102: GLC 4 - Coren / Mahood

August
Mr Ken Livingstone announces GLC plans for a gay bus route. Travellers will be able to go anywhere for 10p. The necessary subsidy will be met by dimming streetlights by thirty per cent.

From “Old Coren’s Almanac”, by Alan Coren. Illustration by Kenneth Mahood.
in “Punch” 16 December 1981

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One of Livingstone’s more notable actions had been to lower bus fares. So, ho ho, this through the magic of associational satire becomes “Gay Bus Routes”.

The creature in the Mahood cartoon has now become a stereotype that has nothing whatsoever to do with contemporary homosexuals. High heeled shoes, flowery tie, bouffant hair, handbag and a limp wrists. This is a shopworn cliché even in the early 70s.