I’m not certain that the Daily Star’s front page on Wednesday was too clever (although I concede that nothing about the Star tends to be clever).
Tuesday’s front carried the headline “Pete Burns dies of heart attack at 57”. The story told of the “pop icon” having died “after a massive heart attack”.
So the following day’s front, “Pete Burns: How I came back from the dead”, was baffling. Had the previous report been wrong after all? Was he alive? Had a miracle occurred?
Evidently not. According to the story, the singer had “let slip a haunting secret shortly before his fatal heart attack”: he had previously been thought to have died. A priest had been summoned to read him the last rites.
This revelation supposedly emerged in “a haunting final interview weeks before his death” from which the Star liberally quoted (but has not, thus far, thought to upload to its website).
Surely that Wednesday headline was calculated to suggest that reports of his death had, to quote Mark Twain, been exaggerated? And does it not smack of poor taste anyway?
And yes, I do grasp the black irony: Burns was a member of the 1980s band, Dead or Alive.
