REVIEWS
Time Out December 8 1986
20/20 Vision: No Man Mants to die: 10.30-11.30 20/20 to C4
A gleaming model of what investigative reporting on TV should be. Punchy, hastily re-written, and updated ‘No Man Wants to Die’ reports on Derrick Gregory imprisoned in Malaysia and facing that country’s mandatory death sentence for heroin smuggling.
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Today Dec 8 1986
Tonight’s television could save a man from the gallows
Derrick Gregory, who goes on trial in Malaysia next month charged with heroin smuggling, was arrested in Penang in 1982 wearing a gidle stuffed with the drug.
He claims he was forced to smuggle because his wife and child were being threatened by Paul Dye, recently sentenced at the Old Bailey to 28 years in prison.
Psychiatrist Dr. Colin Brewer was flown out to examine Gregory by the 20/20 Vision team behind tonight’s documentary ‘No Man Wants to Die’.(No Man Wants to Die C4 10.30 p.m.)
Brewer was commissioned after reporter Andrew Drummond discovered that Gregory attended special schools as a child.
“The examination,” says Drummond “revealed that Gregory has an enlarged brain cavity and has had it since he was about four years old.
“In a British court he would be able to plead diminished responsibility and possibly be acquitted. In Malaysia there are no precedents for mercy at this late stage.”
Gregory’s Malaysian lawyers hope the psychiatric findings will swing the balance of the trial. If they don’t the west London man will hang.
“Gregory, with only a prayer and a television programme to pin his hopes on is clearly scared: “I’ve lost everything….no man wants to die, do they?”
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U.K. Press Gazette, December 5 1986
Award winning journalist Andrew Drummond has completed his first television documentary, ‘No Man Wants to Die’ with Claudia Milne of Channel 4’s 20/20 Vision.
The programme, which goes out this Thursday, is based on Drummond’s investigation for 20/20 Vision of the Paul Dye heroin syndicate which ended last week at the Old Bailey with the jailing of Dye for 28 years.
The programme’s title is taken from the words of Derrick Gregory, 32, the next Briton to face execution in Malaysia on drugs charges.
Drummond was the winner of the Maurice Ludmer Memorial Prize for investigating racism and facism.
He is a former News of the World staffer who refused to cross the picket line.