Nigel Owens: My Struggle

Daily Telegraph.

There are also celebrations of our Nigel in the Mail, the Mirror, The Sun, and The Times.

Verily, this is a 'breakthrough moment' and the world will never be quite the same again.

All bemoan rugby union's homophobia, without pointing out the obvious; in England it's played by posh Hooray Henrys.

Most of the articles relying on this interview, 'Nigel Owens on the pressure of refereeing the Rugby World Cup - and his struggle with his sexuality', with Radio Times, and an old interview with WalesOnline.

Like many, Sport 24 give us a list of The Best Quips - And Put-downs - Of Nigel Owens; 'Shut that door!', 'What a gay day!', 'Look at the muck in here', 'A handbag!' etc.

Too many cliches in this Independent article to count...

Denis Healey: 1917-2015

Fagburn once wrote to Denis Healey after seeing him on a daytime chatshow being asked how he felt about Mike Yarwood giving him this catchphrase; 'What a silly billy!'

He replied something like; 'At least it wasn't 'What a gay day!''

He wrote me a nice letter back saying about how he hadn't meant it to sound homophobic, it was just a reference to Larry Grayson (!).

Think I must have been about 15 or something.

And that, comrades, is my fascinating anecdote about Labour party political giant Denis Healey!

Was saving it for my memoirs but what the hey.

PS Google 'Denis Healey' and 'Chagos' or 'IMF' or 'Benn'.

Camp: And The Damage Done

In his perceptive [sic] analysis of gay men's attitudes to camp (What Alan Carr taught me about gay men's prejudice, 21 April), Owen Jones suggests that an aversion to it is a form of self-loathing. But for many of us struggling to come out in the 1970s and 80s, it was camp itself which represented self-hatred. Comedians such as John Inman and Larry Grayson personified everything that I did not want to be. They were almost a third sex: grotesque pantomimic creatures, willingly collusive in the mocking laughter of the TV audience. My generation of activists wanted to show people that we weren't all hairdressers or ballet dancers, just ordinary blokes who worked in factories and offices and drove trains and buses...

From an actual letter someone bothered to write to The Guardian.

God, there are some top-flight gaybores out there.

Who wants to be 'ordinary'?

And all the poshgays be like; 'Oh Owen, you're saying what we're all thinking.'

'I also hate the gays cause the gays hate the gays, yeah, that makes sense.'

PS Pink News readers continue to gaybore for England.

Radio Times: 90 Glorious Years!

Looking for a suitable Radio Times' cover to mark this great occasion Fagburn typed "Radio Times gay" into Google Image.
Bafflingly, one featuring the notorious heterosexual young diver, Tom Daley, came up.
As this was clearly due to some kind of computer error, I went for this delightful one of Larry Grayson and Isla St Clair instead.
Can't you just smell the sexual chemistry?

Wittgenstein: On Certainty

My life shews that I know or am certain that there is a chair over there, or a door, and so on. - I tell a friend eg "Take that chair over there", "Shut the door", etc etc.

7.

Fagburn: TV Times

Apropos of nothing, but someone tweeted me this.
"This is why I love England," he said, ironically.
And you have to kind of agree.

Gareth McLean: Role Models Roll Call

'WHEN I WAS a wee boy growing up in a small town outside Edinburgh in the late 1970s and early 1980s  - I know: in gay years, I’m dead – TV was the only window onto a wider world and representations of gay men were – how shall I put it? – a little lacking. In my early formative years, I had, to look up to:
Larry Grayson
Mr Humphries from Are You Being Served?
Lieutenant Gruber from ‘Allo ‘Allo
Steven Carrington in Dynasty
Frankie Howerd
Kenneth Williams
Kenny Everett
Freddie Mercury
(And the last two were, at least nominally, bisexual)...'

TV critic bloke Gareth McLean blogs beautifully about gay men on the tellybox.
Funny, I never watched 'Allo 'Allo or Dynasty, and though a fan - and like the wee Mr McLean was gagging to find any kind of gayness - never twigged back then Frankie Howerd or Kenny Everett were gay.
Strange days, indeed.

Thought For The Day 3: John Strafford

"In welcoming 'gays' into the party we should not ignore our existing members. Many of them will be offended, not because they are Conservative but because they are of an age that were brought up to believe that homosexuals were 'poofters'. They reflect the population at large of a similar age. We should show some understanding."

John Strafford, chair of the Conservative Yes To AV Campaign.
Strafford posted this on his website in 2002 after Alan Duncan MP came out - there are calls for Strafford to resign over this and other comments found after trawling through his website.