Boyzone's Stephen Gately was no pioneer but he broke other barriers

You would have a hard time positioning the late Stephen Gately as a musical pioneer, at least based on the records he made: with the best will in the world, it seems unlikely that the treacly oeuvre of Boyzone or indeed his version of the Watership Down theme Bright Eyes will ring down the ages as an example of thrilling, boundary-breaking pop music. But in one sense Gately, who died on Saturday aged 33 (not from drugs, or suicide his family insist), was a pioneer in the pop world, albeit an unw...

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