As we in London continue to endure the succession of crap winter throws at us - today alone, we've gone from frost to chilly winds to depressing drizzle and back again - it's worth a mention that 2024 is another year of milestones...
This year it will be the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the 60th of BBC2 and Mary Poppins, half-a-century since Abba's Waterloo, and the 40th anniversary of my coming-out, as well as that of the "Zola Budd controversy" at the Los Angeles Olympics, the assassination of Indira Gandhi, of Band Aid, This Is Spinal Tap, Purple Rain, The Reflex, Like a Virgin, Ghostbusters...and this lot!
For it was indeed on this very day in 1984 that "saintly" DJ Mike Read declared Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Relax to be disgusting, and refused to play it (swiftly followed by an "official ban" by the BBC)!
Here's how I first featured it, way back in 2011:
"There’s nothing that great about sex - never was. What usually comes from it? Sweat, fatigue, and dirty linens, then later unwanted pregnancies, and, of course, today there’s the health angle.Really?
As for gay sex in particular: Nothing’s really that great about it. It’s very uncomfortable and many times vastly more complex than lovemaking in heterosexual counterparts.
When a boy and girl decide they are going to have sex, they roughly know what to expect. But before two men have sex, they practically have to hold a board meeting in order to figure out the agenda of what they’re going to do." - Quentin Crisp
Not according to Frankie...
