Talk:Graham Stark

Biography assessment rating comment

The article may be improved by following the WikiProject Biography 11 easy steps to producing at least a B article. -- BirgitteSB 00:00, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Roger Lewis's article

I have just removed the sentence based on a single source - an article by Roger Lewis, who, I have to say, seems to specialise in "dishing the dirt" on actors such as Peter Sellers and Charles Hawtrey. While the Telegraph may generally be regarded as a reliable source, it is certainly not infallible, and one can imagine the temptation of dishing the dirt on an actor, once he was dead, who had previously threatened to sue the paper for libel. I'm rather uncomfortable with the idea of Wikipedia spreading this story further without a further reliable citation: there is, after all, the Wikipedia policy "Exceptional claims require exceptional sources". Alfietucker (talk) 10:28, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Lewis is considered an exceptional biographer, and his biography on Sellers forms on of the primary references for Seller's article, which is an FA. Lewis describes the intricate process of the libel case, in which the sexual claims were never challenged. Our attitude here seems to be akin to what Lewis aludes to tin the article when he wrote that "What's pathetic about libel is that it is assumed that the plaintiff has an unsullied reputation. Clearly we were going to be able to demonstrate that this was not so in Stark's case. But in the early Nineties, what Stark got up to was considered, by him at least, to be an embarrassment at most, one that if ignored would pass. The attitude of those days is summed up by what an archbishop said in 1993, when Catholic child abuse cases came to light: "Theyre kids, they don’t know anything about sex, they'll forget about it....We placed £5,000 into court in readiness for a trial. For whatever motives, Stark grabbed the money, which, owing to some technicality I never understood, also meant that he got his legal costs immediately paid (£25,000 or more), despite our refusal to apologise or admit liability. So that was that. Nothing got to be aired." These serious allegations by a should be included, as should his close relationship with Sellers. Gareth E Kegg (talk) 12:52, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Your comment is not altogether coherent - nobody's disputing Stark's "close relationship with Sellers" (so far as this suggests anything). But I don't think we should just go ahead and publish a claim as huge as an alleged case of paedophilia on the basis of just one source, particularly when that source is by someone who clearly had an axe to grind. The Wikipedia policy, as I've pointed out before, is "Exceptional claims require exceptional sources". If you can find another reliable source for this claim, by all means present it and use it to back up this claim. Meanwhile, rather than get in an edit war, I shall clearly source the claim in the text rather than leave it purely in Wikipedia's voice. Alfietucker (talk) 13:08, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

We don't know that Lewis "had an axe to grind", and he is a notable writer. I'd favour retaining the claim, but making it crystal clear where it comes from (earlier edits did not even contain Lewis' name in the citation). Ghmyrtle (talk) 13:13, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Quite. There's unlikely to be a plethora of citations for a case concerning a minor personality that was unknown to anyone but the victims family and Lewis until now. Gareth E Kegg (talk) 16:06, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

I have re-added a reference to the article. I expect it will be removed again. 92.13.252.104 (talk) 10:19, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Wallasey (1922) = Cheshire

Wallasey at the time of Stark's birth (1922) was in Cheshire. Merseyside was not formed until 1 April 1974 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.31.252.243 (talk) 13:34, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

True. Ghmyrtle (talk) 13:36, 11 October 2014 (UTC)