Return to Dunblane with Lorraine Kelly

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NAMES figured prominently in Lorraine Kelly’s documentary marking 25 years tomorrow since the Dunblane tragedy.

There was name after name on the list of the 16 murdered children, and their teacher, that a police officer read out to reporters.

“I thought, ‘When is he going to stop?’” said Kelly. “It just seemed to go on and on and on.”

There were the names of the parents, some of them speaking publicly for the first time, the siblings, the priest, and the paramedic who was first through the gym doors at Dunblane Primary School.

What you did not hear in the entire hour was the name of the murderer. In the same way that New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Adern refused to identify the gunman who killed 50 in an attack on a Christchurch mosque in 2019, Kelly excised the killer’s name from proceedings. The action spoke volumes.

Kelly the young GMTV correspondent would not have left the name out when reporting from the scene at the time. But that was not the Kelly making this film. This Kelly was the one who had befriended some of the parents, who spoke at the memorial service, and has kept in touch since. You could tell from the way people greeted her that this was far from the first sit-down.

READ MORE: A memory that will never fade

Kelly had her memories of the time. Hearing a newsflash about a school shooting, the white with shock faces of police, ambulance staff, and reporters, being handed the photo – “seared into my soul” – of teacher Gwen Mayor and the pupils she fought so hard to protect.

Name in the title aside, Kelly was careful not to make the piece too much about her. The parents were given their place front and centre, and all these years on what they had to say was as heartbreaking as ever. What happened to their children was unspeakable, the pain they live with unimaginable, yet somehow they managed the words.

It was the little details that hit home hardest. The mother who had kept everything, including the packet of roast chicken crisps her daughter had taken to school that day. Gwen Mayor’s daughter, now with a family of her own, spoke of the births, weddings, and graduations her mum had missed. The father relating the long, hard road back from his lowest point.

It could have felt intrusive, but not in Kelly’s hands. Filming under Covid restrictions meant she could not dispense hugs, a fact for which she kept apologising. Again, only Kelly could do this without appearing false or grandstanding.

A sizeable part of the hour was given over to the parents’ campaign to ban handguns. “Because they changed the law,” said Kelly, “our children are probably safer than anywhere in the world.”

Kelly had clearly had done more than her job all those years ago and since; she had, in a small but important way, helped. With this film she did the community, herself, and her profession proud.