The Linchpin of the gay scene - but for how long?

Following the recent unceremonious closures of such iconic London gay pubs and venues as The Black Cap, the Man Bar, Madam Jojo’s, the Green Carnation, Barcode and the Joiner's Arms, the battle is heating up to save possibly the most important of them all...

From The Guardian:

The threat of closure hangs over London’s oldest gay venue, the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, after its purchase by Austrian property developers.

What is about this spit-and-sawdust LGBTQ south London pub that regulars love so much? Performers including Amy Lamé, Timberlina and Bette Bourne show us behind the scenes at the capital’s home of drag:

London's oldest gay pub under threat: There's been a lot of illegitimate fun for 150 years

Facts:

• The RVT was built in 1863 on land which was originally part of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, and started life as a Music Hall; its metal columns are believed to have been salvaged from the original colonnades in the Gardens.
• Once at the apex of two rows of terraced houses, in the 1970s the Tavern was left standing alone when almost all of the other 1860s buildings were torn down; since then it has survived one attempt to turn it into a backpackers’ hostel and another to demolish it to make way for a shopping centre (including water park and ‘snow dome’).
• The Tavern was once the site of a riot sparked by a police raid (wearing rubber gloves in case they "caught AIDS") while Lily Savage was performing in 1984; she and ten others were arrested in the chaos.
• Princess Diana, disguised as a man, allegedly once visited the RVT in the 1980s with Freddie Mercury, Kenny Everett and Cleo Rocos.

Diana Dors with The Trollettes at the RVT

Alongside fellow campaigners Paul O'Grady (the former Lily Savage, who describes it as “the Royal Vauxhall Tavern School of Dramatic Art” and “my spiritual home”), Sir Ian "Serena" McKellen, and director of Pride (which was filmed in part there) Stephen Beresford, the Mayor of London Boris Johnson said:

"The Royal Vauxhall Tavern has been a linchpin at the heart of London’s LGBT community for more than six decades. [In June 2015] New York gave the Stonewall Inn landmark status, recognising its place in that city’s history.

“The RVT’s unique contribution to the vibrancy of London life should also be celebrated. It is a beacon that is known around the world and must be made a listed building so it can continue to shine for years to come.”

And here are just three of the many drag acts who made it "shine" - Lily Savage, Sandra Hush and David Dale on stage at the RVT back in the 1980s:

LSD (The Playgirls) at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern - All I Do Is Dream of You

I urge everyone to lend their support to the campaign to save this historic gay venue!

Canapes, bigots, champers and Holly!

“Going so soon? I wouldn't hear of it. Why, my little party's just beginning." - The Wicked Witch of the West

Amazingly, no Christopher Biggins, Louie Spence or Graham Norton in attendance this year, but the heavenly surroundings of the Victoria and Albert Museum once more played host to a massive horde of celebs from the "A"-list (Dame Joan Bakewell), "B"-list (Sue Perkins, Charlie Condou, Amy Lamé, Scottee, Johnny Woo, Jodie Harsh), and "Z"-list (TV talent show contestants), plus a smattering of politicians (Ben Bradshaw, Iain Stewart, Lynne Featherstone), sportspeople (Carl Hester, Matt Cook), musicians (Holly Johnson [above], Dan Gillespie-Sells, Beverley Knight), literary legends (Paul Burston, VG Lee), meeja'n'marketing-types, and people "whose face you know but you're not sure where from". Mostly gorgeous; the majority of them gay.



The occasion was (of course) the glittering Stonewall Awards ceremony, the annual back-slapping-fest "celebration of the outstanding contribution of individuals and groups towards lesbian, gay and bisexual equality, in the past year". I attended last year's (I am co-chair of Islington's LGBT forum), and was overjoyed once again to be able to attend this one. With lashings of free champagne, the most ludicrously OTT canapés (that you needed a microscope to see, and an insider knowledge of macrobiotic trendy cuisine to understand - one looked like a tray of grass and ferns) and a backdrop of some of the most sumptuous pieces of artwork in the world, it is a wonderful evening out.



Hosted by the very entertaining Gok Wan and Stonewall chief executive Ben Summerskill (with their constant flirting repartee, these two made a perfect double-act), the awards this year were the usual mixture of the inevitable (Jeanette Winterson won the Writer of the Year - commiserations Val Lee, your time will come! - and Rev Giles Fraser, who was in the news a lot around the "Occupy" campagn at St Paul's and happens to be gay, won Hero of the Year), the popular (Sue Perkins won Entertainer of the Year; columnists Hugo Rifkind of The Times and Owen Jones of The Independent were jointly awarded Journalist of the Year), the worthy (newbies in the online news world Gay Star News won Publication of the Year; the Rugby Football League in its entirety won Sports Award of the Year; the tiny local group East London Out Project won Community Group of the Year and received a cheque for £5,000) and the downright bizarre ("Britain's Got Talent" won Broadcast of the Year, for fuck's sake).


Jeanette Winterson


Sue Perkins with the boys from Gay Star News


Rev Giles Fraser

The champagne flowed, we cheered, we clapped.

What of the "controversy"? It was over the Bigot of the Year award, of course. Ruth Davidson, the first openly-gay leader of a major political party in Britain (the Scottish Conservatives), was cheered when she was named Politician of the Year. But the audience began booing when she stood there, award in hand, and rounded on Stonewall for having a "bigot" award, saying the organisation should "respect people who have a different view".

[Here we go again, I thought... Read my last blog on the subject of the word "bigot".]

The intensely unlovely Cardinal Keith O’Brien was this year's deserved recipient of Bigot of the Year - a tough choice, up against Christian Peoples Alliance leader Alan Craig, who compared gay rights campaigners to Nazi stormtroopers and called them the “Gaystapo”; Ulster Unionist Ken Maginnis, who referred to equal marriage as "unnatural and deviant behaviour"; Archbishop of Glasgow Philip Tartaglia, who said of the death of the MP David Cairns that it was directly due to him being gay; and the murderous Simon Lokodo, Uganda's "ethics and integrity minister" [sic], whose anti-gay witch-hunt could lead to the death penalty for homosexuality being applied in that benighted country.

Is this the same Cardinal O'Brien, the leader of the unelected and undemocratic Catholic Church in Scotland, who publicly declared "war" on plans for same-sex marriage equality, who described equal marriage as "a grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right" and said that campaigners for equal rights operated "the tyranny of tolerance"? The same Cardinal O'Brien who, in the context of the debate made this most insulting reference - "Imagine for a moment that the government had decided to legalise slavery but assured us that 'no one will be forced to keep a slave"? Of course he's not a bigot. That much is clear.

Anyway, in my view Miss Davidson was stupid to say what she did, knowing she was addressing a room packed with luvvies brimming with Dom Perignon. Even more stupid is the news that sponsors Barclays have threatened to pull out. As Stuart Smith, in his blog The Politics of Marketing, says:

Mark McLane, managing director and head of Global Diversity and Inclusion at Barclays told The Telegraph: “I have recently been made aware of the inclusion of a ‘Bigot of the Year’ category in the awards. Let me be absolutely clear that Barclays does not support that award category either financially, or in principle and have (sic) informed Stonewall that should they decide to continue with this category we will not support this event in the future. To label any individual so subjectively and pejoratively runs contrary to our view on fair treatment, and detracts from what should be a wholly positively focused event.”

So, righteous fulmination at the underhand introduction of a new category, eh, Mark? Well not quite. Some swift desk research, which even someone as grand as a managing director and head of Global Diversity and Inclusion might deign to do before opening his mouth, would reveal that Bigot of the Year has been a staple of the Stonewall awards since 2006. And, even more interestingly, Barclays itself seems to have supported the self-same awards since 2009. Now I know that there has been a lot of staff churn at Barclays recently and corporate memory tends to be – at the best of times – short. Even so, wakey, wakey, Mark. Or is Stonewall so low down the list of sponsorable causes that you simply haven’t noticed it before?

Either way, Stonewall should sack Barclays before Barclays sacks Stonewall. With friends like that… Surely corporate bullying is just the sort of thing Stonewall is trying to stamp out?

Mr Summerskill was equally scathing and defiant about the whole thing. As he said, "Disagree with us all the time, and as much as you like, and Stonewall will always respond to you respectfully and courteously, but deride us as paedophiles or bestialists and the word 'bigot' seems an appropriate description."

Nothing dampened the evening's pleasures and schmoozing, however. I worked the room (of course), celeb-spotting, and got chatting to Dan Gillespie-Sells (who was a supporter of the charity I used to work for), who kindly took that photo of me with the lovely and chatty Holly Johnson.



Amy Lamé gave me a hug and an air-kiss (I have no idea who she mistook me for, but I hope it was Rupert Everett!), and Johnny Woo took photos of us together.



I chatted with the very lovely Allegra McEvedy (whose Turkish Delights cookery programme is a fave at Dolores Delargo Towers).



And Vanessa Feltz and her gorgeous hubbie Ben Ofoedu both liked my purple velvet jacket, so all's right with the world...

A fantabulosa night! (Unspoiled by any nastiness.)

Stonewall Awards

Apathy or resistance?

One most telling thing about society these days is the "five-second memory" that is encouraged by TV, music videos, video games, and yes, dear readers, social network sites. This "Twitter generation" is actively engaged in snippets of nothingness, and reality matters less and less to some people. In the words of the late, great Dame Joan Sutherland "Them's my sentiments, anyhow..."

And so it seemed to us last night, as the combination of cold damp weather and "more important" stuff such as X-Factor or Strictly Come Dancing, or indeed sex'n'drugs'n'rock'n'roll, appeared to have reduced the number of people who bothered to come out for the "Say No To Hate Crime" rally and vigil. Ian Baynham's murder in Trafalgar Square was, I suppose, still in the news this time last year when 10,000 people turned up.

This year, the gay press is more interested in Joe McElderry [no disrespect meant to the young man by the way, just he really isn't that important!] and numbers were reduced to around 2,000 at the most - a fairly small gathering given the magnitude of the problem.

From politicians to pioneers, from Amy Lamé to Harvey Milk's nephew Stuart (founder of the Milk Foundation), we had speakers from all backgrounds and interest groups - Ian Baynham's sister Diana, Rikki Beadle-Blair, Paul Burston, Lynne Featherstone MP (Minister for Equalities), Peter Tatchell, gay Deputy Mayor of London Richard Barnes, Sue Sanders (Schools Out) and many others gave heartfelt speeches.

A gay brass band tootled from the back of the crowd, (almost inaudible to anyone near the speakers' stage incidentally), and an assembled gay chorus sang some songs of hope and sadness. We all had glow-sticks, some people lit candles. Yet despite messages of support from David Cameron and Ed Milliband, there were no front-benchers or leaders of political parties.



It is sad to say that this felt like a message of hope speaking out to only an interested few. The facts are terrifying. Hate crime is evidently on the increase:

• 1,192 homophobic offences were reported in London in the year to September, up from 1,008 the previous year, a rise of 18.3%
• 1 in 5 gay and lesbian people have experienced a homophobic hate crime or incident in the last three years
• 3 in 4 did not report them to the police. Only 6% reported them to third parties
• 7 in 10 did not report hate crime and incidents to anyone.

A list of hundreds of names of people who have been murdered because of hatred against their "difference" was read out after the silence at 8pm.

One speaker told possibly the most emotional story of all. Artist Paul Harfleet decided to instigate the "Pansy Project" in 2005, to plant a pansy at the site of each reported site of such a hate crime. Since his project began he has planted 10,000.

That is five times the number of people who bothered to turn up last night; despised, beaten or even murdered because they were gay.

I sometimes feel ashamed of what passes for the gay "scene". I am really proud of everyone involved in organising this important event, and everyone who showed up.