An ‘Ask for Clive’ poster recently appeared on my Faceache feed. Why ask for Clive? Living in our semi-rural bubble, we’re a bit out of touch with the big bad world beyond our fields of burnt gold. So I did some digging. It turns out that ‘Ask for Clive’ is an amazing nationwide campaign working with pubs and other venues to promote inclusion and provide safe spaces for LGBT people. It started with a sticker and a simple idea. Now thousands of supporters have joined up to stamp out hate and make inclusion a reality. It’s a welcome and much-needed antidote to today’s toxic politics supercharged by the rise of far-right nutters who, given half a chance, would lock us back into the closet – or worse.

Coincidentally, Clive also happens to be the name of my oldest friend who died suddenly in 2020. I think my Clive would be chuffed to see his name associated with an inspirational anti-hate campaign.

Ironically, adopting the name ‘Clive’ also now serves up a massive dollop of dark humour, an entirely unintended nod to ‘Tip Toe’, Russell T Davies’* recent psychological thriller which took gay bashing to a whole new, deeply disturbing level – a portent of things to come if we don’t watch our backs. If you’ve not seen it, Clive is the mad baddie you definitely wouldn’t ask for. The first episode features a lynching. We couldn’t watch the finale; it was simply too much.

* Russell T Davies is the supremely talented writer of the original pioneering Manchester-based ‘Queer as Folk’ series and the ground-breaking AIDS-era drama ‘It’s a Sin’, both for Channel 4, among many others.