Matt Lucas: Hard Times

From one of those hackneyed 'What would you say to your younger self?' things in The Sunday Telegraph.

Not sure life at The Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School could have been that tough, dear.

Evan Davis: Slut Praising

This was the big scandal while we were away.

Evan Davis made a light-hearted passing reference on Newsnight to gay sluttery, and some gaybores went on Twitter and whined about it.

Wow!

PS Mind you the whole tedious storm in a dating app did inspire a rare moment of humour from Pink News.

Twitterspat Of The Day: Owen Jones Vs Rob Lowe

Obviously Fagburn is with our Owen on the Grexit thingy.

Though Behind The Candleabra was ever so good.

Seems OJ only likes Rob's early work, when he was young and hot...

PS Pls follow Owen Jones on Twitter. Wish I could, but she blocked me. :(

PPS The last word?

PPPS Technically this happened yesterday, so don't write in.

James Arthur: Rank

Daily Star.

A famous person has said a bad word!
Then another famous person tweeted something about it!!!
Snore...

But then...

James Arthur is not homophobic, insists the Daily Star's top pop columnist, James Ingham - and she should know.
Is it just me who doesn't give two hoots about this story?

PS OH NOES!! A famous American man has alo said a bad word! Burn the witch! Will we ever be the same again? etc etc.

Update: James Arthur has a Twitter row about this with someone else from X Factor! Nope, still not that interested...

Walliams & Cowell: A Fine Bromance

'MATT Lucas has branded his comedy partner David Walliams and Simon Cowell the “new Hinge & Bracket”.
'Little Britain star Matt said David and Simon are getting so pally on Britain’s Got Talent that they remind him of the old telly drag queens.
'On the left [^] is how David and Simon would look as the couple who used to sing – and bicker – around a piano.'

The Sun.
Oh dear...

The Daily Star adds informatively...

'BRITAIN’S Got Talent stars Simon Cowell and David Walliams are to carry on camping it up to beat The Voice.

'Telly focus groups have revealed that viewers of the ITV1 show are loving the antics between David Walliams, 40, and Simon Cowell, 52.

'They told chiefs they want to see the camp Little Britain actor tease and flirt with the music executive even more.

'A show source said: “David has been given the green light to ramp up his bromance with Simon for the live shows.

'“Producers believe it’s the key to hooking in more viewers. The focus groups said they’re loving the show’s talent but wanted even more of David and Simon.

'“Viewers enjoy seeing him leave Simon speechless and red-faced. It’s going to become the campest show on telly."

'Last weekend new BBC1 show The Voice averaged 9.5million viewers, pipping Britain’s Got Talent, now in its sixth series, with 9.1m.

'Cowell admitted he was “irritated” to come in second best.

'Wild comic Walliams, 40, married to model Lara Stone, 28, repeatedly jokes on the show that he has a crush on bachelor Cowell.

'He also teases the music mogul about his sexuality, calling him “Queen Simon”.

'Cowell has admitted he is fond of his new judging pal, saying: “It was meant to be, wasn’t it? You know the sketch with the Prime Minister and the gay assistant in Little Britain, it’s like that.”

'Cheeky Walliams then added: “Except you’re the gay one.”'

Fagburn, for one, is positively gripped.
Many people on the Twittersphere have been asking about Will.i.am on their rival show, The Voice, incidentally...

PS The general consensus on Matt Lucas's new show, The Matt Lucas Awards, which debuted last night, is that it is absolute ruggish and painfully unfunny. Oh dear...

Matt Lucas: Please Accept Our Sincerest Hypocrisy

'Little Britain star Matt Lucas quits Twitter over dead lover taunts' - The Daily Mail

"LITTLE Britain star Matt Lucas has quit Twitter after a sicko taunted him about his ex-lover’s suicide..." - The Daily Star

This is presumably the same Matt Lucas who has successfully sued both The Daily Mail and The Daily Star over malicious and false stories they wrote after the suicide of his civil partner Kevin McGee...

Matt Lucas: Harry's Game

"

"The blond bloke looks like what you have left after you have made a man.”

Matt Lucas, on The Only Way Is Essex's Harry Derbidge quoted in the Star On Sunday.
He also said; “Essex people are really common and when they talk it makes your ears bleed. Essex is vermin. The accent is a blemish on this great nation.”
Apparently this was a joke, but on the previous form of this millionaire snobby ex-public school boy I'm not so sure.

The Daily Star: Telling Lies For A Living

"It is an interesting quirk of the English legal system that you can't libel the dead. Very handy if you're a tabloid news editor, at say, the Sun, and you publish an article about 23-year-old Julian Brooker from Brighton becoming a 'human fireball' after touching a railway line while crawling around pretending to be Gollum from Lord of the Rings. The shop assistant was drunk, the red top behemoth informed its readers in 2005, because it was 23 October and Julian was obsessed with the number 23. A great tabloid exclusive. Were an iota of it true, that is.
"In the last 24 hours the Sun's subsequent apology to the late Julian ('His parents have asked us to make clear he was not turned into a fireball, was not obsessed with the number 23 and didn't go drinking on that date every month. We apologise for the distress this has caused Julian's family and friends') has resurfaced across the Twittersphere to howls of derision. Some unacquainted with the idiosyncrasies of Britain's newspaper industry have questioned whether the whole thing is in fact a hoax. Sadly, it's not. Far from being an exception, such cases stray dangerously close to being a rule.
"I make that claim with authority because during the two years I worked at the Daily Star I wrote similar, arguably worse, yarns. When Boyzone star Stephen Gately died in October 2009, I was dispatched to Mallorca to investigate. Beneath my byline in the days that followed were lurid revelations of heavy drinking, drugs he may have taken, and gay orgies he may have been part of.
"We tabloid reporters knew little, but under pressure to deliver much, the hotel bar soon swirled with speculation. Thoughts morphed into theories, theories shifted into fact. After all, you can't libel the dead.
"The same month Kevin McGee, former husband of Little Britain star Matt Lucas, committed suicide. At the Daily Star I picked up the phone to a reader who claimed he knew the couple and the story behind the tragedy. "How much is that worth?" He asked. I told him we needed to meet first. He replied that he was out of town.
"'Sod it, you can't libel the dead," someone proffered. That afternoon I wrote the story: "LUCAS EX BLEW £2 MILLION ON DRUGS AND BOOZE." The tabloid news cycle, unrelenting, waits for no man..."

Riichard Peppiatt, who resigned from The Daily Star earlier this month - writing a devastating J'accuse letter about its scummy editorial (non) standards - offers some more insight into the workings of the British tabloid press, from The Guardian's Comment Is Free.
Lucas won undisclosed damages and a public apology over the above and other stories the Star published after McGee's death.
Here's an example of Peppiatt's "sex and drugs" stories about Gately - which is still online.
Interesting to note that both the examples he cites involved recently bereaved gay men.
Charming.
Peppiatt calls himself a "whistleblower", but he was happy enough to collude in all this crap for several years, so he's hardly Bradley Manning.

Come Fly With Me: Plane Crash TV

Reviews of Matt Lucas and David Walliams' Come Fly With Me have been predictably stinking.
Though pointing out that the targets for their comedy are often society's victims now seems as tired and predictable as... well, as an episode of Little Britain Abroad.
In fact Come Fly With Me has a broad speculum of comic characters, from Fearghal (pictured), a campy gay air steward on a budget airline, to Moses, a campy gay "executive passenger liason officer".
Verily, as Matt Lucas has said; "All human life is there."
Currently halfway through its first series arguably Come Fly With Me's main problem is that it's just not very funny.
However The Sun today have managed to find someone to defend the show;
"David and Matt's new series is absolutely brilliant and very funny.
"I don't believe for one minute they have a racist bone in their bodies.
"They are falling victim to political correctness - just as I did. And political correctness is killing comedy."
Who be this?
None other than right-wing comedy legend and wifebeater, Jim Davidson.
Nick nick!

Comedy Double Acts: Strange Bedfellows

"Double acts have almost always had two performers of the same gender, usually male, with the most famous female one, French and Saunders, still following the model of chums with a big/little, small/tall contrast. One reason could be that audiences seem to prefer double acts to be friends or enemies (bickering is part of the shtick), without any sexual tension. Morecambe and Wise famously shared a bed in their domestic sketches, as Laurel and Hardy had before them, with the joke depending on the asexuality of this arrangement, although biographies have revealed that Morecambe expressed concerns at being thought homosexual.
"This tension has been interestingly explored in recent duos where one of the performers is gay. Stephen Fry told me that he had never felt any flicker of sexual interest in Hugh Laurie, and was relieved by this, because he felt their partnership might otherwise have collapsed. For a while, Walliams's status seemed ambiguous, meaning it was conceivable that he and Lucas could become an item. Walliams now has a wife, though – so again we have a contrast, a difference, helping to give the double act its power."

Marl Lawson explores the dynamics of comedy double acts in his Guardian column.
If Mr Lawson wasn't so tragically fugly Fagburn would ask him to marry me.

Daily Mail: Matt Lucas - An Apology

An article (March 1) ‘How Matt Lucas learned to laugh again’ caused great upset to Mr Lucas which we did not intend and regret.
The article on Mr Lucas’ return to public life following the tragic death of Kevin McGee suggested he had ignored Kevin’s calls, became a virtual recluse, and hosted a birthday party to ‘move on’.
We accept this was not the case and apologise to Mr Lucas.
From The Daily Mail today.

This isn't much of an apology - barely 70 words long, it's hidden away on page 20, a left-hand page.
Matt Lucas was also awarded "substantial" undisclosed damages from the Mail.
He sued for invasion of privacy over an article which appeared in March – five months after the suicide of his former civil partner Kevin McGee.
Matt Lucas said in a statement;
"This has been and continues to be a very difficult time for me and all those who loved Kevin.
"My deep pain and sorrow have been made even greater by the intrusive and defamatory stories made about my private life in the Daily Mail.
"I had no choice but to bring these proceedings to protect my private life and my right to grieve in peace.
"I'd like to add that I take no pleasure or sense of triumph in this settlement. I am just relieved that this case has been resolved and I sincerely hope this sort of intrusive reporting will now end."
One year on from Jan Moir's disgraceful attack on Stephen Gately, The Daily Mail has clearly learned nothing - not even basic tact, or how disgusting it is to dance on a man's fresh grave, even if he's a gay man.
The article has been cached here; 'How Matt Lucas learnt to laugh again; He's lost three stone and still blames himself for his partner's suicide. But now the Little Britain star's stepping back into the limelight.'
Lucas won damages from The Daily Star in May for invasion of privacy over a story they had run following Kevin McGee's suicide.
In 2008 Lucas and David Walliams won damages from the Star after it claimed Little Britain USA had angered an American gay group - which didn't actually exist.

Things I Learnt Over The Weekend

I've had a cold. Looks like I didn't miss much.

1. The Guardian still can't get enough of John Waters.
Superfreak made his third appearance in The Guardian/Observer in a fortnight.
This week he's explaining What I See In The Mirror.
Answer; the body of a junky and Little Richard's moustache.
I think the thing I like most about John Waters is how he revels in bad behaviour - his own and other peoples' - and he never ever apologises.
Unlike some more stately homos...

2. Elton John is the nation's favourite scratched record.
On Piers Meets Elton, a royal command performance of sorts, Sir Elton of John wibbles on about My Drugs Hell.
Again.
I guess it takes a special kind of talent to make taking shedloads of drugs sound boring.
Forgive him great British public for he has sinned...

3. Channel 4's The House That Made Me is the new mea culpa for "troubled" gay stars.
Boy George was on it this week.
It's Michael Barrymore on Thursday.
Both once much loved working-class lads from that London who've been in a spot of bother and are desperately seeking rehab with the great British public by showing off their roots.
Boy George mused; "I'm basically a gay version of my dad.”
Gor blimey, luvaduck, apples 'n' pears, 'ave a banana!
The one thing they won't talk about is the one thing on everyone's mind; the house that ruined them.
Rachel Cooke reviewed the bad Boy George in the New Statesman; "It's hard to be surprised by anything George-related these days. It's only a couple of years, after all, since the bizarre episode that led to his conviction for falsely imprisoning a male escort. The escort in question, who eventually escaped into the street in his underpants, was Norwegian - a detail that has for some reason stuck in my mind like glue."

4. Matt Lucas isn't a bundle of laughs.
And like Boy George and Barrymore, there is one place we aren't allowed to go.
A prickly Lucas is interviewed inThe Observer Magazine.
His camp straight (comedy) partner, David Walliams, fields most of the questions.
"I make what seems a harmless enough inquiry about Lucas and he fires back that, should I report any details in this article, "I would caution you from a legal perspective right now... that you run the risk of being on the end of a lawsuit."'

5. If you are a grumpy old queen, as Quentin Crisp might have said, then turn being a grumpy old queen into your style.
The Daily Mail wonders; Who'll Save Dun Sulking: Ted Heath's home reveals an unexpected side to Britain's grumpiest PM - so why does it face being sold off?'
Apparently he never married.
"There are photographs of his devoted parents and his brother, John, but no clues as to any lady friend who might have cracked this sturdiest of bachelor hearts..."
This stately (alleged) homo's stately home sounds like the world's grandest confirmed bachelor pad.
"He had no immediate family but that is precisely why his home is such a treasure. Instead of leaving it be carved up by relatives, he left it all in a charitable trust — ranging from gifts from Mao Tse-Tung to the moneybox his father made him as a child."
So if you can't be a national treasure, then leave one to the nation.

Come Fly With Me: Is It Okay If I Don't?

Can there be a phrase more certain to strike dread into the hearts of all right-thinking people than; "Matt Lucas and David Walliams new series is due to be shown later this year"?
If anyone cares apparently Come Fly With Me is set in an airport and centres around the hilarious comings and goings at a budget airline.
So lots of opportunities for those two overgrown public school boys to sneer at working class people again.
And to poke fun at some gayers too, no doubt - almost certainly trolly dollies.
And as it's at an airport, there can be loads of those funny foreign people!
What larks.
Well probably not - if it's anything like Walliams and Lucas's last few desperate outings, it'll have less laughs than a graveyard.
Johnann Hari wasn't the first to point out that Little Britain was comedy founded on "mocking the weakest people in Britain" in his 2005 Independent article; ''Why I Hate Little Britain'.
But he probably said it best.
"Their targets are almost invariably the easiest, cheapest groups to mock: the disabled, poor, elderly, gay or fat. In one fell swoop, they have demolished protections against mocking the weak that took decades to build up."
Enjoy!