The right to know the truth

It means that key questions remain unanswered about the events that led to someone's death.

In the case of 31-year-old Stuart Lubbock, who was found floating in Michael Barrymore's swimming pool, plenty of crucial questions remain unanswered.

To a large extent, that is because Mr Barrymore hid behind a coroner's court rule which protects witnesses from incriminating themselves.

"I am not prepared to answer that," was the response he repeated to a series of questions relating to the use of cocaine in his house.

Mr Barrymore was not the only one to fail to come up with answers. As coroner Caroline Beasley-Murray said, none of the witnesses who were party guests had given an explanation about how a reasonably fit and relatively young man had died.

What we do know is that Stuart Lubbock had a combination of alcohol, cocaine and ecstasy in his body and appeared to have suffered a serious sexual assault.

With police keeping the file on the case open, it is to be hoped that someone who does know what happened will do the decent thing and tell the truth because that is what Stuart Lubbock's family deserve.

It is hard enough to lose a loved one, but much harder to be left in doubt about how they died.

Mr Barrymore tried to begin his evidence on Thursday by condemning media coverage of the case before the coroner ruled it was not relevant. It is not surprising that the star wasn't happy about media coverage because it has made very disturbing reading.

Mr Barrymore's solicitor David Corker rightly stressed that there was no evidence that his client had any responsibility for Mr Lubbock's death.

But his reputation has been undeniably sullied and television companies will need to think extremely hard about returning him to our screens.

Mr Corker also announced yesterday that Mr Barrymore was relieved that the inquest had been so thorough.

It would, of course, have been much more thorough - if Mr Barrymore had been brave enough to answer the questions he was asked.