470: Gay Santa Claus

Ken Pyne,
“Punch” 2 December 1981

From the early days of what we would now call multiculturalism, this cartoon offers all the possible bleeding-heart heart liberal alternatives to a traditional Father Christmas. The joke is marrying all these different instances of positive discrimination to harmless Father Christmas, rather than attempting to show what a gay Santa or a CND Santa might look like.

From “Santas for All”
Illustrated by Gerry Gersten
“Playboy”, December 1966

Whereas this is nothing but festive offerings to satisfy various contemporary steretoypes. Amidst the surfers and black power protestors, here's Swish Kringle.

Similarly, you can look at Richard Ingrams camping it up as Santa in “Private Eye”, December 1963

“Playboy”, December 1967

Just asking each other for their Christmas presents, or something more?

469: AIDS 5 - Moralising 2, James Anderton nil

James Anderton was the chief constable of the Greater Manchester. His campaigns to combat crime were complemented by his public opinions on social, sexual and moral matters informed by his strong religious beliefs. Hence he was nicknamed “God’s Copper”. On December 11 1986, officers from police forces across the country attended a seminar organised by the Greater Manchester police to discuss police handling and interaction with AIDS victims. Anderton, until recently a Methodist lay preacher, had converted to Catholicism. (The Catholic Church of the time was strongly resistant to AIDS campaigns which emphasised sex education and the use of condoms.) There he spoke about how AIDS was primarily a risk just for prostitutes, drug-users and homosexual men:

“Everywhere I go I see increasing evidence of people swirling around in the cesspool of their own making. Why do homosexuals freely engage in sodomy and other obnoxious sexual practices knowing the dangers involved? Why is this question not asked of these people.”

Which pretty much speaks for itself. In particular, Anderton’s phrase “swirling around in the cesspool of their own making” has gone down in history as the epitome of 1980’s Establishment homophobia.

Noel Ford in The Daily Star, 13 December 1986

JAK in The Evening Standard, 16 December 1986

Private Eye, 6 February 1987

468: AIDS 4 - Moralising 1

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

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.)

460: Gay Politics - Hanging to the Right

In extreme contrast to the assumption of natural affinities between homosexuals and the left-wing politics, the 1970s also saw a small but vocal body of gay fascists. These were not skinhead-fancying fetishists, but genuine fascist supporters. A faltering economy and concerns about immigration meant that there was an audience for fascist politics in Britain at the time. The leader of the National Front in the late 70s, Martin Webster, was gay, and semi-openly so. It wasn’t just rumoured – he was actually mentioned in “Gay News”, and there was the occasional photo of him at a gay pub or event with other prominent figures in the party who were also gay – whether straight members of the party knew this is another matter. (Several decades later Webster would claim that he had had an affair lasting several years with the current leader of the British National party, Nick Griffin). Furthermore, when canvassing political opinion among gay men of the time, “Gay News” would take into account the opinions of gay fascists. Whether such political leanings are really some sort of yearning for authenticity I leave to others to ponder.

By Michael Heath
“Punch”, 2 August 1978

By Michael Heath
“Private Eye”, 29 September 1978

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

458: Gay Television Producers

And so to add to the gay actors, gay choreographers, gay dancers, gay hair dressers, gay interior decorators, gay fashion designers, gay shop assistants, gay antique shop-owners, gay teachers, gay writers, gay civil servants, gay spies, and gay guardsmen, may I may present:

Gay TV producers

I suppose it’s just a further new modern arena in which gay men can be theatrical and temperamental. There was an early example in Victor Spinetti’s character in “A Hard Days Night” (1964).

“Private Eye” 3 January 1967

A couple of years on is this character by Barry Humphries in “The Adventures of Barry McKenzie”. Admittedly, in this instalment the presentation he’s introduced first as a gay man, and then is a TV producer later, so it’s not a smooth integration.

In most cases this appearance of a gay TV producer is not a matter of being a fully rounded character or even much of a joke. It’s really just a matter of throwing a brief of moment of comic colour into the environs of television production.

“Dawson and Friends”, 1977
Starts: 0.55 – 2.20

This Subsonic sketch is a parody of the ITV music programme, “Supersonic” and its presenter Mike Mansfield, here spoofed by Julian Orchard in a very floppy pink bow, with a very limp wrist and some “sweety”s and “dear”s. Manfield isn’t gay that I’m aware of, so this very broad camp portrayal is just an added extra. There’s a Lot of It About, 1982
20.58 – 21.20

“There’s a Lot of It About” was one of the later of Spike Milligan’s rather free-form sketch programmes. Some of the sketches in this series were also written by Andrew Marshall and David Renwick, but I don’t think this is one of them. Spike Milligan rarely bothers with gay jokes, so for all that this just a very brief cameo it therefore stands out (although some of the characters portrayed by Peter Sellers in “The Goon Show” have a possible gay interpretation). In this sketch, a very broad camp caricature appears for a few seconds when a parody of the TV programme “Panorama” goes off the rail and comes to a technical halt. The part is played by Keith Smith who flounces on, addresses the crew in an enormously camp voice and with tremendously fluttering hands, then flounces off again. The picture quality is a little fuzzy, but it looks as though Smith is also distinguished by wearing a pair conspicuous purple shiny earrings.

“Punch”, 18 October 1978

Off the immediate topic of TV producers, but Smith’s ludicrous caricature me reminds a lot of this equally spurious, unrealistic and related-only-to-other-comic-stereotypes throwaway illustration according a humorous piece about “The A.A. Book of Minorities”.

446: Lesbian Femininity Control

Private Eye, 29 September 1967
Bill Tidy

Private Eye, 5 November 1982
Marc Boxer

The counterapart to the sissy, effete male athlete is the mannish sportswoman, which is equally threatening to conservative gender assumptions. How easy to undermine a woman’s accomplishments in a man’s arena by insinuating that she’s a lesbian. That’s one of the reasons why I generally try to avoid comic portrayals of lesbians. They’re generally a lot more limited than humorous portrayals of gay men – dykes in male drag, threatening burly monsters, feminist ballbusters and sexual teases. I lack the specific historical knowledge to pick up on allusions, and there’s a whole raft of cultural assumptions and experiences that I lack to make any informed assessment so I’d be little better than whoever was making the crappy lesbian joke in the first place. It is also unfortunate that any cartoons that I happen to have posted that have included any lesbians being affectionate or naked with each other have usually had hit rates 4-or-5 times the average. Ugghh.

437: On Your Guards

Unlike America, England has a slightly different expectations regarding homosexuality and the army. Everyone knows the connections between sailors and sodomy due to the long periods spent with no other company except other equally lonely men. However, the availability of a soldier for a nice night out has a long tradition. Usually not just any soldier, but a guardsman or member of the household cavalry. This is partly for historical and practical reasons as these are branches of the military traditionally attached to the Palace and therefore stationed in London and easily available for a little casual rent.

Private Eye, 11 June 1965
Willie Rushton

Private Eye, 5 January 1968

Previously posted is this 1976 parody of A.A. Milne’s “Changing the Guard at Buckingham Palace” by Alan Coren

I can’t help but think that this is prime Osbert Lancaster and Mark Boxer cartoon territory but I haven’t come across any appropriate pieces. However to make up for their absences, here’s a more than relevant entry from the always morally ripe Simon Raven. This excerpt is from his 1960 essay about the different kinds of rentboy to be had in London.

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“Boys Will Be Boys: The Male Prostitute in London”
Encounter, November 1960

In my first category come young men of the armed services who are either stationed or on leave in London. Prominent among these are, of course, the members of whatever units of Household Troops are currently serving in the capital, centuries of city life having endowed these regiments with a traditional knowledge of and a notorious capacity for all sexual activities of a venal nature. If a young guardsman wishes to augment his modest pay, and if he has no objection to hiring out his person to this end, then he need only "ask about," as a guardsman whom I shall call Tom once put it to me, and some older man (occasionally a N.C.O.) will tell him which pubs or bars to frequent, or which street corners to wait on, and will sometimes offer to accompany him in order to see fair play.

"I knew all about it happening," said Tom, "but I didn’t mean to go myself, see? Then one week-end I was going home to see my girl, and most of my pay was owed, and on the Friday I reckoned I was at least two quid light on what I needed. So I went to a bloke I knew used to go with queers .... " He was told to try several pubs in Kensington and the West End, and if still unsuccessful at closing time to take up a stance in the region of Grosvenor Gardens. Tom was not to accept less than thirty shillings in any case, he was told, and he must ask for at least three pounds if his client requested and he himself allowed the "taking of a real liberty," by which euphemism one connotes the practice of buggery as opposed to the very much more usual manual or oral caresses. The upshot was Tom returned from his first outing without "a real liberty" having been taken (he was not at all anxious, he informed me, for this to happen) and the better off by some two pounds ten in cash and several sophisticated items of information. His subsequent week-end with his girl was a success, having got off to a round start when he presented her with an unlooked-for pair of stockings which the odd ten shillings of his wages of sin had enabled him to buy.

Thereafter, having discovered so easy a way out of his financial afflictions, Tom found himself "on the streets" with increasing frequency. But, I enquired, did not these expeditions do violence to his proper sexual nature? Apparently not. Tom’s explanation was that he regarded "what happened" as a form of masturbation: he would close his eyes and think about "girls and things" while his partner provided the necessary mechanical stimulus--a service which Tom performed unthinkingly, with an almost automatic movement of the hand, in return. Thus Tom was able to persuade himself that he was not at all "queer" by nature, and that what occurred was of no sexual significance. However, it is evident that a person who is not at least slightly homosexual in taste could never begin to tolerate such a situation; and I strongly suspect that Tom, along with most soldiers who behave like him, has a definite if narrow homosexual streak. He is, in fact, bisexual---a judgment which, in its general implications, is confirmed by some remarks once made to me by a young Lance- Serjeant (also of the Brigade).

"Some of us get quite fond of the blokes we see regularly," he said. "You go to their flats and have some drinks and talk a bit--they’re nice fellows, some of them, and interesting to listen to. And as for the sex bit, well, some of the younger ones aren’t bad looking and I’ve had some real thrills off them in my time .... "

But it would be unjust to burden Her Majesty’s Guard with an unrelieved onus of obloquy. Provincial regiments which from time to time replace Household Troops in the performance of "public duties" in London are quick enough, after a few weeks of sniffing the air, to rival the iniquity of their predecessors. Not all country boys, one must suppose, have the integrity which is popularly premised of them: show them the chance to make a little easy money, and their response is regrettably easy to predict .... I should also remark, as a final comment on H.M. Forces in this connection, that soldiers and sailors, particularly the latter for some reason, who are to be in London on leave often discover from friends the address of a "Club" or "Bar" where they are likely to be picked up by well-to-do homosexuals, and are sometimes told by friends to ring up "So-and-So, who said to send my mates to him. He’s very rich with a smashing flat, and he’ll give you a fair old time if you don’t mind being fiddled with now and again." By this time, however, activities are within spitting distance of being amateur, and we had best proceed to the second category.

416: Queer Bashing

Private Eye, 27 March 1970
Colin Wheeler

The phrase “queer bashing” was introduced into popular English usage at the end of 1969, when the trial at the Old Bailey over the murder of Michael de Gruchy on Wimbledon Common by a gang of teenagers suddenly gave the phrase contemporary currency. Mention of “Queer bashing” becomes used more and more common through 1970 until it rolls naturally off the tongue. As this cartoon appears in March 1970, Colin Wheeler has been fairly quick off the mark in picking up on this new phrase. In the light of all the late 60s jokes about hippies campaigning for peace being “long-haired faggots”, here you have one about it being more natural to beat up homosexuals than campaign for peace, a joke at the expense of the thuggish dad’s expectations.

413: Michael Trestrail

Something for the Jubilee. Something other than just posting a load of puns involving the word “Queen”, mind you. So something related to her majesty specifically instead – which will mean a few “queen” jokes, I’m afraid, but what can I do about that. I have no time machine to forcibly restrain people from making these slightly lame jokes in the first place.

One of the odder incidents before her children and their marriages became a thriving tabloid feature (toe-sucking, squidgygate, I want to be your tampon, etc.) was the incident in July 1982 when the Queen was visited by an intruder in her bedroom. Michael Fagan climbed over the walls surrounding Buckingham palace, broke into Buckingham Palace undetected, then made his way to the Queen’s bed chamber, where he woke her up and sat on her bed for about 10 minutes.

This was the sixth breach of security at the Queen's London residence that year and there was a clamour to know why the Queen’s security had been breached so many times. On July 19th the Home Secretary Willie Whitelaw announced to a stunned parliament that the Queen’s chief of security, Commander Michael Trestrail had resigned, not because of any failings in his job but because he had been involved in a relationship with a male prostitute.

The 51 year old Trestrail had worked for the Royal Family since 1966, and had become a Member of the Royal Victorian Order in 1978, a personal award of the Queen. It was revealed that several years previously Trestrail had met a couple of times with Michael Rauch, a male prostitute in his 30s. When Rauch had discovered Trestrail’s position he had tried to blackmail him but nothing had come of it. Following the interest in Fagan’s break-in, Rauch tried to sell his story to “The Sun” newspaper, but the tabloid instead passed this information to Scotland Yard.

Trestrail immediately resigned. All of this was not just embarrassing to the palace but also to the government. Trestrail was security checked every couple of years, and his last vetting had only been 3 months previously. Furthermore, Trestrail’s resignation occurred independently of any awareness by the government. Whitelaw was only in the position of announcing what had already happened. Various investigations would follow, which would open up the more private operations of the palace making it more accountable.

Most of the papers and commentators were largely sympathetic to Trestrail. The Attorney General announced: “There should be no general presumption that homosexuality is evidence of inherent personality defects disqualifying the individual from positions of responsibility”. There was an investigation by Lord Bridge, with the report issued in November 1982. Trestrail was exonerated as “no threat to security at the palace”, nor responsible for the Fagan incident, although Bridge remarked on “casual and promiscuous homosexual encounters which (Trestrail) himself recognised as sordid and degrading …[which] still attracts general disapproval”. So if nothing else, an indication of how attitudes have changed in the last 30 years.

All the reports suggest an immensely private man, whose testimony gives the impression of being not entirely comfortable in his sexuality. Headlines and observations were full of the phrase “Secret Double Life”. Developing from the Vassall and Lavender scandals of the early 1960s most of the commentary is still about blackmailing of homosexuals, but now instead of campaigns for purges, the assumption is that honesty really is the best policy.

One good thing in all of the material that follows, almost none of it is directly or personally about Trestrail but only about the mix of homosexuality, royality, policeman, national security, and Fagan’s break-in.

Raymond Jackson
Evening Standard, 21 July 1982
As with almost very other JAK cartoon, if he’s not some effeminate sissy, then a homosexual is a large chap with extravagant facial hair in lady’s evening wear. Pythonesque or just lazy all-poofs-are-transvestite gags? Anyway, here they are infiltrating away like mad.

Michael Heath
Spectator, 24 July 1982
And here’s the first of our queen/ royalty meet’s queen / homosexual puns. Writes itself, wouldn’t you say?

Trog – aka Wally Fawkes
Observer, 25 July 1982
The police officer is Home Secretary Willie Whitelaw. But isn’t that just the mimsiest-looking chap on the step?

Michael Heath
Punch, 28 July 1982
A gay interpretation of the everyday behaviour of policemen. Could almost be a pocket cartoon by Marc Boxer, but none of Boxer’s pieces for “The Times” touch on this story's homosexuality even by allusion.

Punch, 28 July 1982
A Queen gag again. Anthony Blunt for previous secretly gay Royal employee allusion. Quentin Crisp as a default reference for homosexuality. And an ethos of secrecy about being gay.

cover, Private Eye 30 July 1982
A “Hello Sailor” joke. Ho-hum.

David Austin
“Hom Sap” strip in Private Eye, 30 July 1982
Austin is better than a joke whose pay-off is a hand on hip, and a “Haven’t we all, sweeties”? but this is for “Private Eye” in the early 1980s which wasn’t in the market for any subtlety in its jokes about homosexuals.

Michael Heath
“The Gays” strip in Private Eye, 30 July 1982
“It’s wonderful to feel persecuted again”?

David Austin
Spectator, 31 July 1982
An inversion of the whole Trestrail situation. Note the topical homosexual moustaches and realistic early 80s attire in contrast to the character in Trog’s cartoon.

Punch, 4 August 1982.
Listing all the gay signifiers in this would be almost as the piece itself: Cambridge and Foreign Office spies, hairdressers and ballet dancers, Oscar Wilde, leather gear and cottaging. No Jeremy Thorpe reference is surprising, although for those with a particularly good memory, a copy of Baldwin’s novel was involved in Thorpe’s seduction technique. The only other thing missing is some sort of disco reference, but then the audience of “Punch” isn’t hip in anyway.

Cartoon by Geoffrey Dickinson
E.J. Turner
Punch, 4 August 1982
A lengthy piece about the evident failures of the vetting procedure invoking the idea of “effeminate drinks”, James Bond’s odd piece of folklore about homosexuals not being able to whistle, Oxbridge traitors, bachelor holidays to gay venues, interior decorating, handbags, and so on. And a “gay men have handbags” reference in the cartoon too.

Michael Heath
“The Gays” strip in Private Eye, 13 August 1982
Not a bad gag in this context. Although still within general milieu of pity, misery, envy, petty lust, resentment and recrimination of the strip.

Private Eye, 13 August 1982
Easy “hello sailor” cliché aside, this instance looks at the sexual scandal element of the story, in regard to Trestrail’s consorting with prostitutes. The three signatories are all disgraced figures, but the Kincora Boys Homes is a low blow as that was a notorious contemporary paedophile scandal.

Clive Collins
The Sun, 31 August 1982
A camp bitchy gay. Again the idea of being pervasively infiltrated. Although the “I’ll scratch their eyes out” line has probably been a cliché for at least the last 10 years.

Private Eye
3 December 1982
Analysing the Bridge investigation as a cover-up so as not to further embarrass the Palace. Mr Sweeties Roughtrouser is a name revisited from jokes about Thorpe.

After that Trestrail falls out of the public eye. But there is one last reference. The second volume of Sue Townsend’s Adrian Mole books, “The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole” (1984) has the following topical entry, in which the events of the outside world are brought within Adrian’s self-obsessed petty orbit:

“MONDAY JULY 19TH “The Queen’s personal detective, Commander Trestrail, has had to resign because the papers have found out that he is a homosexual. I think this is dead unfair. It’s not against the law and I bet the Queen doesn’t mind. Barry Kent calls ME a poofter because I like reading and hate sport. So I understand what it is like to be victimized.”

405: Gay Bar 6: The Adventures of Barry McKenzie

The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (1972)

Unembeddable:
http://youtu.be/f5CZJGY3kQo
starts: 1.00
ends: 5.40

Directed by Bruce Beresford
Written by Barry Humphries and Bruce Beresford

Another film adaptation of a modern day Candide. In this case it’s the transfer to film of the Private Eye comic strip written by Barry Humphries and drawn by Nicholas Garland. The strip had two satirical targets: the drunken, boorish yet simultaneously priggish Australia left behind encapsulated in the character of Australian tourist Barry McKenzie and the venal, shabby, trendy, exploitative Britain he was visiting. Aside from actual satire, the strip was Humphries’s opportunity to introduce as many slang terms for sex, drinking, and vomiting. Because of this, and because it was perceived to denigrate Australians in the eyes of the world, the strip was banned by Australian censors and the notorious Australian customs board. As it had been running since the mid-1960s there’s an argument that the strip preempts many of the achievements of the American underground comix, but since it's unknown in America it falls beneath critics’ radar.

Most of the film is a fairly direct dramatisation of events, dialogue and characters in the strip. At one point Barry visits a former girlfriend only to discover that since moving to England she has become a butch lesbian with a similarly older butch girlfriend. Lesbians fall outside my remit, but in the film you’ll notice she’s a perfectly normal seeming young lady though the girlfriend is still an escapee from Radcliffe Hall. Barry and his ex then then go to visit a pub for further conversation. In the film version, more is made of it as being gay pub, and so it is that everyone in this pub is a drag queen.

Unlike the drag queens of four years earlier in “Candy” who were in modern dress and seemed relatively free and easy, these drag queens look more like doubles for Danny La Rue in some incredibly ostentatious evening gowns. Nothing else is made of them, although there is a brief appearance of a bitchy trollish bartender. They’re just a sight gag – a herd of men in frocks, to whose nature Barry is of course oblivious.

The second half of the scene in the toilet with the policeman is a direct dramatisation of the corresponding strip in “Private Eye” from November 1966, possibly one of the earliest instances of jokes about police entrapment of homosexuals in lavatories. However, his inevitable farcical transvestite turn makes more sense in the contexts of all these drag queens.

Two drag queens appeared singing the title sequence of “staircase” in 1969, a failure of a film with Richard Burton and Rex Harrison.