Bad Artists

I've been thinking a lot about this recent piece on BBC Online.

It seems that the paedophile Brian Davey was also a talented music teacher whose books for the Recorder are held in high esteem. His victims though are demanding that the books be removed from schools and from general sale.

I've never been much interested in artists - to me the art is everything and stands in its own right well after the artist is dead and gone. I don't care if the artist is a ginger-haired fascist with a tulip fetish or a miserable librarian from Hull - all that really matters is whether they produce anything of merit.

I'm certainly not going to stop watching "The Thick of It" because of what I know about Chris Langham's off-screen life. The reasons I don't listen to Gary Glitter's records are very little to do with his well-documented peccadilloes.

It seems unfair to me that a successful or famous paedophile be punished more than a dropout nobody. Brian Davey is doing 13 years for his dreadful crimes and I would hope that a less talented man found guilty of the same crimes would have got the same 13 years.

Chris Langham comes up for sentencing next week - should be a good test of whether sentencing is truly even-handed.

Artistic considerations should never influence the judge's sentencing decision, and Art should not be judged by its creator's moral flaws.