Sunday 1 February 2009

218: Auberon Waugh on “Private Eye” and homosexuals

from an interview in “Gay News” #187, March 20 1980

The “Eye” makes far more anti-homosexual jokes now because homosexuality is more in the forefront, more able to take care of itself. After all, in the old days, if you said a man was homosexual, you were accusing him of a criminal offense. That’s not so now. The big difference between us and “The News of the World” is that although we spend a lot of time grubbing in the dirt, we do it for laughs saying “Isn’t it funny that so-and-so’s having it away with so-and-so?” whereas “The News of the World” is frightfully moral . . . Anyway you know, I don’t think anyone ever takes up the cudgels against homosexuality as such. I think it’s much more personal than that . . . People who’ve got it in for you will say “bloody catholic” or “bloody queer”.

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