The death of Stephen Gately has hit Boyzone fans around the world hard. Personally, I was never a fan but the tragedy surrounding Gately’s death at such a young age is obviously very sad. The truth is however that a life of stardom may have led to Gately taking drugs and inviting an unknown Bulgarian man into his and his legal partner’s bed on that tragic night.

Boyzone singer Gately is now known to have died after suffering a pulmonary oedema, which is an accumulation of fluid on the lungs. The 33-year-old star was found dead at his holiday home in Majorca last Saturday and, although the official version is that he died of ‘natural causes’, the latest revelations by a Bulgarian student from Sofia have thrown the circumstances around his death into the public eye on the day before his funeral.

Gately, born Stephen Patrick David Gately, was one of the five members of the British pop band, Boyzone. He got his big break as a child actor in the movie 'The Commitments'.

Gately's stardom came from the unprecedented success of Boyzone, which formed in 1993 and later went to record six number one singles and four number one albums. Boyzone are an Irish boy band that had popular mainstream success during the 1990s. The group were most successful in Ireland, the UK, Australia and New Zealand; they also had differing levels of success in parts of Europe. The group had sales approaching 20 million records as of 2008.

It was not until six years after the band’s formation that Gately brought his sexual life into focus when he came out as being gay in June of 1999 at the age of 23. Gately later legally married his partner, Andy Cowles, in a private ceremony in London.

Gately was not one of the most hounded UK celebrities but he still reportedly liked to take lavish holidays to get out of the public eye. It was on one of these vacations that tragedy struck last weekend. He and his legal partner Cowles were visiting their newly renovated GBP 1 M Majorca villa when they decided to have a night out on the town. At the Black Cat Club they met up with the Bulgarian student Georgi Dochev ‘Giorgio’ and must have taken an instant likening to him as he soon ended round at their house.

After a week of silence, regarding what happened at the Majorca villa, Dochev revealed Friday that he had been involved in sexual activities with the couple and had been smoking drugs on the night in question before finding Gately dead.

The question we must all ask: Is today’s celebrity culture a danger to all those who live inside the giant bubble surrounding it? Obviously the same culture affects all young people today. A life of freely available sex and even more freely available drugs is more common in celebrity circles than in the general public.

It is easy to criticize those in the public eye but the truth is that they are role models to a whole generation. Gately’s death is tragic but this can not excuse these immoral and dangerous actions before his death. Only time will tell if the other Boyzone members or the worldwide media will have the guts to slam his actions, eventually to become an example to a morally bankrupt generation.

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