The Soldier, the Virgin and the Drag Queen

Mother’s inaugural royal visit to the weaver’s croft went without a hitch. She was escorted across country by my nephew and namesake, Jack Junior. I wondered if she’d be able to climb the narrow winding steps up to the attic boudoirs. I needn’t have worried. She remains a spritely 83 year and still runs for buses, despite a touch of arthritis. She had a good root around and gave her seal of approval. Fed and brandy’d, she retired for the evening with ‘Fifty Shades Darker’. We took young Jack to the bar at the Playhouse Theatre to discuss his exam results and flourishing love life. This popular watering hole by the water is always bursting with fresh-faced students and earnest artists with a dash of old homos thrown into the mix. The next morning, as Liam fixed breakfast, Mother noticed a timeworn photo of her wedding I keep in a frame on the window ledge. We looked at it together. Handsome Dad looked dapper and proud in his dress uniform and the old girl looked stunning and radiant in her classic cut wedding dress and virginal veil. “But who,” I asked “was the drag queen in the fur next to Dad?”

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A Face for Radio

The talented folk at Future Radio must have thought my debut gig on Pride Live wasn’t too embarrassing as they asked me back for a repeat performance. This time, I wasn’t plugging the book. As the Pride season draws to a close and rainbow flags across the realm are folded away for yet another year, I was invited to bang my drum about paying to be proud at Brighton Pride. Towards the end of the piece, my train of thought was fatally derailed by my new-fangled smart phone throbbing in my pants. It turned me into a rambling wreck. Despite my momentary bout of bumbling amnesia, I hope I came across as the voice of moderation. You can be the judge by clicking on the big poofy pink radio.

You can catch the entire podcast here.

My song choice (which I almost forgot) was the Marc Almond cover of Charles Aznavour’s ‘I Have Lived’. Because I have.

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Jack on Future Radio

Pride Apartheid

A Date with Anna Karenina

Norwich’s rich cultural repertoire has Liam drooling like a rabid dog. He’s joined the club at the Theatre Royal and has planned an entire programme of cultural festivities to drag me along to. I daren’t admit that I’d rather catch Coronation Street as the cold nights approach. Our latest date was with Anna Karenina at Cinema City. The mini-multiplex is housed in the Suckling’s House and Stuart Hall, a Grade I listed complex spanning a 14th Century merchant’s house and an early twentieth century public hall. Much of the ground floor is occupied by a trendy bar with an ancient vaulted oak ceiling and a fancy restaurant extending into a medieval courtyard. It feels like a swanky café with a cinema attached rather than the other way round. We took our deep, comfy seats and witnessed a parade of boozy bacchanalian folk file past with bottles of white rattling away in their ice buckets. Anna was a lavish hostess – exquisitely staged, sumptuously filmed, superbly acted and evocatively scored. Loyalty, betrayal and suffocating social convention were magically set against the sweeping steppe. Keira Knightley’s impossibly long bedecked neck stole the show. Liam was mesmerised. I was strangely unmoved. As the end credits rolled, the audience tottered out. Many were clearly pie-eyed and not in control of their faculties. Who says the middle classes don’t have a drink problem?

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A Very British Olympics

A Very British Olympics

We Brits love to wallow in glorious failure. It’s almost a national fetish. We relish the underdog fighting against insurmountable odds – remember Eddie the Eagle and the Jamaican Bobsleigh Team (not to mention Dunkirk)? This time we had a runaway success on our hands and it crept up behind us like a batty boy in a back room, confounding the doubters and crowned with a bulging bag of bling. Blighty has been in a foul mood for years and, for a brief moment, people have something to smile about. For me, it was the Paralympics that defined the true spirit of the Games – from mad dash to Mad Max, fire to phoenix, high fliers to high wires, gold-play to Coldplay – the very best of humanity tainted only by the very worst of Channel 4 coverage. Keenly covered at home, not so keenly covered abroad, some of our friends across the seas should hang their heads in shame. The Americans televised only limited highlights (despite the presence of a large and impressive American Team) and my former foster home, Turkey, decided to screen a soccer match instead of the opening ceremony. Tonight saw a joyous and very British closing show received by a wall of noise. It was a triumph – a triumph made in Britain.

Photo: Ian Kington/AFP

Now that the big top has come down and the circus is leaving town for Brazil, what next? Will the park become a weedy white elephant like so many of the past? Will the colossal cost deepen the double dip as the bills drop on the mat? There’s a chance, a good chance, that the legacy will endure. The park itself is small and perfectly formed (a bit like me), the velodrome was going to be built anyway and the aquatics centre will replace the aging National Sports Centre pools at Crystal Palace. I used to train there when, for a short while before I discovered hormones, I was a promising young diver. It was a bugger to get to. As for the Olympic Stadium itself, it’s a great fit for big-ticket concerts by big-wig stars. It’s already booked for the 2017 World Athletic Championships and we may yet see Hammers’ fans screaming from the terraces. Transport links in that part of town have been completely transformed and the Olympic Village will provide quality affordable housing for one of the most deprived areas of the country. Remember the Millennium Dome (itself a 2012 venue)? Who would have thought back in 2001 that it would emerge as one of the most successful music venues in the world as the O2? Few facilities were specifically built for the Games and some were designed to be temporary. One or two may even get packed up and shipped off to Rio for 2016. Now, here’s a thought. Perhaps the IOC should commission IKEA to design the travelling flat pack games. Now where did I put that allen key?

X Factor Hair-Raisers

Tonight Matthew, I’m going to be…Quentin Crisp.

Crappy Snaps

Crappy Snaps

With the wonders of cutting edge digital photography, it’s supposed to be virtually impossible to take a bad snap. Just aim and click, right? Wrong. I’m rubbish. Sometimes, though, there’s a little unexpected magic among the discarded litter on the cutting room floor. I was clearing out the camera the other day and came across these images from our February trip to London. The images are of the London Eye taken from inside the Royal Festival Hall. Neither of the pictures has been retouched. It shows what fun you can have with a wobbly wrist.

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Still Waters Run Deep

Still Waters Run Deep

Norwich’s river is called the Wensum. The name derives from the Old English adjective wandsum or wendsum, meaning ‘winding’. It’s aptly titled. The river caresses like a feather boa, arching around the town and providing ample opportunities for boozy afternoons in riverside inns when the weather’s right. So far, the weather’s been right for much of the time. The Wensum is a lazy river with a slow flow. Apparently, this is caused by a large number of redundant upstream water mills. Plans are afoot to modify the mills to enable the river to behave more naturally. In the meantime, the idle waters are a fertile breeding ground for mosquitoes. We’re well acquainted with the sipping beasts of Anatolia. After four itchy years, our tough old hides eventually developed a natural immunity to their veracious appetites. Their slower, more timid English cousins don’t stand a bug in hell’s chance with these old pros. Top up, anyone?

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Pride Apartheid

Pride Apartheid

A significant milestone in the LGBT calendar has just passed: the 20th Anniversary of Brighton Pride. Off we trotted to immerse ourselves in our sub-culture, travelling south on the queen’s express. We watched in amusement as the line of muscle marys minced towards the loo to fix their looks and say hi to Charlie.

It was the Pride equivalent of the rush hour when we arrived at the park. Our good-humoured band of brothers and sisters snaked around the perimeter in their camp and colourful finery. As the masses queued, the booze was fast-necked; just like the airport, liquids were not allowed gayside. Well, not the alcoholic kind, anyway. We broke through the barrier and headed straight for the bar, bagging a couple of cans before meandering through the frenzied enclosure. We had a ball, bumping into old friends, avoiding long-lost acquaintances and convincing ourselves we would survive the day without a little extra ‘stimulation.’

The open-air little boy’s room was a real challenge. The pissoirs looked like they’d been sawed in half, giving a full view of willies in the round. When the man next to me flopped out his baby’s arm, I withdrew in bashful inadequacy and headed to the Cabaret Tent to catch some drag with my tail between my legs. We really enjoyed our day out at the seaside. Getting tipsy among the brethren and wrapping myself around Liam without having to gaze over my shoulder was rather liberating. I’d forgotten how much. All too quickly, the bash came to an end and we joined the sozzled throng as it weaved its way to the exit. Numbed by alcohol and petting each other like a pair of love birds, we staggered back to catch the evening train. The tedious journey back to the Smoke was made less so by sharing a laugh, a flirt and a king-size bag of mini chocolate hob-nobs with a boisterous gaggle of young things next to us.

Down the years, I have watched Brighton Pride grow from little more than a village fête to a vast enterprise attracting tens of thousands from across the country (and the world). It was no great surprise when it eventually collapsed under the weight of its own success. Something was bound to snap. Two years ago, a catastrophic day of bad weather swept the party into the English Channel and left a stack of unpaid bills for the organisers. To keep the wheels on the wagon, Pride was restructured as a not-for-profit community organisation and Pride in the Park has re-emerged as a gated ticket-only event, run on a fully commercial basis and propped up by a team of corporate sponsors. A water-resistant formula was clearly needed and, for the first time ever, serious cash is now being pumped into the coffers of local charities. Nevertheless, I can’t help thinking that a paid-for event goes against the whole spirit and ethos of Pride. Times are hard. Despite the concessions for early bird buyers and the young (though not the old), the cost was bound to exclude some people who might otherwise have popped along to share in the fun. For me, Pride is about embracing everyone regardless, not about paying a high price to be proud. Have a paid-for festival by all means, but don’t call it Pride. The future of Brighton Pride seems secure but does it deserve to be?

My apologies for my terrible images (blame my not so smart smartphone). I’ve mixed them in with some better pictures from the Pride Parade.

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We’re Having a Gay Old Time

We threw caution to the wind and have a gay old night in old Norwich Town. We are blessed with three bone fide out-and-proud gay bars and one club. Who’d have thought? The Castle Public House was our inn of choice, a popular haunt perched unglamorously on the corner of a ring-road roundabout just outside the city centre. We knew we’d arrived when we spotted their open top Big Gay Bus parked up outside. It’s used to frighten the farmers as it cruises the length and breadth of the county spreading the word. Not quite Priscilla, Queen of the Desert but you get the picture. The bar was a pleasant surprise. We were expecting tired, tatty and torn. We got camp, colourful and clean. The clientele was a manic mix of trendy young things, most of them squeezed into skinny jeans and Primark plimsolls. Metrosexual girls and boys mingled amiably, gossiping and giggling over the latest must-sup alcopop being flogged by the multi-nationals.

We popped across the pretty garden and crept into the glass-fronted club out the back. It was like stepping into a village hall on acid. We didn’t last long. The two old codgers quickly decided they were way too old for the thump, thump, thump and returned to the snug to finish their halves of mild. After a while observing the Norwich queens in their natural habitat, Liam suggested we leave the children to their play and stumble back home for a welcome cup of cocoa. As we strolled past the cathedral, Liam noticed that my ancient legs (the ones that had been given me so much gyp of late) were firing on all pistons. He was right. No pain whatsoever. Remarkable. Sightly sozzled and suspecting divine intervention, Liam looked up at the dreaming spire and spoke to his maker. “Praise the Lord!” he slurred. “It’s a miracle.” Indeed. He’ll be feeding the five thousand next.

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The Big Bang Games

The Big Bang Games
Photograph: Anna Gowthorpe/PA

London welcomed the Parallel Olympic Games with a dazzling display full of guts and gumption, and with a look-up-at-the-stars-and-not-down-at-your-feet message of hope. Only the commercial breaks and a plodding commentary marred a marvellous show. For the first time in Paralympic history, the gig is heading for a sell-out as ticket sales surge. Channel Four had its best viewing figures for a decade. As the tidal wave of cheer and goodwill continues to sweep over the realm like a benign Great Flood, this would not be a sensible time for the Government to benefit-bash the disabled. But then, there never should be a good time to bully the easiest of targets. Pick on someone your own size, I say. Like the filthy rich Fagins who squirrel their money away in tax havens. I’ve nothing against people earning a bob or two (If only I owned the copyright to the Union Flag at the moment) but I do expect everyone to pay their fair share. Here endeth the lesson. Let’s sit back, wallow in the joy and hope for a swag bag full of bling. 

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