he had any regrets, he said: "Absolutely none. He was in terrible pain – I was there and I saw it. It breaks you into pieces."
Gosling did not give any information on who the man was, or when or where the incident occurred. The 70-year-old hosted a weekly north-west regional programme on Granada TV in the 1960s and 70s called On Site. More recently he made a short film called Ray Gosling OAP, which was broadcast on BBC4, and documented his move into a flat in an old people's home.
A BBC spokesman said Gosling was a freelance guest reporter on the programme, and that the BBC had found out about the confession only during the filming.
The spokeswoman said:"Ray was made fully aware of the potential consequences of him making that confession. As part of our journalistic integrity we felt we needed to keep that revelation in the report."
A spokesperson for Nottinghamshire Police said: "Nottinghamshire police were not aware of Mr Gosling's comments until the BBC inside out programme was shown.
"We are now liasing with the BBC, and will investigate the matter."
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