Time to be cruel to be kind

Women’s Editor Tracey O’Sullivan gives her views on this month’s hot topics

A beautiful and talented young woman found dead in the bath covered in burns. Her devoted boyfriend discovered dead in an isolated spot of a London train station after being riddled with guilt over her death.

Two lives lost. The promise of so much squandered so needlessly.

The deaths of Natasha Collins in January and Mark Speight earlier this month are tragic - desperately so.

But they were also grubby, ugly and downright wasteful.

There was nothing glamorous or aspiring in this tale of two lovers thrown together in the high-profile world of celebrity and clearly not able to cope with its excesses.

The worrying thing about the current youth culture heroes is that they make it seem all so acceptable.

Can we continue to condone the behaviour of the likes of Kate Moss, Pete Doherty and Amy Winehouse in the name of eccentric talent?

Do we really not see how terribly dysfunctional their lives have become.

Is it not time to return to judging this kind of lifestyle and finding it wanting.

Instead it seems we reward it.

Never have these people been more popular. Never have their images been more lucrative than when they were sinking to the very depths.

When they were in the gutter people lined up to buy their records, products they endorsed and listen to every last word of interviews they decided to give.

Suddenly, alongside the bully and the popular girl, secondary schools are now breeding their own aspiring classes who want to be the Amy and Blake of the year.

You can just see it as the modern-day type that has its own place in the yearbook.

They want to be seen as so cool they can try anything and get away with it.

The problem is not everyone gets away with it. Not everyone lives to tell the tales of their exploits. Not everyone gets the chance to go to rehab.

The families of Natasha Collins and Mark Speight are now having to learn that very hard lesson on their behalf.

Because it is too late for Mark and Natasha.

They are gone - lost to a world which is never brought to book over its misdemeanours.

It’s heartbreaking to think of the terrible gap they will leave in people’s lives when they really should both be alive and well.

They were born with natural gifts which allowed them the kind of privilege so many envy and would wish for themselves.

But, with that privilege comes responsibility and allowing certain members of our society that kind of privilege means we all share the responsibility for not fuelling their addictions.

The only way to make these tragic deaths worthwhile is to start booing and hissing at those who start taking for granted what they have been given.

Not to indulge their whims because it makes for interesting reading from the sidelines.

Who knows whether or not condeming Kate Moss and co out of hand and sending their careers spiralling downward would have saved Mark and Natasha.

But at least we would have been doing something to try and prevent people from being sucked into this twisted concoction of celebrity and drugs.

Let’s start judging each other once again. Let’s start expecting better of ourselves and not accepting any less.

We might even find we can live up to a few high standards and it could just become trendy to do so.