Salvador Dali: Je Suis Fou

Brian Sewell Vs Coronation Street: How Terribly Vulgar

Well-known expert on working class Northern life, Brian Sewell, wades into the debate about all The Gays on our TV soaps before the watershed a-kissing and a-cuddling, asking;
'What Have They Done To CORRIE?'
In The Daily Mail, natch.
"Is it true that the lives of heterosexual Mancunians are haplessly intertwined with transvestites, transsexuals, teenage lesbians and a horde of homosexuals across the age range? Is Manchester now the Sodom of the North?
"Coronation Street has a gay scriptwriter, Damon Rochefort. Fine. Nothing wrong with that. Indeed, its very first writer, its inventor in 1959, Tony Warren, was gay and open about it when homosexuality was still illegal and the penalties dire — and had a tough time with homophobia.
"But the pendulum has swung to the other extreme, and where once we had no gaiety at all, we now, perhaps, have rather too much..."
Blah blah blah!
"As a result, TV is far too politically correct..."
Blah blah blah!
Mad conclusion coming up!
"If the audience responds to the proselytising and is happy for the street to swarm with gloomy lesbians and happy homosexuals engaged in relationships ranging from intensely monogamous to brief, shallow and promiscuous, then it must be broadcast after the watershed. ITV must make up its mind."
Did this commission for the Mail come over lunch with Paul Dacre?
How very stupid of Mr Sewell to enter into this debate in the pages of the Mail.
You silly old queen.

• You can watch Brian Sewell's filth-filled 2007 Channel 4 TV documentary, Dirty Dali here. How lucky for us Dali forever preserved young Mr Sewell wanking on film.

Update: On Thursday The Daily Star ran with a straight lift of this story titled 'Corrie Is Now Far Too Gay'.
They even trailed it on the front page - and guess what they illustrated that with?
A photo of two goodlooking young lesbians from Corrie snogging.
Won't someone please think of the children!!

Showbiz Memoirs: A Happy Finish

"An autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats."

George Orwell

I thought of this beautifully bleak quotation after reading John Harris's account of wading through the latest tranche of celebrity memoirs that have come out for Christmas.
If they write about My Struggle, they still seemed to be happy-go-lucky "tits and teeth" writing - and the fact that they are now a celebrity writing a memoir you are reading is meant to show the lie dream of life having a happy ending.
Here's Harris on Gok Wan's Through Thick and Thin.
"The plotline is simple and affecting enough: raised by a Chinese father and English mother who ran restaurants in Leicester, he feasted on what he calls "deep-fried love", and ended up chronically overweight, and bullied..."
And he's gay as a lorry to boot - should it be filed under showbiz memoir or Misery Lit?
And should every chapter be suffixed with the line; "But look at the bitch now!"?
This is autobiography as a 150 page makeover show.
The only book Harris said was any good was Paul O'Grady's The Devil Rides Out, which Fagburn can well believe.
His first memoir, At My Mother's Knee, was famously the first book in living memory to get a good review in Private Eye.
Though I'm not sure I'm completely at ease with people who are already very talented in one field who can also write extremely well.
Bastards.