125: Noel Ford

in “Punch” 23 March 1983

Freemasons and homosexuality. As secret minorities, they are two great evergreen comic topics. In this cartoon they intersect (like some sort of furtive Venn Diagram) to produce a subset of a subset. Being semi-secretive types how would these gay freemasons identify to each other in covert manner? Freemasons are of course famous for the secret handshake. So it’s a novel twist. I’m not sure about the polo neck and medallion on the chap on the left, though.
There is probably a complementary version of this idea. If this is about gays who are also freemasons, you could have one about freemasons who are gay: a meeting with a particularly flamboyant one in a corner (if it’s JAK or MAC then they’re probably wearing a flowery dress and floppy hat). Ho-hum.