Portillo: My Friend’s Suicide

Portillo gained access to film footage of Findon as a child, photographs and original letters - including his suicide note, in which he said he dearly loved his parents and urged them not to be sad. His own depression focused upon his girlfriend, Jill, whom he met on holiday in Mallorca. Soon after she told him her family were moving up north and that the relationship was at an end, Findon travelled to Jill's local station at Beaconsfield, armed with beer and tablets, and took his life in a nearby field. Jill was not interviewed for the documentary and her face was blanked out of photos shown.

Portillo did interview Gary Findon's remarkably composed-looking parents, musician Ronnie, 80, and Jeanette, 78. Portillo was patient and sensitive with the couple - who had, it seemed, barely spoken about their son's death - to each other, let alone anyone else, over the years.

Just how close a friend Portillo was to Findon was not clear but he and the two other celebrity Harrow County old boys featured - Clive Anderson and comedy producer Geoffrey Perkins, who tragically died in a road accident shortly after filming - did attend Gary's funeral. Perkins commented on how strange he found it to wish the closest relatives of the deceased - in this case, the parents - a long life.

Ronnie Findon admits he was unable even to say the name Gary for the three decades after his son's death, while Jeanette revealed that they still cried every night. Until recently, Ronnie hadn't allowed his other son and musician Andy, who was 12 when his brother died, to play the music Gary had composed. Andy admitted the relationship with his father had deteriorated after his brother's suicide.

But at the end, Andy did play a composition by his brother on the flute.

The making of the film been cathartic for Jeanette and Ronnie Findon and they expressed the hope that it might help other youngsters who were contemplating suicide.

Bitterness, an emotion at the heart of much suicide, was examined by author Naomi Alderman in a satisfying radio essay in which she compared it not only to a wound that never heals, because we pick at it again and again, but also to eating an olive: something only enjoyed by grown-ups.

Alderman analysed the bitterness of characters in literature like Shakespeare's Iago, Alexandre Dumas' eponymous Count of Monte Cristo and the Agrajag from Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and invoked the Passover Seder explaining how Jews are encouraged to feel bitterness by eating horseradish and then putting it aside and enjoying a delicious feast. Bitterness, Alderman said, was inevitable and should be acknowledged. After that, she declared: "Let it be gone!"

There is a Jewish feasting element to the current Celebrity Come Dine With Me, with Jewish model Caprice nailing her colours to the mast by admitting she is kosher and a non-meat eater. Which meant she could not enjoy Vic Reeves's wife Nancy Sorrell's hand-made pork sausages. She did give eight out of ten to her veggie sausage substitute, though. And she not only provided chocolate pots but entertained her guests with a pair of synchronised swimmers.