Category: Writing

What was happening in London in the mid to late seventies, is that spaces and places were becoming more identifiably marked out as gay and, to some extent, lesbian spaces.

In particular, parts of Chelsea, Earls Courts and Soho. Of course books have now been written about the history of queer sexuality in specific cities, for example ‘Queer City‘ (with book preview) by the prolific Peter Ackroyd about London, ‘Queer London’ (with book preview) by Matt Houlbrook, and ‘Gay Berlin‘ (with book preview) by Robert Beachy (covering in particular the period of the late 20’s and early 30’s and popularised in the mid to late 20th century by books such as Mr Norris Changes Trains & Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood and its film adaptation Cabaret).  In the USA too, the book ‘Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940′ (with book preview) written by George Chauncey documents the period of a half century of gay life & lifestyles. 

The psychologist, David Higgs, wrote an interesting book in 1999 entitled Queer sites: Gay Urban Histories since 1600 (with book preview) and in it he documents something of the history of ‘gay space’ in seven of the world’s major cities from the early modern period to the present. He describes a ‘gay space’ as an area with a significant gay/lesbian population, and writes about the changing nature of queer experience in London, Amsterdam, Rio de Janeiro, San Francisco, Paris, Lisbon and Moscow. He looks at the importance of each city and its varied meeting places for gay men & lesbians, such as parks, river walks, bathing places, the street, bars and even churches, exploring the extent to which gay space existed, and the degree of social collectiveness felt by those who used these spaces. What is immediately clear on reading the book is that such spaces have existed for hundreds of years in major cities around the world, and to some extent there is an overlap between the term ghetto and meeting space.  

Although it was and to some extent remains, a derogatory term, the word ghetto originally referred to those places in European cities where Jews were required to live according to local law. However in the 20th century, it came to be used to describe the areas inhabited by a variety of groups that mainstream society deemed outside its ‘norms’, and included not only Jews but poor people, LGBT people, ethnic minorities, hobos, prostitutes and bohemians.

It is perhaps worthwhile spending a little time looking in more detail at the importance that ghettos have had for LGBT people in the past, (and focusing in particular on Soho in central London), although their influence is somewhat less pervasive now. Westernised ghettos are usually situated in crowded inner city districts often within areas where the property is old and in a poor state of preservation (although they can go upmarket in time, as more affluent residents move in). Financially disadvantaged people of gender and sexual minorities may congregate in them as a place of refuge, benefitting from the concentration of safe, non discriminatory resources and services (just as other minorities do).

The neighbourhood of Schoneberg in Berlin was (arguably) the first gay ghetto (or more politely gay village) in recent hisory, developing in the 1920’s and peaking in the early 1930s before the moral and literal devastation of the Third Reich. However, in London (and other cities) for example, there were establishments known as Molly Houses as far back as the early 18th century. A ‘molly house’ was a coffeehouse, inn, or tavern at which men would meet (in secret) to socialise and have sex. ‘Molly’ or ‘moll’ was a slang term for a gay man, although at this time in England sex between men was punishable by death; nevertheless such molly houses were part of a thriving gay subculture.

Legal records document investigations into about thirty molly houses during the course of the 18th century and in some respects, the eighteenth-century molly subculture was as extensive as any modern gay subculture. The records suggest even then there were certain areas that were ghettos for meeting gay men. For example, one of the main ‘molly districts’ then was on the east of the City, around Moorfields in Shoreditch. What is now the south side of Finsbury Square was a cruising area known as ‘Sodomites’ Walk’. In the late 20th century of course, just to the east of this area (towards Hoxton Square) was host to the infamous ‘London Apprentice’ pub amongst others for some decades, of which more later.

In the book Queer London (link above, Chato & Windus, 2017) Peter Ackroyd tells us about the history of Soho, which although it only occupies about a square mile of inner London, emphasising as he does that even in Roman times there were likely places (lupinaria or ‘wolf dens’) where men met for sexual pleasure, sometimes with each other. 

On its western edge Piccadilly Circus has long been a location that rent boys frequented (as in the expression ‘going down the Dilly’). Both the literary wit Oscar Wilde and the painter  Francis Bacon used the area to (illegally, of course) meet ‘rough trade’ until online dating services in the mid 1990s replaced the rent boys lined up on the Piccadilly railings, known as the ‘meat rack’. Much of this era was well documented by Jeremy Reed in his 2014 book ‘The Dilly’ (Amazon link).

Soho has been at the heart of London’s sex industry for the last two centuries. Along with this it has also catered for a clientele with a preference for more transgressive encounters. In Judith Summers History of Soho (Amazon link) (1989 pp190) the areas inherent tolerance has always offered the unconventional, the eccentric, the rebellious and the merely different the chance to be themselves. And yet, and yet, as Stephen Fry puts it so well in a forward to Berne Katz’s Soho Society (Amazon link) (2008) ‘Soho’s public face of  drugs, prostitution and seedy Bohemia.. has always hidden a private soul of family, neighbourhood, kindness and connection.  Every so often it has a clean up, most notably recently before the 2012 Olympic Games in London and slowly small businesses have been forced out by the ever increasing rents charged on commercial properties in the area.

Whilst Soho was not in fact especially thought of as a particularly gay meeting place in the 50’s and 60’s (it catered for a heterosexual sex industry more) it started to see gay bars opening there from the late 1970’s onwards. Even as late as 1976, Gay News listed only two gay bars: the A&B-originally called the ‘Arts and Battledress club’ -you can see where they were going with that, (and it was a real trooper, getting going in 1941 and only closing in the late seventies) and the Golden Lion at 51, Dean Street, in the whole of Soho.

Nevertheless, for a period in the late sixties and early seventies the mod scene decamped to Soho as its central playground and for a dozen or so years since 1965 David Jones aka Bowie, had already been on the scene there, gathering inspiration and writing songs in tribute, such as his December 1966 release ‘London Boys’, and playing gigs in the area, such as at the infamous Marquee Club (69, Wardour St) with his band The Lower Third (link to image selection) “The London Boys,” (see clip below) documents a young guy, new to the city, who is trying to work his way into the scene: drink, pills, getting high. The song builds and he becomes part of the pack, dressing sharply (mod imagery) getting pilled up but he then finds that his triumph leaves him feeling more alone than ever he was before. There must have been quite a few who also identified with that:

Bright lights, Soho, Wardour street
 You hope you make friends with the guys that you meet
 Somebody shows you round
 Now you’ve met the London boys
 Things seem good again, someone cares about you

A London boy, oh a London boy
 Your flashy clothes are your pride and joy
 A London boy, a London boy
 You’re crying out loud that you’re a London boy
 You think you’ve had a lot of fun
 But you ain’t got nothing, you’re on the run
 

It’s too late now, cause you’re out there boy
 You’ve got it made with the rest of the toys
 Now you wish you’d never left your home
 You’ve got what you wanted but you’re on your own
 With the London boys
 Now you’ve met the London boys

The London Boys, Bowie;released December 1966, Deram Records

The song has a surprisingly melancholy feel and perhaps echoes his disillusionment with the relatively rigid confines of the London mod scene as much as anything, for he would soon cast it all aside, make Bromley in SE London his centre and experiment with the burgeoning hippy scene. However, by the early seventies, reborn as David Bowie, he was back in west Soho (The Furriers ‘K West’ at 23, Heddon St to be precise) posing for that famous shot next to his studio, on the cover of the Ziggy Stardust album cover in 1972 and fast gaining a legion of gay fans.   

The best Soho song though, in my opinion (although, somehow, Time Out, the London listings magazine left it out completely of their Top 100 London tunes.. but hey, what do they know?), was penned by the writers for the sixties band Dave Dee, Dozy Mick & Titch, (link to image set) Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley, with something of a minor classic in 1968, when they wrote ‘Last Night in Soho’ (clip below).

You came into my life like rain upon a barren desert
 One smile and I was born again
 I felt sure it wasn’t too late
 I’d find strength to make me go straight
 I had love and threw it away
 Why did they lead me astray?
 For last night in Soho I let my life go

Last Night in Soho, Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Titch, June 1968 Fontana Records

Listen to it and for my money there’s nothing else around that sums up the feel of Soho in the late 60’s and 70’s. It reeks of smoke, dimly lit clubs, shady deals and letting yourself go: doing things you wouldn’t normally think of doing in the bright of daylight.  It went to number 8 in the UK charts at the time and it still packs quite a punch listening to its grooves today. Nevertheless, it seems again to sum up Soho as a bad influence though, as its protagonist, a gang member, is led away to jail by the end. It was Dave Dee’s personal favourite of all their hits (and they had many) and in a later interview Ken Howard, noted  that “I had grown up, living not far from Oxford Circus, so as I child I knew Soho quite well, wandering on weekends alone through its streets… in the fifties it was quite a rough place, full of pimps, prostitutes and petty criminals, porno cinemas and sex clubs. Not the ideal milieu for an impressionable kid’! It is certainly my favourite of all their hits.

Yet again in 1986, the Pogues were singing about ‘A rainy night in Soho‘, (yes another one..) which, let’s face it, you’re going to regularly experience if you’re a local there but again it portrays Soho in a rather negative way, although Shane Mac Gowan, sadly now departed, does meet the love of his life there, to be fair. Then a decade on we get Pulp’s location specific (and classic) Bar Italia from 1995, about the infamous bar that all late night Soho kids of that time knew, gay and straight, as a cheap hang out joint after the clubs closed, in Frith St.  

And then, whilst you might not realise it’s about Soho but you’ll know it: the classic, much loved, 1996 track Born Slippy (slang, meaning quick and alert) by Underworld was all about Soho, as it was literally assembled from snatches of a conversation heard on a night out in Soho, according to writer Karl Hyde. He recalled: ‘In truth, the song was me -literally- asking for help. I was describing a progressively despairing state of mind. I was using alcohol to numb the senses and thus arrived at the point where “Born Slippy” was written. I was saying, “I’m going to describe a typical night; does anybody else think that this is no way to live, and could somebody throw me a lifeline?”

Of course, arguably, the Pet Shop Boys iconic first hit ‘West End Girls’ (videos elsewhere) is more or less all about Soho. The watering ground for the West End girls (and boys) meeting those East end boys. Writer Neil Tennant has noted:

When I first moved down to London, we used to get all dressed up in our David Bowie imitation clothes, and clatter down the staircase at Seven Sisters tube station on to the brand new Victoria Line, (blimey Neil, it opened in 1963, are you that old?!) and go down to Shadowramas on Neal Street. And that whole thing of being a northerner and coming down to London: I always had that feeling, and still do, of escaping into the West End. I don’t even know why really, but it’s the difference between day and night – people go mad at night, and they go mad in Soho. For me, Soho symbolizes that, although it’s a much tidier place these days. I love London and I’m inspired by it. It’s what we write songs about.’

Which is more or less where I come in to the conversation too. My own use of the area as a socialising centre goes back to around early 1977, when I would journey into the city from the south western suburbs to go to establishments such as Spats at 38, Oxford St, BANG in Tottenham Court Rd (which went on in infamy to be the birthplace of UK Hip Hop) and pubs such as the Salisbury on St Martin’s Lane and sometime later in 1986, Comptons on Old Compton St. So by the time I reached Soho, I was travelling on a culturally pretty well worn path, albeit one that was rather bittersweet. Perhaps that is the clue to Soho’s success: it is often a bittersweet experience. It’s gives and it takes, pushes and pulls you. Excites and then dismays. It is, at least, never boring. Early on in the years I frequented those bars and clubs, there was still a grittiness to the place, some of the pubs were still spit and sawdust dives, and the clubs could get quite heavy.

The long life of the Salisbury (opened 1852; the Marquess of Salisbury to award it full marks) on St Martins Lane was still in full swing, in the mid seventies with its reputation as a theatrical ‘ahem.. gay’ bar intact. You never quite knew who you might see in the thick blue haze, that often obscured the vista on the other side of the bar. Google it: the luvvies have all been there at one time or another, if they’ve been performing on the London stage. One day I met an old muse, the writer Philip Hoare there .. ´David?´, he came over and said. It’s Philip from school? Ah, yes. I always wondered..  I had lost touch with most of my school friends but he had news of some of them at least. Sadly, no great surprises though. I never bumped into anyone else I knew in London, from those old school days; quite remarkable really. We exchanged some gossip about who we had seen at various times the pub in our visits. As it was ‘theatrical’ venue people could simply say they were to honour a great English tradition, if asked or it was questioned.     

There wasn’t a huge amount more in the West End then, in the late 70’s. There was the Kings Head Dive Bar in Gerrard Street (pretty rough. A dive bar was a church for down-and-outers and those who romanticise them, a rare place where the high and low rub elbows—bums and poets, thieves and slumming celebrities – but a place that wears its history proudly, then the Golden Lion in Dean Street (quite rough) the Dog & Trumpet in Great Marlborough Street (evidently- I never went there) and that was it. There were some private members clubs like the Apollo but they were -wink wink- members only: a member could sign you in. No, no Comptons: it didn’t come along until 1986. Of course all bars then came with that thick fug of warm beer, blue smoke, BRUT cologne and old carpet; it was somehow quite reassuring, comfortable. I even convince myself I miss it, occasionally.

The bars would be packed then, especially in the late evenings and really could be quite hard to handle, especially for young guys, who would often get a lot of unwanted attention, along with a modicum of wanted attention, if you were lucky. You had to be able to give as good as you got, if you went out alone in the evening. One of the key things which the bars above had though, was, (like the dive bar suggests) a mix of all types and classes of people and I think that has been lost now, in what LGBTQ pub culture remains. Bankers and workmen, lawyers and sailors, city gents and tailors, you never knew who you might meet. In some ways it was quite reassuring but equally you had to be ready to adjust to the conversational milieu.  To some extent the Pet Shops’ West End Girls is really all about the attraction west end queens had, for east end lads. ‘Got myself a bit of rough last night’ they used to say, winking. Rough boys were always sexy. Except when they were beating the shit out of you, of course. Tennant later said that some listeners had assumed the song referred to prostitutes, but was actually, “about rough boys getting a bit of posh. Yep, we knew it, Neil.

I used to joke that in the eighties and early nineties I practically lived my life in Soho and in fact there is some truth in that observation. I actually lived in Somerstown, for years, just east of Euston & it was just a 15 minute walk into the centre of Soho, through Russell Square, so there were many (oh so many) nights I was there meeting friends, imbibing alcohol and enjoying the general melee. As those from the 60’s who knew it then must have felt in the 90’s, I go there today and it seems a different place, much cleaner as Neil Tennant says (literally and metaphorically) and pretty sanitised, even before the anti-covid gel struck out.      

But back in the seventies things were down and dirty. This was the era of the black, boarded gay pub. ‘Going in’ was always an experience, and going in for the first time was an right old eye opener.

Scene: 1977 – dark, a cold grubby grey winters night in central London. A small group of young men are coming out of Earls Court tube, hands in pockets.

You ready for this?

Ready as I’ll ever be.  Can’t be that bad can it? I heard you get thrown out if they don’t like you. 

I just heard it’s so dark you can’t see anyone else in there.

Yeh? Maybe that’s a good thing..? 

Yeh! (chuckles). C’mon then, we going in or what?

The Coleherne had a reputation that preceded it. Of all the options open to you in London in those days, it was surely the most notorious. Until you entered you had no idea what it was like inside, as the windows were boarded up, blacked out. You had to in those days, in case they were bricked. Or worse. And you didn’t really want people peering in anyway. Just about every gay pub then, had those black boards up, blocking out the light, blocking out the real world.

I was ‘going in’ with the Befriending group (still avaliable as a service via MIND OUT nowadays). This was a group led by Martin Jones and several others that met every Wednesday night at a leaders house, first for a warm up and then went on to a local pub en masse.  A good way to introduce young naive guys like me to the big new closed world of the mean old gay scene in late seventies London. Get to know everyone a little first, have a coffee and a pep talk and then attack en masse!  In retrospect – given its reputation- it seems odd that we even went to the Coleherne but it must be remembered that our choice was pretty limited back then. In fact the choice of completely gay venues in west London was always- and indeed still is -very limited.

We arrived outside, after the short walk from Earls Court tube. There was no more time for deliberating:, we were through the door, Martin confidently leading the way. It was as terrifying as I’d expected. To get in you ran the gauntlet of a long procession of men on either side of you, dressed predominantly in tight black leather, the place thick with the blue haze of smoke, stinging the eyes for a moment. You felt dozens of pairs of eyes running  over each and every person who walked in, weighing you up, ticking you off , metaphorically rating their chances- or crossing you off their list of possibles.

To be fair this happened at many gay venues then (and probably still does at some) but the set up at the Coleherne was particularly brutal in terms of initiation.. the shape of the bar down the front of the pub meant that there was a long narrow passageway to traverse before you reached the main larger square shaped area of the pub, with its spit ‘n sawdust floor. I can still remember that first time quite vividly, even forty years on. Of course, I went back many times after. I even took my place in that line, playing an act, engaging in this piece of theatre, my own black leather jacket wrapped tightly around me, taking some delight in watching those fresh young new faces come in, nervously asking for their first half pint of beer or Carling Black at the bar. 

It was a rite of passage that many or most of us on the scene went through; an initiation into a ‘counter culture’; some grew to love it, to rely on it even, others never went back after a first visit. I suppose I grew to accept it and to use it when I needed too. I certainly grew to love later versions of the same kind of places through the 80’s and 90’s. But by then they were not so much bolt holes, they were places of specialised engagement and entertainment, places of spectacle & theatre. Even then in 1978, we youngsters felt that the Coleherne was something that had ´had its time´.We were coming from a younger generation, that already realised it wanted to be out of the smoky back rooms and onto the streets.We were ready to be eyed up, seen and reckoned with out on those streets – and we were pretty certain it was our right.  

Sex, love and life (The Rituals) 2.10 1979: Rise of the body politic & political activism

Sex, love and life: an Index

  

Although I was living in outer London (as I said, in glamorous Teddington to be precise), it didn’t initially occur to me to try and meet people on the pub & club ‘scene’ in central London.

Whilst this wasn’t exactly huge then in the late 70’s in Soho, there was probably the biggest concentration of gay venues outside of New York or San Francisco. However, it wasn’t easy going into such a space and meeting a potential partner on a night, if you weren’t especially confident or got nervous going in there and being by yourself. My experiences on the scene up until then hadn’t been too good either. In retrospect, I’m not entirely sure why but I think it was because I had started to be more influenced by the post punk new music scene that was blossoming about in that time. Bands like The Jam, the Specials, the Jets and similar bands. I wanted to meet people who liked them as well. A lot of people on the scene seemed -to me at least- stuck in a sixties timewarp.

I was also more interested in new cinema directions at the time and grew to have a slightly more specific ‘style’ that I searched out in others, as a result. I joined the British Film Institute (BFI) and started going to watch films there, visited the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) gallery on the Mall for its edgy films, installations and bands.

A lot of this was the result of reading a particular London based magazine, that in retrospect I realise I owe a huge debt to; that magazine is of course ‘Time Out’. Although it’s more or less a pastiche now of what it once was, in its glory days Time Out used to be ‘hot’ on the London scene. It had both gay listings -unheard of then- and gay contact ads.. also unheard of in mainstream magazines then. In 1978 it was money very well spent and an essential weekly read for 30 pence. Tony Elliot was its publisher then, having nursed it in various states of health from episode 1 back in 1968 at 1s.6d -old money- a copy.

About the first edition I ever bought however, was when it was already well established and pretty much in its glory days, on number 421, covering April 28th-May 4th 1978 and featuring The Clash and Tom Robinson on its front cover, at a Rock against Fascism benefit gig.  Richard Williams was then its editor, with Anny Brackx heading up a section unashamedly called ‘Agitprop’ on p19. There was still a poetry section on p18 and the classified ads were on p64. Some famous names were involved in writing for it, Duncan Campbell heading up its news section with Chris Petit editing its film section. You could be pretty sure most of what you needed to know-or should know-would be covered by it weekly, in mid to late 70’s London.

It wasn’t all hard core though.. it had a section called ‘Discos’ on p46. It also had a section called ‘Stop Press’ to give it a seemingly current vibe long before internet days, on the inside back page and it was edgy enough to have various typo’s too; this particular edition shows that p55 saw its ‘Classica and Opera’ coverage start. It still had a reassuringly hip feel to it, at least to this twenty one year old kid just coming out and starting a long journey towards some kind of awareness of how things meshed together. I may well have bought it for its cover (Tom Robinson..edgy and  gay, The Clash, Paul Simenon.. edgy and gorgeous) but soon saw that it covered so much more. I was hooked from the start.

Then there were those personal ads. Did I mention there were gay ones? I soon figured that if someone was edgy enough to read ‘Time Out’, put in a gay personal ad and expect replies they could well be right up my street. Maybe even in my street? Hence began my long love affair with Time Out personal ads. You could more or less say what you wanted (but no swearing). Abbreviations were accepted (so you could add relatively risque things in too if you were careful). It soon became my personal lexiconic challenge to create the perfect twenty seven word ad (words were expensive!) that would attract ‘my type’ of man. 

At the time there was a large market for such ways of meeting people. People were already becoming somewhat disillusioned by the commercial gay scene: its mainstream music, it’s perceived seediness, its behind closed doors attitudes and for all these reasons I suspect they wanted a way to create their own agenda when meeting people.

We would arrange to meet in cafes, such as the BFI’s edgily hip cafe on the South Bank, maybe see a film at an alternative  venue, like the Scala, at its original Scala Street home or go to a good value self service italian bistro, such as Spaghetti House on St Martins Lane (which was an institution in itself , somehow surviving there until 2016) and then a drink in a pub.. gay or otherwise.  

You always (ok, I always..) asked for a photo first too, so as to assess likeability. I felt that I didn’t necessarily need to fancy someone from their photo but if they just looked like someone I could talk to, well, that was good enough. Of course if you fancied them in their photo as well, the game was well and truly on! The letters you’de exchanged already had already covered your mutual interests too, and so you knew there was at least something you could talk about for a hour or two. In the first few years I met probably a few dozen people through such ads, some successful, some less so, and just a few were hopelessly cringeworthy. Five or six became boyfriends and one, Gary, became my first ‘proper’ long term boyfriend, whom I was still regularly in touch with, over forty years later.

My first affair didn’t last too long but thank goodness he was charming, somewhat older than I was, with some experience and took my fumbling nervousness in good spirits. I am somewhat embarrassed to say that although I can picture him -he had glasses, was quite tall with a nice body- I cannot recall his name or surname, and have no idea if he is about today even but I’d like to say a heartfelt thankyou in retrospect, many years later, for showing me that two guys can get it on together, it can feel entirely natural and exciting and there is nothing to be ashamed of. All of those things were not ‘givens’ to me beforehand. I think I was so relieved afterwards, I might have cried.

Maybe things (that is, my life) could be, would be all right, after all?   When things went wrong in the next twenty years or so and relationships broke up (and they did..) I would nearly always think (mostly -but not always- after a suitable pause): contact ad. It worked time and time again. It wasn’t tinder or grindr but it was a definite mapped out way forwards again. At one stage I thought of calling this memoir ‘Return to the Contact Ad’. Probably for the best it was ditched as a title.

Sometimes, some unusual magazines paid off handsomely; for a long time the fortnightly Irish music magazine ‘Hot Press‘ accepted gay contact ads, when other music magazines didn’t. The magazine was imported into the UK and available in London newsagents & bookshops and selectively elsewhere. However, somewhere word got out that you could put gay contact ads into it & it became an exceptionally good way of meeting like minded young gay men into cool bands for a time. The first time I put a well crafted ad into it, I was absolutely inundated by replies from very eligible young gay men, which put me in a difficult position, as frankly, I would have been happy to have gone out at least once with nearly all of them. I replied to about half of them with a photo, still got a lot of responses back and worked my way through them. I had to apologise to many though and try and carefully explain that I had had too many replies and suggest they perhaps put an ad in themselves. You had to be careful though, as some of the guys replying were very young. I met a lovely guy called Steve through Hot Press (he was, I recall, a huge Debbie Harry fan) who told me he was sixteen in the letter. Actually, he acted and looked about twenty and so it was a shock to hear, after I had seen him a few times, that he was soon having his 16th birthday in a few weeks, as the age of consent was still 21.

ON to Sex, love and life (The rituals) 2.8 The film that moved me and moved me on

BACK to Sex, love and life: An index

Someday,
 Somewhere,
 We’ll find a new way of living
 We’ll find a way of forgiving
 Somewhere

There’s a place for us
 Somewhere a place for us
 Peace and quiet and open air
 Wait for us somewhere

Pet Shop Boys: Somewhere (1997) after Bernstein (1957), lyrics for musical ‘West Side Story’

A 21 year old youth

He believes he’s found his life at last

After that long period of needless fear

And yet, as he sits, takes up his pen

Thinks so fondly of departed years

So much to learn that seems completely new

Of course- he has everything to live for, it’s clear.

But looking back, does it seem so bad?

On reflection, he is not quite so sure.

(Wiseman 1979)

At some stage everyone I met then -and many I still meet now- had taken that jump. It was a little like going to a cliff edge and peering over. It felt like that. You talked about it as a throwaway line in a conversation, pretty close to first contact: ‘So how did you come out? The answers you’d get would vary wildly but all accepted it as process from which there was no going back. Everything afterwards, like it or not, was predicated on the notion of moving on, moving forward, the next step. All those musical questions, cliches that we had hummed, danced to, allowed to roll around in our heads, suddenly seemed uniquely relevant: ‘How could something so wrong feel so right?’ It was hard to just dip your toe in, find the water was indeed warm and not want to get further drawn in. Meeting people like yourself for the first time, understanding and sharing their experiences, understanding that doubt, fear, panic. Really?  You felt that way then too!? So I’m not crazy, or ill, or bad, or damned?  

Where were you? Who were you with? How did it go, what did they say, what happened next? Were you nervous, were you scared, did it feel like a release, did you feel sick, could you speak, did you cry, did they cry, was it violent, were you both alone?  Was it dark, was there light, were you happy, were you panicking, were you shouting, were you calm? 

Were you with friends, were you at home, were you out, outside, was it wet, cold, sunny, hot, raining? Were you eating, were you drinking, in your right mind, out of your mind, out of your brain, on the rack, feeling blue, feeling empty, full, feeling beside yourself?

Was it the same for you, was it hell for you, was it at all easy for you, was it ever the same again?  Were you ever the same again? Was there a feeling that a weight had been released, expunged from your heart, soul, lungs, body, mind? 

When you first met, even after sex, you might spend ages talking about it; if it felt good nearly all the first night: talking about how it was for you, how it could be for you, how it might go, how dreams might happen, how life might get lived, how things could go, might go, where you wanted to go, maybe together.. hold my hand, we’re half way there, I’ll take you there, somehow, some day, somewhere:  sweet dreams were ever made of this.   

When we were a bit older, a bit less innocent, we used to joke about it to our best mates back then. ‘He had me married and moved in on the first night, yeh; a bit too intense for me really‘. But in those heady, first encounters, it was sometimes so easy to construct a better future, a more perfect future. To feel that we could somehow, someway, fit into the way we hoped it was meant to be. That perhaps we could please everyone that needed to be pleased, shape a future that ticked all, or at least most, of the boxes.

The pressure to conform then was undoubtedly huge; there were few obvious alternative role models that we could identify with, so few people that we could look at and see that they had found a way forward. Retrospectively, it is easier to see that there were couples in the UK who had lived together, formed partnerships, been accepted in closed communities but they were simply not publicised or promoted then. The books that sold and were read by people then were the salacious ones that said everyone in a same sex partnership was doomed to failure, to scandal, to gossip, to hell, in a handcart. In America, magazines in the 1950’s and 60’s like the National Enquirer, Lowdown, Confidential all had large sales primarily through peddling a lot of gossip and rumour about things that ended badly. Sometimes very badly. This is what all too often we had grown up seeing and thinking and usually what our parents and grandparents thought. Why on earth, they said, would you want to confine yourself to a lifetime of that? 

The mainstream entertainment industry both in the UK -but equally throughout America and Europe & indeed more widely – was equally poor in relation to providing identifiable role models. Books such as Vito Russo’s 1981 classic, The Celluloid Closet which highlighted the historical contexts that gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people had occupied in cinema history, and showed the evolution of the entertainment industry’s role in shaping perceptions of these figures, had yet to be released. In particular Russo addressed the secrecy, which initially defined,  what was thought to be by many, deviant sexuality, but which at least examined the issue: that such relationships were happening but being covered up.  But in the mid seventies all that was yet to come out to the general public, more widely than those ‘in the know’, in the industry.  

In the UK, television programmes that stood out like The Naked Civil Servant, (clip from programme) based on Quentin Crisp’s 1968 book of the same name, were well written, produced and well acted with John Hurt in its lead role, and directed by Jack Gold. It was produced by Verity Lambert  who had a fine pedigree, she was for instance the founding producer of the science-fiction series Doctor Who. It was first broadcast on 17 December 1975, as a 77-minute play, and produced by Thames Television  for the ITV network. For his performance, Hurt won the BAFTA for ‘Best Actor’ in 1976, the production also won the prestigious Prix Italia prize in 1976, it was shown on US channel WOR-TV and later on PBS.

In fact, remarkably, in 2000, the film was placed fourth in a poll by industry professionals to find the BFI TV100, which was chosen by a poll of industry professionals, to determine what were the greatest British television programmes of any genre ever to have been screened (Doctor Who was third) but it was the highest ITV production on the list and the second highest drama on the list (‘Cathy Come Home’ was above it). Whilst its credentials are sound, unfortunately the drama had a very negative effect on a lot of young gay men who had watched it, as many later conversations I had with men that I personally met and spoke to, confirmed. It seemed to confirm to me that the particular trope of gay men as outcasts in society was perfectly valid. There must (surely?) have been certain men for whom the story was quite life affirming but I suspect they were in the vast minority.

For me, it was a reminder that seemed to suggest I would be unlikely to relate to such men I met and that to go forwards in society was going to be an extremely difficult and painful process. Other such stereotypical presentations of gay men abounded in the media then and have been well documented since. It is now possible in retrospect and with the benefit of -decades of- hindsight to view these characters as representations of a particular type of a powerfully alternate, strongly delineated sexuality, that certainly existed in the latter half of the 20th century. For me personally however, such representations made the notion of being accepted and moving forwards with my life in society positively a lot more difficult. It was a long time before I could personally forgive Quentin Crisp for his brand of homosex.  Having said that it is a very good drama.

An important shoutout then, to the very few populist positive portrayals around at the time I was coming out and the people making them happen. One of the first positive role models I ever saw for out gay men was in 1979 on an ITV drama series by London Weekend Television (LWT) called Agony, with Maureen Lipman in the lead role.

Lipman portrayed a fictional successful agony aunt Jane Lucas, whose own personal life was a mess. It was created by Len Richmond, an American writer from Santa Monica, California and the real-life agony aunt, Anna Raeburn, who co wrote all of the first series. (The second and third series were written by Stan Hey and Andrew Nickolds). Anna Raeburn had already developed a very positive reputation with many, in the 1970’s, on the popular late night problem phone-in show on London’s commercial radio station Capital Radio (where Kenny Everett also became hugely popular as a DJ around the same period) called Anna And The Doc. The journalist Vincent Graff said of the show: “If you were a baffled teenager trying to find your way in the world, Anna and the Doc gave you the roadmap.” She had already offered invaluable advice to many young gay men beset with fears on this late night forum (and I was one of them) and so was an ideal writer to co-create and write a populist commercial  script.

Although there had already been an American sitcom drama with a recurring gay character, Billy Crystal in ‘Soap’ (see above for clip) from 1977) as the wikipedia entry notes Agony ‘was the first British sitcom to portray a gay couple as non-camp, witty, intelligent and happy people’. By today’s standards though, it’s quite interesting watching it now, how ‘camp’ those two men do still seem – or maybe it is just how the actors decided they needed to play the roles. Jeremy Bulloch & Micheal Denyer were cast as the -middle class- gay couple bringing their issues and problems to Jane to help solve.

Jeremy Bulloch is now retired but became best known for the role of the bounty hunter Boba Fett in the original Star Wars trilogy but also appeared in many British television and film productions, including Doctor Who and Robin of Sherwood. Peter Denyer (who sadly died in 2009, aged 62) is probably now best remembered for playing Dennis Dunstable from 1971-1973 in LWT’s Please Sir and its spin-off series The Fenn Street Gang, taking on the role of a teenager, when already into his 20’s (which is still quite common in youth drama: ELITE (montage from series 4) at al, I’m looking your way ). 

There is, nevertheless huge kudos due to both actors for agreeing to play these ground breaking roles, which certainly helped me, as a young 22 year old, just coming out gay man at the time, realise that it was very possible -at least in the media’s eyes- to live as a gay couple and have friends who recognised and valued such a relationship, who helped you celebrate the good times and helped see you through the bad times. 

Agony’s creation, script and values were recognised professionally when it went on to win the Banff International Television Festival’s “Best Situation Comedy” award, beating two of the largest American drama shows of the time, “Mash” and “Taxi”.

 It was far ahead of its time and it would be another seven years before there was a similarly positive portrayal of gay character(s) in a popular TV drama series, in fact arguably not until Michael Cashman played the character Colin Russell, in the BBC soap opera EastEnders, his character appearing between the 5 August 1986 and 23 February 1989.

He was also to go  on to become ‘iconic’ in his own right of course, campaigning for lesbian & gay rights and particularly for his tireless campaigning against ‘Section 28’ in the following decades. There was also the character of Gordon Collins on Brookside who came out onscreen as gay in 1986. It would be another long five years on, before in 1991 BBC TV again portrayed a gay couple in the long running comedy drama The Brittas Empire (1991-1997) where Tim and Gavin (Gavin Featherly & Tim Whistler, played by Tim Marriott and Russell Porter) are a couple working at a ‘Brittas’ leisure centre, that the series was based around,  who, throughout the seven series choose not to tell some people of their relationship due to the fear of being fired. The ‘joke’ centred around the fact that their homophobic boss was innocently oblivious to their relationship for the seven series, although this ‘joke’ clearly mirrored fact for many gay men in this period.

Di me! Tell me! Such a simple question, so many answers, so much talking to do. When did you come out? Somewhere, somehow…

But I am rushing ahead; even in the early nineties things had changed. Back in the late seventies, it was not so easy and the first thing you had to think about, as a gay man coming out, was where you might even meet like minded souls? 

ON to Sex, love and life (The Rituals) 2.7 Glory days of the gay contact ad

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So it was then, that aged eighteen, I left home comforts and did my own ‘smalltown boy’ thing, coming up to live and work in London, from Cornwall.  

As my crowded train pulled into platform four at Paddington station in West London, on that late September day in 1975, I hopped off the train ‘with some trepidation’ and a huge red suitcase in tow.   

Even so, when I was first in London, staying at a civil service hostel called ‘Regina’, close to Gloucester Rd tube station, in a large, high ceilinged, five bedded dormitory room, I still had no great understanding of what to do or where to go with myself. I suppose I trod water for some time and engrossed myself in both seventies London and my work.

There was, it  being central London, a lot to do and see. Unlike my roommates, who were all in the Civil Service, working standard nine to five jobs I was in the Scientific Civil Service (having signed the Official Secrets Act, as you did then), as a meteorologist at Kew Observatory (now renamed with its original title the ‘Kings Observatory’) in the Old Deer Park on the banks of the Thames, close to Kew Gardens and Richmond. A rickety old District line tube journey from nearby Gloucester Rd station took me there in half an hour. As I was doing shift work, some of which involved night shifts, I was often not in the Hostel some nights, or I was about in the daytime, with time off, when my roommates were at work.

My first workplace and second home.. Kew Observatory, The Old Deer Park, Richmond

Of course, this work and shift pattern already marked me out as ‘different’ to the others and so it was sometimes a struggle to fit in with things there. They were also all very different to me: huge strapping lads and seemingly much more wordly wise; they saw me as a (literally) small village boy from the sticks. Luckily, I was bedded next to Julian, who was a tall lad with curly, fair, long hair and quite outgoing and he helped bring me out of my shell; took me under his wing I suppose.

He was a kind of role model. He wore flares and high stacked shoes, accentuating his height. We all did, I brought my first pair in Kensington’s High Street Market,  very close to the trendy ‘Biba’, very quickly and those extra few inches made all the difference, as ever.

Much to my initial surprise, he loved Judy Garland (and would consequently play her greatest hits non-stop sometimes, on his record player: ‘Zing went the strings of my heart, again and again..’) but also bands like T-Rex, Bowie, Led Zeppelin and so on, and I was thus introduced to ‘rock ‘n roll’ proper. I had just started to get into rock in the year before I left home and had the King Crimson debut album ‘In the Court of the Crimson King’ with me, (still a stunning album to listen to, after all these years) and several other similar albums (such as ‘The Tain‘ by Horslips, who sounded a little like an Irish version of Jethro Tull, with their innovative fusion of rock/folk music), which definitely gave me some early credibility points. Our room was huge but unfortunately was just above the (broad scottish female) Warden’s office and living quarters, so we would get knocks on the door and final warnings about the noise or requests not to play ‘the Trolley Song‘ ever again, at all hours.

I was soon named ‘the roon’ (a nickname given to people acting silly, dorky, or ‘roon-ish’,  or a somewhat nerdy friend) and to some extent, if it meant I’d be accepted I suppose, I played up to this. Of an evening, we often went down to the Imperial College students Union bar in South Kensington (it was either open to non students then or more likely we just sneaked in) as the beer was extremely cheap there and the music pretty good.

I earned further brownie points, when I sampled my first couple of pints of Theakstons ‘Old Peculiér’ (nearly 6% proof) there and lived to regret it the next day. And many other days to come. Sometimes but especially on a Friday or Saturday evening, we would skip dinner at the hostel, go out to the students union bar and then get a half chicken & chips to takeaway at eleven, when the pubs closed from Dino’s, a great italian joint just opposite Gloucester Rd tube (and only recently closed). Oddly enough now though, I can’t recall going out a lot later to discos or clubs, I’m really not sure why. It was maybe because we were too young or they were too expensive? Or just a bit crap for our tastes? We used to go to the late night coffee lounge at the quite up market and new Kensington Hotel too, as the only place still open at 1am.

One other slightly odd thing that stands out for me now from this time, is that we all went to see the arthouse film Le Gran Bouffe at the fleapit ´The Biograph´ in Victoria. It is about a group of bourgeoius people that eat themselves to death. Only much later did I discover this was a notorious gay pick up cinema in those days.

The Biograph was the second oldest cinema in the UK at the time. It had became very popular during the second World War and in the 1960´s it was one of London’s gay landmarks and nicknamed the “Biogrope”. The police´s increased surveillance of public lavatories drove men looking to “pick up” into the comfort and darkness of the cinema. Men would often change seats to sit next to a young man. Famous racontuer Kenneth Williams visiting it in 1952 “in the hope of traditional entertainment” and complained bitterly, after finding it “terribly desolate”. Yes right, Kenneth. And only later did I realise the potential significance. And now I´m wondering if I missed out! I´m starting to think fifty years later that there were a whole host of signifiers that I wasn´t ready to understand, see or pick up on, if you´ll forgive the pun.

When alone in the daytimes, I’d often walk into the centre of the city or to the museums in South Kensington, as they were free, (Especially the still rather fusty Science Museum) or go to the cinema to see a film: the choice then was huge and I started to favour the arthouse movies. Retrospectively, they were actually quite good times (better than I imagined just a few years after) and often quite fun.

We also started to have friends that had left the hostel and got ‘digs’ or got to know other work colleagues well enough, so that ‘house parties’ were on the agenda. About halfway through my stay there ‘Peter’ came to stay in our room, who was the complete opposite of the other guys: quiet, soft, quite a ‘looker’, well mannered, into men’s cosmetics (quite daring at the time) and I think now, gay. He even had a guy he always saw a lot of in the hostel. Oddly, enough, as far as I can remember, this was never spoken about as a group, he was just quietly accepted. Then there was another good looking guy who came to stay in the room, called Kevin, who worked at Harrods, in their hospitality department and always had a story or two to tell about which famous person had been into the store that day. All in all, these people did change the dynamic of our room, to something that was in its own way ‘quite diverse’. I also fell into a routine of becoming more of a leader and decision maker after the first year. I was always away for at least two nights a week though on shift overnight at the Observatory, so it did still mean I had another life, as it were, quite separate from ‘Regina’ life, which the others didn’t have. And perhaps that already felt entirely natural.

ON to Sex, love and Life (The Rituals) 2.2 Kew and a long lasting love affair

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Desire.

What a strange and fickle creature this is! I possessed many t-shirts at one stage in the eighties, all purchased from a rather wonderful company in London’s Covent Garden called Millenium, run by a Spaniard, who conjured up some beautiful garments at oh, so very reasonable prices. I had a pretty much skin tight, bright blue  t-shirt once with DESEO in orange letters on the front, which I wore for a year or so, without realising quite what it (and I) was proclaiming. I still have some of their pieces that I can’t bear to throw them away. Not because I want to wear them again (if only I could!) but because of what they represent, the memories they carry with them.

One of the first life lessons we learn, as we grow up as toddlers, is that whilst we may desire something, it doesn’t mean we can have it. Smacks follow, as we cry hot, salty tears, when told ‘NO! I won’t tell you again’. And therein lies the start of many an S/M fetish. I digress. Desire, we come to realise, as we are a little older, is an entirely fickle thing. When you get what you desire too often, it becomes cheapened, meaningless. But when you don’t get what you desire and it is paraded in front of you, again and again, desire becomes bitter or bittersweet, especially when others seem to be fulfilled by it and you are not. And society of course co-modifies desire, as it does everything. Tells us how it expects us to live with desire and cope with its slow loss. They say they are four different stages of desire in a relationship, each more ritualised than the other. Yet some still choose to try and subvert desire. Play by different rules allowing for a little more freedom, flexibility, creativity. Is there a rulebook.? Rip up the rulebook! Is there a template? Expand, push back against those confining edges! 

You also come to realise, that desire is almost always not an equal opportunities employer. Whilst you might desire something, someone, there’s no guarantee the feeling is in anyway mutual. So our society employs a gamut of signs, symbols, codes and yes, those rituals to ensure that we know if it is. A stolen glance, a fleeting smile, a loveheart, a clue in our speech, our body language. But perhaps the hardest thing is when our hearts desire is not returned. How often is desire ever truly, completely equal? I fancy him so much, why doesn’t he fancy me? I’m in love with him, surely he can reciprocate.. even just a little? But no, we come to realise, it simply doesn’t work like that.

And when it happens, when it all seems to fit into place, to work out so well.. there’s nothing worse than being told by your sweetheart that they are not in love with you anymore. The vast collection of songs written about tainted love, broken love, lost love- all attest to the emptyness left inside, a ‘hollow space inside’ we say. It’s funny isn’t it, almost as if something physical inside has left you? I suppose that we discover all this bit by bit, as we mature because, if we knew it all too early, we would likely be devastated by knowledge of the loss to come. The pain to be endured. And the more we decide to play it our way, the more pain there is, it seems, to be endured. 

As I sat on that London bound train, in the mid seventies I had all this to come! Sex, love, life? It’s a funny thing.  

ON to Sex, love and life (The Rituals) 2.1 Exploration with some trepidation..

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By 1979, things were looking pretty bleak in regards to the expectation of any great political change of the laws that still restricted the lives of lesbians and gay men in so many ways.

One key change in 1979, was that the UK gained its very first female prime minister. Initially, despite her credentials, some of us had hoped that Margaret Hilda Thatcher would be open to a more humane interpretation of laws relating to public morality. Fairly quickly though, we realised it was not to be.

Different people found their own solutions to these issues in their own ways or made their own compromises that they felt happy with. For myself and many of my close friends though, in the event, the music -or perhaps rather musicians- answered some of those questions for us. Bands started to produce music that was entirely relevant to our concerns, synth pop or songs crafted with strong guitar riffs created simple but strongly melodic verses, where it was easy to hear the political and social message that was being articulated & both react to & act upon it. This generally wasn’t music about love or lost love or even Tainted Love, popular though those themes were but the issues that mattered, that drew us together and finally, finally, gave us common identity with other activists, that we craved.  These songs were less about our relationships with each other and more about the political issues we cared about, marched in support of, with others, out on the streets.

The other reason, was that many of us had a history of going to pubs and small venues (such as the Moonlight (originally called The Railway) in Hampstead and the Hope & Anchor in Islington, in my case) seeing bands perform live, where you often would be dancing or at least moving as much as was possible in the small venues. There was no room to dance manically: dancing was necessarily precise and tailored. This was the music we wanted to dance to and we brought these slimmed down, tailored, less flamboyant dances than disco, out onto the dancefloors.

Songs such as ‘Fascist Groove Thang’ by Heaven 17, ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ & ‘Ghost Town’ by the Specials, ‘99 Luftballoons’ by Nina, ‘Belfast Child’ by Simple Minds, The B52’s, ‘Enola Gay’ by OMITD, ‘The Landscape is Changing’ by Depeche Mode and ‘Pride in the name of Love’ by the early version of U2. Of course, there were also some cross-over tracks, which brought the mainstream & alternative styles together. I suppose one of the most famous and well loved of these, which I’ve already mentioned when talking about Soho, is ‘West End Girls’ (see clips below) by the Pet Shop Boys, as it fuses images from many disparate cultures together in its seamless blend of synth pop and gives what purports to be an ‘outsiders’ insight into the zeitgeist of mid 1980’s London, even though in reality it was very much an insiders view, given Tennant’s position as in-house writer, for the classic teen pop magazine of the time ‘Smash Hits’.

The writer Laura Snapes summed it up recently, when she wrote that thirty-six years on, their debut single still ‘pulses with beguiling ambiguity – a heady rush of lust, naivety, disco and opaque references to Lenin’ and it is this that made it work equally well I suspect, for the alternative scene and mainstream audiences. Tennant writes songs as social commentary and this I think was important to its ‘alternative acceptance’. Like ‘Relax‘ by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, alternative audiences understood it’s inner subtleties, recognised its social constructs and could enjoy it, knowing that they were also ‘in’ on many of the observations being made.   

Reaching number one in the both the UK & the USA and voted as ‘the best pop song’ ever released, in the Guardian’s top 100 rundown in June 2020 by three of its music critics, seems almost too much praise, given the competition but nevertheless it was and remains a classic piece of perfect pop. In 1987, it won the Best Single award (for 1986) at the Brit Awards. In 2005, the song was awarded ‘Song of The Decade’ between the years 1985 and 1994 by the British Academy of Composers and Songwriters (high praise indeed, given the competition) and in 2015 the song was also voted in a public poll by ITV as the nation’s twelfth favourite song. Additionally and perhaps giving the song the most kudos,(in the same way that Bowie’s Heroes achieved at the time) it was performed live by the Pet Shop Boys at the closing ceremony of the London Olympics in 2012. Like Bowie too, ‘The Pet Shops’ eventually became national treasures, whether they liked it or not, whilst -mostly- retaining their street credibility.   

For a more authentic feel, you probably need to listen to the original version, released in April 1984 and mixed by Bobby Orlando; it is a somewhat less shaped, rougher mix but perhaps has a little more credibility as a result. The remix, re-released in October 1985 and produced by Stephen Hague is a more polished, streamlined version of the song. In the earlier version, Tennant’s vocals sound more questioning, Lowe’s more vulnerable, which captures the scene then a little better I think. ‘You can meet east end boys, west end girls‘, he raps. The remix, 18 months later, has them in the ascendant, seemingly knowing, more arch, wiser to the game play; the above line becomes  ‘East end boys meet West End girls’, a subtle but important difference: a stepping back. The remix still sounds fresh and strong however, forty years later, a perfect pitch of pop with its influences and influencers all hanging out. Although we all knew at the time, The Pet Shops did not initially present themselves as a ‘gay band’.

For me and, I know, many others, the vulnerability of the period, where there was never any real doubt or discussion about sexuality, is still best encapsulated by Bronski Beat’s debut, Smalltown Boy, (full clip below) about leaving home, framed around Jimmy Somerville’s rather beautiful ascendant vocals in its chorus; it still surprises me how often this song is used today in fiction based series on Netflix et al, in fact. Along with ‘Why’ (I have always thought this video is very strange and does not do justice to the exceptionally strong, poignant song! ) about queerbashing, and despite their early mainstream crossover success, for me personally these will always remain the sublime ‘alternative classics’ of the period.

For very many reasons I always loved the Bronski’s music, especially the vocal sound produced by Jimmy Somerville, the lead singer of the group; their songs striking a very particular chord. I’d first met Jimmy some years before he was successful, in 1980, whilst living in a housing co-op short life house in Fordwych Rd in Kilburn, in NW London, which I’d moved to with my boyfriend Gaz. Short life housing co-ops were a godsend to many unemployed youngsters in the inner city areas of London then, as for a cheap rent (about £5 a week) council stock awaiting repair was given to housing user groups to look after, until the council was able to repair them to a standard such that they could be put back into the main housing pool. After a lick of paint and minor repairs, with cheap second furniture added, they were, for us, ideal places to live and love in, communally.  

There were usually at least four or five of us living there. Bob from Wales, Alison, the lovely Jeff (a more striking Adam Ant look a like, who could have modelled for Vogue Homme had he set his mind to it) and sometimes his german girlfriend Heike. After a year or so with Gary, our relationship become rather open and then pretty amicably moved into a long lasting friendship. It did mean however, that I moved from a big double bedroom, into a tiny box room, that no one else felt was big enough to exist in. It just about fitted a single bed.

The great thing about living in such houses, as well as shared meals, were the parties. Oh, those parties! We hosted parties frequently and well, if I say so myself, with an eclectic, diverse mix of young people culled from our various experiences in north London’s clubs, pubs, music venues, arthouses and probably, knowing Bob, toilets. I think Jimmy was someone Gary knew from back on the Ealing scene, via a guy called Laurence and with whom Jimmy was seeing. I thought the fresh faced ginger boy Jimmy, was kind of cute with his broad Glaswegian accent. At the end of the night, after an unholy row together, both of them pretty well inebriated (partly about Jimmy not wanting to leave I think but now, who knows) Laurence left by taxi leaving Jimmy looking for a place to kip. Cue my small bed. However, the effects of alcohol kicked into both of us almost immediately I think; sleep was the only realistic option.

Dawn and the morning and I was feeling far more frisky. However, just as the wooing started, Gary poked his head round the door, ridiculously bright and breezy (he was never that bright and breezy normally). Morning guys, cup of tea, how are things Jimmy? They then proceeded to have a long conversation  about life, whilst I idly twiddled my thumbs, glared at Gary and eventually gave up on anything very much more. Gary went on to keep up the friendship with them both, whilst I moved on to pastures new, as we all did in those times, to find a larger room, one that would fit a double bed, with a damn good lock on the door. Ah, good times!

A few years later, in 1982, I ran into Jimmy again, whilst helping make a documentary about lesbian and gay youth, ‘Framed Youth (aka ‘Revenge of the Teenage Perverts’) ’ in Brixton. He had started a band (perhaps euphemistically now called a boyband in their wikipedia entry) with Steve Bronski and Larry Steinbachek, though clearly it was Steve’s baby. I had no idea Jimmy had developed such a distinctive vocal style but was agreeably surprised, as were others, when I heard their take for the Framed Youth video, a self penned piece called ‘Crying’. 

They went on to release an album, ‘Age of Consent’ in 1984 and Smalltown Boy was the first single released from the album, about Jimmy’s experiences of living and growing up in his Glaswegian hometown. I always remember the first time I heard the released cut of ‘Smalltown Boy’ on a National Express coach tuned to BBC Radio One in Harwich, Essex, coming back from a trip to Amsterdam with my boyfriend Mark. We had gone to Amsterdam by boat (you always did then) to experience dutch liberal culture, held hands walking down Prinsengracht and openly bought and smoked joints in the cafes there and yet, coming back to England, hearing that song on Radio One, surrounded by people I didn’t know, suddenly gave me huge hope that perhaps things were changing, even in ‘milksnatcher Thatcher’s’ England.   

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 A version of ´Why´by Bronski Beat (with apologies to all).. but what a powerful song..

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The early eighties were to be a period that brought us into this new world, creating formulative ways of being, of seeing, living with and loving each other. They combined  new identities,  ways of dressing and an understanding of the need for more equality both in terms of gender and to reshape our sexual & social identities. Into this mix, came a further recognition of the need to respond to an increasingly  consumer led & conservative society, as the Thatcher government swept back into power again in 1984, the status quo back firmly in hands of the ‘haves’ rather than the ‘have nots’, as the transformative strength of the Trade Unions diminished. They were to be a time of radical experimentalisation for many, when we were still young enough to both believe in our ideas and ideals and -more to the point- still able and willing to transform ourselves and those around us, to accommodate them.  

Sex, love and life (The Rituals) 2.12 The very best of gay watering holes through the eighties:  Life and love at the ‘LA’

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Some things, like the Centre, came and went but one thing that always seemed to manage to somehow pick up the pieces and regenerate itself each year was the Pride event of a march and rally in London.

As I mentioned earlier I think it took events like this to really show that there were large numbers of ‘ordinary’ lesbians and gay men prepared to come out and walk in large numbers, to show others that they really were not alone. Usually, it consisted of a march (or later to be more apolitical, a ‘Parade’) from some central area, like Hyde Park, to a finishing point somewhere else, with a rally in a park or similar location. The first one I’d been on was back in 1979, celebrating the 10th anniversary of Stonewall. This in itself was the third march, since the first in London, in July 1972, when 2000 people had attended (though there was a small march billed as a ‘Gay Day’, from Hyde Park down Oxford St in 1971 organised by the GLF (Gay Liberation Front) Youth group that had about 200 attendees). There were to be no marches though between 1974 and 1977.

Reincarnated, in 1978, it went from Earls Court to Shepherds Bush but was still relatively small. However, it was featured in two television documentary programmes at the time, with short but generally positive segments on ‘World in Action’ on ITV and ‘Inside Story’ on BBC.  Quite a few people saw the film cameras on the day though, and covered their faces as they went past the cameras, as they were worried they would be seen by parents, friends or family, who did not know they were gay, such was the undercurrent of fear, anxiety and worry about at the time. 

However, this was always a ‘must attend’ event for me after that, partly as everyone else you knew would be there too and it wouldn’t be good to say you hadn’t attended to, partly as it was important to be seen and partly as it was always good fun. Yes, it might pour with rain, yes the police might be unpleasant, yes it was a long day but you just ‘went,’ especially if you lived in London. However, the organisation of the events were nearly always fraught with issues too, whether related to problems caused by the money lost by the previous Pride, the make up of the organising committee, issues to be dealt with smoothly on the day or problems with tidying up after the event, both literally and figuratively.

Many different ways of staging the event had been tried in the years after that third 1979 march that I had attended. In 1980, 3000 people, including myself, marched from Hyde Park to end up at the University of London Union (ULU) in Malet St. In 1981, it had decamped (literally, not figuratively) up to Huddersfield of all places, as an act of solidarity with the Yorkshire gay community, whom rightly claimed that the West Yorkshire Police were harassing them, by repeatedly raiding the Gemini Club, a leading nightclub in the North of England at the time. The idea of taking it out of the capital and ‘up north’ seemed a good idea at the time too. 

1982 saw a small march of about 1200 people, perhaps due in part to the weather forecast, on a similar route as 1981, which I was on with my boyfriend Mark and his good friend Gabrielle. It did feel smaller, I remember looking around anxiously and saying to Mark that there didn’t seem to be as many people as we had expected. I have pictures of us all laughing, at being completely (and I do mean completely) sodden by the absolutely torrential rain, a cloudburst, along with a crack of thunder which had started just after the  march  moved off. We jokingly said that the almighty clearly had it in for us too. In 1983, the march was held on the 2nd July, with around 2000 people again starting in Hyde Park and ending at the ULU in Malet Street.

Capital Gay, a freesheet, that that recently started publication in London, reported that about 2,000 had attended ‘on the happiest Pride parade for years’, which was probably as much as anything because a) it was dry and b) it was not in Huddersfield. Oddly enough, in 1984 it seems that everyone forgot to organise a march, (or more likely nobody wanted to take on the huge responsibility for it) but 1,500 people still turned up in Hyde Park, simply because it was the first Saturday in June.

After that non-event and the recriminations, from 1985 things started to expand, in terms of scale and the numbers attending, quite quickly. The march went from Hyde Park to the Jubilee Gardens on the South Bank of the Thames, with the number of marchers an estimated 10-15,000. This was the one that the mining communities showed up to, as recreated and immortalised in the film ‘Pride’, in return for the gay support by the LGSM (Lesbian & Gays support the Miners) during the miners’ strike. It was also immortalised by John Waters as ‘Divine’,  who arranged to ‘parade’ down the middle of the River Thames on a large barge, with a huge PA system onboard, blaring out his hit single ‘You think you’re a man, but you’re only a Boy’. As a PR stunt it certainly took some beating. Capital Gay called it, “the biggest gathering of homosexuals Britain has ever seen.”

By 1986, the organisers had realised that with the scale it was now on, and the expectations that surrounded it, it was starting to become less a march than an ‘event’, a happening in its own right; more a parade to showcase all the best that the community had to offer. It was felt that it needed somewhere ‘big’ to finish and so it ended up in Kennington Park in South London. It was another success and was generally agreed to be the best march and post march rally (or party as it was starting to be called), so far. Interestingly too, for me, this was the first time that there was less of a feeling of ‘open hostility’ from the police walking with it, there were even some smiles that the crowd managed to get from some of them, some banter, each riposte celebrated by enormous cheers from the crowd. On June 27th 1987 a similarly attended march and rally was held finishing at the Jubilee Gardens on the South Bank, despite its limited size, with Bronski Beat performing on the main stage.

By the time it was due to start planning the 1988 event, to be held on June 25th that year, it was also recognised that some kind of official historical commemoration needed to be made of these events. As much as anything, the organisers wanted to be able to show future event sponsors what kind of scale support they would see and moreover that they could be trusted to manage such an event. As a result Cleancut, my own production company, offered our services to the organisers to make a documentary about the event, using equipment hired from the London Video Arts workshop in Soho. 

In the event it was estimated that around 40,000 people attended the event in all , where Section 28 was very much at the top of the agenda, along of course with the ongoing and devastating effects of HIV/AIDS. We had determined to have three teams with cameras out on the day, getting all the action from both Parade and Rally, although in the event we had severe technical problems with one camera, that meant most of the footage taken on it couldn’t be used in the final edit. Luckily, the other two teams managed to get some excellent footage of the parade and especially the rally in Jubilee Gardens again, afterwards. We also had someone taking photos of the event as well. Interviews were secured with, amongst others, The Communards (Sample question: What do you want to see happen in the future Jimmy?:  ‘All out onto the streets, Revolution”!) and Derek Jarman. We had made a list in advance of interviews we wanted to get, with a range of different types of people attending, so the crew was particularly looking for these on the day. We got some good clear footage of Michael Cashman on stage, talking about the issues raised by Section 28 and also the interviewers were briefed to specifically ask related question to those interviewed.  As far as I’m aware this was the first time that a video celebrating ‘Pride’ had been commissioned and made.

In the end we cut together about a 35 minute documentary, with a mixture of vox pop from attendees, more serious interviews about the potential effects of Section 28 and the reasons to come on such a march and music from the performers, which had included the already iconic Sandie Shaw. I recall in particular my partner Dennis at the time being assigned to do interviews and haranguing two police officers , a man & women. He was like a little terrier with them, determined to get a response of a sort. ‘Is this the first march you’ve been on’, he brightly asked? ‘Do you like policing these Pride marches’? When I first watched the rushes I was cringing inwardly, thinking that he was really pushing his luck! To his credit though he got a reaction, ‘It’s all right’ the policewomen laughed, ‘we don‘t mind‘. What a difference I thought from that policewomen talking about ‘all the poofs here’ eight years before, at the Notting Hill Carnival. Were things moving forward, attitudes finally changing, even those ingrained ones in the police force?

Derek Jarman, who had been diagnosed as HIV positive six months before, provided a fitting soundbite that we used to wrap up the video, when he was asked whether the future, with the Section 28 debate ongoing, looked bleak for gay men & lesbians, when he said ‘Oh no, I think it will help bring us all together, I hope so anyway: I’m an optimist!

In the final event, he was right of course, events such as that did provide a platform around which groups came together, to fight back in relation to the legislation. Derek himself became a leading campaigner against Clause 28 and was able to live to see much of the positive effects of this campaign, this ‘fightback’ in the following seven years, though sadly dying, in 1994, of HIV/AIDS related complications.

That was the first and last time we filmed Pride. Generally, I preferred to be having fun, actually being part of the Parade itself and Pride was to continue of course, although the increasingly popular Brighton & Hove Pride and Manchester Pride events did take away from some of its domination as ‘the event’ to be at each year. By 1990 and 1991 the annual parade was going right across London, starting from Victoria then via Trafalgar Square & Whitehall, past the Houses of Parliament, and down Kennington Road to Kennington Park.  1992 saw London as the ‘Euro Pride’ capital and both 1992 and 1993 events were large enough to need to end in Brockwell Park, near Brixton, although it was quite a trek, as Kennington Park became too small and crowded a location to be safe. 1995 saw the march start in Hyde Park to end in Victoria Park, Hackney whilst the 1996 and 1997 marches went on down through south London to end at the larger site available on Clapham Common. In 1999 the event was renamed ‘London Mardi Gras’ ( in a nod to the hugely successful event each year in Sydney, Australia) and finished up at Finsbury Park, this route being repeated in 2000 and 2001.

The event was held on the Hackney Marshes in 2002, not an especially popular location for many, due to accessibility issues, so in 2003 it stuck to Hyde Park in central London. In a nod to the unofficial very first ‘Gay Day’ rally in 1971, there was a Big Gay Out in 2004 in Finsbury Park. And so it continued through the last few decades. In 2013 some reports suggested that as many as up to half a million people took part in the ‘Pride in London’ Parade, going from Baker Street via Oxford Street and Regent Street to Whitehall, followed by a festival (“Summer Rites“) in Shoreditch Park. And they continued, in much the same vein, until the year 2020 sadly saw ‘Pride’ cancelled- like so many other events- due to the nationwide restrictions to control the spread of the Covid-19 virus. But the event, which now has a long tradition and history and means so much to so many people everywhere, has happily continued again, post COVID, although the debates surrounding its presentation and staging continue, as ever.

On to Sex, love and life (The Rituals) 2.26 Love out on its own: the trials, tribulations and magic of Hampstead Heath

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There are many bars that might honestly claim they hold a special affection in the heart of any ‘red blooded’ gay man who lived in the London in the ‘80´s but few perhaps hold quite as much affection as the London Apprentice , or ‘LA’ as it was almost universally known. 

I sometimes feel I lived much of my life in the eighties in the place; traversing its three dark floors from top to bottom. And then going round again. Then again, backwards. In its eventful and long heyday, it was usually rammed on a Saturday night, such that you queued to get in, queued to get a drink, queued to get your coat checked and to get out. And you simply didn’t care; it was part of the ritual. Like all those very special places, it had ritual firmly on its side.

It was by no means the first or only gay pub in the east End. Charley Brown’s (after the retired sea man who bought it) in Limehouse was ‘gay’ from the 1920’s, and only demolished in 1990. Francis Bacon regularly frequented its bar. The Royal Oak , still going strong, in Columbia Road, Hackney was ‘gay’, initially run by a trans couple  Lil and Maisie, who lived in Hackney throughout World War II and performed at the Royal Oak whilst the bombs were more or less falling and it was still popular in the 80’s and 90’s. There were plenty more. Run ahead 30 years and pubs like this were having preservation orders slapped on them by the London Mayor, Sadiq Khan. Oh, how we would have chuckled, back then. 

The ‘LA’ was always a little bit more though, than just another pub with drag. It goes back a long way as a public house with rental agreements  from around 1895 and film footage of the nearby Britannia Theatre shows the LA in the 1920’s looking very similar to how it was in the eighties. However, it rather slowly rose to its infamous status in the late 1970’s, when a new owner took over, Michael Glover who has said that he brought his experiences of gay bars from a gay scene that was slightly more advanced that existed in the ghettos of a few American cities, back to London.

Described by my friend Gus, who worked there for a while, as ‘the best gay pub ever in the world’, as London began to relax its laws, little by little, Michael, a jolly leather queen who looked like the laughing cavalier, crafted an experience that few would forget and it became like a second home to many gay Londoners  Gus recalls how, because of licensing hours in the early eighties ‘there were only two hours (drinking time) on Sunday lunchtime – they’d all pile in at twelve and empty out at two to go on to the Market Tavern, (in Vauxhall) which had a special late afternoon licence’.

Originally, it was very much a place where clones and transvestites would dally –or troll- in an unholy alliance. It had infamous secret parties in the dungeon-like basement, The Tool Box. This, more or less square shaped black hole, featured walls & ceilings dripping water, a skanky, small dance floor with a DJ mainly playing loud hi energy music and a reputed secret tunnel from the eighteenth century, under Hoxton Street to the Magistrates Court over the road. Above the skanky dancefloor was an upper balcony level, on both sides, where you could watch the spotlights pick out the faces you hoped to attract. It had poles you could twirl and dance around or grind against if the mood took you that way. And it usually did. It was an extremely sexually charged club, where inhibitions, if indeed they even existed in the first place, often slipped away like the sweaty punters, grooving on the sticky floors.

I recall standing there in the basement on a Saturday, week after week, mesmerised, watching, transfixed  by the spotlights and the sea of bodies, faces, noise, the generally good humour and the pervasive sweet smell of sweat, poppers, warm leather and beer ; it was not by any means the only place to get the formula for this brand of sexual success (and indeed excess) so right, but it was perhaps one of the few to hold it close, for so long, so confidently, so clearly, so cockily. It sold a fantasy world of course, so far removed from the dreary dull realities of day to day London life, that eventually it almost became a cliché of itself.  There were times when you had to laugh at its absurdity, the things you saw and heard, the scenes you witnessed, and yet, and yet.. it kept you coming back for more. To enter the door of the LA was to enter a world of complete acceptance, complete understanding, complete familiarity, complete escape. Friends, new friends, new faces, willing embraces, sweet hard earned successes and conquests. It was the glorious hell, concocted by Dante, imagined, perhaps experienced by Caravaggio, as enjoyed by the chosen but willing few.

Later in its life, it hosted the club night known as the Block. The Block which had various incarnations (and at one stage was hosted at the aptly named Paradise Club in Islington) was aimed more at those into the gay S&M fetish scene in London but it managed to encompass a very broad church in its regular clientele. Each Saturday night the top floor would be artfully re-dressed, to become a maze of ropes, netting, canvas, camouflage and leaves.  And that was just what the punters wore. It filled up quickly each week and by midnight the dark red lighting would reveal those punters in various states of dress or undress, dependent on the attire itself. Disrobing completely for example, whilst wearing a rubber one piece body suit is a prime example of necessity intervening over concept and often required a degree of creative invention, not to mention manual dexterity.  And boy, were they hot to wear: mid summer nights could see you collect a stream of sweated moisture, trapped at the knees and releasing the rubber fold at the knee would send it cascading down the legs, chilling you off quickly, as you came out of the fetid smoky club into the -by now -cool night air.

You never knew quite who you would see there, all sorts of people you vaguely recognised would turn up and hang around but often in very different gear to that which you might have associated them in. One night I was there with my friend Gus and there was an attractive guy in some leather and rubber combination that ticked the ‘effortlessly butch’ box for me standing on the side of the largest room, which was a little unusual, as you tended to cruise and get off more in the ropes and camo area. I sauntered past and getting the ‘come on’ eye contact I don’t think we said much but got on with things, as you did. It was pretty good I thought, with chemistry enough to make it feel worth taking time over. It was however in full view of everyone, which was quite unusual for me but I was too engrossed to care that much. Anyway, after about half an hour or so we finished and said a few words and I came back over to Gus, who I had at least noticed, had been watching. ‘You star fucker’ he said laughing. Why I asked? That was Marc Almond, you did realise that? I had had no idea; I never did.

There was another occasion when in ‘Traffic,’ when I had a long ‘session’ with Andy Bell, (also looking effortlessly butch) also without realising who he was, before being told afterwards. I’m sure if I had known, there’s absolutely no way I’d have approached such people, so it’s likely a good thing. It does make me wonder who else I met, without realising it though. But of course the whole point I am making here is that they were just people, cruising their patches, like everyone else. There was always a certain classless structure to our scene that said everyone was ´just another person. Of course some were writing some damn good songs about it as well.

To some extent, perhaps strangely, the scene was quite conservative, within the gay milieu. Generally, as I mentioned, the idea was to look as effortlessly masculine as possible, even if you had spent a few hours getting ready in the comfort of your home boudoir: trying on tops, inspecting positions, angles and styles. The wearing of combat tops, camo gear and tags was de riguer to get that butch look absolutely right but there were always those who liked to subvert the subversion and play around a little more with ideas of gender and drag. By and large, these guys existed very harmoniously with the ‘straight ‘ gays and the broad church notion that it took all sorts to party was widely accepted. Sometimes, there were guys who took it a little too far for my liking, by wearing bright yellow and red rubber one piece jocks stretched ludicrously tightly over, perhaps, rather too skinny bodies. Call it a ‘Tom of Biarritz’ look. It kind of killed the butchness and you sometimes just had to close your eyes and pray they might go away, before you squealed with what would surely be seen as cruel laughter. I constantly had to remind myself that it takes all sorts. A very useful lesson in life. 

During the mid eighties kilts briefly became very fashionable on men, (well, on some men.. ) perhaps prompted by a now infamous cover on the Face magazine, in November 1984, simply known now as Kiltboy. A buff model, styled by Ray Petri and rather beautifully shot by Jamie Morgan, stood in full length tartan kilt (..worn well below the knees, if you please) , buffed chest exposed in open jacket: the article entitled, succinctly, ‘Menswear at the Outer Limits’.

We wore them to the Block and rather later to the Anvil, a similar and very popular incarnation of the Block, based near Tooley Street in SE London. A later version of this style, featuring mini kilts less than eighteen inches long was very much derided at a later stage by the real kilt aficionados. I know, as I, dear reader was a real kilter man , if only for a relatively short time. The benefits of kilt wearing instead of a rubber one piece in certain clubs are far too obvious to be discussed of course. If you were not careful though, the material would snag and run, over various metal buckles and braces.  

And it all eventually unravelled of course. How could it not? By the mid to late eighties as HIV sadly became ‘established’, such venues were under attack from all sides. Rents were rising as Shoreditch, Hoxton became trendy, the very beginning of its prime position in the early twenty-first century as a hipsters paradise, the press were painting such venues as dark, seedy, smoky places and people were thinking about moving on. Even an article in the oh, so carelessly liberal Guardian in that period noted that ‘AIDS dangles like a flashing neon sign in front of the gay community’. Why, the writer asked the LA landlord did people continue to come to these dark, dank places for sex, week after week? But even to ask this question was to some extent missing the point; the experience was more about life, of living, of loving, of giving, of receiving: of simply being. The response given to the writer was perhaps as honest as it was possible to be in those times. 

It was perhaps appropriate, given this perception and yet being seen as such a pillar of the gay community, (the punters of the LA raised huge amounts for the early gay charities including London’s Gay Switchboard) that the LA hosted the first ever Terence Higgins Trust meeting to spread awareness of AIDS and HIV. So there you have it. Sex, love and death, death, love and sex: all entangled together. As I reread it, it sounds harsh but I do not say it as a criticism, simply as a lived reality.

In 1990, the pub was bought by Vicki Pengilley of The Bricklayers Arms, to prevent it becoming another ‘yuppie’ wine bar and she kept the vibe much the same there for some time. It became simply 333 in 1998 with innovative DJ’s and designers keeping the place on its feet and it was soon once again a local for partying celebs. While musicians from the Gallagher brothers, to Seal frequented the venue, there were several bands who cut their teeth in ‘333’: Babyshambles, The Libertines and Razorlight all played some of their first London dates here.

But of course its days as a gay watering hole were long over. The clients had moved on, moved up, gentrified or in some cases, sadly, died. However in my mind there is absolutely no doubt. Its early glory days do deserve to be written about, remembered and just as surely, celebrated.

ON to Sex, love and life (The Rituals) 2.13 A completely new flikker agenda..

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Back then, in 1981, nobody used to venture far up the Essex Rd, unless you had to.

It was on the route of the hop on, hop off 73, on its way to leafy but then rather run down Stoke Newington before it became desirably bijou. Half way along it passed the Islington library, where the lovers Orton and Halliwell had nicked books and cheekily, sometimes erotically, altered the covers before replacing them on the library shelves, back in 1962, for which they received a six month jail sentence when discovered, which seemed excessive both then and now.

I had gotten involved with a newspaper called Gay Noise. Very leftist leanings, Gaz and I had kind of stumbled into it by default. Its logo: Marx and Engels arm in arm; even then it seemed improbable. Two magazines had folded in 1980, Gay Socialist & a Marxist publication called Gay Left, which had explored notions of gay political theory and Gay Noise really started in the autumn of 1980 to try and maintain the impetus, focusing itself more on activism, big at the time. We thought it was 5 new pence well spent (later, as needs must, it rose to 30p), every fortnight. In some ways it mirrored the later development of radical groups that developed from the community anger generated by the AIDS crisis, like Gay Men Fighting AIDS (GMFA). One early cover story, featured the arrest of two gay men, Paud Hegarty (an Icebreaker collective member, later to go on to manage Gays the Word from 1983-1997 and who sadly died of pneumonia in 2000) and Gareth Thomas who had been arrested and charged with ‘Insulting Behaviour’ after kissing each other goodbye at the end of a demonstration against the movie ‘Cruising’. It always ran with a pithy headline: ‘Insulting Behaviour’?, issue 2 declared, in a large bold typeface, ‘they ain’t seen nothing yet’!

We were both activists as well I suppose, so had some kudos there but we carried other cards up our sleeves. We were both heavily into the ‘new wave’ of music prevalent at that time and wanted to write reviews of gigs (Gaz more than and better than me, truth be told). I think we had to write a couple and then read them out to get a collective hands up. Soon we were having benefits at the Hemmy, ULU (University of London Union) Gay Soc, bands were doing benefit gigs  for us and pennies were going into collecting boxes in pubs. However, after a while the mood of the collective, led by Don Milligan, was changing. Don Milligan (now Dr Don Milligan) is still active in 2020 and recently taught a course on the theory and practice of anti-capitalism at Manchester Metropolitan University and, to his credit, is also still writing as fervently as ever about Marxism, in his blog ‘Off the Cuff’ also producing a useful summary here too of his writing in the past four decades about various elements making up the history of gay liberation, with very much an anti-capitalist bent to it  (see ‘A brief moment in turbulent times’, Sept 2019) 

Back to the Gay Noise collective though and debts were fast accruing from print costs and the feeling was that a regular newspaper couldn’t be justified anymore. I wrote an open letter to the collective, with another Scottish member of it, called Alan Reid, with whom I had been having an on/off affair with at the time, of which I still have a copy. Alan was particularly indignant that the paper should cease.

‘If Gay Noise disappears’ we wrote, ‘it will just be another failure’ (I think here we were particularly thinking of the demise of the other left wing publications in the recent past)

‘and by its disappearance will just give credence to those in the gay community and those outside of it who do not believe that such ventures can be successful. Society considers gay people to be failures, do we want to reinforce those attitudes? We have had articles about us in Gay News, we can get coverage in Time Out and NME (the New Musical Express). It’s the best publicity we’ve had and we should use it to best advantage. We should print the paper ourselves or work through a printer discharging our debts through fundraising and keeping a much tighter control over our production costs. Gay Noises’ continuity is vital!’ 

Many in the collective wanted to be involved in political action only but we felt it needed a regular newspaper to hold it together, which the irregular publication of leaflets wouldn’t fulfil.

‘Last but not least’ we continued,’ we have an obligation to our subscribers , we do operate as a link line between some very isolated gay people, who share our political concerns and commitments’.

Fine words but, as the saying goes, they buttered no parsnips; the writing was on the wall and it wouldn’t be the first or the last time that radical gay collectives or organisations broke up in acrimony. Of course, Gay Noise all ended in tears eventually (further political infighting: there’s a surprise – one of the original group, Shane Enright, writing later, noted how ‘a splinter group, the ‘Revolutionary Gay Men’s Caucus’ which Don Milligan was involved in for a time, ‘wandered off into a misogynistic wilderness’).

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Every issue of ‘Gay Noise’ here https://www.revoltinggays.com/gay-noise

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However, two very good things to come out of it were Berni and Martin, gay boys from Manchester and Plymouth, with a flat at that time in Archway. They arrived in London from Plymouth on May Day in 1980. They had been involved in local gay and anti-Nazi activism movements there but also shared a common love of music of all kinds from growing up in the 1960´s and 1970´s. From Motown to the Doors, Black Sabbath to Bowie, Roxy Music to the Velvet Underground and punk. They spun the music we liked, under the banner ‘Movements‘ (see what they did there..?) although I do believe they were SWP stalwarts (SWP being the Socialist Workers Party) and so technically ‘socialist sinners’ in Gay Noise’s radical marxist eyes. But maybe they had swopped religions –people tried out new political mantra like new boyfriends then. Actually I have since checked this with Berni and I was right, they were indeed SWP for a while!

Anyway, they had played one off benefits already, at the Hemmy, during December 1980 (I’d been to one just before Christmas on December 18th, which was really good and then to a party at their place in Archway the night after, getting to know them better) and others too, early in 1981. However, it was agreed that a more regular venue would help benefit ‘Gay Noise’, as it was fast running out of money. It took a while to find and set up but eventually Berni & Martin reported they had found a potential venue. Of course, it had to be a bit different to the naughty, capitalist, commercial gay scene. So new wave was acceptable to our Marxist brethren. And it was to be at a place called the Carved Red Lion on the Essex Road in Islington. I’d volunteered to be on the door, taking the money on the opening night, Saturday April 18th 1981, and so we started leafleting for our little ‘alternative gay disco’. 

In some ways I suppose, it was like a gay version of Cabaret Futura, that I’d been frequenting the year before but much more earthy and quite racy. The first night came and when I arrived at the venue, it was clear that we had left out an important word in our publicity; namely basement.  It also appeared that whilst Jimmy Somerville and I would be fine, anyone over 6ft was going to need to stoop or crawl and clearly stilettos were completely out of the question. It was –ahem- a cosy venue but I had to concede it had its charms. A good solid floor, plenty of dark corners and a decent, if small bar. 

So, on that first night, we had no idea if our little alternative disco would work. Did lesbians want to dance to the Au Pairs? Would gay men be tempted away from Heaven’s box of delights in central Charing Cross?  This was no new, romantic Blitz club in Soho. North Islington was actually rough then, trust me.

We opened the doors at nine sharp, as advertised. The music was playing, the lights (or in retrospect, probably light) were flashing: we were ready! But no one came down the stairs, eager to dance. In fact, no one came down even eager to drink, talk or fuck. It’s early, I said to the others. Who goes out at 9pm on a Saturday to a club?  We waited a bit, and a bit longer. I was getting a bit anxious. About 9.30, two faces appeared at the top of the stairs at street level.  Slightly suspicious.  A bit worried. You always were then when you went to a new gay place. As if you might be ambushed, beaten up and gang banged by drag queens on the door. ‘Is this Movements- the gay place’? We nodded. Down they came. Paid their one pound. And trooped in, heads held as high as was feasible.

And they never stopped coming after that. By ten, we had a queue out into the street to get in. Lots of faces: some I knew, some I wanted to know but plenty I had never seen in my life. Alternative lesbian and gay London had come out to play. Lesbians with their long scarves, big pullovers, dungarees. The gay boys wearing a lot, lot less. Black DM’s, black army jackets, badges, faded, ripped 501’s. Lots of bleached quiffs, short shaven sides and little caps. It was more or less compulsory to bleach your hair in those days, at least for a time. A rite of passage. Anyway, they were all right up my street!

Two hundred went in and no one came straight back out. Two hundred quid went into the till… maybe more, as some people gave larger donations I recall.  Maybe we didn’t have a till, probably a tin, I can’t remember. I do remember thinking though, that we had ourselves a success!  It got as hot as hell in there, in fact as black & noisy as hell but by god it was good.  Almost like Traffic in fact but better music, more mixed and hotter (in fact wearing leather in there was just about impossible, especially in summer, though I don’t think we generally wore leather then anyway, as leather was a bit retro dahling by then for that particular scene, (although even as I am writing this I can already think of two or three people I knew who always wore leather and always looked damned cool in it: yes, you know who you were). I think the scene actually got quite segregated & tribal for a while. It’s hard to imagine now, that we had never danced in a gay & lesbian club to ‘our music’: the Specials, the Associates, Simple Minds, Orange Juice before, in a lesbian and gay crowd.  This was something we could theoretically have done anywhere- in a non gay venue.

However, I suppose it must have been the same when the Mods went to mod clubs first: their tribe, their music, that sense of complete unity, that you could talk to anyone new, dance with anyone, perhaps it was like everyone felt at the first raves when ‘e’ was about -but this wasn’t really drug fuelled. Ok, a little speed was snorted, a few joints smoked I suppose but it wasn’t off your face clubbing. I think the adrenaline high itself was enough. 

The third night Saturday May 2nd was not a good one, as there was an invasion by skinheads and the police had to be called. At one stage it seemed like things might fall apart but no, the next week May 9th, it opened its doors as usual and people still turned up. By the 16th it was even being allowed an extension until the wee small hours. Well, 12.30 at night. After Gay Noise folded, the music happily went on. For around two years Andy Alty ran Movements with a group called Gay Workshops. He recollects these as being great nights with Berni and Martin still on the decks, and that he discovered so much new music through listening to their sets. And that was the beginning of a long chain of ‘alt gay’ venues.

And talking of the gay press or ´gapers´ as we came to call them, that year another institution was to launch itself onto the capital. A weekly freesheet called Capital Gay, managed by the genial Graham McKerrow and distributed to gay venues and other welcoming places, hot off the press, late every Thursday. It was to last 14 years in the end and it was a sad day when the last issue rolled off the press in mid 1995. It was the very first publication in the world to use the term ´HIV´. But in 1981, that particular term and its ramifications was still all a relatively long way away.

And what became of DJ´s Berni and Martin? Well, they kinda hung around! And we will see more of them later. In the meantime warmest congrats on 45 years together guys! Though Movements at the Carved Red Lion closed in May 1982, it was to continue at the Pied Bull in Islington High St, the infamous Bell in Kings Cross and a string of copy cats that were to go on to hold our attention, as the eighties progressed. Imitation is indeed the very best form of flattery.  

On to Sex, love and life (The rituals) 2.17 1981: Joining ‘London Gay Switchboard’: ´the best thing the movement ever made´

BACK to Sex, love and life : An index

For how long had it been like this? Sex and death, death and sex?

It was just after Mark’s funeral that Jeff told me he had fancied me all along. It was too late by then of course. Far too late. How do you come to be talking about fancying someone, straight after a funeral? 

It was the big one, Mark’s funeral. The one that we all talked about, even years afterwards. Were you there? What did you expect? Did you see any of the miners? The place was so packed they were standing outside. I had worn a suit, thinking for some woe begotten reason that the dead deserved some kind of suited & booted respect, but I don’t know what I’d expected really about that funeral. Certainly that it would be the first of many -and of course I was pretty much right on that. I just wasn’t sure beforehand that I should even be going there.

Back in the early eighties, long before it all started, I used to go to his flat in Ladbroke Grove to get my hair cut. He did a mean flat top, the distinctive style many of us wore back then. I’d  ring the bell and tramp up the narrow stairs to his flat. Knock on the door. I’ll just get the scissors, he’d say. I went as much for the chat as anything. There was always a story to be told, some gossip- something a bit sordid and something religious. On a good day you’de get both together. The flat was full of religious iconography. Crosses, a rosary, Our Mary, little pictures of Jesus. I could never quite work out where the love of a good saint and strong sense of high camp crossed over but with Mark they did. Maybe they do in all good catholic boys? His heart was in the right place though and that’s all that ever really mattered to me, in a good friend. He could natter for Jesus though, that Portrush accent thickening up fast, as he got into his stride. 

‘Want some tea? Stay still, cut to here? Number two on the sides yeh? No, he isn’t me, I mean it was a good night but I won’t go back.  I’ll put the kettle on then. Hold on… head up a bit. Stay still for fucks sake, these scissors will have your ear off. No, I never thought I could do that (laughing) but no, it was fine.  Be right back. Sugar? Drat, milk’s gone off.. ‘ 

After those times in Ladbroke Grove I suppose we got to know each other pretty well. He had joined the Gay Switchboard (as it was still called then) like me, so we would do shifts together. There was time to natter between calls, swop stories: he always had a good story to tell. And then there were all the marches: you couldn’t keep Mark away from a march. And me I guess as well, those were the glory days when as long as you had a decent banner you could march anywhere, with any cause that took your fancy really.

So we went on marches with the bright yellow and red Switchboard banner. I remember there was a ‘Gays for a Nuclear Free future’ banner we marched under, that was really impressive: we were in awe. I’d imagine Mark marching under lots of other banners though for his various causes, carrying a flag if he wasn’t holding a banner.

However, I’d lost touch with a lot of people in the couple of years before; we had gone our separate ways. I had been studying for my film and video degree down at Farnham, in West Surrey, living there for nearly a year before missing London too much and instead commuting from Hackney each day and back: a slog but a bearable slog. Everything’s bearable in your twenties though. Even ‘tube cruising’ made the journey bearable. How many people can you make flirtatious eye contact with on one journey in one carriage?

Mark would have approved. He was a right royal flirt, that boy. Never a dull moment in that well lived life. But he had died, aged just 26.

I’d had a sudden phone call from my ex, Gary. It was a chilly grey day in mid February.

‘Mark’s dead’ he said. Straight out with it, he was never one to beat around the bush. 

‘No! You are kidding me’?

‘Yep, really sudden.. twelve days-AIDS’.  We still said AIDS then. Simple and direct, the word still had the power to chill you to the bone.

‘But .. so quick. Mark? How could Mark just.. ‘

‘I know. It’s scary. There’s a funeral next week-Tuesday.

I’m going. You should come’.

‘Yeh, of course, of course. God. But.. I wanna go with you..I need to be with somebody.. you know Gaz’?

‘I know, I know.. there’s a mini bus picking us up from Tulse Hill station, the Communist party have hired it, to go to Lambeth church. With his old friends. I’ll see you there at one’.

I remember we drove past lots of people through the Church gates, right into the church yard, there were mini buses, coaches, cars all parked on the side roads. That’ll be all the miners come down from Wales, Connie said.  We sailed past them though, pulled up right outside. Bit weird, felt like some kind of royal party arriving. Walked straight in past everyone outside .. packed already. Like a church.  Mark in a church? Not so odd.. he was a good catholic boy that loved the idea of revolution. Workers of the World Unite and Pray.  That boy was a huge mass of contradictions but by jesus, he wore them well.

A few nods at familiar faces, many I had no idea. Some Switchboarders: there was Lisa. A lot of men with their wives in hats; solid faced, no nonsense types, I remember thinking. I had been told earlier that Mark had been a big supporter of the miner’s strike a year or so earlier. Made the journey to the South Wales valleys to the miners in Dulais many a time. Now, those same union men and women from their lodges had all come down to pay their last respects to a good comrade.  They led the 1985 National Pride march in London & never forgot the support of the -eventually eleven- LGSM’s groups either. The 1985 Labour party conference saw a motion to support equal rights for gay men and lesbians go down to the wire. It was eventually carried only due to the block votes of the National Union of Mineworkers and its allies.

And just about everyone else seemed to be there from his past, at least it seemed that way; he would have been proud of our sudden unification on his behalf. ‘Pride‘?  Yep, you bet.

Were we ready to start? People outside a murmur went round, can’t all get in. Extra seats. A hush, a few coughs and we were off. Now, I can’t remember the hymns we sang but I know we sang them well, there were that many Welsh valley people there for whom singing was the release, an emotion shared. I can’t remember what exactly it was that started the tears flowing but I wasn’t alone; my god, I have never seen so many people crying at a funeral before or since. Gary hastily proffered me a paper hankie. 

And so it was that, red eyed, we all trooped out of the place forty five minutes later back into our Party mini bus. There was a wake to go to. I think people were just glad it was over. We were hurting. Connie was wisecracking as ever, hiding it well. Jimmy was there too, comforting Mark’s mum. And Jeff, the lovely Jeff. Face like a started doe caught in a spotlight.

Where have you been Dave, not seen anything of you at all recently. Too good for us all now are you? 

‘Ran away from your pretty face Jeff’ ..

‘Ha. You should have had me when I said’. 

‘You never said.. ‘

‘Never said? What about when I saw you off at the Tube after the April housing co-op meeting, said I didn’t have to go straight home’.

‘That you were going to the pub..? ‘

‘I was giving you the eye all through the meeting’.

‘You never were’?

‘You’re blind ‘.

‘Really? I never knew, really. Never had a clue’.

‘Too late now mister. Far too late now, I’m almost a married man.’

Jeff, I learnt much later, was the official photographer for LGSM, & went on to become a filmmaker and make a rather wonderful low budget documentary about the events in Dulais in 1985 which was part of the inspiration for Pride, a film about Mark (played uncannily well by Ben Schnetzer) and the miners, made many years later and released in 2014. He also went on to shoot a lot of the future films and videos that I would make as well. 

The minibus was heading towards Mark’s flat in Elephant and Castle; Gaz went but only stayed for ten minutes because, he told me later, everyone was bawling their eyes out. He said it was the saddest thing he had ever experienced.

‘Let me off at Brixton tube guys. I just need to go home and get some rest’. After a spot of tube cruising that is and as I ponder how I can think about sex so much, at a funeral. 

How long has it always been about this- sex and death? 

ON to Sex, love and life (The rituals) 2.25 1988 Filming ‘Pride’ for posterity

BACK to Sex, love and life: An index