Rev Richard Coles: Seedy Past

 

When a high-profile vicar yesterday attacked the Tory plans to sell housing association homes as a ‘right to steal’, it might have sounded like a stern ticking off from the pulpit.

Known to many for presenting Radio 4’s gentle human interest show Saturday Live, he is the supposed inspiration for the hero of the BBC church sitcom Rev.

And while he might now feel free to attack others for seeking the right to buy their own home, he not so long ago felt he had the right to do whatever he chose himself, regardless of the law or anyone else’s feelings.

For Coles raised eyebrows by last year publishing a frank memoir which detailed not only his rise to fame as half of the famously gay 1980s pop band The Communards, alongside singer Jimmy Somerville, but also his enthusiasm for ‘dogging’ – having sex with strangers in the open air – and for taking drugs including cocaine, ecstasy and amphetamines.

He also confessed that he falsely told his friends that he was HIV positive, to generate attention and sympathy, and kept up the unpleasant pretence for five years.

Coles, 52, is now a regular on TV and radio, but on Sundays he performs at his 14th century parish church, St Mary the Virgin, in Finedon, Northamptonshire

Daily Mail.

Thou hast blasphemed against holy Tory party policy!

Is that the best you can do?

PS The Mail were less judgmental about Richard's "colourful past" last year.

.... discount. That's #righttobuy ? Sounds like Right to Steal to me.
— Richard Coles (@RevRichardColes) April 14, 2015

Brighton: Notorious Gay Dogging Site

Fagburn gets the impression no-one at the Daily Star has a clue what goes on at this 'notorious gay dogging site'.

Or, indeed, what the action looks like.

Oi! Gay men do not go dogging - FFS, we have some standards!

Further, the story is based not on how 'FAMILIES hit out at a council', but a story in the Argus yesterday where a gay man complained about the poor lighting down the Bushes.

The Daily Mail is also not happy - and Mail Online readers are MAD AS HELL! 

How disgusting, if my husband and I went for a quickie behind the bushes and got caught, they would throw away the key. etc etc.

But it's not all homophobes...

Joyless gayers for UKIP - YAY!

Paul Flowers: Random Outraged Sunday Tabloid Headline Generator

“CRYSTAL methodist” Paul Flowers has had gates put up to stop doggers having sex outside his vicarage.

Daily Star.

2 out of 10. Must try harder.

The Daily Mail: Not Disgusted Of Oxfordshire

Life is full - full of surprises.
While reading The Daily Mail this morning, I came across an article - about an elderly aristocrat having some problems with a cruising ground close to his stately home - that was positively delightful.
Will wonders never cease?
The Telegraph published a sour and cackheaded piece about this last week.
The Daily Mail's journalist, Robert Hardman - titter ye not - went out to meet the man and see things for himself.
The title sets the tone; 'The doughty baronet and the doggers: Sir Beville's polite war on al fresco liaisons on his estate'
Some land near a layby by his old pile has long been a cruising ground; "It seems to be mostly gay men, but there are also sexual exhibitionists (male and female) and their voyeuristic followers — collectively known as ‘doggers’."
Sir Beville Stainer is being ever so English and nice about it.
"Sir Beville is a man of the world — a former Army officer, he was aide-de-camp to the Governor-General of Australia — and he can certainly see the funny side of it all.
"‘I kept hearing this word “dogging”, so I looked it up on the internet the other day and, well…I couldn’t believe what I saw!’ He bursts out laughing, adding that Lady Stanier was equally startled."
Like the old joke about the couple in a rail carriage who only get told off by their fellow passengers when they light a post-coital cigarette, it's not so much the shagging the baronet minds, but all the litter they leave behind.
"'I came down here two-and-a-half weeks ago and filled 28 binliners with rubbish,’ says Sir Beville Stanier, as we tiptoe through the filth on his side of the fence."
The local peoples' real gripe is that a border fence built by Oxfordshire County Council isn't sturdy enough.
"These people are not prudes. ­Richard, a former resident, laughs as he recounts the sight of a naked man running across the estate at dawn. Some tenants talk fondly of the ­regular faces — the chap with the suggestive numberplate and the bloke who takes up residence in a camper van for the entire summer."
It all reads a little like an Ealing Comedy.
"There is nothing new about sexual shenanigans in this particular layby. The council built this section of dual carriageway through the Shotover estate in the Fifties, along with the public convenience.
"It soon became a meeting place for local homosexuals — plus the police, who once discovered a local magistrate in breach of his own laws...
"‘I am pretty liberal,’ says a lady in one estate ­cottage who does not want to give her name.
‘I don’t mind what people do in their own backyard. But why should they do it in mine?’"
A fair point.
Let us hope this kerfuffle is soon resolved to everyone's satisfaction.
It is time for Robert Hardman to bid a fond farewell.
"The temperature is falling and so is the snow. It’s not exactly Dr Zhivago here on the A40 but it clearly retains a romantic allure for some.
"I am reminded of Winston Churchill’s remark on receiving the grave news that one of his MPs had been caught in a compromising ­situation with a Guardsman in a London park ­during a blizzard: ‘Makes you proud to be British.’"
And so does this article.

Language: Real Gay Men Don't Go Dogging

Fagburn has written before about his delight at the quaint language employed by The Daily Telegraph when they are writing about gay men.
It's the only British newspaper that still regularly uses the word "homosexual".
It was at it again over the weekend; "Sir Beville Stanier, nephew of the late Sir John Miller who was in charge of the Royal household, claims he has been plagued by homosexual men who use his land for sex."
It also appeared to coin a new term, used in its headline to this non-story*, and in the text; 'Tory grandee calls police after gay doggers target estate'
This perhaps suggests that Telegraph readers are expected to be familiar with "doggers" and "dogging", but not their nearest gay equivalents "cruisers" and "cruising".
Journalists find the latter rather confusing, recently we had Rosie Boycott talking about "cottaging on Hampstead Heath" in The Observer.
Such innocence masquerading as experience can be forgiven in straight journalists.
It gives gay men a good laugh, if nothing else.
But what should gay men make of a gay publication that's just as ignorant of gay culture and confused by the gay lexicon?
Step forward one Jonny Payne, who in the Pink Paper today writes a story titled; 'Conservative landowner tackles gay dogging'

Police Guidelines: To Serve and Protect Doggers

A shouty headline from The Daily Mail; 'Now police are ordered to protect 'Doggers' indulging in outdoor sex with strangers from hate crime.'
"An extraordinary new Hate Crime Guidance Manual has been handed to officers telling them to arrest anyone suspected of committing a hate crime against those engaged in ‘dogging’.
"Although it notes that outdoor sex can have an ‘impact on the quality of life of people using these locations for leisure pursuits’ - for example dog walkers and tourists - the rights of those cottaging, cruising or dogging must be taken into account by officers."
Well, it's extraordinary that the Mail thinks it doesn't have to explain to its readers what cottaging, cruising and dogging are.
Police being told to arrest people who commit a (hate) crime - that's not so extraordinary.
It's also encouraging to see that the Mail appear to be more outraged by the lenient policing of dogging; an activity that is almost exclusively part of the sordid twilight world of the heterosexual.
Doggers have certainly made arguing for cruising a lot easier.
We used to have to try and defend public sex with "it's a gay thing", now we can just point out how everybody's at it.
Thank fucking for that.
The Scottish Sun is all-over-the-place, veering between disgust and desire.
"COPS are being told to protect kinky DOGGERS - in case the perverts are targeted by hate mobs.
"Barmy new advice is being handed to officers on how to deal with the seedy thrillseekers, who have illegal outdoor sex with strangers."
Are doggers "seedy perverts" (Boo!) or "kinky thrill-seekers" (Wa-hey!)?
It's hard to tell these days, isn't it?

• The Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland (ACPOS) Hate Crime Guidance Manual 2010 is available as a PDF here.
It's all a bit 'stating the bleeding obvious', and probably doesn't warrant its own 60 page booklet, but hey-ho.
Maybe someone should write a booklet explaining what the law is to journalists?