Christopher Biggins: A Portrait Of The Artiste

Intent on a healthy old age, he still needs to lose weight, but recently quit booze: “I was drinking a couple of bottles of wine a week, but a doctor asked if I wanted to die in my own bed or in a hospital bed dribbling, so I gave up just like that and don’t miss it at all. I do worry about a painful death, but I keep telling Cameron Mackintosh I’ll move into his house and we’ll be looked after by the most gorgeous male nurses.”

Born in Oldham and brought up in Salisbury, he has always moved in circles he can’t really afford, ever since his car salesman father and barmaid mother scrimped to send him to private school and elocution lessons to erase the Wiltshire accent. He attended Bristol Old Vic, then joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, performing alongside Peggy Ashcroft, Donald Sinden and the young Judi Dench: “I was classified as the joker of our year, but when I got the RSC everybody was shocked, jealous.”

Subsequent gigs included the film of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Porridge with Ronnie Barker, Nero in the BBC’s legendary I, Claudius and the “sex-mad vicar” in the original television series of Poldark.

After moving into children’s television in the 1980s (”You had to be terribly careful as a gay man not to be seen as a paedophile”), his image morphed into that of bon viveur for hire; walker to everyone from Liza Minnelli to Lauren Bacall. It’s clear why they all indulge him — he oozes empathy and anecdotes and is much sharper than his buffoonish image implies...

In recent years his bread and butter has been panto and reality shows (he won I’m a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here! in 2007 — “the best career decision I ever made”)...

As Lukewarm, the comedy gay in Porridge.

A “ridiculous” youthful marriage apart (he and his former wife are still friends, natch), Biggins has long been openly gay, a situation that, according to his peer Rupert Everett, makes it impossible to win leading man roles. “Did Rupert say that? Sounds like sour grapes, he’s far too old to get romantic leads anyway. It amazes me there are still so many sportsmen, actors, singers, politicians who won’t come out and admit what they are.

“People are scared they’ll upset their fans, but the fans don’t care. I was at Cliff Richard’s concert at the Royal Albert Hall the other night — he gives so much pleasure. It may be to women of a certain age but that doesn’t matter. He’s a megastar.”

Biggins, a campaigner [sic] for Stonewall — the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender charity — “doesn’t approve” of gay marriage: “It’s fine for others, but calling Neil my husband is a step too far.” Gaybies? His baby-pink face crumples in distaste. “I couldn’t afford children: I’d need an enormous house with wings and nannies who’d bring them to me every evening for half an hour. I’d rather have a 54in TV.” He laughs joyfully, then leaps up to snaffle a scone from the complimentary buffet.

The Sunday Times.

Not sure either Sir Cameron or Sir Cliff have actually come out, Christopher...

Thought For The Day: Rupert Everett

"I have no sex drive any more and I really enjoy that because I realised that my whole life from the age of seven was ruled by sex. It’s quite a relief to have time for other things. It’s very liberating,”

Express.

She's 55.

Rupert Everett: How The Fallen Have Fallen!

Not owning a tellybox, Fagburn was blissfully unaware that Rupert Everett had made a series of ads for Young's Seafood where he voices a green-eyed hungry cat.
Apparently they've been running since January - here is the latest instalment.
Mind you I asked some TV owners and they had at best but vague recollections.
Anyway, enjoy!

PS Read about them in the new Private Eye, which alleges the concept is a bit of a rip-off.

Rupert Everett: Hello Darling, Had Any Work Done?

She's so controversial!

At first, he bats away my question about whether he’s had work done but later agrees to talk about it. He has his own blood injected into his face every four months.

“They put it through a Magimix, turn it into plasma and inject it back in. It’s really good for your skin. Blood is the new thing. What you really want to have, if you’re rich, is someone with your blood group running high up in the mountains all day long and sending you down their blood, deliciously oxygenated, which you can inject in various parts of your body. I’d advise you to inject the whole of your face with blood – it will make it look radiant. Then I would have a little bit of laser, which is very good for tightening.”

Telegraph.

Oh, Rupe also says some stuff about how being out has held his career back -  yeah, that and you being an insufferable arsehole.

Thought For The Day: Rupert Everett

“Today the world has gone full circle. Gay people seem to be doing all the decent things the straights used to do – getting married, having babies and recycling. I feel like an old grandmother, sitting in my rocking chair, writing to you, dear Russell, during a break from my knitting. The past is all twinkling lights in the woods on a snowy night. Was it revolution? Or were we just crashing up and down on a much deeper wave, as history ploughed on regardless? Did everything change in ’67 with the new law? Was Stonewall the defining moment? Were we as free as we felt in the Seventies? Are we as free as we think we are now?”

From Rupert Everett's article on how far we've come from Wilde's day.
In the new New Statesman - guest-edited by Russell Brand.
In the shops now, but not online til Monday for some reason.

PS And here you can watch a bunfight between Mr Russell Brand and Mr Jeremy Paxman on last night's Newsnight.
Some have told me they detected a distinct homoerotic undertone.
Whatever, pseudo-radical wankers across perfidious Albion appear to have taken this as a stirring (not) call to arms.

Rupert Everett: Unvicious Old Queen

"Sex has passed me by. It's over! I've spent most of my adult life, since the age of 10, thinking almost exclusively about sex, and getting it, or recovering from it. But it's all smoke and mirrors to me now...
"Sex isn't really over. I'm just not motivated by it any more, and I used to be motivated by it purely. I think that happens to a man; it's part of a midlife crisis. But it's been quite nice, in a way, because I do lots of other things instead. Since it stopped, that major driving force, I've felt much calmer."

Rupert Everett interviewed in The Observer.

Even though he's an annoying posh gay, I have a begrudging respect for Rupert's ability to annoy even more annoying posh gaybores.
The outrage over him saying he thought gay marriage was "a waste of time" was totes hilair.
Though, disappointingly, he doesn't say anything very controversial here.

The Hollywood Closet: The Silence of La-La Land

Gay British actor Rupert Everett was recently on the BBC's Hard Talk warning that young male actors who were ambitious should not come out if they wanted to play leading roles.
When Rock Hudson died from an Aids-related illness in 1985, commentators bemoaned the intolerance of the old studio system that had compelled him to remain in the closet.
"Forty years ago, the world was a very different place and there were virtually no publicly available gay men or lesbians in any walk of public life," notes Brian Robinson, senior programmer at London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, of the period in which Hudson was working. "Now, lots of things have changed. A whole generation has grown up with an idea of normalcy about gay identity."
Even so, Hollywood is still in the business of making "four quadrant movies" – that's to say ultra-mainstream films appealing to males and females, young and old. When a studio spends $100m on a mainstream movie and an equivalent amount in marketing it at home and abroad, anything that can jeopardise its box-office performance is frowned on. Agents put pressure on their clients not to "come out"...

Geoffrey MacNab in The Independent on the Hollywood closet - a subject that obsesses the straight press almost as much as the sports/football closet does.
It's a bit of a brisk gallop from Valentino to producer Iain Canning, often veering off-course by introducing barely relevant quotes and anecdotes from the likes of screaming Tarantino.
MacNab doesn't come to any real conclusion beyond; "It's pressure from the risk-averse, profit-driven studios, innit?"
And it's sprinkled with more than a little irony as two of the three people he speaks to for the piece - a "gay writer" and "an industry insider" -  are both unnamed and anonymous.
Fingers crossed, they exist.

This article was one of several "inspired" by Jodie Foster's apparent coming out on Sunday - there have been eleven on the Independent online alone!
Some were gushy old guff, but several gay commentators have been rather sniffy and sour, leading Fagburn to invent a new word "Out-righteous, to describe a privileged gay man who looks down on a celebrity who's just come out for not doing so sooner.
It's yet to catch on.
The most offensive comment piece about all this was Amanda Platell in the Daily Mail, Why Jodie's Silence Spoke Volumes.
Do lesbians and gay men really need to be told by straight people - especially Daily Mail columnists - where they went wrong and how we should live our lives?

PS Have to admit Rupert Everett was very good on HARDTalk.

PPS Sorry about the forced pun in the title, I'll try and think of something better.

Rupert Everett: Stalking

“You were told [at school] that if you got a hard-on, you should turn over and say a Hail Mary. You somehow make it work for yourself, but it gives you lots of bubbles inside. I wanted to tear everything down, and the way I found to do it was sex.” With whom? “They didn’t necessarily have to be attractive. It depends how the lights are hitting you and how the drinks are hitting you.” Was it, I ask, self-hating? “Guilty, certainly,” he says. “My whole life was about sex, really, in one sense or another.” Aids terrified him: there was death everywhere in the 1980s, and the backlash was vicious. “People were really turning against gays — they had been so popular in the 1970s. Being black was rather popular in the 1970s, too.” This is a typical of Everett; just when you think he is sensitive and clever, he says something so fashion-stupid, I want to thump him.

We then have an absurd conversation about Ian McKellen, which demonstrates his ambivalence about his early life. When he was young, in London, he stalked McKellen, which is fairly normal for teenagers who find their backgrounds uncomfortable or dreary. According to his memoir Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins, he told a friend: “I am shagging Ian McKellen, I swear!” Since he is usually so talkative about his promiscuity, I ask him if it’s true. “No,” he says calmly. “I was friends with Ian McKellen.” But it’s in the book, I say, and I repeat the anecdote. “I did sleep with Ian McKellen,” he says eventually, and I feel unkind that I even asked. “I loved stalking people,” he says. “Now it’s illegal, such a shame. Such fun.”

Rupert Everett profiled in The Sunday Times.
Mr Everett has won much praise for his portrayal of Oscar Wilde in The Judas Kiss.
It transfers to the West End on Wednesday.
As it stars Rupert my chances of seeing it are less than zero.

Update: Rupert The Bore was also on The Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, sitting next to one David Cameron, who was enthusing about gay marriage.
Rupert said bluntly; "I can't stand marriage..."
Thus making "Dave" look rather silly. 

The Judas Kiss: The Resurrection

I missed this revival of The Judas Kiss, David Hare's play about the fall of Oscar Wilde
Oh Cadogan, oh Naples, oh Bosie.
It was widely derided when it opened in 1998, and for me, far more off-puttingly, this time round it starred Rupert Everett.
Oh dear.
But apparently it was - surprisingly - very, very good.
Oh well...

Stockholm Syndrome: Evil Men

Stockholm Syndrome describes the strange propensity of hostages to feel positively towards their captors – sometimes to the point of defending them. It catalogues the “strong emotional ties that develop between two persons where one person intermittently harasses, beats, threatens, abuses, or intimidates the other.” Gay men of Mr Starkey’s age remember well when the British establishment harassed and intimidated gay people, and the state’s reluctance to afford equal marriage rights continues those abuses today.
Mr Pierce, Mr Everett and Mr Starkey – as gay men, I do believe you have a touch of Stockholm Syndrome. The disappointing thing is that, deep down, I’m sure you would love to live in an equal society and enjoy the same rights as everyone else. It’s just so very sad, then, to see you lick the hands that push you down.

Paris Lees in Independent Voices.

Good piece as ever from Paris, but she neglects to state the obvious - gay men who are "anti-gay" are invariably middle/upper class snobs and/or really right-wing.
Mentioning no names [Cough! Mark Simpson].
What they hate is ordinary gay men - ie the rest of us.
Cause; "They're all so frightfully common and vulgar, yah?"
I wish them all dead.

PS Pierce looking slightly rougher there than the photo he uses in his Daily Mail by-line.

Rupert Everett: Dreadful. Snob.

"He's a dreadful snob, really." 

And that is all you really need to know. 
From a profile in The Guardian.

PS Vanished Years was serialised on the wireless this week, and I have to confess, I found it quite amusing. 

PPS Having a straight publication calling a gay man a "queen" in the headline, unsettles me. Am I alone in thinking this?

PPPS Rupert is one of those "queens" the broadsheets adore - "Ooh, he's bitchy, but clever with it!" (See also John Waters, Neil Tennant and the late Gore Vidal) - so he's probably everywhere this weekend. Forgive me if I don't catalogue them all.

Update: Claims in the Sunday Telegraph he's got "death threats" about his disparaging of gay parenting. You may note Dame Rupert hasn't contacted the police. Silly old drama queen.

Thought For The Day: Rupert Everett

When you’re young, you don’t care. I was busy constructing my identity — I didn’t give a damn about what anybody else felt. 
Looking back, I wish I’d not said tons of things. A lot of what I thought about life was just wrong! But it’s too late to worry about that now. Families are like desert islands, aren’t they? You’re all stuck there together, so you might as well get on. There’s no point in regrets. 
 [My mother] has met my boyfriend, but I’d imagine she still wishes I had a wife and kids. She thinks children need a father and a mother and I agree with her. I can’t think of anything worse than being brought up by two gay dads. 
Some people might not agree with that. Fine! That’s just my opinion. I’m not speaking on behalf of the gay community. In fact, I don’t feel like I’m part of any “community”. The only community I belong to is humanity and we’ve got too many children on the planet, so it’s good not to have more. 
The curious thing is that, as I’ve grown older, I find myself agreeing with my mother on lots of things. I look around at this new world we’ve created and I find it scary. We all share our problems on TV. We shed tears on X Factor. My mother would be far more stoic. After we lost my father, she just said: “This is how it is. Let’s get on with it”. She was right... 

The Sunday Times.

His mum said; "In the past, I have said that I wish Rupert was straight and, I probably still feel that. I’d like him to have a pretty wife. I’d like him to have children. He’s so good with children. He’d make a wonderful father. But I also think a child needs a mummy and a daddy. I’ve told him that and he takes it very well. He doesn’t get angry with me. He just smiles."

Aren't posh people odd?

PS A companion piece in The Sunday Times says; 'The actor Rupert Everett will upset fellow homosexuals [sic] with his views on parenting - WHEN Rupert Everett, the actor, came out of the closet more than 20 years ago he was heralded as a champion of gay rights.'
It's debatable when he came out, but no-one has ever thought Rupert was "a champion of gay rights."

Colin Firth: Begins Ambitious Project To Play Every Gay Man Who Ever Existed

'Rupert Everett will make his directorial debut with The Happy Prince, a comedic biopic on Oscar Wilde that will star Everett as the legendary Irish writer and playwright and Colin Firth as his friend and confidant Reginald "Reggie" Turner...'
Hollywood Reporter, 21st May.

'Colin Firth has signed up to star as Noel Coward in BiteSize Entertainment’s dramedy Mad Dogs and Englishmen, the story of Coward’s two weeks at The Desert Inn in Las Vegas in 1955...'
Hollywood Reporter, 19th May.  

As to whether either of these fillums actually get made...

Charlie Condou: On Being Frank

'For Rupert Everett it was clear cut. Coming out ruined his career. And if an Equity survey published this week is anything to go by, many actors feel the same.

'According to the survey, only 57% of gay actors feel they can be open about their sexuality to their agents. '"A previous agent of mine once told me to keep quiet about my sexuality and, though I am out, I do not broadcast it," said one.
'I can't relate at all. For my entire career I've never had a problem being frank about my sexuality, never felt I've been turned down for a role on the basis of being gay, and have only played three gay characters in a career that spans 20 years. The idea that keeping your sexuality a secret will win you better and more varied roles is a lame excuse – often the result of internalised homophobia rather than reality. The industry has moved on and it's time actors did as well.
'Some of Hollywood's most bankable actors are openly gay. Ian McKellen, for example, starring in some of the highest grossing franchises in cinematic history such as Lord of the Rings and X-Men, had his most commercially successful period as an actor after he came out in 1988. Look at how the career of Russell Tovey, openly gay from the start and one of this country's brightest young prospects, has blossomed. And my co-star on Coronation Street, Jeremy Sheffield, is still very much the housewives' choice and leading-man material – he's been out since he started. So why all the fuss?'

Charlie Condou -  who plays the bent Marcus Dent in Coronation Street - writing on Guardian Online. 

Well said, sir.

Though your list of "bankable actors" who are "openly gay" is not a very long one, is it? 

And I doubt we could stretch it that much further.
Which is odd - seeing as probably only cabin crew beat acting as a queer career choice. 

Hollywood's only just got its first out young male lead, Zachary Quinto.
And we're still waiting to see what roles he gets offered post coming out.

Not that that negates your original thesis, mind. 

Or does it?

Archbishop Of York: Isn't It Ironic?

There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth yesterday over the Archbishop of York's condemnation of gay marriage.
If you ask me, taking any notice of what Dr John Sentamu has to say on this matter makes as much sense as taking traffic instructions from a mad drunk tramp who's standing in the middle of a motorway and shouting.
Best to ignore the homophobic publicity-seeking mentalist, that's what I say.
However...
His comments were made in The Daily Telegraph, but there was a companion piece that the furore caused to be cruelly overlooked; 'Dr John Sentamu: Church Must Avoid Being 'Too Middle Class’
I only got round to reading it today and my bullshit detector fairly exploded.

See if you can spot any irony, contradictions, flaws, hypocrisy or good old-fashioned fuckwittery between Dr Sillyoldmoo's anti-gay comments yesterday and this:

'While the focus has often been on the introduction of homosexual and female clergy, Dr Sentamu is aware that the Church must do more to avoid its leadership being solely white and middle class.
“I used to chair the committee for minority ethnic Anglican concerns, and we seemed to be making some progress but that now seems to be going backwards. Where we have lost out is black people who had been realised Anglicans, who are now joining Pentecostal churches. That’s a huge drain.”
'He said white working-class parishioners were also poorly represented in the Church’s leadership, often being relegated to making tea after services, and highlighted support groups for single mothers and replacing theological books with audio versions as ways to help disadvantaged groups.
“The Church should be a sign of the kingdom of heaven and should be telling us what it will look like. Heaven is not going to be full of just black people, just working-class people, just middle-class people, it’s going to be, in the words of Desmond Tutu, a rainbow people of God in all its diversity.”'

Quite.
The article also reminds us that the archbishop is currently in Jamaica.
But how in the name of Jehovah did anyone miss this line?

"Back at his 1950s hotel in the coastal town of Ocho Rios, where he struck up an unlikely friendship with the actor Rupert Everett..."

One wonders what they find to talk about.
Unless "struck up a friendship with Rupert Everett" is a new euphemism, that is.
God bless!

Word Of The Week: Fagwa

Fagwa n.

Something that Rupert Everett said he would issue on "whoever wrote that scandalous review of Nicky Haslam’s book". The Sunday Times.

James Franco: Straight Acting Gay For Today

'Unusually for Hollywood, Franco is sanguine over speculation about his sexuality. He has a girlfriend, but has joked, after all the gay roles he has played (including Sean Penn's boyfriend in Milk), "maybe I'm just gay". Watching Howl, which is also a love story, you wonder if playing the gay Ginsberg is something only a demonstrably straight actor could risk.
"It's possible," says Franco. "I remember when Brokeback Mountain was being cast, people saying, 'Gosh, I wouldn't want to do that. A gay cowboy?' And I still get it – that's the bloggers' favourite topic, how many gay roles I've played. So it's territory where people pretend they're OK with it, but based on the amount of coverage that a straight person taking one of those roles gets, it shows that there's still a big bias. It's easier for a straight actor to play a gay role than it is maybe for an out gay person to play it; my sense is that a gay actor still feels he or she, if they came out, would be typecast and couldn't play straight roles after that. I don't know the ins and outs of Rupert Everett's story, but he certainly claims that happened to him."'

James Franco - interviewed in The Guardian - adds his two cents to the eternally gripping Straight Acting Gay/Gay Acting Straight debate.
By happenchance The Advocate has just put up an article online; "And the Gay Razzie Goes To... Forget about The Oscars. From J.Lo to Al Pacino, The Advocate looks at some of the actors who've perpetuated stereotypes and turned in terrible performances by going gay."
I'll put up the link when it fucking works!
Update: There we go...

The photo shows James Franco and Aaron Tveit in the movie Howl echoing a famous photograph of Allen Ginsberg and his lover Peter Orlovsky.

Will Young: Straight Acting Gay/Gay Acting Straight

This week's Popbitch gave us a fascinating little glimpse of what it's like to be at a press screening...

'Sky Living recently held a press screening for its new haunted house show, Bedlam, which stars Will Young. Unsurprisingly, the pop star was the focus of most of the Q&A. And we got a glimpse of what it's like to be one of the only prominent gays in pop.
So was poor Will asked anything about the show or his acting? Well, he was asked if
kissing a girl in the series was "rubbish".
To which he rather cooly replied "Do you mean because I am a homosexual?"
It got worse...'

Fagburn's sure that it did.
Today's Daily Mail have regurgitated Will Young's press call quotes into a feature; 'Will Young isn't spooked by success: Star shows different side in ghostly TV drama'
Like the tease - or possible double entendre - in the title, it's obsessed by the "gay plays straight" angle.

'You could almost believe Will has been possessed by one of the troubled spirits that haunt apartment block Bedlam Heights, as he recklessly kisses and caresses his young and attractive landlady Kate (Charlotte Salt).
A bit of a shocker, isn’t it, Will?
"I think the series has the potential to shock, although I hope you’re not ­suggesting it’s shocking because I am a gay man who gets passionate with a woman," says the singer, his indignation perhaps only partly for comic effect.
"There are plenty of straight actors who have played gay men. Why not a gay actor in a love scene with a woman? I think it’s quite refreshing."'

Fagburn really liked the way Will Young handled this vaguely offensive daftness.
But the thing is gay male actors have been playing romantic straight leads since before the dawn of Hollywood - all that's new is that many big name gay actors are now out.
Hence "Gay playing straight" has become a media trope in the US last year - partly prompted by a Newsweek article by Ramin Setoodeh, Straight Jacket, that argued that out actor Jonathan Groff was unconvincing playing it straight in Glee.
The cat was let out of the closet again more recently by Richard Chamberlain [Left] - an old school TV matinee idol, and quite a dish in his day.
Chamberlain told The Advocate in December; "There's still a tremendous amount of homophobia in our culture.
"For an actor to be working [at all] is a kind of miracle, because most actors aren't."
"So it's just silly for a working actor to say, 'Oh, I don't care if anybody knows I'm gay' - especially if you're a leading man.
"Personally, I wouldn't advise a gay leading man-type actor to come out."
Rent-a-quote ex-rent boy Rupert Everett told BBC Radio 1 he thought Richard Chamberlain was right - claiming the good non-gay parts dried up after he came out; "I just never got a job [in Hollywood] and I never had another job here for, I don't know, ten years probably after [coming out]."
There is an elephant-sized irony in all of this, of course.
All actors are acting, they get paid for playing someone they are not.
A further irony is that when a straight man plays a gay man it's often Oscar Gold!
The Bafta may well be in the goodie bag for Matt Smith playing Christopher Isherwood on the BBC later this year.
"I think that's fine," said Everett, "but that does mean the gay actor who used to just get to play the gay part - like me - has been reduced to drag really."
Hmm...
I'll leave the last few hundred words to Alan Cumming, talking to The Guardian last month;

'"I think it's so mean-spirited. If you're living a lie, that's not healthy, and I think it is really irresponsible of [Chamberlain] and Rupert to say these things."
But do they not have a point – that audiences don't seem able to accept actors who they know to be gay playing heterosexual lovers onscreen, and therefore their acting opportunities are instantly limited?
"But it's not about your work," he says, scornfully biting out the last word. "It's about how you exist as a person in the world, and the idea that your work is more important than you as a person is a horrible, horrible message. I always think about a little gay boy in Wisconsin or a little lesbian in Arkansas seeing someone like me, and if I cannot be open in my life, how on earth can they?
"Anyway, it's an academic question: how can you know [that coming out affects your career]? Some people get less work than others and it has nothing to do with sexuality."'

I wonder if he's talking about anyone we know?

Rupert Everett: The Arrest Of Oscar Wilde At The Cadogan Hotel

Rupert Everett has written a really good article for The Times today.
Will wonders never cease?
Regular readers of Rupert's column will know that he is currently staying at the Cadogan Hotel in Chelsea in the room where Oscar Wilde was arrested.
Mr Everett has been meditating about this - it was the anniversary last week, and Oscar died 110 years ago this winter.
"I am lying on Oscar Wilde’s bed in the Cadogan Hotel in Chelsea. It’s late, the night is cold and I am sipping at a weak hock and seltzer in his honour and gazing through the same Nottingham lace curtains that John Betjeman describes in his marvellous poem The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel."
That's one of fagburn's favourite poems, incidentally.
Cracks me up every time.
"Through the haze of gauze that still shrouds the bay window it could be 1895 outside. Pont Street still “towers red under the London sky”. Inside, the room is grey and high and luxurious with wooden floors and a huge bed, the perfect hideaway for an exiled movie queen..."
Each man creates the Wilde he wants, and Mr Everett's is Wilde as the world's first celebrity; "the most successful playwright in London at the time, but also a rather silly fairy sometimes."
His libel action against Queensbury was "a tragically blind example of early celebrity madness."
His fall is seen as not the wages of sin but the price of fame; "Success befuddled him. Add alcohol and sex to the mix and an almost syphilitic (maybe) sense of self unfurled, flapping uncontrollably in the changing wind."
After considering Wilde was caught up in a great political conspiracy, and surrendered himself to martyrdom, Mr Everett concludes; "Wilde may have been a silly fairy, but he is also one of my heroes...
"For me, he had the perfect blend of brilliance and silliness, of pride and humility. He was one of the first “stars” in the tradition of Byron and, with Paul-Marie Verlaine, one of the last great vagabonds of the 19th century."

Rupert Everett: Advertisements For Himself

Professional posh gay Rupert Everett has joined The Times writing a column for the Saturday edition.
We are now in week two - both columns were Rupert Everett writing about Rupert Everett and his fabulous lifestyle.
How very interesting.
"I must pay the council £10,000 for the pleasure of having scaffolding all over my flat for five months (with the sole purpose, it transpires, of painting some windows and replacing 27 tiles on the roof. A huge panelled staircase is seriously in need of repair but the budget for that was cancelled!). Not only must I pay for alternative accommodation but I must also pay more tax as our country scavenges a few more bob out of me to keep the war going and the banks afloat.
“I want benefits for being single. And what about all the tax I pay for being a f***ing queen in showbusiness?!”
Yes dear.