Steve Strange: The Final Guestlist

The guestlist - wishlist? - for Steve Strange's funeral earlier today via BBC News Wales.

PS The New Romantics: A Fine Romance - a fine BBC4 doc featuring just about everyone.

Steve Strange: 1959-2015

It seemed there was a law that all online tributes to Mr Strange must be accompanied by the video to Fade To Grey.

Stonking record though that was, it did paint him as no more than a one hit wonder (who once got caught shoplifting a Teletubby tee hee etc etc).

Me choose The Damned Don't Cry.

As Alexis Petridis writes - rather brilliantly - he was a genuinely pivotal figure in the British pop and club scenes - one of those beautiful freaks that popular culture so needs.

PS Fagburn interviewed Steve in 2002 when he published his memoirs*, and remembers him holding court at The Cock around the same time.

What a (cold) mess!  Sad.

* Avoid. Please read instead Dave Rimmer's New Romantics: The Look. It has lots of lovely photos, too.

Thought For The Day: Boy George

"These things go in circles. In the early 80s there was this sense that things were changing, and becoming more open-minded. But we don't have that sort of gorgeous youth culture any more, the glam rockers, the New Romantics. People aren't so individual any more. There is this sense of why would you want to stand out and make a show of yourself?
"You can find that sort of attitude in the gay community too. That if you are an exhibitionist you are somehow spoiling the big assimilation. Most gay men go out of their way to look normal and fit in, but Philip is not of that breed."

Boy George talking to The Guardian after his friend, club promoter Philip Sallon, was beaten up in the West End of London last Saturday.
George often says things like the above.
There's some truth in it, but while it seems radical, his tendency to paint gay men as our own worst enemies, and harking back to the Good Old Gays of yore is actually quite reactionary.
Westminster Police are not treating the attack on Sallon as homophobic.