466: AIDS 2 - A Talking Point

By the end of 1984, AIDS has become a fixture of conversation, an imminent concern, an object of speculation and ill-informed speculation, but now part of the casual cultural landscape – something that we don’t know much about but which something must be done if civilisation isn’t to reach some catastrophic tipping point.

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Auberon Waugh’s Diary
Private Eye 28 December 1984

Poor Ken Livingstone made a fairly average joke about AIDS to some students, and now everyone is complaining his jokes are not good enough. He was asked how he planned to save the GLC and replied: "We're going to bring over some poor unfortunates who suffer from AIDS and get them to work through the House of Commons…"

Immediately the local Lesbian and Gay Society was up in arms: "AIDS is not a laughing matter," claimed a spokesman. "Mr Livingstone was well out of order and those comments were in very poor taste". Well, perhaps it was not one of Ken's best jokes. We all have our better and our less good efforts. But ratepayers are getting above themselves if they expect and absolute sizzler every time.

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Great Bores of Today
Private Eye, 22 February 1985

Proof for my thesis.

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By David Haldane
Private Eye, 14 June 1985

Well, precisely. Making them backwoodsmen only adds an additional layer of incongruity, rather than the expected “what’s the news of the world?”

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Auberon Waugh’s Diary
Private Eye 6 September 1985

Sitting in the warm sunshine on the garden bench in southern France while lizards play at my feet and larks sing merrily in the air above, I'm idly turning over the pages of the Daily Telegraph airmail edition when my eyes fall upon this headline:

"Anger at 'monstrous' claim that Earl of Avon died of AIDS"

Political colleagues and friends expressed shock yesterday at a report – described as 'monstrous' by the Government Chief Whip – that the Earl of Avon, son of the late Conservative Prime Minster, formerly Anthony Eden, died of AIDS.

It all seems most unlikely. Hereditary peers normally have an in-built resistance to such infections which explains, in part. the survival of the House of Lords. But poor Lord Avon was not, perhaps, a member of one of our noblest families, being the younger son of a political first generation. Now the earldom has died with him. If AIDS is really going to start wiping out the peerage, it is plainly time I rushed home to fight the good fight.

An odd aspect of the disease is how the medical profession seems unconcerned by it. Only an occasional doctor, like John Seale in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine breaks ranks to give us sensation-seekers what we want to hear.

"Such a virus could produce a self-sustaining epidemic. It could lead to la lethal pandemic throughout the crowded cities and villages of the Third World of a magnitude unparalleled in human history. This is what the AIDS virus is now doing."

Even he does not dare mention the threat to our beloved House of Lords for fear of mass hysteria and panic. Now the Government's Chief Medical officer, Dr Donald Acheson, claims the illness is so unimportant that there is no need to tell your wife about it, let alone leave your job.

But the oddest thing is the silence of the BMA fanatics and Moral Re-Armers. Every week they shriek and groan about the dangers of smoking ro drinking. They have insisted that every cigarette packet carries a health warning and are now campaigning for a ban on all cigarette advertising. but not a whisper from them about the dangers of homosexuality, or an suggestion that homosexual advertising should be discouraged. What on earth is happening?

When I come to power every bottle of Eau Savage Cologne, every pair of leather jodphurs or "chaps" sold will carry a notice:

DANGER Government Health WARNING
SODOMY CAN SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH

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The above is doubly noteworthy, since the next issue featured the following letter:

Private Eye 20 September 1985

Waugh on AIDS

Sir,

Auberon Waugh is quite right in observing that most doctors are strangely silent on the seriousness 0f the AIDS epidemic, but the reason is not that they do not recognise it, nor that they are indifferent, but that it is very difficult to know what effective action can be taken. Tow things are clear, however. First, and most important, homosexuals must come to terms with the scale and urgency of the problem as quickly as possible, and any campaign must therefore be mounted with their active assent and collaboration. They are understandably obsessed with the anti-gay backlash that AIDS is already generating, and this red herring is a major obstacle to their acceptance of wide-spread confidential blood-testing. Such testing must be the backbone of any effective control measures, as the number of individuals infected is probably at least 50 times the number with AIDS. Secondly, the general public should be made aware that the risk from non-sexual contact, and even to children of women with AIDS who were born before their mothers became infected, is very low. The main effect of the prevalent paranoia about lavatory seats and coffee cups is to make a reasoned approach to the homosexual community even more difficult. I suppose it is too much to ask the EYE for a moratorium on gay-bashing, but AIDS is a uniquely serious issue, and you could at least tone it down a bit.

Yours sincerely,

Julian Peto

465: AIDS 1 - Earliest Days

By the late 70s/early 80s, an accepted element of a healthy life on the gay scene was the regular trip to the VD clinic and then a few pills or shots to clear up the STD of the moment. A cartoon that appeared in the gay magazine “Christopher Street” in the summer of 1981 (and which I’m sure was reprinted in “Gay News”) showed two men at a bar with one saying to the other: “What do you say you and me pool our viruses”. If printed in a straight magazine, it would almost certainly be condemned for homophobically suggesting the diseased quality of gay life, but when printed in gay magazines it’s a twist on contemporary mores. Either way, it was a foreshadowing of what was to come.

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“National Lampoon” 1982

(The headline alludes of this piece alludes to a famous "NY Daily News" headline: "Ford to City: Drop Dead". This is a surprisingly early piece alert to one small blip in a small subset of the American population. On the one hand this can be read as satirising the casual bigotry and religious condemnation in the dismissal of the rising deaths in the gay community. On the other hand, it’s just as likely to provoke laughs in its unconcerned readers, for whom satire is breaking taboos, saying the unsayable, and joyously anaesthetising the heart so as to appreciate finer graduations of cruelty and vitriol. In retrospect, this piece is unfair to Dianne Fehrstein whose AIDS budget for the City of San Francisco was bigger than President Reagan's AIDS budget was for the entire nation for several years in the 80s)

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A little over a year later and AIDS is a word to conjure with in this glib concoction.

“Punch”, 18 May 1983

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Auberon Waugh’s Diary
Private Eye 26 August 1983

In fact, there are only 14 confirmed cases of AIDS in Britain, as I keep telling everybody. The disease is no less fatal than rabies, and the health authorities have managed to control rabies by a strict policy of quarantine. Would the Gay Community take it very badly if I suggested that American homosexuals visiting Britain should be required to spend six months in kennels before being allowed out to take their pleasure with the natives. My purpose is not to annoy English gays, many of whom are terrifically amusing, talented, artistic, etc, but to protect them. Scientists are working on an idea that a prophylactic against AIDS might be to eat huge numbers of cucumbers every day, but it would be foolish to rely on this.

Illustration by Brian Bagnall

(What is intended here in a sententiously high-toned and blithely semi-nonsensical opinion-proffering manner would later go on to be offered as serious advice by numerous media and political pundits. Where the cucumbers come into this I don’t know, other than the tendency for people to use them as demonstration models for the application of prophylactics.)

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Eddie Murphy, Delirious (recorded August 17, 1983)

http://ukjarry.blogspot.com/2007/12/27-faggots-eddie-murphy.html (I’d already covered this piece of stand-up before, but mostly just looking at Murphy’s manner, rather than his extended piece on AIDS)

Ladies be hangin' out with gay people. Ladies be saying, "Gay men are the best friends to have. 'Cause they don't want anything from you and you don't want anything from them and he can just hang out and you can be with him and it's fun and you can talk to them" and all that bullshit and they be hangin' out with them.

You know what's real scary about that? That new AIDS shit. AIDS is scary 'cause it kills motherfuckers, AIDS. That ain't like the good old days when venereal disease was simple. In the good old days you'd get gonorrhea and your dick hurt, Go get a shot, clear it right up. Then they came out with herpes. You keep that shit forever like luggage. Now they got AIDS. That just kills motherfuckers. I say what's next? I guess you just put your dick in and it explode (mimes sex and an explosion) and the girl will be on the bed and go "Maybe I should see a doctor about this."

Kills people! And it petrifies me because girls be hangin' out with them. And one night they could be in the club havin' fun with their gay friend and give them a little kiss (lip-smacking sound) and go home with their AIDS on their lips. Get home with their husband and like five years later it's "Mr. Johnson, you have AIDS." He goes, "AIDS? But I'm not a homosexual." "Sure, you're not a homosexual."

(In an October 1990 interview with Spike Lee, Murphy apologised for making these jokes about AIDS. He explained that he had been only 21 at the time, and that AIDS was then a new disease that nobody knew enough about at the time., and that he wouldn’t joke about it now because it’s a much more sensitive issue.)

459: Gay Politics: Dressing to the Left

Obviously the big gay political movement of the 1970s was the fight for civil rights aka Gay Lib which began at the end of 1969. Independent of the activists involved in Gay Lib, homosexuality began to appear as an issue of concern to nice liberal heterosexual folks. But as part of a political programme, homosexuality was most readily incorporated within the broad array of issues proclaimed by the post-hippie Radical Left (aka New left in America). Homosexuality was a part of political platforms which included diversity, feminism, gender equality, minority-rights and strident non-racism. Heady radical stuff, you’ll agree. Or wholly unrealistic, preposterous, pie-in-the-sky demands proposed by anti-social types who felt that government should be lavishing the public purse on irrelevant grievances if you’re of a more conservative disposition. So: a concern for homosexuality was a shortcut to portraying leftist politics as ludicrous by association.

By David Langdon
Punch, 24 September 1975

These would be protestors outside the annual Conservative Party Conference. The newspaper vendors are the opposite of moderate, but the person holding “Gay News” doesn’t appear to gay as such.

from Auberon Waugh’s Diary
“Private Eye”, 9 December 1977

There’s a certain amount of accompanying style from Waugh here, but it’s really just the well-worn conceit that a gay worker would only be a hairdresser. A brief knock at literary/political freeloaders, leftists, and homosexuals in the Waugh manner.

by David Austin
Spectator, 27 June, 1981

The Left’s obsessive concern with gender roles and issues over practical matters.

Illustration by John Johnsen
“Punch”, 17 March 1982

To accompany an article “”Spring Diary of a Social Worker”, who by the turn of the decade were seen as the local government-employed shock troops of leftist socio-political engineering. Even the socialist alternative comedian Alexei Sayle had his joke: “Help a deprived inner city child. Kill a social worker”. The homsoexuals holding the banner appear to be a curious mix of New romnatic, Gay 90s dandies, and Radcliffe Hall butch tweedy lesbians

Out of gay political groups came numerous short-lived magazines and publishing endeavours. The public might be aware of the existence of this sort of minority-interest stuff, but no specific title or approach is going to make a massive impression on general consciousness. So you can’t specifically parody a particular author or title. They fall too far below the radar. However, it is the gay-positive content in other leftist magazines that will make the general populace aware of gay issues and give a forum for gay voices, lifestyles and activities. There are lots of feminist and leftist journals, but as they solely political magazines they have a limited audience. The most famous example of such a magazine in the UK is “Time Out”. “Time Out” was a listing magazine, detailing the weekly events in London, and so its functionality meant that its readers encountered the leftist political life of London. Hence these two parodies of “Time Out” make much out of the gay oriented content of the magazine.

“Private Eye”, 5 June 1981

“Private Eye”, 28 August 1981

Readers with incredibly retentive memories will note that that in these two parodies there’s a lot of cross-over with the parodies attacking the irrelevant, wastefulness, social rebalancing by Ken Livingstone and the 1980s GLC (Greater London Council). I already covered a lot of those satirical attacks that used GLC’s support of homosexuality against it (20 different bits starting here). But here are a couple more from Michael Heath’s “The Gays” strip:

“Private Eye”, 23 October 1981

“Private Eye”, 26 February 1982

“Private Eye”, 11 March 1983

“Private Eye”, 6 May 1983

And let’s just round out with a silly sexual / political pun.

Spectator, 4 September 1982

334: Gay Biggles 4 - Waugh and Rushton

from “Auberon Waugh’s Diary”
by Auberon Waugh
illustration by Willy Rushton
in “Private Eye” February 1985

“Three cheers because Biggles is back,” trills lovely, broad-bottomed Glenda Lee Potter. “Squadron Leader James Bigglesworth DSO DFC is being reincarnated on our screens to enchant small boys,” she shrieks.
Poor Glenda is possibly not au fait with the latest research in the English Literature Department of Strathclyde University. It seems to prove that Biggles was not only an alcoholic but also a raving pooftah.
A few years ago one might not have objected to the idea of this drunken Nancy boy being put on television to tempt small boys. If they wanted to be buggered, that was their own affair. It was still a free country.
But since the arrival of the disease called AIDS, which destroys the body’s natural immunities, it seems rather irresponsible to encourage small boys to take up a hobby of this sort. They might infect the rest of us by bleeding over our toes or peeing on our mosquito bites.


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Both Waugh’s diary entry and Rushton’s cartoon are each offensive by various criteria, but by God they made me laugh when I first saw them.
There’s a certain talent to Waugh's managing to make almost every line harbour some objectionable content. And Rushton, following Waugh’s argument, manages a nice line in RAF paedophile banter. If Biggles and co really did have designs on little boys this is just how they’d express themselves.
Waugh’s repetition of “little boys” reminds me of similar gay=paedophile insinuations in Monty Python’s Carl French sketch. The idea of homosexuality being a choice is nicely played off with the idea that boys will emulate Biggles’s homosexuality. Waugh’s suave fantasy then swerving into disdainful confusion about the transmission of AIDS also raises an inappropriate laugh.
If I find this all more amusing than similar attempts by the likes of Ricky Gervaise, I suspect it’s probably a matter of contained and modulated tone. Ah me, a traitor to the cause and an aspirant snob to boot.

311: Sing If You’re Sad To Be Gay

"Gay used to be one of the most agreeable words in the language. Its appropriation by a notably morose group is an act of piracy." - Arthur Schlesinger, 1971

One of the side effects of the popular adoption of the word “gay” to describe homosexuals was that the word also opened several new avenues for casual jokes about homosexuals. There was the lazy tactic of employing a camp gesture or mannerism every time the word “gay” happened to be used, a conspicuously limp wrist or bitchy “ooooh”ing. The other tactic, not necessarily humorous, but often employed by conservatives was to protest that homosexuals had hijacked “gay”, that “they’ve taken away our lovely word”. So the next step after that was to complain that “gay” men didn’t seem at all gay. That homosexuals were in fact the opposite of gay. Demanding rights and equality, gay men are all so angry, or strident, or depressed. They were no longer funny, silly, delightful and trivial, which had previously made them at least a bit acceptable. There may also be some implicit mockery that being homosexual is actually a more miserable condition, and that “gay” is just a pretence.


from “Auberon Waugh’s Diary”
by Auberon Waugh
illustration by Nicholas Bentley
in “Private Eye” 10 January 1975

The comment about Enoch is a reference to the British politician Enoch Powell, who gave an educated voice to racist fears about immigrants. So Waugh employs racism, misogyny and a little homophobia, but each is somewhat ironically and allusively played off of each other, while under the cover of Waugh making a pretence to liberal understanding.
Bentley does capture a look of weary disdain in his homosexual’s face. Although really he’s only drawn the one figure several times in different attire, with long, curving bouufant hair, and slightly casually kicked up heels.


by J.B. Handelsman
in “Playboy” January 1978
Most of the patrons of this gay bar look more like fashion models than gay men of the period, but if you assume that gay men are fashionable then it’s easier to copy a few models than have to think about what you really have to depict. I really don’t know about the neck scarves though. Although right in the background there is a more burly type and even a black man.


by Ken Pyne
in “Punch” 14 April 1982
Of course Gay Pride is the magic phrase in this cartoon, with all of its social connotations. It is a typical Ken Pyne cartoon, since most of his straight characters are also normally miserable and lamenting their condition. So nothing actually denigratory here. You’ll notice most of the men have earrings in this bar. Whether that’s because of fashion, or merely a way of indicating effeminacy, I can’t be sure. The main figure in stripy trousers and hat could probably have been drawn at any point in the ten years previous. I’m a bit dubious about the bell bottoms and lapels as well.


by Michael Heath
in “The Spectator” 25 September 1982
Just your usual sombre Heath-man. Nothing even faintly gay. Which is rather the point.

251: Edward Heath, Aspersions, Slurs, Insinuations and Innuendos of Effeminacy and Plain Just-Not-Quite-Sexually-Rightness

Illustration by John Kent in “Private Eye” 11 September 1970


Comic strip by John Kent in “Private Eye” 20 November 1970


Comic strip by John Kent in “Private Eye” 26 March 1971


Illustration by John Kent in “Private Eye” 5 November 1971


Illustration by Michael Heath in “Private Eye” 5 May 1972


From “Auberon Waugh’s Diary” in “Private Eye” 28 October 1977

250: Edward Heath, A Man Among Other Men

As Edward Heath was a man apparently oblivious to the charms of women, cruel, heartless, disgraceful satirists insensitive to the true nature and delicate feelings of the man who was their dedicated leader were wont to make out that he was correspondingly susceptible, almost cravenly so, to the affections and good opinions of the world leaders with whom he associated. What indignity to inflict upon such a stalwart representative of his nation, to portray him as some schoolgirl eager for the favours of his international colleagues. Emasculating I call it. To suggest our Prime Minister wasn’t a proper man.

from “H.P. Sauce” by Auberon Waugh, with illustration by John Kent in “Private Eye” 1 January 1971

By John Kent, in “Private Eye” 21 May 1971

By Gerald Scarfe in “Private Eye” 8 October 1971
And this? It really was not common cartooning practice almost 40 years ago to draw a leading politician as some romantically susceptible female.

249: Edward Heath, A Preference for Seamen?

In his private leisure time, one of Heath’s manly pursuits was a wholly laudable interest in maritime activities as a fervent sailor. Since the public on occasion harbours certain sordid suspicions about the private interests of sailors, it seems sometimes Heath’s reputation suffered by unfortunate association.

by John Kent in "Private Eye" 27 May 70
John Kent’s strip “Grocer Heath and His Pals” ran in “Private Eye” during Heath’s period in office, and was a political satire of Heath in the style of an old-fashioned English children’s comic. This one is about the suspicions that Heath’s assorted activities and tastes combined to create in the public imagination. For shame, everyone of you.

from “HP Sauce” by Auberon Waugh, with illustration by Willie Rushton, in “Private Eye”, 2 July 71
Waught attributes some strange psycho-sexual compulsion to Heath’s maritime pursuits. And can Mr Rushton mean by the sign reading “Portnoy”? And that one of the nautical tars wears a hat bearing the legend “Hello” cannot but evoke the cheeky gay solicitation “Hello sailor”?

A sketch on “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” (21 December 1969) about a Chippendale writing desk that performs impersonations of famous Englishmen with wood-allusive names does his “Edward Heath” with a throwaway “Hello Sailor”.

“Hello Sailor” by Eric Idle
One of the threads in this comic novel follows a ruddy-faced, lumbering, nautically-interested Prime Minister and his attempts to cover his secret gay affairs. The book was published in 1975, but was apparently written in 1970, which would have made the inspiration for Idle’s fictitious Prime Minister rather more blatant.
The cover is a rather camp parody of the image off “Player’s Navy Cut” cigarettes.

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”.

204: Jeremy Thorpe 22

Auberon Waugh’s Diary

From “Private Eye” 6 July 1979

WEDNESDAY

The Thorpe Trial is over and we await the verdict. Judge Cantley's summing up was one of the strangest judicial performances I have ever seen. Sniggering and giggling throughout he insulted the prosecution witnesses one by one, misdirected the jury about the "impeccable" character of the defendants and urged them not to believe Mr Bessell.
I decide to dedicate my book about this dingy affair to Peter Taylor QC, Chief Counsel for the Crown, and Chief Superintendent Challes, practically the only two people who come out of it with any credit.
Towards the end of his second day's closing speech Mr Carman QC said he thought there 'might, indeed, still be a place in public life for his client, Mr Thorpe. I think there may still be a place in public life for me, too. At the next general election I may easily find myself standing not only as a Dog Lovers' candidate, but also for Law and Order and Public Safety, against Frightening and Tendencies in Public Life.

THURSDAY

The jury is still out. Thorpe apparently spent the night in hospital in Brixton Prison with an upset stomach. Just occasionally I, too, have suffered from an upset stomach and it can be quite disagreeable, although it has never occurred to me to go to hospital for it.
The other three defendants, being of lower class, spent the night locked in a single cell with two rebarbative Negroes. Although not by nature a left-winger, I feel something about this case stirs the latent Robespierre in me.

FRIDAY

The Verdict. Thorpe declared not guilty, as we all knew he would be. How could it have occurred to any of us for a moment that he was anything but innocent?
Speaking for myself, I think it may have been something to do with the double-breasted waistcoats he wears. At my school, prefects were allowed to wear these absurd garments as a badge of office. So many of them were hypocrites, sodomites,and criminal psychopaths that I understandably jumped to the conclusion that Jeremy Thorpe might just possibly be one, too.
Now we know otherwise, perhaps he will consider wearing more conventional clothes in the future.

from “Private Eye” 20 July 1979

TUESDAY

At last I have decided on a name for the book. The idea came to me in a flash of inspiration while I was reading from the works of Beatrix Potter to the outdoor servants and farm labourers. I have instituted these readings in protest against the collapse of secondary education in this country, and in rehearsal for the traditional Connolly Night celebrations later this year.
This is what I read from The Tale of Mr Jeremy Fisher:

'The water was all slippy-sloppy in the larder and in the back passage. But Mr Jeremy liked getting his feet wet; nobody ever scolded him and he never caught a cold!"

Suddenly the Idea was born:

THE BACK PASSAGE
by
Auberon Waugh

Part One: The Tale of a Flopsy Bunny
Part Two: Fierce Bad Rabbit
Part Three: Mr Jeremy Escapes
Epilogue: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

All these ideas are world copyright and anyone who plagiarises them will spend the rest of his days in a prison ceIl with three rebarbative Negroes suffering from upset stomachs.


(The book Waugh refers to is his “The Last Word: An Eye-Witness Account of the Thorpe Trial”, 1980)

202: Jeremy Thorpe 20

The trial was scheduled to begin on 8 May 1979. The trial had been moved so that there would be no conflict with the general election, in which Thorpe would be campaigning.

At the suggestion of the editor of “Private Eye”, Auberon Waugh stood in North Devon as a candidate against Jeremy Thorpe in the 1979 general election. Waugh’s campaign address was published in “The Spectator”, 28 April 1979, and also in the “The Guardian”. Thorpe’s solicitors attempted to have an injunction slapped on his address and have Waugh committed to prison for contempt of court on the grounds that the address might prejudice a jury. After going back and forth between various courts and appeals, Waugh had no address. He did still manage to receive 79 votes. Thorpe, however, lost his constituency to the Conservatives.

You will, of course, note the allusion to Sodom. Making this piece of satirical political theatre the "Dog Lover’s Party" was a clever stroke. As far as the English are concerned, shooting a defenceless dog is about as perverse and unnatural as a taste for light recreational buggery (vide the Marc Boxer cartoon)



CITIZENS OF BARNSTAPLE AND VOTERS OF NORTH DEVON

Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking I offer myself as your Member of Parliament in the General Election on behalf of the nation's dog lovers to protest about the behaviour of the Liberal Party generally and the North Devon Constituency Liberal Association in particular. Their candidate is a man about whose attitude to dogs - not to mention his fellow human beings - little can be said with any certainty at the present time.

But while it is one thing to observe the polite convention that a man is innocent until proven guilty, it is quite another thing to take a man who has been publicly accused of crimes which would bring him to the cordial dislike of all right-minded citizens and dog lovers, and treat him as a hero.

Before Mr Thorpe has had time to establish his innocence of these extremely serious charges, he has been greeted with claps, cheers and yells of acclamation by his admirers in the Liberal Party, both at the National Conference in Southport and here in the constituency. I am sorry but I find this disgusting.

I invite all the electors of North Devon, but especially the more thoughtful Liberals and dog lovers to register their disquiet by voting for me on 3 May and I sincerely hope that at least fifty voters in this city will take the opportunity to do so.

Genesis XVIII 26: And the LORD said If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes.

1 Samuel XXIV 14: After whom dost thou pursue? after a dead dog, after a flea.

Rinka is NOT forgotten. Rinka lives. Woof, woof. Vote Waugh to give all dogs the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

196: Jeremy Thorpe 14

by Auberon Waugh
from "Auberon Waugh's Diary" in "Private Eye", 29 October 1977

After 45 years loyal membership of the Labour Party - years in which it is true to say, I devoted most of my life to the Labour movement and all it stood for - I think the moment may have come for me to join the Liberals.
The attraction of David's Bunny Club may not seem obvious at the present time, but the whole idea of the death penalty for homosexuals has always interested me very much, although I do not approve of capital punishment. Liberals, with their introduction of the bungled execution, seem to have found a compromise which works. Since the attempt on his life, Norman Scott has settled down with a nice young woman who has already given him a baby.
Perhaps the general use of attempted murder to tidy up a party's electoral appeal should be approached with greater caution, although I have always argued that an element of drama is needed to stimulate interest in the democratic process. If all members of an outgoing administration were hanged or imprisoned, as they usually deserve, this might whip up a bit of interest in election results.
The Tories are constantly moaning about how much better their chances would be if Grocer Heath could disappear. Heath is not, of course, a homosexualist, any more than Mr Thorpe is, but nobody can deny that lovely, oyster-eyed William Whitelaw would be leader of the Tories today if it were not for his unfortunate friendship with Grocer. Whenever I make the obvious suggestion to Tory policy groups, they receive it with a nervous giggle. Liberals seem to be made of sterner stuff.

132: Tom Driberg 4 - Auberon Waugh and Nicolas Bentley

from "Auberon Waugh's Diary" in “Private Eye” 28 October 1977

A group of Tom's friends are getting together for a Tom Driberg Memorial Lavatory, or "cottage" , as he called it, to be built on the Westminster Embankment - scene of so many romantic encounters.
Designed as a Puseyite Oratory, it will provide a convenient meeting place for MPs to sharpen their social awareness and generally to practise compassion with like-minded tramps and derelicts of the neighbourhood. It will be equipped with copies of the Bible and Karl Marx and a Division Bell in every cubicle.

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An ironic encapsulation of so many elements of Driberg’s character.

The illustration is by Nicolas Bentley. Offering two gentlemen with bouffant hair and high heels, handbags and hands upon hips. The slightly rougher nature of the gentleman just zipping his jeans up is probably in tribute to Driberg’s particular tastes. And of course the suggestion that sex is happening just off sight.

111: GLC 13 - Auberon Waugh's Diary

in "Private Eye" 19 Apr 1985.jpg

Auberon Waugh was the son of Evelyn Waugh. He was a jobbing journalist and columnist. His diary was a feature in “Private Eye” from the early 70s until the late 80s. It was a weird fantasy, featuring topical news and public figures. The right-wing Waugh presented himself as being superior to everything and everyone, and delighted in ornate but bizarre abuse. It was a weird but unique blend of political insight, caricature, and bigotry. When Waugh indulges common prejudices they are usually enlivened by a plunge into insane reversals of the common-place world. After much of the same dull repetitive abuse from lumpen bigots, something so energetically, creatively and almost ludicrously different is almost a relief.
Waugh starts with the usual bigot’s claim about if we let homosexuals live happily, then we’re opening the gates to all other sexual deviants up to and including necrophiliacs and bestiality. It suddenly spirals into a desperate plea for the public to be aware of the threats posed by seals and the need to club them to death.
He’s not entirely wrong about gays and lesbians, either.