Stephen Fry: Even More

"The reason two of my girlfriends married gay men is they make great, touchy-feely fathers, don’t object to lots of pink in the decorating, and have affairs with partners who don’t make the woman feel inadequate."

Liz Jones, being ever more baffling in The Mail On Sunday.
The article is called 'Watch Brief Encounter, boys. Then you might get us interested in sex'
Irony has just died.

Education: It's All Great To Me

"What," asks the teacher, "have Sir Elton John, Alexander the Great, William Shakespeare and Clare Balding got in common?"

They all bore the tits off me?

I was wrong - The Independent takes a different view.
They were all gay or lesbian or at least bisexual or something.
They're teaching school kids about the gays now, you know?
In Stoke Newington at least.
Whatever next?
Brighton?

John Grant: Professional Drama Queen

It was a low point — a syphilis diagnosis on the day that all the student doctors were in. “Twelve or thirteen of them!” beams John Grant. “Actually, I’d gone in to get treated for alcohol addiction but the nurse noticed this rash . . . ” It was just another day in New York for the singer, who had sunk into obscurity after the breakup of his band, the Czars, in 2004 and was trying to kick alcohol, cocaine and crack all at once, while waiting tables and sleeping on people’s floors.
The nurse was quite taken with her gentle, soft-spoken patient and offered to become his sponsor for Alcoholics Anonymous. In the absence of drugs and drink, Grant ramped up his addiction to unprotected gay sex. “I loved it. It was a great way to play Russian roulette,” he admits now. “I really dodged a bullet there.”

John Grant in The Times.
Fagburn isn't sure what he makes of John Grant - I quite like his album, but Grant keeps coming up with "Oh pity me please, I have been to gay hell and back" Rufus Wainwright/Judy Garland crap like this.
So you've taken drugs and had bumsex.
Big fucking deal!

I've pasted the interview in the comments section - take that Rupert Murdoch and your stupid paywall!

A Poem For Lawrence (Of Felt)

Lawrence
Lawrence from Felt.
And also from Denim,
who I preferred actually.
I wasn't too keen on Go Kart Mozart though.
Sorry.
No one knows your surname.
I do.
It's Hayward.
And no one knows I used to see you at Victoria Station buying cornish pasties,
except my friend Darren
who I've just told.
It was all you ever ate.
Or so I was told.
I bought the last Go Kart Mozart album at the HMV at Victoria Station funnily enough.
I wonder if it's still there.
Are you?

PS There's a great new fanzine - actually it's more of a book - about mad Lawrence, Foxtrot Echo Lima Tango. You can buy it here.

Jonathan Ross: Loves George Michael

"I love and admire George because he is so remarkably, uncompromisingly, perhaps even foolishly, his own man.
"I'm not talking about his recent late-night driving madness here, or indeed the brief stay 'inside' at her Majesty's Pleasure that was the inevitable end result.
"No, it's because the cherry on top of his remarkable talent is that he is a modern, gay man who refuses to act embarrassed, or even pay lip-service to dominant hetero-culture - instead offering himself up as a radical and yet much-needed alternative role model to young gay men who don't embrace camp or feminised homosexual behaviour as their own.
"A strong, butch, unashamedly gay man who does what he wants, when he wants to. I have nothing but admiration for his talent.
"Nothing but respect for his courage in the face of the sneering press that seek to diminish or destroy those that are different to them. And nothing but love for the whole package."
Joathan Ross writing for the re-release of George Michael's Faith album.

GT: It's A Sign... Of The Times

Here is a copy of the new GT (Gay Times).
Nah, I'm joshing you - in no way is Gay Times trying to market itself to teenage girls, sorry I mean teenage gays.
I've pasted the actual cover below - it has Shayne Ward off the X Factor fame on the cover!
Woopefrigingdo!
I hope they ask him if he likes going to gay clubs, cause that would make my fucking day.
Of course only a fool would say that the evil masters of "GT" are trying to turn it into a new Mizz or the old AXM - filled with who is "hot", style tips and dating do's and don'ts and that.
AXM was a magazine no-one bought - so they closed it down.
The Pink Paper was a paper no-one read - so they closed it down.
It's interesting to note that GT is now edited by Tris Reid-Smith, former editor of The Pink Paper (now deceased - twice) and AXM (also late of this parish).
To close one gay magazine may be regarded as a misfortune; to close three looks like cluelessness.
Tick tick tick...




Actually looking through it, there is some very good writing in GT, so kudos to them...

Stephen Fry: The Wolf Is At The Door

Can there be any more dispiriting trick in the journalists' lexicon than to start a column with the word "So"?
"So Stephen Fry has been in the midst of a whirlwind of condemnation for his remarks in an interview for a gay magazine in which he seemed to say that women — unlike gay men — don’t actually enjoy sex, and have sex only to secure relationships..."
Naomi Wolf writes in The Sunday Times - regardless of the fact Stephen Fry did not say that.
But after siezing the wrong idea, she then proceeds to take it for a walk.
Are some of her best friends gay?
You betcha!
If you believe Naomi, she was cruising the Castro in the Seventies...
"I remember hearing this oddly jingoistic notion — that gay men were the ones who really 'got it' about men and sex, and women had no clue and were just going through the motions — from a few gay men in the Castro district of San Francisco in the early 1970s."
It's such a cavalcade of nonsense it would be cruel to pick points in it.
But here's a highlight; "To state the obvious, women don’t tend to “cottage” because they can get raped and beaten up..."
To state the obvious gay men most often get beaten up when they are "cottaging" or "cruising".
Nor do they do it in inverted commas.
I could go on.
To be fair to Wolf, later in the week she did recant somewhat.
By adding the line; "To be fair to Fry, later in the week he did recant somewhat..."
Suffice to say that Wolf quotes two gay men approvingly; "the cutting edge" Andrew Sullivan and the "prophetic" Larry Kraymer.
It would be hard to find two bigger right-wing gay house trained homophobes - the "good" gays - apart from Mark Simpson, of course.
I. Give. Fucking. Up.

"My Son Is Gay" - US Mom Says "So What?"

The Mail On Sunday - the best newspaper in the world etc etc - has picked up on the lovely story about the US mom who stuck up for her son wanting to go all girly for Halloween and dress up as Daphne of Scooby Doo fame.
Their take on it: 'Mother sparks child welfare debate after posting picture of her 'gay' five-year-old in fancy dress on the internet'.
You couldn't make it up etc etc...

The Mail On Sunday's bulletpoints!

• Son dresses as Daphne from Scooby Doo for party

• Kidscape calls mother's reaction 'troubling and disturbing'

Here's the Mail's picture. They've blanked out the kid's face.
Why? Because they care...



Check the readers' comments - satire lives!
Here is his mom's wonderful post.
Fagburn loves the fact his mom posts as 'Cop's Wife'.
My friends Stu, Adrian and Peter would seem to indicate that a lot of policemens' sons turn out to be Daphne.

Tom Daley: I Say Nothing

I don't care if Tom Daley is "the oldest 16-year-old" – he deserves better than a provocative pose in his trunks and the "coming of age" coverline. If the same approach had been taken with a 16-year-old sportswoman, it would have been clearly exploitative. The same is true for Daley.
Alison Smith
Norwich

Working in the macho environment of a professional kitchen, I already get a lot of stick for reading the Guardian. A half-naked Tom Daley on the cover of Weekend, and a further 38 fully naked men inside did not help my cause when it was delivered to work last Saturday.
Jack Glossop
Linton, Cambridgeshire

Guardian Weekend letters.

By showing Tom Daley in a provacative pose in his trunks, The Guardian is now breaking this law: here.
Well done New Labour.

Phil Woolas MP: Good Riddance

So farewell then Phil Woolas MP.
"His 2010 election win was declared void and he was suspended by the Labour party.
"Mr Woolas faces a three-year parliamentary ban after being found guilty of deliberately making false statements about a Lib Dem rival in campaign literature," BBC News reports.
He made "false statements" - ie lies - which pandered to racists for electoral gain.
Woolas was New Labour's Minister for Immigration - so one could argue that his last job also involved pandering to racists for electoral gain.
Woolas also produced election pamphlets accusing the unmarried Lib Dem, Elwyn Watkins, candidate of lying about living in the constituency and making insinuations about his sexuality. Watkins was described as "a single man who lives alone with his mother".
Woolas oversaw the disgusting and indefensible policy that lesbian, gay and trans people seeking asylum in the UK could return to their countries if they were "discreet".
He is a scum egg.
As Woolas returns to life amongst his former constituents in Oldham East and Saddleworth, Fagburn hopes he will be discreet.
And then drop dead.

Dove Ads: Adventures In The Skin Trade

Fagburn is loving the new advertising campaign for Dove's new men care range, the imaginatively named Men+Care.
It's so manly!
Ads for male grooming products are often hysterically straight, and thus hysterically funny.
The subtext is often; "But using this doesn't mean you're a poof."
"Be comfortable in your own skin" is the message/moral in the Dove campaign, but it could be "Are you man enough to moisturise?"
I like the way the men in the Men+Care ads are frequently pictured with a baby - you may have to forgive Fagburn, but isn't the baby there to signify not cleanliness ("Take two babies into the shower?"), but heterosexuality?
I hope no-one tells Ricky Martin.

Fit: A Legz Akimbo Theatre Company Production

Reviewers are struggling to find le mot juste for the film, Fit - originally a Stonewall-backed DVD for schools to help tackle homophobia.
"Worthy", The Times thought.
"The message movie is a difficult thing to pull off. And Fit, commissioned by the gay equality charity Stonewall to combat homophobic bullying in schools, demonstrates the pitfalls time and again..."
Which sounds like a polite way of saying it's dreadful.
"Well-meaning", said The Guardian.
Both awarded it two stars - perhaps they awarded an extra star for effort?
Fit - written and produced by Rikki Beadle-Blair - began life as a play about The Gays performed in schools.
You can watch some trailers and clips here.
It does look "worthy" and "well-meaning", but reminded Fagburn of 'Everybody Out', the Legz Akimbo Theatre Company production from The League of Gentlemen.

Drugs: First Do No Harm

You can read Professor David Nutt's report, Drug Harms In The UK, in The Lancet here.
It's a sign of our society's political infantilism that something so reasonable has beencausing such a fuss, and we continue to cling to a drugs policy of prohibition that is failing so spectacularly and doing so much harm to individuals and society.
Professor Nutt comments on the sadly predictable manufactured outrage by the mediain The Guardian today.
The website of Nutt's Independent Scientific Committee On Drugs is a wonderful resource.
Here, for example, is Nutt writing about Mephedrone: An end to the madness?' in April.
Sadly the answer was in the negative, but the struggle continues.

Stephen Fry: And Finally...

Now I don't care about you, but I can't get enough of Stephen Fry at the moment.
So apropos of nothing here he is talking about men and women and sex on the What About Me? video project from way back in December 2008.

"Women for some reason like to claim that they're as excited about the idea of sex as men are - but it's such manifest nonsense.
"I mean when do women hang around in parks hoping for casual encounters with men? They just don't. The only ones who do it are prostitutes who do it for money - which proves the very point. They have to be paid to do it.
"Whereas when it's just men they don't want to have a relationship, they just want to have sex. Now if women were like that we all know men would say 'Oh thank you!'
"And for some bizarre reason women don't want you to believe this; 'Oh, that's not true at all. I saw a waiter the other day with quite nice buttocks, made me quite juicy just thinking about it.'
"And a man would say; 'Only the other day!? What about every fucking minute of every hour of every day? You just don't get it! You don't get it - what it's like to have one of these in your bloody trousers! You have no idea what it's like.'
"And women don't - and lucky for them."

Oh, and Stephen Fry has finally written his response to the whole Hate Week hoo-ha on his blog.
It is called simply - and fittingly - 'Silliness'.
A summary or a quotation would be rather inappropriate here, so I hope you take the time to read it.
Some of it's good, some of it's rubbish, but there you go...

Thought For The Week: Silvio Berlusconi

"As always, I work without interruption and if occasionally I happen to look a beautiful girl in the face, it's better to like beautiful girls than to be gay."

Silvio Berlusconi, Italian Prime Minister, billionaire, media mogul, crook, heterosexual.

"The Gays": Style Is All

The Guardian has just published the third edition of Guardian Style.
Fagburn is slightly obsessed with style guides and books about words, and is so sad he's reading this one - his most favourite - from cover to cover.
On page 128 we find the following entry:
gay should be used an adjective rather than a noun: a gay man, gay people, gay men and lesbians, not "gays and lesbians"
Fagburn loves the fact that an entry in a guide to good writing contains a howler - you may want to read it again, it should read "should be used as an adjective".
But anyway, your correspondent is in full agreement with the above - using "gay" as a noun or "gays" jars - nobody uses it in everyday speech, unless they're spectacularly out of touch.
It's become a joke, symbolising clumsiness and cluelessness, of someone not being "down with the gays".
Hence "the only gay in the village" in Little Britain, and Fagburn and others' ironic use of the phrase "the gays".
But it's a rule that The Guardian regularly breaks - cue miffed email from me.
They've just done it again.
Spain's gays and lesbians to stage 'kiss-in' during pope's visit
This might be understandable if it was used as the shorthand style that headlines are often written in, but it carries on in the text of the article.
"Spanish gays and lesbians will welcome Pope Benedict XVI to their country at the weekend with a massive homosexual kiss-in to be staged in front of Barcelona's cathedral."
The offence is compounded by the appearance of the hilariously old-fashioned "homosexual" in the same sentence.
Who says that anymore?
Apart from The Daily Telegraph, obviously.

Julie Burchill: Hating Stephen Fry

It was perhaps inevitable that Julie Burchill would wade in and use her piss-poor column in The Independent to turn her guns on Stephen Fry.
'Gay man lays into women, fine. But when it's the other way around...'
She then promptly proceeds to lay into various gay men.
Poor Julie - verily she is the stupid person's idea of a newspaper columnist.
She's always all over the place, as per.
Is she a homophile or a homophobe, lesbian or straight, Stalinist or Thatcherite, Jew or non-believer?
Why, it's almost as if La Burchill is making it all up as she goes along.
Or drunk.
Or she gets someone else to write chunks of it.
So what is Julie saying today?
I'm damned if I know - why not have a go yourself?
Blah blah blah. Graham Norton is "hideous". Gok Wan is "vile".
But for why? "Gay men seem to think that because they sometimes call each other 'she', they are honorary women and thus can chuck the gynophobic abuse around like there's no tomorrow.
"But let one woman – the real kind, not the pretendy drag-queen kind – pass a comment on gay male sexuality, as the journalist Jan Moir did on the death of Stephen Gately, and seven sorts of hell break loose. Indeed, Fry himself spat: 'I gather a repulsive nobody writing in a paper no one of any decency would be seen dead with has written something loathsome and inhumane.'
"I quip, he bitches, she makes a full-on hate-attack upon a persecuted minority and I'm going to report you to the Press Complaints Commission, so there! This seems to be the current attitude of a certain section of gay men to the tricky business of name-calling, and I can't begin to express what half-witted hypocrites it makes them look. A word of warning, boyz – you're still men, even though you're gay. If you insist on telling women what they are or what they want, be prepared to be judged right back in return by us. BTW, this wasn't an attack – think of it as a warning nip. If you can't stand the heat, get out of the bitching."
Silly old cow.

Marketing: In Every Dream Home A Heartache

Stonewall has just published a new workplace guide, Marketing: How To Market To Gay Consumers.
You can download a PDF here.
Blurb: "The seventh, on marketing to gay consumers, looks at how organisations can successfully adapt their marketing initiatives to target lesbian, gay and bisexual consumers. The guide features good practice examples of successful marketing campaigns and also recommendations on how to get it right once you've decided to produce a campaign. The guide was launched in October 2010."
And launched incredibly quietly for some reason.
Ben Summerskill writes in the introduction; "When businesses get this right, they don't only secure consumer loyalty from millions of gay people and their friends and families but also from millions more consumers who sense that the relaxed inclusion of gay people in advertising or marketing strategies is a telling sign of a 21st-Century product or service."
The guide begins by asking; 'Why implement marketing strategies that target gay people?'
Simples! "Gay consumers make up a powerful and lucrative consumer group, estimated to be worth £70-81 billion in Britain alone."
Curiously, no reference is given for this ludicrous figure.
They also quote an equally ludicrous figure that there are an estimated 3.7million lesbian and gay people in the UK.
The £70-81 billion figure means they would be worth £20,000 each - which is nice.
Anyway, the guide is packed with good advice, such as; "Targeting lesbians with imagery featuring gay male couples may not be effective."
The guide also recommends "Initiatives to engage with lesbian, gay and bisexual communities".
One example given is American Express supporting the Stonewall Brighton Equality Walk; "Aligning their brand with a reputable organisation like Stonewall allowed American Express to reach an extensive existing network of gay people and gay consumers."
The guide warns; "Respond robustly to any negative reactions to maintain the loyalty of gay consumers."
Perhaps this could have been illustrated with a mention of the biggest gay PR fuck-up of the year; Stonewall's refusal to come out for gay marriage.

There is a breathtakingly dumb article spurred by this in Marketing Week, 'Pink Pound's Value Rises In Mainstream Markets'.
Best bit: "Kim Watson, managing director for media and marketing at gay media owner MPG, claims that many brands have yet to acknowledge the benefits of gay-friendly communication. The pink press might seem like an obvious route to getting a message out to the gay community, but Watson says many brands are shying away from MPG titles, despite them having a combined circulation of about 500,000 a month."
GT and Diva have a combined circulation of 500,000 a month!!!?
But then what is marketing if it's not telling lies for a living?

Adoption: The Parents Are Not All Right

You gotta love The Daily Mail.
Not only do they wilfully grab the wrong end of the stick, but they'll then start beating people round the head with it.
Today they are wibbling on about the Coalition being " silent" over the Sexual Orientation Regulations which outlaw adoption agencies discriminating against gay couples.
I find their silence on this rather worrying for the opposite reason to the Mail, but anyway...
The law is quite simple; if you provide a public service, you can't let your bigotry stop you providing that service to members of the public you don't like.
The adoption agencies this has affected have all been Catholic-run.
The Mail has dreamt up a fantastically arse-over-tit term for this.
They call "the bar on adoption through Christian agencies that do not approve of gay rights" "Christian discrimination".
For the Daily Mail it would seem, lesbian and gay parenting is only okay if it's on film, and not in reality.

• Photo from the Swedish film, Patrik Age 1.5

Stephen Fry: Hated By The Daily Mail

Not that they're obsessed or anything, but The Daily Mail have splashed the Stephen Fry story across their front page today.
It's rather odd as they haven't really got anything new to add - but seem so keen to bash him they're pushing a reprint of Yasmin Alibhai-Brown's unbelievably shitty article from The Independent.
This has been re-titled for emphasis; 'Your problem, Stephen Fry, is that you just don't understand women (or like them very much)'.
It's one of three (!) articles, a second is a rehash by Rosie Boycott, who was quoted at length in The Observer article that kickstarted this Hate Week, asking 'So Is Sex Less Important To Women?'
It's not, in case you were wondering.
And Charlotte Metcalf writes a piece that's actually in agreement with what Stephen Fry actually said in the Attitude interview; "Women are driven by a ­different imperative, not by our libidos, to the extent that we’re willing to make fools of ourselves to satisfy men, which I think is the point Stephen Fry was trying to make."
Quite.
It must be hard for The Daily Mail to know how to treat Stephen Fry.
Many of their readers adore Fry the "National Treasure"; the witty posh clever clogs from the middle England comfort zones of QI, Jeeves & Wooster and the Twining tea ads.
And any friend of Charles and Camilla...
But he's also a naughty little bugger - who is quite vocal about hating The Daily Mail and all it stands for.
He was last on the front page of the Mail in September; 'What An Unholy Welcome To Britain - As Pope flies in for historic visit, Vatican aide brands UK a Third World country fuelling atheist hate campaign led by Stephen Fry'.
Fry blogged at the time; "Today’s headline and the leader inside however actually made me genuinely guffaw and wriggle with delight. It is the final proof, if proof were needed, that the Daily Mail is not just actually wicked (intentionally, knowingly lying) but actually now quite, quite mad. In the name (it must suppose) of morality, spirituality, goodness, kindness, sweetness and honesty it intentionally, knowingly twists, distorts, misrepresents, smears and calumniates. Will their editor and subeditors go to heaven? Is god pleased with them? Have they done a good deed? Is this their advertisement for the religious way? To lie?"
And - lest we forget - a year ago it was Fry who spearheaded the campaign against Jan Moir's odious Daily Mail column about the death of Stephen Gately.
He memorably tweeted; "I gather a repulsive nobody writing in a paper no one of any decency would be seen dead with has written something loathsome and inhumane."
Is it any wonder they're giving Mr Fry such a damned good kicking over this?

Gay Parenting: It's The New Gay Marriage!

Simply everybody's talking about gay parents!
And everybody's cooing over them and their babies - bless.
It seems slightly strange after all the parliamentary rows over gay adoption, and lesbians and IVF treatment.
Maybe no-one actually thinks it's a bad thing apart from a few right-wing religious nutcases?
There's those lovely lesbian moms, Nic and Jules, in The Kids Are All Right.
There's gay dads Cameron and Mitchell with little baby Lily in the hilarious Modern Family - they're even funnier than the Drewitt-Barlows.
And Latino newly minted homogay, Ricky Martin, has just told Oprah Winfrey he came out in March for his twins, Matteo and Valentino.
"I couldn't take it any more. It was too painful," he told the billionaire media magnate and student of bees.
"I guess the most important thing is my children. When I was holding them in my arms I was like 'What? Am I going to teach them how to lie?'
"That was my blessing right there. Then, when I was holding my children, I said: 'Okay, it's time to tell the world'."
Blub!

Scrabble News: Hey Mikki, You're So Fine

To celebrate Mikki Nicholson (pictured) winning the National Scrabble Championship while dressed in a matching shocking pink PVC dress and wig - without anyone so much as batting an eyelid - one of Fagburn's favourite hacks, hetero queen Craig Brown, reminds Daily Mail readers that cross-dressing-up is as English as roast beef, rain and rioting.
"In the evening, I went to the nearby village of Firle. An ­elaborate Guy Fawkes party was underway.
"It kicked off with a vast procession of trusty villagers dressed in ­high-camp costumes, escorting papier-mache effigies of Cameron and Clegg.
"It continued with three robust village men clad in equally camp priestly robes denouncing Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators. Each of them looked just like Ann Widdecombe on Strictly Come Dancing.
"What a topsy-turvy world it is! It can’t be long before the Cabinet assembles in ballgowns and the England football squad run onto the pitch dressed from top to toe in chiffon. But now you must excuse me: my stilettos are killing me."

• From The Guardian website: 'This article was amended on 1 November 2010. The original referred throughout to Mikki Nicholson as a man. This has been corrected'. "Nicholson said she had been diagnosed by a psychologist as a woman trapped in a man's body. She has not undergone any surgery."

Iraq Wikileaks: "Pentagon Knew About Gay Killings"

"A 2005 document included in the nearly 400,000 US Department of Defense records recently posted on wikileaks.org shows that the Pentagon was aware of the organized killing of gay Iraqis more than 15 months before those murders were first reported, in Gay City News.
"'The male was shot (___) times in the chest, and a note was discovered on the body stating that the man had been killed by ___ for stealing cars and being homosexual,' read the January 1, 2005, memo, in which some words were redacted.
"The body was discovered in Ramadi, a city in central Iraq, and a note was left at the scene by the gunmen who killed the man. The fact that the note was written in advance of the killing suggests that the gunmen knew whom they were targeting and why they were killing him, and had time to plan and prepare for the murder..."

More from Duncan Osborne at Gay City News, New York

Fostering Court Case: "Sorry, We're Bonkers"

'Christian couple 'doomed not to be approved as foster carers for views on homosexuality'' reports The Daily Mail.
"A couple are ‘doomed’ not to be foster parents because their Christian beliefs prevent them from accepting homosexuality, the High Court heard yesterday.
In a landmark legal case, Eunice and Owen Johns argue their rights are being ‘trumped’ by those of homosexuals under equality legislation..."
But during interviews with social workers in 2008, they admitted they would not be able to tell a child that a homosexual lifestyle was acceptable because this would conflict with their traditional Christian values.
"Mrs Johns has said in the past: ‘The council said, “Do you know, you would have to tell them that it’s OK to be homosexual?” But I said I couldn’t do that because my Christian beliefs won’t let me. Morally, I couldn’t do that. Spiritually I couldn’t do that.’"
Of course Mr and Mrs Johns shouldn't be allowed to look after children - they're clearly fucking mental.
Case closed.

Update: David Cameron spoke out in support of the decision reports the Telegraph.

Stephen Fry: What She Said

Oh bottoms!
It seems Stephen Fry has said something stupid.
Which means it's open season on Stephen.
The "National Treasure" has become an overnight pariah.
Welcome to Hate Week.
Columnists have been queueing up to say something stupid about Stephen back.
Yesterday Stephen Fry tweeted; "So some fucking paper misquotes a humorous interview I gave, which itself misquoted me and now I'm the Antichrist. I give up... Bye bye."
He seems to have meant it - today his Twitter account is "no longer in service".
A big queeny hissy fit?
Or another nervous breakdown and a moonlit flit to France, or worse?
Paul Flynn, the (very good) journalist who interviewed Fry for Attitude, says Fry was not misquoted.
Going back and looking at the interview in Attitude makes things none the clearer.
Fry is talking about gay teenage gay crushes, and crashes right into the stuff about womens' sexuality, but so sharply it looks like there are a few lines missing.
"I get an enormous amount of mail from young gay people who are in love with people in their school. 'How do I tell them? If I do tell them, will they beat me up? I think they maybe know?' It's so touching and sweet but also one must never underestimate the overmastering power of the emotion they feel. It consumes them. Those things are not to be sniffed or laughed at. They do consume you. I think most straight men feel they disgust women. They find it difficult to believe that women are as interested in sex as they are. For good reason. If women liked sex as much as men there would be straight cruising areas..."
You know the rest.
But how on Jupiter did Stephen Fry get there from there - a spectacular leap of the imagination about the nature of desire?
Whatever, please note, he was making an almost banal point; men - straight or gay - are more interested in sex than women, they're more sexually driven.
Is there any debate about this as a generality?
Stephen Fry does have some odd views about sex - and for many years was celibate as he seemed rather disgusted by it himself.
Or by himself.
But can we keep to what he actually said in the Attitude interview, please?
He did not say; "Women don't really like sex" - as it was put in the headline to The Observer article that began this perfect shitstorm.
Its author, Polly Vernon, editorialised a prophecy; "the remarks... are likely to be roundly dismissed by those who have embraced the idea of women's ability to have unemotional, uncommitted sex as an empowered lifestyle choice."
And then she found two writers to do just that.
Susie Orbach told Vernon; "Why would he believe that women could be so disgusted by men?"
He didn't - Fry said; "I think most straight men feel they disgust women."
Fagburn presumes he meant not because men are inherently disgusting, but because men have very dirty minds.
The Telegraph today quoted Germaine Greer; "Stephen Fry is clearly under a delusion that he is an authority on female sexuality. Well, if he thinks that women are not interested in genital encounters with total strangers then he is absolutely right. But to conclude that we are therefore uninterested in sex is madness."
This was a constant riff, with a distinct whiff of homophobia in the way Fry's sexuality was constantly referred to; "What does he know - he's gay?"
"Stephen Fry offering up his views on female sexuality is a bit like Wayne Rooney spouting forth on Aristotle..." (Bryony Gordon).
Though straight commentators felt free to pronounce forth about gay sex - or "homosexual intercourse" (Laurie Penny, The Guardian)
We were told it is "bad, filthy, grubby, disgusting and dislocated from the emotions." (Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, The Independent)
But Stephen Fry didn't say women were "uninterested" in sex, just not as interested as men.
By Chinese whispers, this was even twisted into 'Stephen Fry: Women Hate Sex'.
This is why it all really blew up, Fry was painted as colluding in the denial of all female sexuality, and of female sexual pleasure; viz Germaine Greer's now famous phrase "The Female Eunuch".
Or worse, that he hated women; a collective slur on gay men every bit as offensive as the above.
In The Independent, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown declared; 'Fry's misogynistic view is of women as evil temptresses'.
But by what warped logic is what he said misogynistic?
And how can you accuse him of thinking women are "temptresses" if you say he said they don't like sex?
And moreover how the fuck can you justify claiming he thinks women are "evil" - an incredibly low blow.
Alibah-Brown set about demolishing a "national treasure" - her words - with (anti?) gay abandon.
She even fell back on a variation of that old bigot's standby; "Some of my best friends are..."
"Most of my good gay friends truly like femininity. But I have known some phobic ones too..."
But what has he said that was "phobic"?
Slightly silly, yes - but he probably meant it to be.
Offensive? Clearly it was, if only to those who wanted to be offended.
But there simply was no misogyny in what he actually said.