Category: Family & Friends

Top of the Pansy Pops 2025

Yes, folks, it’s that time again when I look back at another year of my missives from the sticks. The most popular broadcasts of 2025 have a distinctly nostalgic feel, with the leader-board dominated by anniversaries and commemorations, righting wrongs, resurrected traditions, memory lanes and old haunts, and topped with a trip to the seaside.

Numbers-wise, Perking the Pansies enjoyed the best year since 2014, so there’s still some life in the old blog yet. Blimey!

Oh, I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside

What better way to spend a sunny spring afternoon than a trip to the seaside? We’d never been to Southwold, the classy resort on the Suffolk coast because, without our own wheels, it’s a bit of a trek. So an equally classy neighbour took pity on us and offered to take us. We had a…

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Idyllic Ithaca – the Return

It’s taken quite a while but we’ve finally recovered from our frolic-filled sojourn on Ithaca. For our second expedition, we were accompanied by a couple of fellow village people who added an extra helping of spice to the mix. We had a ball. We haven’t laughed so much in years. It was well worth the…

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Nowt as Queer as Folk

Ours is a quiet little village where little happens except for occasional (but mercifully rare) low-level anti-social behaviour – like bored teens on the wacky baccy and cheap cider mucking about down by the river. But there’s one misdemeanour guaranteed to get everyone’s blood boiling – dog poo. Man’s (and woman’s) best friend is big…

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Turkey Street with Bettany Hughes

People who know me know that I love an old ruin. Nothing gets me going more than a pile of ancient tumbledown stones. When I can’t visit ’em, I watch programmes about ’em on the box. And few TV pundits get the sap rising better than classical scholar Bettany Hughes. Buxom Bettany flits and flirts…

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End of a Vera

I am bereft. After 14 series over 13 years, we’ve just watched the final two episodes of Vera, featuring the dishevelled and irascible detective from the fictitious Northumberland and City Police Force, played with great panache by the wonderful Brenda Blethyn. Based in and around England’s most northerly county, Vera blends the gritty streets of…

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Okay, You, One Sentence Should Do It

Our double anniversary has sneaked up on us again – 19 years since our eyes met across a busy West End gay bar fit to bursting with a gossipy after-work crowd, and 17 years since we got hitched. This year, we’ve decided to push the boat out and paddle down the Seine. Yes, we’re off…

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Lest We Forget

We joined the enthusiastic crowd of locals gathered on Church Plain in front of the Loddon War Memorial to celebrate the 80th anniversary of VE Day – the end of the Second World War in Europe. The organisers did a splendid job. So too did the kids from the local primary school who serenaded us…

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Happy Birthday, Perking the Pansies

“In the beginning there was work and work was God. After 35 years in the business, the endless predictability made me question the Faith. Liam, on the other hand, was neither bored nor unchallenged but was routinely subjected to the ephemeral demands of a capricious boss, a soft and warm Christmas tree fairy with a…

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LGBT Armed Forces Memorial – No More Shame

Last month, His Maj, King Charles, dedicated the first national memorial honouring LGBT armed forces personnel, 25 years after the ban on LGBT people serving in the military was lifted. Before this, those who were – or who were thought to be – gay or transgender were subjected to interrogation and discharge, a brutal and utterly needless…

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Dwile Flonking

A couple of summers ago, I wrote a tongue in cheek piece about Dwile flonking, a notorious East Anglian pub game involving two teams of twelve players, each taking a turn to girt (dance) around the other while attempting to avoid a beer-soaked dwile (cloth) flonked (flung) by the non-girting team. Imagine my amazement to…

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Once again, a five-year-old tongue twisting post about a game old bird fit for the pot took centre stage – all thanks to the magic of AI. In fact, it’s currently the most popular post of all time. Blimey!

I’m Not a Pheasant Plucker

When I put food out for the birds, I don’t expect a big fat pheasant to waddle along and scoff the lot. Bold as brass it was. Where’s the pheasant plucker when you need him? I feel a tongue twister coming on. I’m not the pheasant plucker, I’m the pheasant plucker’s mate, And I’m only…

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And what was the most popular image of the year? Drum roll please…

This image of John Garner and me from our first holiday together – to Majorca. Anything that keeps alive the memory of an extraordinary young man is fine by me. As I once wrote in a book…

I remembered John cuddling a weeping stranger at London Pride after the red balloons had been released, each one commemorating someone who had died of AIDS. I remembered John buying a McDonald’s Happy Meal and handing it, without a word, to a beggar on the street. I remembered John helping a drunken tramp to his feet because he’d fallen over and cut his face. I remembered his quick wit and winning smile that lit up my life.

Perking the Pansies, Chapter 15, Jack’s Guardian Angel

Happy New Year to one and all. If I were the praying kind, I’d be straight down on my knees wishing for a lot more peace, goodwill and glad tidings in 2026.

Dancing Queens No More

As our birthdays are just two weeks apart, each year Liam and I tend to mark them together. Nowadays, as befits our budding dotage, our jollies resemble more of a pensioners’ outing than the bop-til-you-drop of our yesteryears. 2025 also marks me reaching my latest chronological milestone – 65 – so Liam planned some fancy ticklers to get me in the mood. First on the menu was a glass of overpriced plonk in a Canary Wharf wine bar followed by a surprise dinner date with family. We dined on Italian, washed down with copious amounts of gossip and scandal – naughty but nice!

 The next morning Liam took me up this…

… for a full-on full English with a show-stopping view at the Sky Garden. Perched on top of the Leadenhall Building – affectionately known as the Walkie Talkie – the Sky Garden is London’s highest public green space, with panoramic views of the city. It was a gorgeous crisp day with the sun hanging low in the wispy blue, so our snaps aren’t all that. But you get the picture.

After breakfast, we wandered through the City in a vain attempt to burn off the calories, passing ‘the Monument’, the enormous column commemorating the Great Fire of London of 1666, and then across the Thames to Southwark – pronounced suth-erk – via London Bridge. We strolled along the busy Queen’s Walk, passed HMS Belfast and through Hays Galleria before crossing back into the City via Tower Bridge.

Our final destination was St Katharine Docks, immediately downstream from the Tower. Once part of the Port of London, the docks have since been repurposed as a place to work, sleep, shop and sup, centred around an upmarket yachting marina. After a quick gander, we found a place to sink a bottle and watch the world sail by.

Afternoon drinking can be exhausting even for these two old lushes, so it was back to our Westferry digs for a kip. We had to be fresh and fragrant for the main event, which was…

This was our second visit to the breathtaking ABBA Voyage, located by the deliciously named Pudding Mill Lane Station. Our debut performance was in 2023 as part of a birthday bash for the good wife of our local pub’s (now ex) landlord. Back then, we wiggled about like has-been dancing queens to the ageless ABBA classics. This time round we booked comfy seats in the auditorium. This old codger has finally hung up his dad-dancing shoes, much to the relief of all those around. Well, I don’t want to put my back out.

Idyllic Ithaca – the Return

It’s taken quite a while but we’ve finally recovered from our frolic-filled sojourn on Ithaca. For our second expedition, we were accompanied by a couple of fellow village people who added an extra helping of spice to the mix. We had a ball. We haven’t laughed so much in years. It was well worth the hour-and-a-half delay at Stansted Airport, the three-and-a-half-hour flight to gorgeous Kefalonia, the hour-long taxi trek across the island to the pretty port of Sami, the two-hour wait for the thirty-minute ferry to Ithaca – enough time for a liquid lunch – and, finally, the half-hour cab ride to Frikes.

Even the ferocious squadron of wasps sharing our breakfast buffet each morning didn’t manage to spoil our picnic. Neither did the nasty mozzie bite on my once pert posterior.

Our ouzo-fuelled romp was liberally sprinkled with hot-off-the-press gossip, laced with the lewd and the rude. Here’s a few choice phrases chucked into the drunken conversations. A bit of camp old nonsense, I think, but if bawdy double entendre ain’t your thing, then best change channels now.  

“Need to get some water on my aubergines.”

“Our neighbour’s always going up my back passage.”

“Well, there was that time when my friend shat in a Pringles tube.”

“Apparently, Keira Knightley buys her onions from a veg shop in Bungay.”

“So, the doctor just shone his torch up my backside and said, nice and clean.”

“Oooo, you’ve got a lovely little foible!”

“You gotta keep your own hair on your own seat, right?”

“It’s true! She came home with a pickled foetus in a jam jar.”

“So there I was, just standing there holding my swimming teacher’s long pole.”

“It’s like butter off a water’s back.”

And the evergreen classic…

“So, is your cervico intacto?”

 “Oo-er. Didn’t know you spoke Latin.”

Massive hugs to our splendid travelling buddies. Thank you for the good times to be treasured. You know who you are.

Idyllic Ithaca, we shall return again.

Top of the Pansy Pops 2024

The 2024 top of the crop had a distinctly thespian theme – gays and the arts. Could it be any more of a cliché? Or maybe it just reflects a need for a distraction in worrying times. Who knows? Also thrown into the mix were celebrating the life of a dearly departed, a fond memory from our lotus-eating days in Turkey, and a few Greek postcards from gorgeous old Corfu Town. Oh, and then there was the little piece about my money-making side hustle as an Only Fans porn star. If only.

For some inexplicable reason, a 2020 post about a game old bird fit for the pot waddling around our modest small holding took off. Why? It’s a mystery.

Also, numbers-wise, Perking the Pansies enjoyed the best year since 2016, so there’s still life in the old blog yet. I thank you.

Happy New Year. Let’s hope for a lot more peace for 2025.

Top of the Pansy Pops 2025

Yes, folks, it’s that time again when I look back at another year of my missives from the sticks. The most popular broadcasts of 2025 have a distinctly nostalgic feel, with the leader-board dominated by anniversaries and commemorations, righting wrongs, resurrected traditions, memory lanes and old haunts, and topped with a trip to the seaside.…

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Extra-Special Christmas Guests

Liam and I had intended to enjoy an intimate Christmas dinner for two with all the trimmings. But, at the very last minute, we binned boring old traditions and invited a few of our closest friends to the table to drink us under it. But who were they? To our right sat multi-Michelin starred potty-mouthed…

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Where Love Lives

This Christmas, as is our habit, we’re looking forward to calorific grub, artery-hardening afters and pick ‘n’ mix snacking, washed down with a barrel of posh plonk (all courtesy of Mr Marks and Mr Spencer) and seasoned with a little peace on Earth. The last one seems to be a rare commodity these days; we can only…

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Pantos and Parties

Storm Darragh barrelling across angry skies couldn’t keep us from our annual panto and party pre-Christmas pilgrimage to The Smoke. The London Palladium pantomime this year is Robin Hood, starring the outrageous queen of high and low camp, Julian Clary, and his usual cast of merrie men and women. The vocal act is Jane McDonald – every pensioner’s favourite cruise-line crooner – as Maid Marion. And the likely lass from Yorkshire can really belt out a tune. Lavish, filthy and with a plot as flimsy as a Christmas twig, the show is a belly-laugh sacrament that’s become a firm festive fixture for these two village people.

The gusty winds and horizontal rain drove us into various watering holes to dry off and warm up. Everywhere was rammed. But even these two old merry men don’t drink before midday, so we spent one morning wandering around the splendid Museum of Science, one of the holy trinity of world-class museums along Exhibition Road in South Kensington – the V&A and the Natural History Museum being the other two must-sees. Like the pubs, the various galleries were rammed, not with dripping trippers but with wide-eyed kiddies in backpacks and waterproofs. It’s a fascinating place to spend a few hours, whatever the weather.

We also had the good fortune to catch up with family for much-missed hot gossip and to meet the latest editions to the clan – twin girls. And gorgeous they are too! It made these two old festive fairies very proud great uncles.

A Family Affair

This week has been a double bill of showbiz fun featuring our local innkeeper’s talented family. First to mince across the boards was the master of the house himself, Simon Peck. Simon played Roger De Bris in The Producers, Mel Brooks’ notorious black comedy. The story centres around a dodgy theatre producer and his accountant who together hatch a get-rich-quick scheme to swindle investors – by staging a gay romp about Hitler that’s designed to fail. De Bris, an uber-camp, cross-dressing director whose shows rarely get past the first reading, is hired to make doubly sure the musical flops.

If offence is easily taken, then Springtime for Hitler, the musical within a musical, is superficially offensive on every level. But it’s outstanding, a satirical piss-take at its most piercing. And Simon Peck was brilliant in it as the OTT limp-wristed luvvie – as camp as a row of tents – a role he was simply born to play.

Down the years, The Producers has achieved cult status and expectations were high, but we needn’t have worried. The entire top-notch cast at The Pavilion Theatre Gorleston put in a stonking performance. These two old gay luvvies loved it.

Talking of cross-dressing, next up was a stage version of the 1998 film romcom Shakespeare in Love from The Echo Youth Theatre at The Garage in Norwich. Echo Youth always put on a good show. And for this production, gender roles were mostly reversed. Whether this was due to a shortage of boys in the company or as a statement about the ban on female actors in Shakespeare’s day (a key theme in the plot), it worked extremely well.

Young starlet in the making, Alice Peck, played one of the leads as playwright Christopher Marlowe, a contemporary of the Bard. In the show (as in real life), Marlowe comes to a sticky end in a pub brawl. Ms Peck gave a glowing performance, lighting up the stage. And she died well too. In a good way, of course. Alice’s brother, Rory, whose principal role was playing clarinet in the chorus, had a hand in her undoing. Did he volunteer? We can’t say.

A special mention must go to the young chap playing Elizabeth I. Let’s face it, Judi Dench is a tough act to follow and he did a great job. Oscars all round, we thought.

The Ties That Bind

My oldest friend died in January 2020. He’d just finished his shift as a drama teacher at a North London school and was about to drive home. He had a cardiac arrest in his car. It was sudden and without warning. He died shortly afterwards.

We met in the first year of our secondary school and meandered through life together – the fab times and the not so fab times, the love affairs and the broken hearts, the loss and the recovery – just like family. And it’s fair to say that, also just like family, we didn’t always see eye to eye. In fact, we sometimes clashed and quarrelled. But through it all, we remained truly bonded, more like brothers than friends. He even remembered me in his will, which was completely unexpected.

Rather than commemorate his death, instead we celebrate his life. And we do this around his birthday. It’s that time of year again so we’re off to old London Town to raise a glass or four with a few choice friends. It will be a day of gossip and giggles. He would have loved it.

Cutting Room Floor

I’m off-air while Liam and I are perking our pansies on pretty Paxos. While we’re away, here’s a selection of photos that ended up on the cutting room floor, blog-wise. It’s an eclectic mix of random snaps – local and London – plus a really ancient polaroid of me back in the eighties on godfather duty. The babe in arms is now in his forties and his own babes in arms have reached school age. Yes, I feel really old.

Banquet at The Angel, Loddon
Norwich Ukulele Society
School LGBT Helpline
Glitzy London Minaret
Spooky London Church
Easy, Boy
Drippy Garden
17th Century Weaver’s Cottage – Our First Norwich Gaff
Our Vows, Renewed
Yuletide Dino
Bond Bug
The Godfather – Yes, That’s Me!

Lost Boys and Fairies

Sometimes something just turns up without warning, punches you in the gut and has you reaching for the Kleenex. Such a thing is Lost Boys and Fairies, the three-part prime time BBC drama about a gay couple – Gabriel and Andy – applying to adopt a child in Wales. No big deal in these more liberal times, you might think. It’s all about love, right? Except it is a big deal. Not because of the gay angle but because the adoption process is forensic and intrusive. It has to be. Kids in the care system are often already badly damaged, and getting it wrong can finish them off for good.

Cue the gradual opening up of old wounds for lost boy Gabriel – the strict chapel upbringing, the relentless bullying, the repression, depression, an over-fondness for risky pleasures and eventual salvation through sequins and song. Brilliantly scripted, peppered with Welsh, tender performances and gloriously showy musical interludes. Glitzy and graphic, the drama pulls no punches. At times, it’s uncomfortable viewing. Does it end well? Watch it to find out, but don’t forget the tissues.

Not Gay At All

Back in the seventies, catalogue shopping was all the rage and buy now, pay later was my old Mum’s mantra. The entire family was kitted out on the never–never, all for a few shillings a week for 52 weeks. Her catalogue of choice was Freemans and no one was more excited than me when the latest glossy collection dropped on the mat. For some strange reason, I was always drawn to the men’s underwear section – endless hours of fun thumbing and fumbling. I can’t think why. But, for me, it brought a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘mail order’.

My best friend at primary school was a boy called Christopher and, one Saturday, Christopher and I decided to go newt hunting on Wimbledon Common. He arrived at my gaff fully prepared for our safari in all-weather gear – sensible shoes and waterproof anorak. And what was I wearing? A little two-piece number I’d picked out from Mum’s catalogue – matching tight t-shirt and skimpy shorts in sunny yellow towelling with bright blue piping.

I was 10. Not gay at all. And, yes, it rained.