Category: LGBT

Backstairs Billy – Mistress and Servant

As we dropped into our seats on the top deck of the early morning workers’ express to Norwich, Liam said, “Okay Jack, roll up for a magical mystery tour.” I had no clue what was to come but went along for the ride anyway. Three hours later we were meandering through London’s theatreland, eventually joining the queue outside the Duke of York’s Theatre in St. Martin’s Lane.

Sneaky Liam had secretly booked tickets for a West End play I’d mentioned in a throwaway comment months earlier. The show, Backstairs Billy, is a comedy about the close relationship between Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and her faithful retainer of 50 years, William ‘Billy’ Tallon.

Set long after the dowager queen had been put out to pasture, the razer-sharp script cascades from belly-laugh slapstick farce to moments of real tenderness. The sparkling Penelope Wilton (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Downton Abbey) and hunky Luke Evans (Beauty and the Beast) play mistress and servant. And they do it with great aplomb.

Billy cut a controversial figure in royal circles. The Queen Mother wasn’t the only queen he serviced. An infamous chaser of young men, Billy often sailed close to the wind at a time when it wasn’t quite cricket. The play waltzes around one such indiscretion when he was caught in flagrante delicto with a casual pickup in the garden room of Clarence House and almost got the boot. But the Queen Mother’s loyalty knew no bounds – apparently she loved her gays, as evidenced by the famous quote,

“Perhaps, when you two queens are quite finished, you could get this old queen her drink.”

Whether or not she actually said this we shall never know, but the line got the biggest laugh in the show.

Billy died in 2007 and, despite his notoriety, his funeral was held in the Queen’s Chapel at St. James’s Palace, and it was attended by more than 200 mourners, including lords, ladies and luvvies of stage and screen. Not too shabby for a boy from the wrong side of the tracks.

Dutch Courage

In the autumn of 1978, a pretty-faced eighteen-year-old pulled into old Amsterdam’s grim and gloomy Centraal Station. It was cold and wet, with scary types milling about the windswept forecourt. The new beau in town had no place to stay. He’d heard that Kerkstraat was the place to hang out but had no clue where that was or how to get there. While standing in the rain wondering what next, he was approached by some sleazy bloke with a nasty comb-over – the kind of man your mother warned you against – who offered him a lift. He wisely refused, jumped into a cab and stumbled into the first hotel he came across. He asked if there was any room at the inn. There was – just the one.

That new beau in town was me, and that was my inauspicious start to an eye-popping, life-liberating experience. I lapped it up – and Amsterdam lapped me up – looked after by the proprietor of the West End Hotel, a grey-haired Dutch chap with a handlebar moustache and kindly eyes.

Forty-five years later, Liam and I pulled into old Amsterdam’s now bright and flashy Centraal Station. It was cold and wet but buzzy, with travellers and locals milling about the windswept forecourt. We jumped on a packed tram to Kerkstraat and stumbled into our hotel.

“Hold on, I know this place.”

Yes, you guessed it. It was the same hotel – renamed, remodelled and reborn, phoenix-like, but the same gaff, nonetheless. What are the chances?

If you look closely at the image below, you can spot the old name ‘West End Hotel’ etched into the glass above the entrance.

I wonder what became of the grey-haired Dutch chap with a handlebar moustache and kindly eyes who looked after a pretty-faced eighteen-year-old all those years ago?

Take a Walk in My Shoes

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

Director’s Cut

I’m off-air while Liam and I are perking our pansies on Ithaca. Thankfully, Odysseus’ fabled isle has escaped the terrible wildfires that have torched Southern Europe – and now Hawaii and Tenerife – and brought destruction and misery to many, and death to some. Let’s not kid ourselves, the future’s buggered. Our next-door neighbour and his partner were caught up in the devastating firestorms that hit Rhodes last month and were forced to flee their hotel to sleep in a school playground. They made it back in one piece, I’m pleased to say.

So I’ve chosen some random photos that didn’t make the grade, blog-wise, during the past year and ended up on the cutting room floor.

And this is my personal favourite, spotted on the underside of a loo-seat lid on a train to London. It brightened up a dull journey. Who doesn’t appreciate a little toilet humour?

Norwich Pride 2023 – a Celebration of Youth

It’s been a dribbly July and more rain had been forecast to drench Norwich Pride. Contrary to the weather pundits, old Ma Nature decided to give us all break and the sun shone on the crowd of many colours who piled into the city for Norwich Pride 2023. All life was there, from the newly hatched to old farts like us – truly reflecting our diverse universe. And with our marching days behind us, once again it was humbling to watch the long chorus line of young people putting it out there, happy and proud. I reckon we’re in safe hands.

I’ll let the photos do the talking…

We were content to wander through the rainbow throng and settle down to a bottle or two at the Forum to soak up the vibe and take in the cabaret. Watching a talented dance troupe of young girls strutting their stuff to Lady Gaga’s ‘Born This Way’ MC’d by a drag queen gladdened the heart. Yes, we really are in good hands.

Bloody-Minded Brits

I’ve always had a fu*k ’em attitude to authority, particularly the do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do hypocrites. You know the kind of thing: politicians preaching ‘family values’ while knocking off their secretaries on the side or hellfire priests touching up the altar boys in the vestry. I’m glad to say that sheer bloody-mindedness is a glorious national trait. And one that goes back centuries, judging by the bawdy carving high in the rafters of Hereford’s medieval All Saints Church. Hidden for centuries, it only came to light when a new gallery was added for a café. The gentlemen reclining in anticipation is now in full view of the chattering flat-white coffeeholics below. Well, it’s certainly something to talk about over the Victoria sponge.

Obviously, as a ‘family values’ site, our randy man’s family jewels have been pixilated. But, be honest, you want more, don’t you? Check out the naughty bits here. Sadly, we’ll never know what pissed off the carpenter. And as it’s Norwich Pride today, I rather hope it’s…

“We’re here, we’re queer, so fu*k you!”

John Garner 1967-2003: Twenty Years On

I looked around the tidy cemetery. It was serenely silent except for the sound of birdsong and the trickle of water from the mouths of the dolphins in their petrified embrace. It calmed me. I sat on the bench and inserted the earphones of the MP3 player, already cued for the moment. I pressed play, closed my eyes and sat back. The soulful tones of Boy George’s Il Adore, his beautifully crafted lament to a lost friend, poured over me. I cried as I listened and reminisced. 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. I remembered his resolute loyalty and steely determination. I missed him for all these things but most of all I missed him for him. His illness had been short, only a few fleeting weeks. His demise was swift and unheralded. His white room fell silent as the machines were turned off and I watched his last laboured breath. I was unprepared. I was felled by the turbulence. I created a ghost within to keep him alive. What of me now? My life as a wanton lotus eater was blessed. It seemed achingly unfair. I’d been given a second time around and I sensed John’s steady hand at the tiller.

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

Sensitive boy, good with his hands

“Il Adore” Boy George

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

Liam is away visiting an old friend from his wayward early years as a young gay about town. They worked and played together when Liam did a proper job with a pension attached. It’s the first time I’ve been home alone since we moved to the village over three years ago. Liam left to catch an early train and I fell out of my pit to an empty house, silent apart from the morning squawk of the horny birds outside. It felt odd and a little unsettling. But, as I went about my domestic chores, I kept finding post-it notes hidden here and there. Here’s a sample…

I did as I was instructed and jumped on the bus to our local garden centre. It was a warm and sunny day and the place was packed with people taking tea and talking shrubs. I cannot lie, I felt out of sorts. As I went to pay for my trolley-load of horticultural supplies, I opened my wallet to find this…

Soppy old sod. Amen to that.

Fifteen-Year Itch

For our fifteenth wedding anniversary we were itching for a big city scratch with a difference. Despite my heathen leanings, I do like an impressive church, and few are more impressive than London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral, Christopher Wren’s tour de force topped with its heavenly dome. The earlier Gothic pile was torched along with much of the old medieval city in the Great Fire of 1666. It’s reckoned the blaze started in a bakery in the appropriately named Pudding Lane, bringing a whole new meaning to the hallowed phrase ‘give us our daily bread’.

Meandering around the flashy Baroque splendour brought back happy memories of my first pilgrimage – back in my spotty teens when I accompanied my grandmother, who was over from Ireland.

According to the annals, there’s been a church on the same spot since 604 AD, and possibly as far back as the late Roman period, as suggested by a plaque listing the pre-Norman bishops with their glorious tongue-twister names.

In stark contrast to the lavish decor above, the crypt is simply appointed and stuffed with the tombs of kill and cure notables from days long past, from Florence Nightingale and Alexander Fleming – who discovered penicillin quite by chance – to the victors of Trafalgar and Waterloo, Nelson and Wellington. Napoleon must be spinning in his monumental Parisian grave. Wren is there too, of course.

After piety came avarice, with indulgent afternoon tea and bubbles in The Swan at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre followed by mother’s ruin at Halfway to Heaven, the homo watering hole near Nelson’s massive column, where Liam and I first met. They knew we were coming judging by the ultimate gay megamix playing on the jukebox – Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, Marc Almond, The Communards, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Dead or Alive, Gloria Gaynor and Hazel Dean – with Liza Minnelli’s ‘Love Pains’ bringing up the rear. Liam’s shoulders shimmied to the beat. Perfect.

Send in the Clones

When, in the late seventies, I took my first tentative steps onto London’s knock-and-enter gay scene, facial hair was all the rage. Walk into any smoky dive bar and you’d be confronted with an ocean of moustaches – the bigger, the bushier the better. It was like a Tom Selleck convention minus the Hawaiian shirts. We called ’em clones – the Frisco Crisco look. Even the limp-wristed tried to butch it up during the clone wars. The entire lookalikee-ness was gloriously sent up by the Village People in their camp 1978 disco classic ‘Macho Man’. I had the 12-inch.

And clones were only attracted to other clones – that was the Clone Law – dancing round each other in some strange narcissistic mating ritual. I couldn’t really grow convincing face furniture, and pretty boys like me didn’t get a look in. Still, it didn’t hold me back.

By the nineties, hirsute was out, supplanted by the clean-shaven and the fully-waxed. Roll on the noughties, and Desperate Dan* wannabees reclaimed the streets with overgrown hipster beards. But now the lumberjack look is old hat and tashes are back among the trendy young things. And so the world turns.

Being older and furrier, I saw this as my last chance to release my inner clone. For about a month, I nurtured my new whiskers with pride; a bit more salt than pepper perhaps, but full-bodied all the same.

But then a young chap accidentally brushed passed me in a crowded Norwich pub. “Really sorry, old man,” he said.

That was the end of my seventies pornstar tash.

*Desperate Dan was a big butch cartoon character from the Dandy comic with a beard so tough he shaved with a blowtorch.