The Pink List 100: Sindy's List

Fagburn adores The Independent On Sunday's annual Pink List 100 of "the 101 [sic] most influential gay and lesbian people in Britain today."
Up and down this fair isle today, queens with an over-inflated sense of their own worth will be frothing at the mouth at their lowly placing - or worse - screaming that; "The clueless fuckwits have missed me off their stupid fucking list again!"
It is all but of course pink nonsense on a stick, and between you and me, I've a feeling it's not actually worked out by some incredibly complex scientific formula.
In fact, in Fagburn's experience magazine and newspaper lists - whether of the world's most beautiful men or of Britain's best new bands - tend to show bias towards names that will be headline/attention-grabbing, people of note and/or their PRs a publication wants to butter up, petty personal feuds, favours or friendships that are of absolutely no interest to anyone else, in house horse-trading, tokenism, and... "Oh, just get the student intern to bump the list up to 100."
This year two people share the number one position; as luck would have it a lesbian and a gay man.
Gareth Thomas; "Rugby player - The revelation of Thomas's homosexuality in an interview with the Daily Mail last December confirmed what had been an open secret in rugby union for years after his separation from his wife, but it highlighted the taboo over gay people in professional sport.
And Mary Portas; "Broadcaster, PR and Queen of Shops - For such a candid personality, it's a surprise that Portas has kept her private life just that for so long. Within the magazine and public relations worlds, her relationship with the fashion journalist Melanie Rickey was common knowledge, although she never discussed it in the media. This year it all changed [with] the couple's civil partnership in June – and discussion of it on Jonathan Ross's chat show and in Grazia magazine..."
Wow!
Thomas and Portas are two people who've been in the news a bit in the last year because they've come out in the last year.
But are they really the most influential gay man and lesbian in Britain today?
Gareth Thomas certainly deserves much credit and kudos for kicking open the professional sports closet.
You wonder if he's been chosen mainly because of his apparent incongruity; a gay man excelling at this most manly of sports.
A lesbian sports celebrity wouldn't have been quite as big news.
But then nor would a gay man who - as does Mary Portas - is best known for dispensing advice on shopping and style.
Fagburn shall return to look at the rest of this gripping list in a bit...