Sunday Night At The London Palladium: Bona Hoofer

"Vada the bona lallies on the feelie," was, apart from a few "good mornings", my only welcome as I entered my new dressing room backstage at the London Palladium.

I would later learn that the greeting was in a theatrical patois called Polari and translates as: "Look at the kid with the lovely legs."

It was my first day at the world's most famous variety house.

I had never heard of Polari and I must confess not to a flush of fear but more a cynical sneer as I crossed the boundary between classical ballet and the commercial theatre.

The gobbledegook greeting confirmed my worst fears...

Live television changed my life. Being on stage in the first place is both scary and rewarding but knowing you have to be perfect, often with minimum rehearsal, for 20 million pairs of eyes, strips you to the core.

There is no second chance, you either hit it 100 per cent immediately or you are dead.

When your too-tight pants split, which they do often, or your partner hits the floor, there is nothing you can do but keep on smiling and bashing it out...

A sweet piece in The Sunday Express where Jeffrey Taylor remembers being a dancer on Sunday Night At The London Palladium in the 60s. 

Jeffrey is now a regular theatre reviewer for the Express.

Gay: OK

Gay OK? Well, it's certainly something to think about.

Update: The cast and crew of Coronation Street have made a video for Manchester Pride! Okay...

Sunday School: Come Thou With Us

Frankie Goes To Hollywood got banned for less - time to end the pro-Christian tyranny!

The Guardian: Gay Shame

A triple-whammy for The Guardian here.

Because of their secret editorial ruling that gay men's faces can not be shown, this story - which is of fuck-all relevance to British readers - is illustrated by two men in silhouette behind a rainbow flag!

Fucking hopeless.

Bad Cop: Good Cop

Gay Star News think this - a cop saying some bad things about the gays - is a big story, but the shooting of an unarmed black man is a mere 'controversy'.

But hey, cops are 'hot'.

Unquestioning worship of state power? Gay Star News Loves!

PS Racists love GSN.

Television: Gay Bars

Vito Spatafore, The Sopranos.

When we talk about the so-called Golden Age of Television that we are presently living through, the common elements of the conversation are well-established: anguished middle-aged white men, their put-upon and much-despised wives, issues of sexual assault and debates about ultra-violence. But as I have been watching through “Friday Night Lights” for the first time, it struck me that some of these shows have another element in common: surprising encounters in gay bars...

In prestige television, gay bars act as a kind of portal: Straight characters step into them and are surprised by what they learn, not only about men they thought they knew, but about themselves. It is a measure of both the promise and limitations of the so-called Golden Age of Television that the treatment of gay men in homophobic organizations by “The Sopranos” did not prove quite as influential as James Gandolfini’s performance as the titular mobster.

Alyssa Rosenberg, WashingtonPost.com

Update: We need more sex on (US network) TV, The Advocate.

In No Way Racist Tweet Of The Day: Patrick Studwick

Last time I went to Notting Hill Carnival - 20 years ago, aged 17 - a torrent of "batty boy" homophobic abuse came my way. All day. Enjoy!
— Patrick Strudwick (@PatrickStrud) August 23, 2014

Scratch a gay wet liberal and find a gay...

'Imagine if he said that about black people!'

Oh, he has.

David Sedaris: The Men That Got Away

It was a Friday night in mid-July, around nine o'clock, and Hugh and I were at the dinner table, eating this spaghetti he makes with sausage in it. We've been together for 23 years, and for some reason I waited until this moment to ask how many people he'd slept with before we became a couple.

Hugh looked at the ceiling, which is crisscrossed with beams, and, to my great consternation, spider webs. I'm vigilant, really I am, but out in the country there's no keeping up with them.

"So?" I said.

"I'm thinking," he told me.

I used to know how many people I'd slept with. After meeting Hugh, though, I took myself off the market and the figure faded from my memory. If I were to slog through all my old diaries I could certainly retrieve it. Twenty eight?

Thirty? Do I include those early gropings? They felt significant at the time, but does it qualify as sex if you never took your clothes off, or actually touched anything with your bare hands? I wanted to ask Hugh, but he was too busy counting. "Thirty two, thirty three..."  

I put down my fork. "You're not finished yet?"

"Shhh," he said. "You're making me lose track."

It shouldn't have surprised me. When you look like Hugh, all you have to do is leave the house and people will approach you, especially gay men, the dogs. His handsomeness was never my own personal opinion, rather, like the roundness of the Earth, something society generally agrees upon. Without my face to use as bait, I had to work a lot harder than he did. There are times, I'll admit it, when I had to beg. That said, some of Hugh's earlier choices seemed poorly thought out to me, especially once Aids came along.  

"Thirty five... thirty six."

Every man ticked off on his fingers was someone I'd been compared to at one point or another, not overtly – he's anything but cruel – but surely it happened. Someone kissed better than me. Someone had more stamina, a more seductive voice. I'm confident enough to compete against a dozen of his exes, but he was moving on to the population of a small town.

"Thirty eight, thirty nine…"

By what miracle had neither of us contacted Aids? How had we gotten away? I don't just mean later, when people knew to be safe, but back in the days when it didn't have a name and no one understood how it spread. One of the men Hugh had lived with – a professor he had in his first year of college – had died of it in the late 80s, and surely there were others, on both my side and his. Yet for some reason we'd escaped, had prospered, even. Now, here we were, the shadows lengthening, our spaghetti growing cold as he hit the half-hundred mark, then blithely sailed beyond it.

Whore.

David Sedaris, pictured with Hugh Hamrick, from a selection of celeb recollections, The One That Got Away in Guardian Weekend.

PS Meet David Sedaris is currently on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 4 Extra. Yowsah!

The Guardian has a "best of Blind Date" magazine today. Not got it yet, but I imagine it's pages and pages of this. pic.twitter.com/zD7UcoAPxx
— The Guyliner (@theguyliner) August 23, 2014

Brighton: Notorious Gay Dogging Site

Fagburn gets the impression no-one at the Daily Star has a clue what goes on at this 'notorious gay dogging site'.

Or, indeed, what the action looks like.

Oi! Gay men do not go dogging - FFS, we have some standards!

Further, the story is based not on how 'FAMILIES hit out at a council', but a story in the Argus yesterday where a gay man complained about the poor lighting down the Bushes.

The Daily Mail is also not happy - and Mail Online readers are MAD AS HELL! 

How disgusting, if my husband and I went for a quickie behind the bushes and got caught, they would throw away the key. etc etc.

But it's not all homophobes...

Joyless gayers for UKIP - YAY!

Co-op: When In Doubt Blame Paul Flowers

The Sun.

Wow! It's been literally three months since you've had a go at Paul Flowers.

Where have you been, lads?

For the record, Paul was a non-executive director of the Co-op and didn't actually make any financial decisions, so blaming him for the Co-op's current woes makes about as much sense as blaming Her Majesty The Queen for the recession.

His only crime still seems to be having way more fun than your readers do - and, unlike some journalists I could mention, he never tried to claim it back on expenses.

Fagburn remains as ever #TeamFlowers. x

Sam Smith: The New Normal

Sam Smith is a rarity in the pop world, and not in the way you might think. He's young, with a soulful voice beyond his years, but that really only makes him the male Adele. No, what makes Smith different is that he's openly gay at just 22 – rarer in contemporary culture than you might think.

More than that, Smith is an openly single gay man in pop culture [sic], which doesn't seem that surprising until you think of all those who came out before him. The Neil Patrick Harris and Matt Bomer types come out with secure partners, while the Jonathan Groffs and Zach Quintos generally keep their romantic lives very private. Not so for Smith; the young Brit is quite happy to spout his opinions about relationships and dating.

Unfortunately, those opinions have so far been poorly phrased at best, and boorishly wrongheaded at worst. The most recent of these involved Smith bashing dating and hookup apps like Grindr and Tinder, saying that they're "ruining romance" in a recent Metro interview. Smith found his current beau through more traditional means – so he wondered, why can't everyone else?

Your average 22-year-old gay guy shares plenty of half-formed opinions over brunch mimosas. But when Sam Smith dishes these hot takes out, he does them in an international media interview. If he wants to push forward on this path, he's certainly free to do so – but he should probably know what he's getting into first.

In May, after releasing the decidedly queer video for "Leave Your Lover" featuring a gay love triangle, Smith came out publicly. In an interview with Fader, Smith explained that his album In the Lonely Hour was about his unrequited love for another man, and described himself as "comfortable and happy" with his sexuality.

But then he continued: 'I’ve been treated as normal as anyone in my life; I’ve had no issues. I do know that some people have issues in life, but I haven’t, and it’s as normal as my right arm. I want to make it a normality because this is a non-issue.'

Today's show is brought to you by the word normal, folks. Used in a sentence: "Sam Smith desperately wants to be considered normal." ...

Kevin O'Keefe, The Wire.

Stephen Fry: More Fool You

Stephen's in serious danger of writing more 'autobiographies' than Katie Price.

Prepare yourself for a multi-media blitz around this come September.

And when I say 'Blitz', I mean 'Run for cover!'

Fagburn liked his last one where he wrote; 'Sorry, I've written about all this before.'

PS Haven't  heard a word about Stephen and his new young actor friend, Steven Webb, for a year.

Hope they're both okay.

If not, there's probably yet another volume of memoirs to milk out of it.

Divine: Trash

The estate of gay icon and John Waters muse Divine (ne Harris Glenn Milstead) was illegally usurped from his cousins, who are his rightful family heirs, according to a U.S. District Court judgment out of Orlando on July 10. The ruling is a black eye for Michael O'Quinn, who had befriended Divine's mother, Frances, and become her business manager and later was named as a beneficiary to the estate in an addendum to Frances' will. (The estate reverted to Mom after Divine's death at 42 in 1988 from an enlarged heart.)

The court now has ruled that O'Quinn, who has worked as a costumer at Universal Studios' Florida theme park, willfully ignored Frances' will revision in 2008 that bestowed the estate to her nieces and nephews. Noah Brodie, a Warner Bros. studio lot VIP tour operator and O'Quinn's former business partner in Everything Divine, which was set up to leverage Divine's assets, discovered the shenanigans while in talks with a cosmetics firm in 2011 about a Divine-themed line.

"It's such a unique and unusual intellectual property," Brodie tells THR. "I was duped, but eventually [O'Quinn] got caught in lie after lie." O'Quinn could not be reached for comment.

The Hollywood Reporter.

Loxfest: What Has Am, What Has Am, What Has Ambridge Done To Deserve This?

Pet Shop Boys have been announced as the surprise headline act at Borsetshire's first and finest music festival, Loxfest!

Fagburn is too thrilled for words.

Apart from all the words I am now typing, clearly.

The episode will be broadcast on Monday.

This is like, I dunno, Chomsky appearing on Curb Your Enthusiasm or something.

Fagburn would like to pad this out with loads of hopeless farming puns on Pet Shop Boys' song titles - West End Cows, It's A Pig etc - but needs a lie-down now.

PS But does this mean Ambridge rejected Morrissey?

PPS Next Pets' stop Festival No. 6 at Portmeirion! Now that's a nice venue...

Queer+ Friends Of Chelsea Manning: An Open Letter About Wikileaks

Dear all,

As many of you will already know, in recent days Queer+ Friends of Chelsea Manning has publicly distanced itself from Wikileaks. 

Wikileaks has relied upon Chelsea’s cables for many years and has repeatedly not referenced those cables back to their publicly known source. They are not Wikileaks' cables, they are Chelsea’s cables. She is the one facing 35 in a cell and being denied therapy for releasing them. Wikileaks faces zero years. Credit is necessary so that the public can know the source of their information - which also helps Chelsea’s case and increases the number of her supporters and her chances of being released early. 

Wikileaks has not supported Chelsea’s case as much as it could have - Jaraparilla has just retweeted two cases on Twitter, attempting to show Wikileaks has supported Chelsea, one case was 622 days old and both tweets are so old that they both use Chelsea’s dead name. Please, never use Chelsea’s dead name, otherwise you will alienate a large proportion of the trans community - a community Queer+ Friends of Chelsea Manning has worked a great deal to connect with. This is a community which has very high awareness of Chelsea and which is, on the whole, very supportive of her. We are not even able to share urls containing Chelsea’s dead name because it’s rude and not acceptable. 

I know many of you personally and I have a huge amount of respect for all of you. Yes, all of you, despite what I have said. 

I have done one thing and I will continue to do one thing while running QFCM: I will absolutely, and categorically, continue to support Chelsea Manning - her best interests are paramount. 

I have no idea who, on this list, has what influence with Wikileaks but Wikileaks needs to be more supportive of Chelsea Manning and they need to do it now. I am not going to stop criticising Wikileaks publicly until this situation changes. 

Every single decision I make concerning this campaign has and always will be preceded by the question “Is this a good thing for Chelsea?”. And this includes the decision to criticise the morality of Wikileaks. 

Coming out has not been easy, I read some awful tweets, but silence is not something I do well. Not anymore, at least. 

I know many of you will not be interested in campaigning with us in future, but if you want to you would be very welcome. 

I have tacitly supported Wikileaks for too long, I am happy I have made this move despite the angry response.

Best, 

Oliver Shykles

Queer+ Friends of Chelsea Manning
Email contact: 342d495a at opayq.com

• Chelsea Manning says she is being denied gender-reassignment treatment: Defence department’s promise ‘is not being honoured’ The Guardian.

Love Is Strange: People Are Stranger

The MPAA [Motion Picture Association Of America] movie ratings are supposed to provide information on a movie's content, so parents can decide whether or not it's suitable for their children.

But what kind of information are they really providing? And what are they assuming we want to protect our children from? ...

[Opening this weekend] is "Love Is Strange." There is no nudity. There are no sexual situations. The drug or alcohol material mostly consists of adults having wine with dinner, or cocktails at a bar. There is no violence or gore. There are several scenes of men kissing, and two scenes of a gay couple sleeping together, fully clothed, in bed. It is rated R ['Not appropriate for people under 17 unless accompanied by a guardian']...

Not only is there nothing violent in "Love Is Strange," there's not even anything explicit. It is about as mild and mainstream a portrayal of gay life as you can imagine. Ben, played by John Lithgow, is a 71-year-old retiree. George, played by Alfred Molina, is a music teacher at a Catholic school. In the film, they have been together for nearly 40 years (until, in a unfair and sudden reversal of fortune, they lose their apartment).

It's a simple human story. And it is very hard to imagine that — if it starred, say, Robert Duvall and Jane Fonda as a similar long-time couple suddenly facing homelessness — it would be lumped in with movies crammed full of queasily stylish sexism and sickening torture porn. This is a gentle, if often heartbreaking story about two loving men in a long-time committed relationship. What on earth is in it that so horrifies the MPAA?

I'm sorry. I think I just answered my own question.

Stephen Whitty, The Star-Ledger Via Queerty.

This got picked up everywhere, here's The Guardian saying it's HOMOPHOBIA!

Can't say I'm totally convinced by this, sounds more like someone (1) at MPAA just being dumb.

And Whitty's conclusion that it was picked on cause it's a 'story about two loving men in a long-time committed relationship' is dumber still.

Cause dull heteronormativity is so threatening, yeah?

Queerty used this story as an excuse to run quotes from 17 straight actors talking about playing a gay character. So brave etc etc...

PS Love Is Strange is the most romantic movie of the year, Slate. Chances of Fagburn watching it now - zero. 

BBC Autumn Highlights: Gay Porn And Propaganda

Brace yourself because a whole host of gay characters are about to hit your TV screen.

BBC drama boss Ben Stephenson – paid a staggering £247,800 per year, paid for by your TV Licence – has declared that he is making it his business to make his homosexual persuasion everyone else’s. *

The compulsory TV Licence for television owners in Britain goes entirely to the BBC. Are you happy paying for this kind of television?

From the BNP Facebook page.

Have to say I'm shocked to hear these racists cunts are still going.

The BBC will show gay porn on CBeebies!!

* This is a twisted version of a talk given six months ago.

Tweet Of The Day: Banter

I hope everyone in the world poos themselves to death and the moon gets AIDS and Jesus gets fucked by a horse. #banter
— Noun (@ncguk) August 22, 2014

Am I alone in not caring much about this story?
Footyball bloke is a bigoted prick shock!

Crystal Meth: The Musical!

METHTACULAR! written and performed by Steven Strafford, directed by Adam Fitzgerald, is Strafford’s hilarious and harrowing account of his three year run as a crystal meth addict in Chicago. As Steven weaves together stories, songs and Facts of Life references, audiences will laugh their way down into the depths of a drug addled, sex crazed life. Methtacular! is a roller coaster ride you won’t soon forget. 

At last...

Thought For The Day: Peter Robinson

It's very easy to sit at a desk criticising charitable acts. It's also easy to bake a potato; that doesn't mean it's wrong.

Peter Robinson, Lost In Showbiz, The Guardian; Ice bucket challenge: a celebrity wet T-shirt contest that has nothing to do with charity.



PS That might be it from me today.

Local News: The Bushes

PARK workers are being told to let the bushes grow at a well-known gay cruising spot to keep illicit activity out of sight.

Bushes are left tall around Duke’s Mound public gardens for “obvious reasons”, according to Brighton and Hove City Council’s parks department.

In an email responding to a resident’s complaint, a Cityparks worker said: “We have been advised to let the bushes grow tall for obvious reasons and always err on the side of caution when pruning due to the sensitivity of the area.

“The thinking behind this is to keep the activities mentioned all in one place.”

However, local resident Peter White, who is gay, fears the steep land that separates Madeira Drive and Marine Parade in East Brighton is being neglected by authorities and is becoming a “ticking timebomb”...

Sussex Police Inspector Brian McCarthy said the area was part of the force’s “everyday patrol” and police would “deal positively and appropriately with any reported acts of violence, drug-taking, indecency or exposure in a public place where members of the public are caused alarm or distress”.

The Argus.

A great ad for the fun-packed Bushes - thanks The Argus!

Clickhole: If Gay People Said The Things Hungry Straight People Say

Totes hilair satire on what's become a YouTube cliche! Enough!!!

Pride: Now That's Magic!

Modern culture is obsessed with the idea of gays giving straights a moral makeover. Apparently gays are really politically switched-on and super-fashionable – not to mention dab hands at interior design! – and so they are encouraged to grab straights by the scruffs of their badly dressed necks and turn them into better people. You see this trope everywhere these days: in Queer Eye for the Straight Guy; in the Aussie reality TV show that sent a busload of drag queens to “educate” the beer-swilling inhabitants of South Australia; in Glee, in which pretty much every storyline involves a monosyllabic jock having his prejudices corrected by a shy, erudite gay kid. The TV Tropes website describes this kind of character as the “Magical Queer”, who has “all of the wisdom in the world because he is gay” and who is often charged with “bringing culture to his heterosexual brothers and sisters”...

The Magical Queer trope takes on a political edge when it is applied to the miners’ strike. What we have here is a subtle but quite profound rewriting of history, with the miners’ strike wrenched from its historical context and turned primarily into a problem of attitudes among far-away communities rather than a life-and-death political conflict. Thatcher might have beaten the miners, but it is the new cultural treatments of their strike that really bury them, through reducing them to little more than exhibits in today’s moral trial of British men and our being found guilty of having been too macho for too long and now needing to become softer, more consensual and a bit more gay...

Brendan O'Neill, The Telegraph blog.

[Insert obligatory, 'Now while I don't agree with everything Brendan O'Neill says...' caveat here].

I haven't seen Pride (The Movie) yet, but there is something deeply disturbing about how fawning and uncritical the coverage has been.

See the ever-so-slightly OTT quotes used on the poster above, for example.

The cover of the latest issue of Attitude even declares it; 'The greatest gay film of all time'. 

Of course it is, dear. 

Maybe this is because the subject matter is - now that enough time has passed - a wet liberal's wet dream?

And how ironic that a film about working-class resistance, rebellion and non-conformity should induce such cosy bourgeois conformity.

For shame.

PS Brendan O'Neill's piece seems to be founded on a belief that homophobia no longer really exists and all is hunky-dory for The Gays now. If so, may I kindly ask him to read the Telegraph readers' delightful comments? A gay version of Lewis's Law?

Update: The Daily Express - that well-known champion of striking workers and gay rights - has called it 'an absolute joy from start to finish'.
Makes you suspect the people behind this film have fucked-up big time, no?

Marriage: We Don't

More than 1,400 same-sex marriages have taken place in the UK in the three months since they were made legal, official figures have revealed.

The statistics are the first measure of the popularity of David Cameron's legal changes that were passed in 2013 despite opposition by some prominent Conservative MPs.

There was a rush of couples tying the knot after the law came into force at midnight on 29 March. Over the next two days there were 95 same-sex weddings, with 351 in April, 465 in May and 498 in June, according to figures from the Office of National Statistics...

The number of women marrying outnumbered men, with 796 female couples compared with 613 male couples. The average age of women marrying was 37, more than a year younger than that of men...

The Guardian.

As these figures are for the first period ever that same-sex couples could get married, it's safe to assume this will probably represent a splurge and the figures will settle down to something significantly lower.

But the latest ONS statistics on straight marriage show there are about 65,000 each quarter - that's almost 50 times higher.

Which could mean there aren't actually that many gay people [see Fagburn passim].

Or that we're just not that interested in getting married.

Or maybe it's a bit of both?

WHO CAN BILLY WELL SAY!!???

PS Fagburn will be setting up a crowdfunding thingy for his own gaywedding shortly. In the meantime feel free to send me money via PayPal. x

Update: Spookily enough, the Susan Calman Is Convicted episode 'Equal marriage' was repeated today. Please listen, it's fucking hilarious.

Morland: Made In Britain

@mortenmorland for The Times.

• How The War On Terror Created The World's Most Powerful Terror Group - Patrick Cockburn.

PS On reflection Fagburn gets the feeling his interpretation of this cartoon may be very different from the artist's intention.