Ellen: When You See People In Need You Help Them

I love you so much.

Costa Book Award: This Book Is Gay

A “searing, magnificent” depiction of a gay relationship during the bloody founding of modern America, described by judges as “one of the most wonderful depictions of love in the whole of fiction”, has won the Costa book of the year award.

Sebastian Barry won the £30,000 prize for his novel Days Without End, making him the first novelist to win the prize for a second time. He previously won the Costa book of the year, regarded as one of the UK’s most prestigious literary awards, for his novel The Secret Scripture in 2008.

After being named the winner at a central London ceremony, Barry thanked the judges, saying: “You have made me crazy happy from the top of my head to my toes in a way that is a little bit improper at 61.”

Barry deftly explores notions of national identity and self-renewal as two young soldiers find intimacy amid the horrors of war.

Days Without End, praised in the Guardian as “a work of staggering openness; its startlingly beautiful sentences … so capacious that they are hard to leave behind, its narrative so propulsive that you must move on”, follows the life of Thomas McNulty, a migrant in the 1850s who flees the Irish famine.

Leaving a country behind that is “starved in her stocking feet. And she had no stockings”, McNulty reaches America and embarks on a soldier’s life, first fighting Native Americans and then against armies in the civil war. Barry, who has said he was inspired to write a book containing a gay love story after his son came out, also focuses on McNulty’s romance with fellow soldier John Cole, and their adopted Native American daughter, Winona.

Speaking after receiving the award at a ceremony in London, Barry said he had just spoken to his son Toby on Skype. “That was an award in itself,” he said. “I couldn’t hear anything, technology can’t overcome the great literary buzz.”

Having previously said his children refused to read his books, Barry said that Toby had now read Days Without End, which is dedicated to him. “He said to me, ‘You’re not gay, dad, but you’re an ally. And I like your book.’”

Guardian.

Ain't read it - probably never will.

Ain't been to a Costa neither.

Coronation Street: A Gay Is Gay

No idea who this is, but yeah great.

Pardon: Meaningless

Thousands of gay and bisexual men found guilty of decades-old sexual offences in England and Wales have been posthumously pardoned.

The enactment by the government of the so-called Alan Turing law means about 49,000 men will be cleared of crimes of which they would be innocent today.

Wartime code-breaker Mr Turing was pardoned in 2013 for gross indecency.

Statutory pardons will also be granted to people still living who apply to have their convictions removed.

The pardons were first announced last year and have now been officially rubber-stamped after the Policing and Crime Bill received Royal Assent.

The men were found guilty of committing now-abolished offences while in consensual relationships...

BBC News.

Hello, I am dead, but thanks.

Yes, yes , yes, it was utterly meaningless.

Owen Jones Watch: I'll Take Both Of You On

Hic.

PS Oops. The right royal row is here.

Gay Star News: Freedom Defined

That's freedom is it, standing round in your pants?

The West is the best!

Christ, Gay Star News is shit.

Florian Philipott: Racisme Gay Chatte

A profile of Marine Le Pen's far right hand man - and yup, he's a fag.

We need guns.

Vanessa Redgrave: Happy 80th Birthday

#

Tom Daley Watch: Or Forever Hold Your Peace

Not gonna happen...

PS Also includes a Q&A about Shirley Temple Black, swimming trunks, food, fans (not the one he had online winky-wanks with), and the wedding (that's not going to happen).

Edward Heath: Wasting Police Time

Detectives investigating lurid abuse allegations against Sir Edward Heath have interviewed key figures at Private Eye – because the satirical magazine joked about his sexuality 40 years ago.

Police even visited the current editor, Ian Hislop, to ask what he knew about the former Prime Minister, despite the journalist being a teenager during the period under investigation.

Officers have also tracked down former Downing Street staff to ask them if young men were ever sneaked into Number 10.

Wiltshire Police’s controversial inquiry into Heath – Operation Conifer – has now cost taxpayers almost £900,000, with 17 people still working on it, despite growing demands for it to be shut down.

However, Chief Constable Mike Veale has apologised to MPs and peers for the operation being launched in front of cameras outside Heath’s former house.

It comes after The Mail on Sunday revealed how an expert brought in by police to assess claims that Heath had been linked to a network of paedophiles who held satanic orgies, dismissed them as

In the latest example of what has been branded a farce, Wiltshire Police rang former Private Eye editor Richard Ingrams earlier this month because the journal often made jokes at the expense of Heath when he was PM from 1970 to 1974.

Unmarried Heath had been jokingly dubbed ‘Sailor Ted’ in a reference to rumours that he was gay.

‘The policeman said he wanted to know whether I had any information on Mr Heath,’ said Mr Ingrams.

‘I said, “You’re talking about jokes.” They’d obviously looked through old copies of the Eye to some extent. There were plenty of “Hello, Sailor” type of jokes.’

He added: ‘I told the policeman there was a general subject of speculation about whether the Grocer [Private Eye’s nickname for Heath] was gay or not. He had a dislike of women. He was very rude if he was sat next to women at lunch parties, just ignoring them completely.

‘It did all look like he was gay. But I never heard any evidence of paedophile rumours. It’s a waste of time and public money.’ ...

Mail On Sunday. 

Sake. 

PS Richard Ingrams is a homophobic shitbag.

Mail On Sunday: Up The Duff

If you read the story, you'll find this headline is bollocks.

Basically.

Naturally, Britain's leading transphobe Julie Bindel is up in arms - and in cahoots with the Mail On Sunday.

Philip Glass: Eighty Sixed

Six hours of Philip Glass on BBC Radio 3 to celebrate his 80th birthday.

Even more here.

You don't get that on Classic FM.

Milo: A Season In Hell

Fuck off Milo.

A man protesting outside a talk by MY was shot last week. Judging by the minimal media coverage this is clearly far less serious than a neo-Nazi getting suckerpunched.

PS Here's a great long essay on Milo and alt-right by George Michael (not that one).

John Hurt: 1940-2017

One of our finest actors.

One night in the late 70s ITV re-broadcast The Naked Civil Servant. It must have been after it won every television award going. My mum let me stay up to watch it. I wasn't even in double figures yet. Tellingly my dad had gone out.

I was in awe. I'd never seen anything like it, he could have come from space. I thought he was so beautiful, and yes, so brave. The scene that haunted me was the taxi driver refusing to take him when it was clear he was about to get queerbashed by a bunch of thugs.  An epochal evening in my childhood.

'You can not touch me now. I am one of the stately homos of England.'

'It’s about the tenderness of the individual as opposed to the cruelty of the crowd' - John Hurt

Thanks mum, and thank you Mr Hurt.

'I told Mr. Hurt it was difficult for actors to play victims, but he has specialized in victims. When he stopped playing me, he played Caligula, which was only me in a sheet. Then he played The Elephant Man, which was only me with a paper bag over my head.' - Quentin Crisp.

Yes o yes, the noble outcast, refusing to hide, braving the mean streets of London.

Thought For The Day: Douglas Coupland

I know a few drag queens, and the thing about drag queens and the Queen is that they’re both very much about power. It always amazes me how people misconstrue drag identities for transvestism. Transvestism is an almost entirely straight thing, where guys want to dress like women yet still have straight sex. Drag queens, on the other hand, are largely about power and creating a vivid powerful persona. A drag persona elevates you out of a world that marginalised you, and hooking up isn’t the end game. Some of the toughest people I know are drag queens, and I’d love to see the Queen having tea with them. She’d have a great time, I think: I see you have a very good tuck. Lemon or cream?

Douglas Coupland, dreaming of the Queen in his always great column in FT Weekend magazine.

PS Fascinating UK media fact: The Financial Times is the only newspaper that has a special two-day weekend edition, along with... the Morning Star.

Summit: Donald And Theresa Sitting In A Tree

Ugh!

Did Mrs T agree to put up the money so Trump can build a wall to keep out Muslim refugees fleeing war-torn Syria to get free abortions?

And people ask me why Lee Harvey Oswald is my only hero...

National Pride March: Pointless

A gay activist from New York has announced plans for a mass LGBT protest after being inspired by hundreds of thousands of women who marched in Washington DC last week.

David Bruinooge from Brooklyn, NYC, posted plans on Facebook for a march in the capital on June 11, in response to fears within the LGBT community that President Donald Trump’s administration threatens equality rights.

Mr Bruinooge, who works in television, told the Washington Blade: “I was watching the events [of the women’s march] unfold on TV and I was very proud and inspired by all the women, the strong women in our country who were kind of taking this to the street and getting their voices heard.

“And in the back of my mind as an openly gay man I thought the gay community should be doing something like this to follow up on the momentum,” he added...

The Independent. 

This is so juvenile.

Apolitical piggybacking

'They've had a march so why don't we have one?'

'What's it going to achieve?'

'Erm...'

I hope no-one turns up to this wanky exercise in collective narcissism.

Grindr: The Hours

Guardian.

Could have stopped that after the first four words.

AMIRIGHT!!???

I don't, though.

Cause I don't have a smart phone.

Or a sex drive tbh.

Nothing's piqued my interest or ire today so I'm going to the beach.
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PS Queerty are doing a poll asking readers' how many hours a day they spend on 'hook-up apps'. Where do they get their ideas from? Oh, and their re-design really is quite awful.

Picture Of The Day: All In All You're Just Another...

Holocaust Memorial Day: Remember

So bored and sick with pointing out that saying thousands of gay men being imprisoned - as they were in Britain and America - is equivalent to millions of Jewish people being killed is morally obscene.

Some people just love masquerading as victims.

Chelsea Manning: Ungrateful TRAITOR

Chelsea Manning is an "ungrateful traitor" who "should never have been released from prison", President Donald Trump has said on Twitter.

Manning, who was convicted of leaking documents to Wikileaks in 2010, recently had her sentence commuted by former President Barack Obama.

The transgender US Army private, born Bradley Manning, said in an op-ed that Mr Obama's legacy was not bold enough.

Mr Trump took to Twitter to criticise her for calling Mr Obama a weak leader.

"Ungrateful TRAITOR Chelsea Manning, who should never have been released from prison, is now calling President Obama a weak leader. Terrible!" he tweeted...

BBC News.

LOL!

Here's the article by the ungrateful TRAITOR.

PS Trump can't overturn her commutation, so don't have nightmares.

Piers Morgan: Tabloid Scum

Via Pink News.

PN have now got Benjamin Butterworth on the books.

Beats working for Richard Desmond.

Julian Assange: But You Don 't Understand, This Is All About Me

Me, me, me!

Graham Norton: Some Feat!

Graham Norton received a Special Recognition Award at the National Television Awards tonight.

I hope he enjoyed the craic and the audience gave him a big foot hand.

Blackmail: Trampled Underfoot

A TOP TV star was blackmailed for £18,500 by a crack addict who threatened to reveal he had a fetish for being trampled on.

The celeb — known to millions — feared his alleged £2,000-a-week cocaine­-fuelled sex sessions with rent boys would be exposed.

A male escort has been jailed for four and a half years after the victim called in the police.

The rent boy was paid between £80 and £100 a time by the TV star to “trample him”, a court heard.

The masochistic fetish involved walking and sitting on the celeb’s body...

 

The Sun.

 

Although there are few clues to his identity - big TV star, also does radio, gay, clearly loaded - if you can't figure out who this is you're thicker than a peat bog.

Peter Tatchell: Happy Birthday

Happy birthday Peter!

Here's to many more years of standing outside foreign embassies holding up crappy placards, serving imperialism, patronising LGBT people in the developing world, transphobia, Islamophobia, left-bashing, hijacking meetings and movements, fictionalising your own biography, perpetually presenting 'alternative facts', harassing young women and anyone who dares to criticise you, and sending out press releases about your fantastic self.

Mr Vain even sent out a press release telling the media it's his birthday today.

Here's the self-congratulatory, self-mythologising press release.

Unbelievable.

PS Here he is, acting like a right-wing stooge as per, interrupting a speech by Jeremy Corbyn last month.

And here's another hilarious 'Peter Tatchell's postcard from fantasy island' piece from Pink News; 'I first met George in about 1980, when he was still a teenager and long before he was famous. It was a chance meeting in a small gay disco above a pub by Manor House tube station in north London.'

Of course you did, Pete, and were Freddie Mercury and Princess Diana there too? And your good friend Whitney Houston?

Can't believe anyone falls for this baloney.

You're 65 now, Peter - pick up your bus pass and go.

Oscars: I Am Not Your Negro

Here is the website.

And here is the trailer.

Released in the US February 3rd - not sure about the UK.

Great to see this and Moonlight nominated.

Thought For The Day: Alan Bennett

via @Bennett-Diaries.

The eponymous documentary inspired by Alan Bennett's Diaries is on BBC4 again tomorrow.

Gorden Kaye: 1941-2017

'Allo 'Allo! star Gorden Kaye has tragically died aged 75 in a care home.

The star's agent confirmed he had died today but made no further comment.

The actor - who is best known for his role as Rene Artois in the British TV comedy - leaves behind an impressive legacy and career.

He appeared in all 84 episodes of the show for a decade until 1992, and reprised the role 1,2000 times in the stage adaptation...

Daily Mirror.

In early 1989, Gorden heard the News Of The World were going to out him via a story sold to them by a rent boy. He had been tipped off by a journalist from The People who said they should run a spoiler the same day.

Suspicious of their motives and aim, he approached the Daily Mirror who ran a sympathetic coming out interview which nixed them.

The NOTW ran the rent boy story anyway and ran a readers' phone-in poll asking if the BBC should resign from 'Allo 'Allo - inspired by a comment from Geoffrey Dickens, the insanely homophobic Tory MP who began the ridiculous rumours of a 'VIP paedophile ring' and a prime mover behind Section 28. Readers wanted him to stay, by 10 to one.

The following year Kaye was hospitalised following a car crash. Two reporters from the Sunday Sport snuck into the hospital disguised as doctors.

And that, my friends, is how the British tabloid press works.

Placard Of The Day: Kick Out The Trumps

Thought For The Day: Brian Eno

'Most people I know felt that 2016 was the beginning of a long decline with Brexit, then Trump and all these nationalist movements in Europe. It looked like things were going to get worse and worse. I said: ‘Well, what about thinking about it in a different way?’ Actually, it’s the end of a long decline. We’ve been in decline for about 40 years since Thatcher and Reagan and the Ayn Rand infection spread through the political class, and perhaps we’ve bottomed out. My feeling about Brexit was not anger at anybody else, it was anger at myself for not realising what was going on. I thought that all those Ukip people and those National Fronty people were in a little bubble. Then I thought: ‘Fuck, it was us, we were in the bubble, we didn’t notice it.’ There was a revolution brewing and we didn’t spot it because we didn’t make it. We expected we were going to be the revolution...

'Actually, in retrospect, I’ve started to think I’m pleased about Trump and I’m pleased about Brexit because it gives us a kick up the arse and we needed it because we weren’t going to change anything. Just imagine if Hillary Clinton had won and we’d been business as usual, the whole structure she’d inherited, the whole Clinton family myth. I don’t know that’s a future I would particularly want. It just seems that was grinding slowly to a halt, whereas now, with Trump, there’s a chance of a proper crash, and a chance to really rethink.'

From a rather tetchy interview in The Guardian.

PS See Brian's clarification on his Facebook page.

Paul Flowers: Defrocked

Former Co-op Bank chairman Paul Flowers says he still struggles with addiction, three years after a drugs sting led to his suspension as a Methodist minister.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Sunday Programme after being stripped of the title reverend last week, Mr Flowers, 66, said his problems were "largely" in the past.

But he said it would be a "lie" to suggest they were completely over.

In 2014 he was fined for having cocaine, crystal meth and ketamine.

Mr Flowers, who became a Methodist minister in Bradford in 1976, has now also lost the authority to lead services for "seriously impairing the mission, witness or integrity of the Church".

He had initially been suspended in November 2013 following allegations in the Mail on Sunday newspaper that he bought and used the illegal drugs.

Along with claims of inappropriate expenses payments, the allegations led to him stepping down from his roles as deputy chairman of the the Co-op Group and chairman of its banking arm.

Mr Flowers told Radio 4: "The truth is that I think all of us struggle with issues of addiction and we have different addictions that affect millions of us in this country,

"I'm not going to tell you a lie that it's behind me totally, because it isn't, but I believe it's now largely behind me, but we still struggle with addiction of different sorts."

Mr Flowers added that his departure from the bank and suspension from the church ultimately made his faith stronger...

BBC News.

Big hugs, Paul.

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You can listen to the Sunday Programme programme here.

George Michael: G Is For...

GEORGE Michael’s ex-lover has told how he fears a sex drug he used to deliver to the star may have led to his death aged 53.

Paul Stag, 48, says the singer was hooked on Liquid G during their nine years together.

He said: “George was mad on G. He loved it. It is 100 per cent he would have had chems on Christmas Eve before his death.”

The pair used the codeword “champagne” when the ex-Wham! singer wanted to place orders.But Paul said: “George just couldn’t handle his own drugs.

“He was incredibly sexually active and in his mind drugs equalled sex and sex equalled drugs. My belief is he didn’t separate that until the day he died.”

Paul’s revelations come days after George’s cousin Andros Georgiou claimed the star died of an accidental overdose and blasted the singer’s partner Fadi Fawaz for suggesting it was suicide.

Police are awaiting toxicology tests after George was found dead aged 53 at home in Goring, Oxfordshire, on Christmas Day...

The Sun On Sunday (Not sure why Stag went to the SOS, the heir to the News Of The World, the paper George despised more than any other. Oh, yeah, that...). 

Have to say this was my initial suspicion.

GHB is of course very gay - viz the Stephen Port 'murders' etc - and moreover very George, the lovely old perv.

Though the media's shoehorning of the buzzword/scareword 'chemsex' into this is as crass as it is clueless.

The spell in a Swiss clinic suggest he was into hard drugs - there have been rumours that he was addicted to crack or heroin.

A few brief points on the cast list here; I'm not convinced Paul Stag was his secret lover (drug runner and "escort", sure), George and his cousin Andros hadn't spoken for years, so it's hard to see what insight he has here, and Fadi claiming he slept in the car outside George's many bedroomed house on a freezing cold Christmas Eve sounds, erm, unlikely to say the least (libellous).

Whatever, I'm sure this story made several tabloid hacks Christmas.

NB Despite the predictable scaremongering of hysterical gay nuns like Patrick Strudwick, the number of G-related (ie GHB was known to have been taken, it may not have been the cause of death) is realtively tiny; 61 between 2011 and 2015.

Lush: Bubble Barf

Lush released a Valentine’s Day advertising campaign featuring gay couples and people are loving it.

The handmade cosmetics brand posted a photo of a gay couple sharing a bath together...

Gay Star News.

Another press release masquerading as news.

You can tell it's from a press release as Attitude, for example, used exactly the same line.

Oh, to be so gaybraindead and so easily pleased.

And so easily used.

PS And look! A gay couple feature in an ad pushing Kellogg's Corn Flakes!!

Amazing! 

Or is it 'adorable'?

Tom Daley: Naughty But Nice

OLYMPIC diver Tom Daley told how he ­confessed to his fiancé that he had online sex with another man.

Tom said: “It will never happen again” — after film emerged of him stripping for a cyber romp.The Olympic diving ace revealed it took place in a ­seven-month split from hubby-to-be Dustin Lance Black.

But he pledged: “This will absolutely never happen again now that we’re getting married.

“The date is set, and we’re raring and ready to go for that wedding now.”

Tom said he and film-maker Dustin, 42, had secretly been “on a break” because of the demands of their long-distance ­relationship when he chatted with other men online and indulged in cyber sex with one.

Tom said he had confessed all to Dustin about his online sex session...

The Sun.

Well I found this shocking!

Because our Tom has always seemed beyond vanilla sexless.

Great to see him being unapologetic and shameless too.; 'I don’t think I've done anything more or less than any other 22-year-old has done.'

The timing is interesting.

The seven month break must mean they were reunited at the Rio Olympics, and that they parted around xmas and the new year a traditional 'I think we need some space' time.

Pure speculation but I wonder if Tom fessed up the day before the semi-finals - cue screaming row - and that's why he fucked up so badly.

And does it shed any light on Lance's mysterious hospitalisation afterwards?

Who, as they say, can say?

PS For the record The Sun's was the only front page today not hogged by Donald Trump. Though a quick Twitter trawl suggests this story has been doing the rounds for yonks. Oh, and I bet Lance has been living a nun-like life in LA.

I've a feeling we may not hear wedding bells. Gay marriage is a sign a relationship is probably doomed.

PPS Tom's in the middle of a publicity blitz pushing his recipe/well-being book, Tom's Daily Plan - many photos, but all clothed. Most dramatically he claimed in the Mail intensive diving training has damaged a disc and he could end up in a wheelchair. Hard to know if this is a real threat - let's hope not - or an attempt to get more space in the press.

Chelsea Manning: Free At Last (Almost)

President Obama has commuted all but four months of the remaining prison sentence of Chelsea Manning, the former US Army Intelligence Analyst serving 35-years for releasing classified information. Chelsea’s attorney Nancy Hollander, who spoke with President Obama’s counsel earlier today, confirms that “Chelsea will walk out of Fort Leavenworth a free woman in four months, on May 17th.”

The Chelsea Manning Support Network applauds this decision by outgoing President Barack Obama, and extends our heartfelt gratitude. A commutation can not be reversed by a future president.

“Today’s fantastic news goes a long way to making amends for the brutal treatment Chelsea was illegally subjected to while awaiting trial at the Quantico Marine Brig. It’s tragic that Chelsea had to spend 7-years imprisoned for releasing documents that should never have been classified in the first place, and were clearly in the public interest,” stated Chelsea Manning Support Network co-founder Jeff Paterson. “All of us who worked on Chelsea’s behalf are overjoyed.”

Free Chelsea Manning - soon to be a statement of fact, not a demand.

The best news you'll hear all year!

Fagburn: A New Year's Resolution

To write more.

More or less.

Regular viewers may be aware I've been unwell.

Feeling a bit overwhelmed by everything, too.

I'll be blogging erratically for a bit, but hope to return to abnormal soon.

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