Category: LGBT

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 witch hunt that ruined countless lives. Ironically, in the past when the nation faced an all-too-real existential threat – a couple of world wars – the top brass didn’t care less where you stuck it so long as you kept your mouth shut and didn’t frighten the horses. We were all cannon fodder back then.

The memorial in bronze, at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, takes the form of a crumpled letter featuring words from those affected by the ban, with the words ‘pride’ and ‘solidarity’ highlighted.

Here’s what the Beeb had to say about it…

The memorial is especially poignant for me, not just because I’m an ex-forces brat who was born in an army barracks, or that I am a great believer in natural justice and fair play for all. It’s also because, in the early nineties, I met Duncan, a dashing young former naval officer who was forced to walk the plank simply for being gay; another irony given the senior service used to be described as ‘rum, bum and the navy’. Even Churchill said something similar.

Duncan didn’t take it lying down. Oh no, he joined three other ‘dishonourables’ and took the UK Government to the European Court of Human Rights. Against all odds – including a hostile press and the pissed off powers that be – they won. Soon after, much to the horror of a few fuddy-duddy generals and bearded rear admirals, the ban was overturned.

Here they are then and now, with Duncan on the left…

Of course, it wasn’t just the four gay crusaders who made it all happen. There was a small army of supporters bringing up the rear. And the rest, as they say, is LGBT history. My history.

Take a Walk in My Shoes Again

While we’re perking our pansies on Ithaca, I’m reposting something from the time we first tasted the wine on Odysseus’ fabled isle. So ladies, gents and everyone in between, take a walk in my shoes all over again…

I gloriously misspent my youth trawling the sleazy dives of many of the world’s great metropolitan sin bins – London, Amsterdam, Paris, New York and Los Angeles among them – and cruising the hedonistic no-holes-barred gay fleshpots of Europe – Ibiza, Sitges, Gran Canaria, Mykonos. My dance card was rarely empty and I had a ball. But, there comes a time when the spirit is no longer willing and the flesh is in bed by midnight.

These days, a gentle week around a cool pool with a good book, a glass of something local and Liam by my side is what gets the pulse racing. Let me take you on a walk through laid-back Frikes, our latest tranquil bolthole, a cute village on the northeast coast of the pine-dressed Greek isle of Ithaca.

Courtesy of JustGreece.com and Jorgos Nikolidakis

Spuds, Spies and Something for the Weekend

The renaissance of the iconic Battersea Power Station and its surroundings isn’t the only radical regeneration along the old Thameside rust belt. Virtually the entire south bank from Grosvenor to Vauxhall Bridges has been transformed by new fancy offices and posh flats along Nine Elms Lane. At the Vauxhall end once stood Market Towers, a typically seventies block with the Market Tavern on the first floor. It was added for the traders who fancied a pint or two after a hard day’s graft shifting spuds and sunflowers at the nearby New Covent Garden Market*.

Come the weekend, though, an altogether different trade was transacted. The pub doubled up as a gay bar, particularly popular on a Sunday afternoon because the boys just loved to booze and cruise after Sunday prayers. I should know, I was one of them. I misspent many an afternoon there during the nineties and noughties. As did Jean Paul Gaultier during his Eurotrash years. But I was never tempted to try my hand in the very ugly and very derelict Nine Elms Cold Store next door. Many a randy lad came a cropper cruising its dark and dank corridors. Plunging down an unlit crane shaft was not good for anyone’s health. Ironically, it was built on part of the 17th-century Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, which had pleasured Londoners for over 200 years. Both Market Towers and the Cold Store are now gone, swept away by redevelopment. Ah, the memories.

Alongside the ribbon of luxury riverside high rises sits the HQ of MI6, the UK’s spymasters, as featured in a number of James Bond films. And not far away is the new, fortress-like US Embassy, which looks like it sits on a lazy Susan. No doubt, both buildings are bristling with various top-secret ways to detect and deter, disrupt and destabilise. Is their proximity to one another just a coincidence? I wonder. Let’s hope they’re keeping us safe from Tsar Pukin and his deadly cronies.

MI6
US Embassy

*The old Covent Garden in Central London is now an uber-busy tourist hotspot, so you won’t find Eliza Doolittle flogging flowers and warbling ‘Wouldn’t it be Loverly’ on the steps of the Royal Opera House.

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 to gay Paree for a gay old time. For these gay old timers, this means a gentle stroll along the handsome boulevards and a big slice of café culture rather than painting the town pink in our disco pants. Our tush shaking days are long gone.

In the meantime, I stumbled across this old Faceache post written by him indoors to mark our seventh anniversary. Liam was challenged to say it all in a single sentence and he did it in style. He wrote…

Seven years ago we met in that bar in Trafalgar Square, shared that Sloppy Giuseppe and over-priced Pinot Grigio, argued about the bill, eventually went Dutch, courted for months like a pair of 1950s Catholics (for heaven’s sake), collapsed out of exhaustion into the world of jiggy-jiggy (terribly messy but strangely exciting), fell madly in love, got married (nice suits), moved in together (delicious scandal), watched the curtains twitch (mostly nets), gave up everything sensible and moved to Turkey (what was wrong with Spain?), fell in-and-out-and-in-and-out of love with an extraordinary (no, challenging, misogynistic, homophobic, primitive and God was it cold – okay I loved it) place, you writing ‘that’ book, ‘that’ book getting critical acclaim and big sales (cha-ching) but ‘that’ book largely ignored by those close to us (discuss?), coming back to look after our own (good call), becoming poor, well poor-ish (bad call), discovering the great city of Naaaarwich (nuff said), having more jiggy-jiggy (apparently unnatural, but terribly good with central heating and an injection of Radio 4 LW), re-discovering UK culture like a long lost friend but afraid to tell the expats how wonderful it was in case it came across as boastful (fine line), you becoming ‘properly’ recognised as a ‘proper’ writer (hurrah!) not to mention radio star (OMG), me re-learning Bach fugues (they are SO hard to play, even harder than Mozart, you really have no idea how my fingers ache), both of us weeping like candles at the latest Cinema City flick (okay, mostly Dame Maggie and thank God for the discounted tickets and blood-warm Merlot at the bar), getting over-excited about that converted railway carriage in miles-from-nowhere (yes, I could wash my bits in a sink with a view like that), improvising those make-shift nappies during the messy norovirus days (thank you Blue Peter and Morrison’s super-padded 2-for-1 kitchen towels, we owe you), people-watching at the Playhouse and longing to be young (clearly, we need to avoid Death In Venice comparisons here), gasping at Bonnie Langford’s amazingly flexible crack (and boy, can that Dolly can write a tooone) but most of all, keeping our focus, always, on making sure our glass is resolutely full. I’d say it’s been an extraordinary seven years, husband.

Sometimes, Big Boys Do Cry

We binge-watched the third and final series of Big Boys on Channel 4, having been hooked from the very first episode of series 1. A semi-autobiographical account of the university years of writer and comedian Jack Rooke, Big Boys follows his journey from freshers’ week to graduation. As if coping with teenage angst and social awkwardness isn’t enough, Jack is also dealing with the agony of his father’s tragic death from cancer and exploring his own sexuality. The real Jack is both writer and narrator.

BAFTA nominated and featuring a rich tapestry of vivid characters, the sad-happy comedy deftly weaves together challenging themes of grief, coming of age, mental health, suicide and sexuality with a beautifully light touch, making us belly laugh one minute and well up the next. It’s rude, lewd and pulls few punches.

Jack’s touching relationship with his mother is one of the show’s many incredible highlights. Here’s a small taste from series 1. His coming-out confession halfway through the clip gets me every time. Because, sometimes, big boys do cry.

Jack on Wiki

Blimey, you could knock me down with a feather boa. I’ve made it onto Wikipedia. Ok, it’s only the cut-down, ‘Simple English’ version but it’s still Wiki nonetheless. I’ve been cited in a page about LGBT rights in Turkey. The article says:

Jack Scott, a British writer who moved to Turkey with his partner and who is the author of Perking the Pansies: Jack and Liam Move to Turkey, said his “obvious union with Liam has never attracted bad publicity from any Turk”, talking to the real estate company Quest Turkey.

What I actually said was…

“My obvious union with Liam has never attracted bad publicity from any Turk. I just assume, as non-Moslem foreigners, we are infidels and Hell-bound anyway so it hardly matters what we do.”

Not quite the same, but never mind. You can read the full Wiki article here:

LGBT Rights in Turkey

Even though my first book is pretty old hat these days, I’m chuffed with the plug. In fact, I have noticed a recent spike in sales across the pond. A coincidence? Who knows?

So it seems I’m nearly famous, in a fly-by-night, here-today-definitely-gone-tomorrow kinda way. We left Turkey in 2012, so infamy has come late in the day. Well, at least it’s not posthumous.

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.

Love Actually

Christmas is almost upon us, and it’s a big deal for local businesses trying to make a few extra shillings before the January slump. As regular readers know, Liam and I like a drink or three, so we do our bit to keep the hospitality sector afloat – it’s our patriotic duty. One of our…

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Hair Dos and Don’ts

On a trivial note, the thing that intrigued me about the guinea pig kids I ‘interviewed’ a couple of weeks back was the boys’ hair dos. They tended to fall into two cuts, style-wise – all swept front and centre, or flapping about behind. The front loaders resembled an alpaca, whereas the back flappers were…

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Guinea Pig Kids

Strolling through our hamlet, you could be forgiven for thinking it’s one sprawling retirement village with more mobility scooters than you could shake a walking stick at. We don’t see too many teens milling about the sleepy streets and kicking their heels. Recently, though, I had a chance to get up close and personal with…

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Pruning the Pansies

You know you’re getting long in the tooth when Santa brings you a shiny new pair of secateurs for Christmas. It simply confirms my suspicion that old fairies don’t go disco dancing, they just end their days pruning the pansies at the bottom of the garden. That’ll be me, then.

Actually, it just so happens that Father Christmas got my letter. My old secateurs were knackered. I know I’m supposed to keep ’em sharp and clean but I just can’t be arsed because life, as they say, really is too short. The new pair will be handy come springtime for the annual horticultural nip and tuck.

My new pansy pruners weren’t made by bobble-hatted little elves shackled to work benches in Lapland sweat shops. No, like everything these days, they were manufactured in China. Still, they look like they’ll do the business. The same can’t be said of the instructions.

Sprout long new thingses?

Pickling oil?

Body’s each spot?

Inscrutable or what? 🤔

Pigs in the Proverbial

It’s now been five years since we moved out to the sticks. One day we were enjoying city centre living like pigs in the proverbial, the next we were in the smallest cottage in the county surrounded by the stuff. Such is country life in the Norfolk flatlands.

We’ve been invaded by ants, spiders, moles, slugs and rabbits, been charged at by a seriously pissed-off heffer and kept awake by bloodcurdling screeching and the unforgiving dawn squawk. We’ve also endured fierce storms, leaks and the occasional power cut. And like everyone else, we were put under house arrest by a pandemic.

Local wildlife of the human kind is mostly friendly, though. No doubt, the odd blue-crested bigot still lurks in the undergrowth, but they’re an endangered species nowadays.

It’s our sixth move since we met that fateful evening 18 years ago in a West End gay bar, and unless we end up in a maximum security care home for the bewildered, I reckon this’ll be our final resting place. Never did I imagine as a young gay about London town that I would end my days in the middle of nowhere. But I’ve never been happier or more satisfied with my lot. I feel blessed.

Everyone’s a Critic

We’re big fans of Sir Ian McKellen, star of stage, screen and gay bars – or ‘Sirena’ as he’s affectionately known by the brethren. Sirena is at his devilish best when working to a witty and waspish script. And he clearly revelled in the role of Jimmy Erskine in The Critic, our latest movie jolly.

Jimmy, a fearsome and feared 1930s theatre critic, writes for a right-wing ‘family’ national newspaper. Despite the rag’s political leanings, Jimmy’s predilection for ‘the love that dares not speak its name’ is barely concealed. After all, a theatrical gay is hardly front-page news (even back then). But when it gets him into hot water with the boys in blue, the scandal also gets him the sack.

Staring at an impoverished future preaching to an empty house, Jimmy hatches a dark plot to get his job back. He persuades an up-and-coming young actress – played by the marvellous Gemma Arterton – to seduce the newspaper owner. Jimmy has blackmail on his mind. What’s in it for her? Glowing reviews, of course. She craves Jimmy’s affirmation. These days, everyone’s a critic. But before we all got in on the act, a bad newspaper review could make or break a budding star.

McKellen is deliciously wicked as Jimmy and gets all the best catty put-downs. And he’s ably supported by a first-class cast. How does it all end? Well, let’s just say the critic and the critiqued do not make great bedfellows. Here’s the trailer…