Of a culinary vamp, tenors, treasure, old farts radio, brutalism, gay disappointment and Bowie in cabaret

Congratulations to the "sex kitten" of TV chefs Nigella Lawson, who steps into the shoes of previous hosts Dame Mary Berry and Dame Prue Leith as the new presenter of The Great British Bake-Off.

It's another snippets post, dear reader:

• Calling all higher voices news: There is apparently a worldwide shortage... of tenor singers! Will the next Pavarotti please stand up?

• Hoorah for heritage fanatics news: Thanks to a fundraising campaign that brought them support from trusts, benefactors and the public alike, a gorgeous heart-shaped gold pendant linked to the ill-fated marriage of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon, found by a metal detectorist in Warwickshire, has been secured by the British Museum for permanent display for the nation. I want to see this...

• Old people need music radio too news: Boom Radio, the independent radio station established by, and specifically aimed at, the so-called "baby-boomer" post-war generation will celebrate its fifth anniversary on 14 February. Three cheers for the plucky older generation!

• Brutal(ist), indeed news: The hideous concrete monstrosity that is London's Southbank Centre [the 1950s adjunct to the otherwise OK Festival of Britain survivor the Royal Festival Hall, it encompasses the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and the Hayward Gallery, and was later joined by the National Theatre next door, and the British Film Institute (BFI) after that] has become a Grade II listed building. It's still depressingly ugly.

• Muddled history news: It is once again LGBT History Month in the UK and, unlike in its heyday when Camden & Islington LGBT+ Forum actively facilitated loads of events that appealed to all sorts of groups who vaguely sat under this stupid "alphabet soup" banner, and we always found at least one or two events to go to, there's not a lot that appeals. Not for several years, more's the pity. It's all "trans" this, "queer" {{shudders}} that and "lesbian" the other; at least in our locale.
  One event on the other side of London did indeed catch my eye, however - a touring dramatisation of a long-forgotten radio script from the BBC all about homosexuality in an age when it was completely illegal: Stephen M Hornby’s play The BBC’s First Homosexual. Unfortunately, and possibly inevitably since its London run is a) cheap (£5) and b) hosted at the teeny-tiny Cinema Museum in Kennington [which I have been dying to visit], it's sold out! As is the centenary celebration of the irrepressible Kenneth Williams at the British Library. Dammit.

• And finally: Sad news arrives of the death of Mr Des de Moor. Latterly known for his passion for real ale and his writings about the subject, he seems an unlikely candidate for a tribute here - but his name rang a bell when I saw it in the obituaries. With very good reason - for, way back in 2003, I happened to purchase a copy of a real oddity: his tribute CD to David Bowie, in cabaret style, with the late Russell Churney [of Fascinating Aida and Julian Clary fame] Darkness and Disgrace! And here, for your delectation, are two tracks from it:

Russell Churney, Des de Moor - Always crashing in the same car

Russell Churney, Des de Moor - The Man Who Sold The World

And the weather? Shit.

Of fashion, planets, fluffy animals and homosex

"Planetary parade": from Dolores Delargo Towers we can see Venus, Mars and Jupiter - but not a sniff of Uranus! Boom-tish.

Another snippets post today, dear reader:

• Royal news: The ancient and historic St James's Palace - residence of several monarchs over the centuries, and home to the ceremonial Court of St James - is to open to public this year for the first time. We'll be getting tickets, no doubt!*

• Awwww news: London Zoo is celebrating after a "baby boom" - with a number of endangered small mammals being born. None of them edible, I believe.
• Another piece of Hollywood history is gone: Following the death of Columbia Pictures (now Sony), MGM Studios (now Amazon) and 20th Century Fox (now Disney), there's sad news of the legendary Technicolor - pioneers of the transition of films from black & white to full colour in the early 20th century, and integral to the success of all the classic early Disney cartoons and blockbusters such as The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind - which has gone bankrupt. RIP.

• Fa-fa-fa-fa-fashion news: The madness and the me-me-me generation that tends to accompany London Fashion Week has departed once more in a cloud of pink glitter, taking memories of Florence Pugh, Richard E Grant, Fiona Shaw and a raft of famous (and not so famous) names on the catwalk in its wake... See the gallery here.
• Drugs news: Following last week's fabulous story about a Peruvian policeman in a capybara costume who led a massive drug raid, police in Colombia this week caught a man smuggling packets of cocaine under his toupee!
• And finally: It's almost the end of LGBT History Month here in the UK and, as has been the pattern in recent years, I/we haven't been to a single event! Admittedly, we were away in Spain at the beginning of the month so missed the most interesting ones. Let's make up for that fact, shall we, with a classic? [Historical, indeed - I first posted this way back in 2008.]

Roddy von Seldeneck - Homosex Discoteque

The weather? Typical British Springtime - wet one minute, sunny the next.

---

STOP PRESS:

* Not at £85 per person, we won't!

All just a little bit of history...

It may be St Valentine's St Hallmark's Day today [I steadfastly ignore that cynically commercialised rubbish], but it is also LGBT+ History Month here in the UK, and, as ever, Camden and Islington LGBT Forum (nowadays calling itself "Forum+") has put together a wide-ranging itinerary of events...

We've already missed some interesting (and bizarre) things while we were in Spain - wouldya believe someone actually produced a show called Alan Turing The Musical?! - such as several gay history walking trails, a talk at the British Library intriguingly called The Further Queer Adventures of Alexander the Great: Boyfriend, Activist and Porn Star, and some special themed nights at gay venues Central Station at King's Cross and Zodiac in Camden.

Coming up are a talk about the closeted gay American poet Walt Whitman [never liked his work, so won't be going to that], a weird-sounding "narrative cabaret" work called Wild Onion [that doesn't appeal, either, tbh], more walking trails, a tour of the new Queer Britain Museum behind St Pancras station [which we've not visited since it opened last year, but will one day], a creative writing workshop, an event at the British Library focusing on the BBC documentary The Story of Aids: the Unheard Tapes [which sounds a bit depressing], a discussion of a "forgotten queer classic" historical novel about the fascinating "Ladies of Llangollen" [online-only, more's the pity, and as I spend my life at work on Teams meetings I shan't be rushing to sit at home and watch that] and the annual LGBTQ+ Film Day at The British Museum which features Derek Jarman's The Tempest [unfortunately it clashes with our gang's get-together for a late celebration of The Madam's birthday].

Here in Haringey, things a little more "low-key". There are, however, some events [that we will surely miss] such as poetry readings, a screening of Call Me By Your Name at a library in Crouch End, and what might have been the most interesting, a discussion on curating LGBT+ oral and film histories at the Bruce Castle Museum, a place I have never visited, despite the fact it's only a short bus ride from Wood Green [but that, too, is on the same day as the "gathering of the clans"].

Here at Dolores Delargo Towers, of course, I/we have always been fascinated by LGBT history, so much so that I "curate" my very own "Museum of Camp", which has, over the years featured many and varied stories of the people and events that shaped our narrative - not least today's "exhibit" Richard "Dickie" Colley!

Here's something appropriate for today - that true pioneer of gay cabaret, the peerless Douglas Byng, in 1932

Douglas Byng and Roy Fox & His Band (with Al Bowlly on guitar)

Sublime.

Know your history

“If you don't know history, then you don't know anything. You are a leaf that doesn't know it is part of a tree. ” - Michael Crichton

February is Gay History Month in the UK, in celebration of the 2003 abolition of Section 28 ("Clause 28"), a nasty piece of '80s legislation that stated that a local authority "shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality" or "promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship".

NB America has its own such month-long event in October every year.

Over the years, a whole "alphabet soup" of additional initials has added to the original terms to describe homosexuality ("L" for lesbian and "G" for gay), including "B" for bisexual, "T" for trans, and even more recently "Q" for that vile term of insult "queer" [which some radicals have tried to "reclaim" but still gives me the shudders], and many more besides; the result being that if everyone who shouts loudest gets heard, we end up with "LGBTTQQIAAP+" or, more amusingly, "QUILTBAG". It all gets on my nerves, to be honest. Apart from societal prejudice, if truth be told most of these so-called "identities" have absolutely sod all in common - and with so many conflicting voices, much depends on what is the latest to be "in fashion", as that tends to dominate the narrative.

As a consequence, Auntie Beeb's effort to recognise the currently-termed LGBT+ History Month, by way of a podcast - cheerily-titled You're Dead To Me - has got her knickers, or rather her British history, in a twist. Among a list of "some of the key LGBTQ figures in our past" [my italics] are featured the Chevalier d'Éon (French trans diplomat and spy in the 18th century); Gladys Bentley (American lesbian Harlem singer); Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P. Johnson and Stormé DeLarverie (two American trans activists and one American lesbian, who may - or more likely with the first two, according to contemporary accounts, may not - have been involved in New York's Stonewall uprising); Bayard Rustin (American civil rights campaigner at the time of Martin Luther King); and Alfred Kinsey (American sexologist). All utterly fascinating and remarkable lives, of that there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever. However, the only notables from gay British history featured are Anne Lister (famously bold lesbian landowner and diarist, whose story was recently dramatised in the TV series Gentleman Jack) and Roberta Cowell (first British trans woman to undergo gender reassignment surgery).

Now, I have never listened to the podcast, and don't suppose I actually will unless there is nothing else on the radio or telly, so I cannot speak for whether this is the entire gamut of lives covered by their History Month special. I do, however, feel that some effort is lacking on the part of the British Broadcasting Corporation when six Americans and a French person dominate the roll-call, and out of the whole list (including four trans, two lesbians and one closet bisexual) there is only ONE gay man!

Let me help the BBC out here...

British gay men from history (notwithstanding the "usual suspects" such as Oscar Wilde, Noël Coward, Quentin Crisp, Peter Tatchell, Alan Turing, Derek Jarman and the like) who might have been taken into account include:

• W. H. Auden
• Jeremy Bentham
• Humphry Berkeley
• Lord Berners
• Benjamin Britten
• Ted Brown
• Edward Carpenter
• Thomas Cannon
• Graham Chapman
• Tom Driberg
• A. E. Dyson
  
• Havelock Ellis
• E. M. Forster
• Ray Gosling
• Antony Grey
  
• David Hockney
• Allan Horsfall
  
• A. E. Housman
• Christopher Isherwood
• George Cecil Ives
• Brian Kennedy
  
• William Lygon, Earl Beauchamp
• Christopher Marlowe
• Somerset Maugham
• Joe Orton
• Frederick Rolfe ("Baron Corvo")
• Siegfried Sassoon
• Michael Schofield
  
• Simeon Solomon
• Ned Sherrin
• Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji
• Labi Siffre
  
• Lytton Strachey
• Howard Sturgis
• John Addington Symonds
  
• Matthew Tomlinson
• Patrick Trevor-Roper
• Peter Wildeblood

...to name but a few from a veritable "cast of thousands" that includes kings, aristocracy and the lower classes alike. [And I haven't even attempted a list of historical British lesbians...]

I mark your effort, Auntie, as "could do better".

Here's a little more "historic gayness", which I thought appropriate:

Queen - Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy

Hey, boy, where do you get it from?
Hey, boy, where did you go?
I learned my passion
In the good old-fashioned
School of loverboys

Didn't we all, dear?

Classical and not-so-classical gayers

It was somewhat appropriate that this afternoon, I ignored Saint Hallmark Valentine's Day and went to a faboo "potted history" talk at the British Museum - to launch their recognition of LGBT History Month (and indeed their establishment of a special gallery dedicated to LGBT history and artefacts in this, the 50th year since the (partial) decriminalisation of homosexuality in the UK, opening in May).

What better way to start my sojourn through the month's events [we missed week #1 of course, being in Spain] than with the blatant sex scenes of The Warren Cup, the love story of Emperor Hadrian and Antinous, and with the lesbian love poetry of Sappho..?

However, not all things in life are so cultural.

While exploring the darkest recesses of La Nogilera gay scene in Torremolinos last week, we were delighted to discover [we're obviously late to the game, not being fans of RuPaul's Drag Race, from whence the first mix below emerged] the - ahem - talents of a certain Señor AB Soto, and here he is (twice), with Cha Cha, Bitch!:

RuPaul featuring AB Soto - Cha Cha Bitch

(...and the original:)

AB Soto - Cha Cha Bitch (official video)

I like to think that Hadrian and Antinous would have approved.

A flash, a mob, and a feast

It's finally arrived!

Back in November I, John-John, David, Lloydy and numerous others gave up a whole Sunday to dedicate ourselves to playing our part in recording another "film epic" - the video promotion to launch Camden and Islington LGBT History Month (which takes place in February).

And here's the result...

"I'm ready for my close-up, Mr DeMille!"

More old cocks

Tonight we're donning our glad-rags for the grand "One Night in Heaven" Ball to mark the end of LGBT History Month for 2016, featuring the unstoppable Andy Bell. However, on Thursday night I was overjoyed (once again) to attend the flagship event "Objects of Desire" at our fave small museum in London, the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology. Another splendid evening of "frocks, rocks and cocks"...



Hosted as ever by the ebullient and learned John J Johnston, the premise is for a bevy of invited guests, prominent in the "LGBT world" and from a variety of non-archaeological disciplines, to talk about a chosen item from the Petrie's collection with a relevance to gay history.



First up was ethical florist, artist and designer Lauren Craig, whose choice was one of the newly displayed items from the Petrie's special exhibition on life in Amarna, the chosen capital of the 'heretic' Pharaoh Akhenaten, a fragment of wall art depicting a lotus and part of a poppy.



With encouragement from "J-J-J", she related this directly to her work campaigning for an improvement in working conditions for (the mainly female) workers who cultivate and harvest flowers in the Third World for use as decoration in the West; and together they wove into the discussion the importance of the Sacred Lotus in cosmetics and decorative arts throughout the Egyptian world.



Public Astronomer Marek Kukula chose as his item some tiny and corroded (and not outwardly impressive) iron beads - which, remarkably, date from a period 2,000 years before the Iron Age (long before humans first mastered the art of mining and smelting iron). Relevant to Mr Kukula's profession, it appears that the beads were worked from chippings taken from a meteorite, and, he surmised, must have been revered as a "gift from the Gods" back in those pre-Dynastic days.



His discussion also revealed how modern artists, working with the same methods as those ancient metalworkers, had attempted to recreate beads from meteorite material and - because the iron from space rocks is liberally mixed with crystals of nickel, which creates naturally exotic geometric patterns in the finished articles - they turned out to be quite beautiful indeed.



Dress and textile historian Daniel Milford-Cottam of the V&A [who is profoundly deaf and uses written notes to communicate, hence the fact that Public Programmer at The Petrie Museum the witty and charming Helen Pike was sat with him to interpret] naturally chose the remarkable Tarkhan Dress - a pleated linen gown that was recently confirmed to be the world's oldest known extant garment. It was made between 3482-3102BC, about the time that Stonehenge was under construction - and is still alluring.



The discussion not only surmised how the dress would actually have been worn [its skin-tight skirt is missing, but it would not have been a practical garment for walking in], but also covered its (and Egypt's visual style in general) influence on fashion to this day - especially some famous 20th century pleated gowns, such as Manuel Fortuny's Delphos gown and the work of Madame Grès, that obviously owe some of their origins to Ancient Egypt (alongside their more obvious homages to Ancient Greece and Rome).



The very lovely Sara Walton - author of the historical novel Rufius (about the outrageous exploits of a cinaedus [ultra-femme gay man] in turbulent times for Rome and Egypt) and reader at the most recent Polari - quite mischievously chose an item of cock-worship; a Graeco-Roman period terracotta model of a procession carrying a large phallus.



Of course, this gave "J-J-J" full rein to steer the discussion around the role of the phallus in Egyptian ceremony (and in more - ahem - domestic rituals; as a fertility token of course!). The audience was enraptured. This is LGBT History Month, after all, and the audience was indeed full of fellow phallus-worshippers...



Rob Eagle - visual anthropologist, documentary film-maker and occasional drag queen - is a long-time supporter of the Petrie Museum (and an avid fan of dressing as icons from Egypt's history). He arrived this year in the regalia of Horus the hawk-headed god to talk about one of the most popular LGBT-themed items in the collection (regularly featured in similar events we've attended here over the years) - a notorious papyrus fragment found at Lahun telling the (rather fruity) Tale of Horus and Seth. Dating from the Late Middle Kingdom (1850BC – 1700BC), it's an early version of the story that in its later incarnations became more violent.



However, in the Petrie Museum's copy Horus and Seth, who had been fighting over the throne of Egypt for over 80 years, have a well-deserved break from hostilities for a more intimate encounter. Seth flatters Horus with what is the oldest recorded gay chat-up line: “How lovely are your buttocks. And how muscular your thighs”. After a meal the two gods retire to bed and have sex - which the papyrus describes in all its glory:

Then Set said to Horus: "Come, let us have a feast day at my house." And Horus said to him: "I will, I will." Now when evening had come, a bed was prepared for them, and they lay down together. At night, Set let his member become stiff, and he inserted it between the thighs of Horus. And Horus placed his hand between his thighs and caught the semen of Set.

Steamy stuff!

This was a remarkably enjoyable evening (again). Even though I was on my own, once more, I had a wonderful time.

Long live the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology!

Priapic fascination, sword-swallowing, hypnotic behaviour, a cinaedus and a jar of jelly-beans

It's LGBT History Month again - and our first event of this estimable feast of historical insights was Polari on Tuesday. Of course.

Hostess-with-the-mostest at "London's peerless gay literary salon" Mr Paul Burston, in the absence of partner-in-crime VG Lee had seated us (John-John, Alex, Jayne and I) in the "Royal Box" (one of the front tables), leaving Paul, Bryanne, Simon and the rest to languish in the stalls... We waved, regally. Occasionally.



Anyhoo - opening this month's show was historian Jennifer Ingleheart, with her fascinating talk (technically, a mini-lecture, given that we had handouts and everything) Romosexuality. Cleverly weaving in references to both EM Forster's classic gay love story Maurice and the Victorian pornographic novel Teleny (purportedly written, at least in part, by Oscar Wilde), her point was to illustrate how, in spite of repeated scorn from scholars through the ages, it is in fact the Roman perspective on gay relationships rather than the idealised Greek which bears more relevance to our modern lives:

Areas in which specifically Roman rather than Greek sexual practices and ideologies intersect in significant ways with modern homosexualities include, in particular, Rome’s ‘Priapic’ fascination with well-endowed males, its greater concentration on and candour about sex, and its adherence to a less rigidly structured age-related model of same-sex relationships than that of Greek pedagogic pederasty; Roman texts contain more examples of men’s desire for and sex with other adult males, and have thus been read as authorizing same-sex relationships which involve partners defined by their same-sex attraction rather than their desire for the sexually other...

Despite its prominence in scholarly accounts of homosexuality, and its important role for early gay rights activists, it might be argued that Greek homosexuality does not play a comparable role in contemporary popular culture: its pederastic aspect provides a stumbling block for many gay men.

Excellent stuff - as I am sure fellow gay historian and regular host of History Month events at our beloved Petrie Museum, John J Johnson (in the Polari audience for the very first time) agreed.



Next to the stage was poet David Clarke, who read a selection of works from his collection Arc. From that anthology, this...

Sword-Swallowing for Beginners
Start by flicking the fleshy switch at the back
of your throat. When you’ve thrown up a dozen times,
you’ll find the impulse subsides – you can sit for hours
with a knuckle softly pressed inside your head,

watching rolling news of the war. Insert spoons,
knitting needles, a length of plumber’s pipe.
Stare at the ceiling, your jaw loose as a gorging
python’s, and try to conjure those shocks that pass

through the body, but leave it intact – the rasp of panicked
breath, the whump of a nearby explosion, a scream.
Or think of the soldier who coughed up a sleeping bullet,
shrapnel burrowing out of a human thigh

to freedom. By then you’ll be ready to take a blunted
bayonet, silver and slick with spit. Arrange
your body around that deathly spindle,
repeat to yourself – I am unharmed. Unharmed.

Slurp!



Closing the first half, our chum Chris Green - most famous as the delightful Hip Hop Music Hall legend Miss Ida Barr (who we like so much, my sister even had her play at her wedding reception!). One thing we never knew was his lifelong fascination with hypnotism, and it was from his new book on the history of the subject Overpowered! from which he read a few engrossing pieces before inviting questions from the audience. And speaking of engrossing, how about his newest stage creation, The Singing Hypnotist?

Christopher Green - The Singing Hypnotist

Suitably - ahem - mesmerised, it was time for a quick break for a fag and a top-up.

Our next reader, novelist Sarah Walton has dedicated herself to her art. To prepare for writing her debut Rufius [his caricature heads this blog], Miss Walton studied for a PhD and, in her words "immersed myself for five years in the everyday clutter of ancient Roman lives – from favourite recipes to remedies for genital warts." She introduced the book thus:

"Meet Rufius, flamboyant hedonist with perfect eyebrows. Rufius is a cinaedus, Latin for an effeminate buggeree. Far from the hard, muscular Roman ideal, cinaedi wore make-up, curled their hair, plucked and painted on their eyebrows. They could be thought of as an ancient Roman version of transgender. The laws that condemned these men to public burning became more severe under the Christian Emperors, but Rufius is having none of it. He’s not ashamed of wearing his mother’s cameo brooches on his toga, and he’s not going to stop talking with a lisp because of a bunch of jumped up bishops!"

And who better to portray the man himself but Chris Green (again), complete with all the mincing..?

"Fill my glass, boy."

What a drag. Avoid the pirates, Damasus had said. I could strangle him. Who’d have thought I’d be cast off to the East? I must be the only cinaedus exiled in the history of the Roman Empire. Exile’s a punishment reserved for senators and poets. Legally it’s a valid sentence for my kind, but no judge would bother... unless bribed by Damasus, the Arch-bloody-bishop of Rome. Curse you, Damasus. I’ll fleece you for this...

"Curse that Archbishop and his double chins – at least he has a few more than me." Men are tortured and beheaded without a trial for being in possession of heretical books. Exile and in league with that scoundrel! But what choice did I have when he waved the law at me … and the Emperor Gratian wrapped around his fat finger... "Need I remind you of the punishment for being a cinaedus, Rufius?" I recall the smell of the roses in the Lateran Basilica that day. Yellow rose petals, crushed in Damasus’ hand, fluttered through his fingers as he spat out the word cinaedus. His laughter at having me cornered still makes me shiver with rage. I’ll fleece him for this. If he thinks he’s getting fifty percent of the profits he’s misjudged me. The best way to hurt Damasus is in his precious purse.

"Pharos," shouts a deck hand. "Lighthouse. Starboard."

"Shut him up will you, dear?" I reach out to stroke the slave’s hair. "I can’t tip you, but I can give you a kiss." He lets me pet him, ready to jump away at the slightest angry twitch. He’ll receive a decent tip for putting up with my ill temper. Simple joys, like surprising slaves with the odd forbidden possession, are what keep my pulse throbbing these days.

Campness abounds. Utterly sublime.



Only a reader of the brilliance of our eternal favourite Mr Jonathan Harvey could follow that! Reading from his new novel The Secrets We Keep, he teased us with the mysterious tale of Natalie "...that woman, the one whose husband disappeared. It's made me quite famous. I just wish it was for something else. He went out five years ago for a pint of milk and never came back. So here I am with a daughter who blames me for all that's wrong in the world, a son trying his best to pick up the pieces and a gaggle of new neighbours who are over friendly, and incredibly nosy. Then I find a left luggage ticket in the pocket of one of his old coats and suddenly I'm thinking... What's if he's not dead? What if he's still out there somewhere?" Here's a snippet:

It was the late eighties, and lots of loft apartments and offices lay empty. And it was at a party in one of these that I met a gorgeous guy just a year or two younger than me who was addicted to jelly bean sweets. This was Danny. He claimed he’d seen me out and about around London, working the door of a club near Piccadilly Circus. I had no recollection of him. But before I could say so he’d offered me a sweet. The rest, as they say, is history.

For years he kept a jar of these sweets in the fridge. I used to bicker with him that there was no need, those sweets don’t really go off, but he said he liked the colour they brought to the fridge. They were his sweet of choice and he enjoyed the ritual of opening the door, pulling the nipple shaped lid off the jar in the door, and furtling around inside for a handful of the multicoloured beans. After he disappeared I didn’t dare move them from their home. If that fridge was jelly-bean-free it meant I had given up hope. He would return. He would furtle and eat again.

The left luggage ticket and the jelly beans themselves come back into the story as our heroine decides to use subterfuge to investigate more. On discovering that a woman had come to collect the "lost" parcel, she gets a job as her cleaner - and it's then she discovers a familiar jar in her fridge...

We were on the edge of our seats - but will need to read the book to find the true story.

This was a splendid evening (once again), and, despite being left wanting more - it was a brilliant way to start out LGBT History Month celebrations.



Our next outing for Polari on 9th March will be part of the South Bank's Women of the World festival, and features headliner Polari First Book Prize 2013 winner Mari Hannah, together with Jacquie Lawrence, Sophie Sparham and VA Fearon and (again) Sophie Ellis-Bextor's mum Janet Ellis. Can't wait!

Polari website

Really old frocks, rocks and cocks

It was all about frocks, dear! Certainly, the superb LGBT History Month Objects of Desire event, in London's best "hidden treasure" the fabled Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, on Thursday began and ended with a pair of the most miraculously preserved examples of ancient Egyptian garments - with, of course, many more fascinating objects (and speakers) in between...

The concept of the evening, genially hosted as ever by that expert in all things LGBT-history-related Egyptologist John J Johnston, is that a series of individuals whose area of expertise is not Ancient Egypt are invited to select an item from the museum's vast collection and to have a chat about why their chosen artefact attracted them. It's a great formula for discussion - as we found when we attended a similar event there two years ago. And so it was that Hils, the History Boy, Jim and I went along with much anticipation. We weren't disappointed.



First up was Geoff Slack, film and television costume designer, to talk about the above beautiful Fifth Dynasty bead net dress. Knowing a thing or two about how clothing is constructed, he agreed that the conservators of the dress had probably accurately captured the way it would have been when it was originally worn (found as it was as just a pile of beads, the threads rotted away long since its burial) - and, as Mr Johnston's slide helpfully pointed out, if worn with minimal undergarments was not too dissimilar to the type of outrageous costume worn today by the likes of Cher or Katy Perry.



The discussion then steered into how other costume designs - notably some of those worn by Elizabeth Taylor in her epic Cleopatra - were wildly inaccurate and rather reflected the era in which they were made than the way clothes were worn in Dynastic Egypt. Artistic licence vs historical accuracy; a common phenomenon, even today.



Moving swiftly on, Professor Sharon Morris - senior lecturer at Slade School of Art and poet - came on to talk about a lovely papyrus fragment of the Book of the Dead of Nes-Ptah, notable in its own way for its obvious portrayal of powerful women enjoying the fruits of their privilege at the top of Egyptian society. Fascinated as she is in the relation between words and images, Prof Morris talked about the way women writers have often featured analogies of the glittering times of old Egypt to act as a juxtaposition for the state of society today. Her own favourite modern poet, Hilda Doolittle (known as "HD") often incorporated Egyptian themes in her abstract verse, as some passages she read illustrated.



Egyptian classical history is full of homoerotic art, but it wasn't until the Romans took over that more "realistic" funerary portraits such as the above image of a "young man from Hawara", described by founder Flinders Petrie as "the Red Youth", became commonplace. Our next guest Mark O'Connell (shortlisted for the Polari First Book Award 2013 for his book Catching Bullets: Memoirs of a Bond Fan) is fascinated by them, and the discussion ventured a few theories about why quite so many appear to our eyes as apparently gay, beautiful young men - were they revered athlete pin-ups (a la David Beckham?) or genuine portraits of departed male partners?.



Nice to look at, whatever.



Dr Nathaniel Coleman, UCL lecturer in Philosophy of Race, came next - to talk about the controversial collection of terracotta heads from Memphis, identified by Petrie as "foreigners". Dr Coleman is strongly of the opinion that the collection, the way the items were catalogued and presented, was evidence of Petrie's own predilection for eugenics, and that they even have their modern equivalents in racial stereotyping (such as on gay dating sites). This, needless to say, generated a slightly heated debate with members of the audience, whose interpretations were at variance with Dr Coleman's.



Hamish Steele - animator and graphic novelist, author of Pantheon: The True Story of the Egyptian Deities - chose to talk about the most famous gay artefact of all in the Petrie archive, a papyrus fragment that tells a particularly smutty story from the Tale of Horus and Seth. That saga in itself might well be the sort of thing a superhero comic/film might tackle - the everlasting battle between vengeful uncle and son, taking on the guise and form of various mythical animals as they thrash out their differences (and thrash each other). However, it would seem that not all the "thrashing" was necessarily so violent - the passage this particular papyrus reveals is one of a sexual liaison between the two, and one of the oldest (and corniest) chat-up lines ever: ‘How lovely are your buttocks! And how muscular your thighs…’

Unsurprisingly, this almost 2000-year-old equivalent of Grindr was chosen by one of the participants at the previous event in 2013. However, this was the first time the papyrus was actually on display - and it was fascinating to see it.



Finally, saving the "surprise reveal" till last, we were greeted by the arrival of a real Ancient Egyptian! Well, almost. Rob Eagle - visual anthropologist and documentary film-maker - is also a dressing-up fan, and decided to come appropriately garbed for the occasion, to talk about another frock - a First Dynasty linen dress (known, internationally, as 'the Tarkhan dress'). By far the oldest piece of intact clothing in the collection (and indeed, one of the oldest on display in the world), its conservation and how it might have been worn drew the discussion into a fab analogy with modern attitudes to "men in skirts", and how these have changed over the millennia.

With that final flourish, a most absorbing and stimulating evening drew to a close. Sheer magic...

The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology never fails to astonish and entertain - and in the next few months alone, there are showings of Carry on Cleo and The Spy Who Loved Me (with its fabled battle between Jaws and Bond in Karnak Temple) to look forward to!

Tell me why is it so?

It's almost the finale to another (rather odd) week, dear reader - a week of awards ceremonies, Gays supporting Miners, Polari and Ancient Egypt (more to come on those LGBT History Month events in due course when I have a moment to myself, no doubt), and also a week when Google turned nasty with its outrageous "crack-down on adults".

The last bombshell has hit my favourite blog community hard. Anyone who has ever posted a nipple or a pair of bollocks is now threatened with "lock-down" (I wait and see if anything I've ever included will fail The Test), several have already made the switch to the unfamiliar world of Wordpress, and some are threatening to close down operations altogether in response to the announcement.

So it's with mixed feelings that I post this jolly number by the much-anticipated headliner for tomorrow's "Gala Parlour" end-of-History-Month Ball, Mr Jimmy Somerville (here with the Communards) - and Thank Disco It's Friday!

Communards - Never Can Say Goodbye

It's that same old dizzy hang-up
I can't do with you or without
Tell me why is it so?
I don't wanna let you go!

Hey, I never can say goodbye boy, ooh baby
I never can say goodbye, no, no, no, oo

Hey, I never can say goodbye boy, ooh baby
I never can say goodbye, no no no, no no no

Indeed.

Pits and Perverts

"We knew gay people existed – my dad worked with a miner who was gay – but nobody openly talked about it; it was considered very personal. There was an uncertainty about how these people would be different and whether we would have to modify our behaviour. Would they expect us to talk about things, ask them questions? And they were bloody vegetarians! This fazed us far more." (Siân James: miner's wife, now Labour MP)

To my eternal shame, I have yet to see the film Pride [although I hope to redress this heinous omission during the forthcoming London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival in March]. Of course, I knew the story [I came out in 1984 in the middle of the strike, and my first Gay Pride was in 1985 - Divine-on-Thames, and all], and I was overjoyed that a mainstream film starring luminaries such as Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton and Dominic West, had been made and was met with such huge acclaim (not at the Oscars, inevitably) - nominations for Best Film at the London Film Critics Circle, the BAFTAs and the Golden Globes, winner at the British Independent Film Awards, and awards at the Cannes, Flanders and Leiden film festivals. By all accounts, it is joyful.

Of the real story - well, there was nothing particularly "celebratory" about the 1984-5 Miners' Strike. It proved massively divisive and caused bloodshed and mayhem up and down the country - mineworkers vs police, mineworker against mineworker in some cases. So, to find that of all the fundraising efforts from traditionally militant minority groups in Britain at the time, the one that raised the greatest amount of money for Welsh miners' families (whose union welfare fund had been frozen by the government during the strike) was a rag-tag bunch of gay men and lesbians from London, of all places, must have come as a shock to all concerned.



Three decades on from that momentous tale, and as part of Camden and Islington LGBT History Month 2015, we were ecstatic that one of the founder-members of that original "rag-tag" group, Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM), Mike Jackson was to speak about his memories of that era (at Central Station pub near King's Cross - where he is a regular) last Sunday. I was very pleased to find that time has not eroded his passion...

As he said in an interview in Pink News: "We are so thrilled that [the film] has happened because there was a great danger that the story would be lost to history forever. I mean OK, yes, I did keep an archive of everything that we did but it’s a chicken and egg argument – it’s no good having a historical archive gallery in a museum if nobody actually knows about the history in the first place."



Along with the politics and how it felt to be part of a ground-breaking "meld" of what at the time probably could not have been two more diametrically opposite causes (gay rights and those of striking workers in Britain's dying industrial heartlands), he gave us an insight into some of the fun times they all had (that form a major part of the film's story, no doubt) - such as how on their very first visit to the village of Dulais near Swansea, the group's minibuses got lost in the valleys and didn't get there till one in the morning, long after the "reception committee" had packed up and gone to bed. Twenty-seven assorted gays and lesbians (in the film it is a dozen) slept on the floor in one of the miners' houses.





Then there were tales about the hugely well-attended "Pits and Perverts" gala concert with Jimmy Somerville, Mike's secret crush on the group's founder (who sadly died of AIDS-related pneumonia not long after the strike ended) Mark Ashton, his long-time friend and co-founder the eternally camp Jonathan Blake in his home-made faux-furs and flamboyant trousers raising money basically by leaping on people, and about many others who were sadly left out of the film (for logistical reasons - the cast would have been too huge). Of the film's variance from their real experiences, he was benign.

In real life, he did not ring to offer the Welsh miners LGSM's support as he does in the film – he wrote them a letter. "I thought - God, I'd love to be a fly on the wall when they open it." Nor was there much in the way of homophobia on the group's first meeting with the miners:

"It would be dishonest to say there was no dissent. Years later, we found out there had been a meeting following my letter explaining a bunch of queers wanted to support them. It had led to a very heated discussion. But the consensus was: we have been demonised by the press, maybe we should meet the gay people because they've also been demonised. Those who had a problem with it were told to stay away. So we never encountered any hostility."

"They started wearing gay badges on their lapels. They wanted money because they were on strike; we wanted recognition and acceptance – not that we went with any preconditions, we did not expect anything back." However, the miners were the "headline act" who led the Gay Pride march in London the very next year alongside Mike and the LGSM crew - and, by all accounts, they will be doing so again at this year's march to mark the thirtieth anniversary...



This was a fascinating and intriguing evening, and made me just want to see the film even more. Here, however, is a real treat from the archives - the home-made mini-documentary made at the time of the strike and of LGSM:

All Out! - Dancing in Dulais

Read more interviews with the real people behind the story of Pride in The Guardian

Oh, yes! And guess who's performing at the closing Gala Ball for this year's Camden and Islington LGBT History Month? Only the aforementioned Jimmy Somerville, that's who!

Can't wait...

Together we make history

Back in October I took part in a morning video shoot, with a horde of assorted hunks, ladies-with-sensible shoes, drag queens, trans women and the Mayors of Camden and Islington.







It was fun, if rather knackering; for a good cause.

At last! The finished result - our promotional video for Camden and Islington LGBT History Month in February 2015 - is edited and approved, and...

...here it is - Together (We Make History):

Camden LGBT Forum