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.

467: AIDS 3: Avoid Like the Plague

All the casual disgust and revulsion occasioned in certain people by the mere existence of homosexuality, let alone any sexual practices, were given a full arena for open expression in the public health consequences of the apparent death sentence of AIDS. Homosexuals - not just innately detestably, and morally sick, but actual plague-carriers. So, thanks to the tabloid press, here’s the funny side of the leper’s bell:

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Stanley Franklin in The Sun, 26 February 1985

Bill Caldwell in The Daily Star, 19 February 1985
Stanley Franklin in The Sun, 5 December 1986

Stanley Franklin in The Sun, 10 July 1987

Two months before “The Sun”’s “Pulpit Poofs must stay” headline.

from the "The Appallingly Disprespectful Spitting Image Book", 1985

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.)

461: Posy Simmonds - Mrs Weber's Diary

by Posy Simmonds
in "The Guardian", 1985

Mrs Weber’s Diary was a weekly strip that appeared on the Women’s Page of the Guardian from the late 1970s (originally as “The Silent Three”) until the late 1980s. The Guardian’s Women’s Page disdained dieting and dresses for feminism. The strip soon turned into a commentary on modern issues and a satire of its Guardian readers: middle class post-60’s counter-culture types grown up with families, working in social services, universities or as would-be artisans. The strip encapsulated them as people for whom the personal is political. The little dramas of domestic life were further fraught by ethical and social quandaries. Simmonds’ Weber family were the archetypal “Woolly Liberals” tying themselves into knots over the right responses to racism, capitalism, education, childcare, ecology and Thatcherism during dinner party conversations. Simmonds also captured contemporary tastes in fashion, furniture and holidays. Americans might care to think of it as an infinitely better drawn equivalent of “Doonesbury”. It is a superb series wittily dissecting many aspects of 80s Britain.

An Omnibus of all the previous “Mrs Weber’s Diary” collections has just been published as “Mrs Weber’s Omnibus”. The promotional material says the book collects the entire run of strips, but it doesn’t, although at almost 500 cartoons, it’ll satisfy all but the most completist of Simmonds fans, and it does restore the colouring of the originals. (Still: Lying bastards at Jonathan Cape publishers) This strip is one of the omitted. It was reprinted in Alan Moore’s 1988 “AARGH” comic collection - “Artist’s Against Rampant Government Homophobia protesting the introduction of Clause 28. “AARGH” collected works that either attacked Clause 28 and homophobia, or else showed homosexuals in a positive light as people with real loves and feelings. As this strip predates Clause 28 by a number of years, it was selected as a positive representation.

So here we get George Weber and his unnamed friend, a cuddly, older clonish looking gay chap with moustache , jeans, checkered shirted and bomber jacket (who I don’t think I’ve even seen before or seen after this strip, but never mind). Homosexuality and camping it up – which is seen as being expressive and not merely innate – are part of a larger argument about the perception of masculinity and acceptable manly roles. The strip is actually about George’s embarrassment before the shopkeeper, an unreconstructed male chauvinist. George’s arguments for the broadening of traditional male/female responsibilities have been undermined by visible homosexual behaviour, thereby confirming George’s apparent unmanliness. If George is abashed, his friend is given a significant space in the strip to argue for his own particular brand of dignity and independence of traditional assumptions.

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”.

457: Gay Boxing 3: I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again

I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again – 19 Apr 1970
Written by Graham Garden and Bill Oddie

http://www.oldtimeradiodownloads.com/comedy/Im-Sorry-Ill-Read-That-Again/710-Harder-They-Fall-April-19-1970-show-9360.html

You can play the episode online or download a copy at the link above.
“The Harder They Fall, the More They Hurt Themselves” runs for the last 10 minutes of the programme

Prior to this sketch, Terry Southern had executed several variations on the idea of a gay boxer in the film and book versions of his “The Magic Christian”

The radio sketch programme “I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again” drew its humour from silliness, puns, running gags and characters, sarcastic topical comments, and mild sexiness. This was matched by the enthusiastic performances of its cast, which were equalled and sometimes overpowered by the responses of an overenthusiastic audience. Each show usually ended with a longer 10 minute sketch parody.

“The Harder They Fall, the More They Hurt Themselves” is a parody of boxing match has as its centrepiece John Cleese’s camp old queen of a rookie boxer, Butch aka “Sugar Puff Robinson”. This is an obvious play on the name of the famous boxer Sugar Ray Robinson, as sugar puffs are a breakfast cereal, but in English slang “puff” or “poof” or “poufffe” was a then-popular term for “homosexual”.

5 years have passed since Julian and Sandy on “Round the Horne”. Julian and Sandy employed the private slang of Polari, and the writers and cast were unsure as to what they would be able to get past the BBC censors. So even as people were laughing at those sketches, they may not necessarily have been entirely sure what they laughing at, but were just caught up in the entertaining hysteria. The gags in this episode of “I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again” aren’t intended to go over anyone’s head or appear to worry much about the censor. Cleese’s character makes numerous sly sexually appreciative comments about wrestler’s glistening bodies and his camp innuendoes (“You can call me anytime”) get strong laughs. Broad acting, broad gags, broad laughs.

Bill Oddie as boxing trainer: All I want is a raw youth I can get to work on.

Cleese: Mm, don’t we all. Oh, I say. Quiet, plebs. Hello boys. I’m butch. Sorry -“Butch”.

There’s a heavy dose of effeminacy gags about and wearing women’s clothing: “If you touch my earrings I’ll wince”

Mention of a fighter’s purse (his prize money) gets a “Goody, it’ll go with my huge handbag”

Graham Garden as the promoter: Jack will be your second

Cleese: Don’t you believe it!

In this extended sketch, Cleese takes the camping-it-up spotlight from Tim Brooke Taylor, who as noted all over this blog, was the go-to-performer for mincing about for this generation of Oxbridge comedians.

Cleese’s comment “I’m as rugged as the next man” elicits a quick fey fairy cameo from Tim as The Next Man, and then a quick spat as to who saw all the men first.

Tim BRooke Taylor now admits, “The one thing I do regret is the large number of gay jokes. At the time it was liberal to be able to do ‘poofter’ jokes at last – ‘Round the Horne’ did them brilliantly. But it went on too long and I remember thinking, ‘if I do this in a ‘whoops’ voice it will get a laugh.’ I’m happy to say I gave that route up eventually.” – “The Clue Bible” by Jem Roberts.

452: Miles Kington: Gay football Teams

From a longer column which is just an extended opportunity to knock out puns on football team names and congregate silly incongruities. The tiny excerpt below is the obligatory gay bit. It’s beneath my dignity to have to point out what the joke teams below are about, other than noting that Queens of the South are a real football team.

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Miles Kington
The Times, 4 October 1984
"How Europe Put the Boot In"

In the European Fruit Cup, Sporting Nancy went out to Gay Boys of Vienna, the Finnish side Dynamo Conditioner beat All-Male Disco of Frankfurt and Queens of the South went out with Macho Madrid and haven’t been seen since.

451: Gay Cricket 2 - Peter Tinniswood and Willie Rushton

And what comic mileage is to be traversed at the prompting of the thought of gay cricket matches? Well, mostly it’s an opportunity to alternate between depictions of sissiness and sexual forwardness, written up in the tones of mock-suburban outrage and mild surreal inventiveness which is a tradition in British humorous columnists dating back to Beachcomber. Pansy hysterics, activities in North African climes, sailors, Greek origins, something a bit more advanced the idea of just slapping at each other with handbags, and naming of various famous homosexuals (all of the artistic persuasion). Names like Tufnell and Illingworth are thrown in as they are real cricketeers, and further jokes can be knocked out by association and contrast. All in all, a rather innocuous but silly piece, rather than denigratory.

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From “Whitney Scrotum”, by Peter Tinniswood, 1995

Illustration by Willie Rushton

Alternative Cricket

My emotions are mixed, dear readers.

They rage. They fume.

They soar to the delights of rapture experienced by Mr Philip Tufnell when at long last on a Saturday afternoon he finally finishes reading the front page of Monday's “Sun” newspaper.

And why?

Well, I am thrilled and delighted to record in readable print the outstanding success of the first world tournament for ‘Alternative Cricketers'.

Yes, the Air Wick Cup lived up to all our expectations, despite constant mild outbreaks of swooning and shrill giggling in the nefarious regions of long leg and a most unsavoury incident when the Onanists' Select XI from the United Arab Emirates were eliminated in their match against Eleven 'So-Called' Gentlemen of Marrakesh for defacing a David Hockney self-portrait of our much-lamented and revered Cec Pepper, erstwhile patron saint of crooked little fingers.

Barely have I seen waterproof lipstick and Boy Scouts' woggles used to such devastating effect.

Aggers, who for some obscure reason was known to one and all at the tournament as 'Elsie', was absolutely livid.

He got his grandmother's luminous spats into the most fearful twist and vowed 'in no uncertain terms' that never again would he pick his nose with Mr Bill Frindall's indelible pencil.

All that could I endure.

I could have tolerated and even at times condoned Mr Norman Gifford's nude sunbathing on his personal, portable slip cradle.

I was even prepared to 'turn a blind eye' to the grumpy behaviour of Mr E.W. 'Gloria' Swanton, who had been inveigled into giving his patronage to the tournament under the impression that it was the annual general meeting of the West Sussex Hamster and Edible Dormouse Fancy.

But what stuck in my gullet and gave me such yearning pain was the fact that the trophy was not won by 'our boys'.

The Gropers, a team of out-of-work dressers from the National Theatre and freelance stumpers from Northamptonshire, was soundly thrashed and deeply humiliated in the final by the Shirt Lifters, a collection of American vilenesses with false sun tans, painted toenails and only a minimal knowledge of the LBW laws relating to leg spinners bowling 'round the wicket'.

The Gropers seemed positively to revel in their debasement.

Never shall I forget their whoops of delight after the match when they plunged headfirst with their erstwhile opponents into a vat of strawberry milk shake and made the most vulgar of gestures towards the saintly Mr Raymond Illingworth, who was present in his capacity as deputy physio to the Testicle and County Cricket Board.

Whilst I have no intrinsic objection to his being constantly boarded by crew members of Royal Navy Fishery protection vessels for selecting 'off limits' I do take exception to his being constantly bombarded by quarter-scale effigies of Mr Donald Trelford.

Of the subsequent competition I have little memory.

I remember Oscar Wilde scoring a ton before lunch and Jean Cocteau bowling a devilish eight-over spell of googlies, flippers and Chinamen dressed in nothing but ankle-length Glamorgan sweaters and Wilf Wooller. autograph sweat bands.

And of the final - nothing.

As the lugubrious Innersole said to me as we trudged away from the ground after the defeat of The Gropers: 'It's all Greek, mate, ain't it?'

'You play football for Walthamstow Avenue once and there ain't no human perversion can ever turn your head again.'

I am not inclined to agree - remember, dear readers, I once went on a bicycling holiday in the Yorkshire Dales in the company of Mr Noel Coward and Mr Bill Alley.

450: Gay Cricket 1 - Willie Rushton

From a longer book of humour about cricket, Rushton’s idea of what an historical team of gay cricketers would look like. Nothing very advanced, nor building from anything innate to cricket suggestive of gay behaviour. Really just an excuse for intriguingly converting a load of gay slang phrases into people’s surnames - rather like the similar contrivances in the Radio 4 quiz show “I’m Sorry I haven’t a CXlue2, for which Rushton was a panellist for some 20 years. I do think the “Bumbandit” one is nicely ingenious.

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from "Marylebone vs the World", by William Rushton, 1987

Emerging from the second pavilion erected on Lord's ground in 1874 is one of the most extraordinary cricket teams ever assembled. It is thought to be a humorous retort by one O. P. Rogers- Boyes, an intimate of Oscar Wilde and something of an 'aesthete', who had not been selected for the Marylebone team for three seasons. The reason, he suspected, was that he was not a Freemason. It is more likely that his rich variety of Toilet Waters and Unguents upset his fellows in the changing room. However, this team was his revenge. Here it is in batting-order:

1. C. V. P. Brown-Hatter
2. N. J. Shirtlifter
3. Buggery A.
4. S. D. P. Turd-Burglar
5. O. P. Rogers-Boyes (capt.)
6. Bender L.
7. Crouch P.
8. H. O. Roaring-Poofter
9. Fairy G.
10. Bent V.
and bringing up the rear an Indian doctor from the Docklands -
11. R. V. Bumbandit

Tradition has it that the MCC lost rather badly, but all records of the game have disappeared.

449: Peter Cook and Dudley Moore - The Masked Phantom

Goodbye Again, 1968

Peter Cook as Reporter
Dudley Moore as the Masked Phantom

In which the aggressive wrestler is really a camp, artistically-inclined sissy. Basically, it’s an opportunity for Dudley Moore to camp it up once again - and at rather too long a length.

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REPORTER: Good evening. Tonight in Worldnewspectoramaprobe, we examine the controversial sport of wrestling. Last week, I went down to the Shoreditch gymnasium to see the Masked Phantom in training. . .

(Cut to the Shoreditch gymnasium)

REPORTER: Well, here I am at the Shoreditch gymnasium, and we're about to see a practice bout between the Masked Phantom, who is just over here behind me, and looking very confident - a very fit, compact and agile fighter. His opponent tonight is an extremely dour and tough northerner from Scunthorpe, the Scunthorpe Strangler. I'm just going to try and get a word with them before the fight begins. . .

(The bell rings. The wrestlers start fighting)

REPORTER: I think I'll probably leave now, and let them get on with it . . .

(The Scunthorpe Strangler picks up REPORTER, and hurls him out of the ring. The Masked Phantom wins the ensuing bout, and joins REPORTER for an interview)

REPORTER: Speculation has been raging up and down the country as to the true identity of this ferocious fighter. Tonight, for the first time in the history of the universe, the Masked Phantom rips off the mask and reveals his true identity.

(The Masked Phantom removes his mask, revealing the familiar features of Phantom)

PHANTOM: (very camp) Hello.

REPORTER: Good evening, Phantom.

PHANTOM: I wish you'd call me Tom.

REPORTER: Tom, wrestling's a pretty rugged sport. What made you go into it?

PHANTOM: I think really to prove myself as a man, you know. The whole Sir Francis Chichester, Round The Horn bit, you know.

REPORTER: I understand - to prove yourself as a man. Are these fights in any way ever fixed?

PHANTOM: (increasingly effete) Well, I can't speak for my colleagues in the profession, but speaking purely personally, you know, I go in that ring to be champ. I go in there to win. I become like some ferocious beast, you know - like some savage monster. I pull that mask over my head and something goes pop in my mind. And then something comes over me.

REPORTER: The mask, presumably?

PHANTOM: Right first time, cheeky chops. Whereas in real life, look at me now. Gentle, sensitive person - wouldn't hurt a fly.

REPORTER: Well, we have a chance to test the sincerity of the Phantom's words, as I happen to have a fly with me here in the studio, which I'm going to place in front of him and judge his reactions. Phantom, a fly for you.

(REPORTER takes a small box .from his pocket, and passes it to Phantom)

PHANTOM: A fly for you and a fig for me.

(Phantom opens the box)

PHANTOM: What a beauty! What a lovely creature! I think you're very cruel, keeping him cooped in here like that. (to the fly) Off you go, Ferdinand! (to REPORTER) Honestly, you are awful!

REPORTER: Proof positive, I think, of the Phantom's sincerity.

PHANTOM: If I may interrupt here, excuse me, but as Goethe, the great German poet said, die Liebe ist Alle - all you need is love, baby.

REPORTER: You mention Goethe. What are your favourite kind of books?

PHANTOM: Er, leather bound ones, mainly. You know, I love old things. Any old thing appeals to me. It's what they say about me down the gym, anyway.

REPORTER: Have you any interests outside the ring?

PHANTOM: My goodness gracious me, yes I have! Oh, yes! The people look at me and, you know, all they see is a great hunk of flesh. You know, I get branded as a wrestler, whereas in fact I'm interested in anything you care to mention - ceramics, pottery, sculpture, music, dancing, theatre. You name it, and I love it.

REPORTER: You mention theatre. What sort of roles do you see yourself in?

PHANTOM: Ooh, you're going to get me going, aren't you? Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. I know I'm stretching my neck out, but I love Shakespeare. You know, whatever anybody says about him, I adore that man. I'd love to have a go at his King Lear, for instance.

REPORTER: You see yourself as King Lear?

PHANTOM: Well, shall I say I feel it here within me, you know. But all I need is a good director to coax it our. I think, oh what's his name? Come on, mutton head! REPORTER Brook! REPORTER Brook could get a wonderful Lear out of me. He could get a wonderful anything, you know. I only wish I'd put myself up for Oedipus.

REPORTER: You're interested in the Greek theatre, too?

PHANTOM: (ecstatic) The Greek theatre! I've loved the Greek theatre ever since “Never On A Sunday”. All that music and dancing, the philosophy - I love it!

REPORTER: Have you been to Greece recently?

PHANTOM: I only put a little body oil on before the show. Does it show?

REPORTER: I meant the country.

PHANTOM: Oh, I thought you meant grease! I'm sorry! I'm miles away!

REPORTER: Outside all your interests such as the theatre and ceramics, I understand you're also something of a singer.

PHANTOM: Yes, I've waxed my first disc, actually, just recently.

REPORTER: And I believe that, rather unusually, you accompany yourself on your own body.

PHANTOM: Yes, I call it deep singing. It's actually just an extension of Paganini's dictum. You know, the great violinist, Paganini.

REPORTER: Yes.

PHANTOM: He used to say, 'Whenever I make love to a lady, I like to think I'm playing the violin.'

REPORTER: I wonder if you could give an example of your singing now?

PHANTOM: I'd be delighted. I'll just whip my cosie off.

REPORTER: Right. Here, accompanying himself on his own body, in “O For The Wings of A Dove”, the Masked Phantom.

PHANTOM: Don't laugh, now.

(sings) O for the wings, for the wings of a dove

Far away, far away would I roam

(speaks, to REPORTER) I feel a bit thin without the backing behind, but that's the sort of thing.

REPORTER: I think it's very promising, and I'm sure we all wish the Masked Phantom an immense hit with his first record.

PHANTOM: You're very sweet, thank you.

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.

445: Gay Olympics Sex Test

Punch, 11 February 1976

Wup-wup-whooppeee! (Twirls finger in air like a tiny pixie about to throw a lasso.) Thank god my TV’s partly broken and I can only use it to watch DVDs. Don’t know about you, but I’m going to go Robert Altman crazy.

Aaaannnnnnnnnnyyyyyyyway.

As every child knows the practical test of masculinity is the ability to run about and jump and kick and throw and catch things. People who can’t do these things are either girls (though this has now changed somewhat, as the games started with some women playing football in Wales – make your own jokes here) and poofs. So imagine the hilarity of effete sissy homosexual types trying to play sports. No, go on, imagine.

Much earlier I posted this 1982 Gay Games-inspired two-page cartoon spread by Larry in Punch, so have a look at that for a warm-up (see - I’ve got that athletic patter down).

“Femininity control” is indeed a real thing the Olympics enact, to ensure that women competitors attain the allowed level of women-ness to be able to compete – don’t have the wrong levels of testosterone and oestrogen or any other chromosomal oddities or who knows whatever else. That’s not creepy at all, is it? Or enforcing existing social sexual stereotypes either?

So here’s it’s used as the excuse for a load of jokes which reverse it for the purpose of “masculinity control”. The old third sex bit, with lots of shallow, ditzy, sissy assumptions (hairdresser stereotypes basically), and a little surreptitious sexual appreciation of the male form. The line about “writing to the Leader of the Liberal Party” is to an allusion to Jeremy Thorpe whose gay problems had just been publically revealed in January 1976.

442: Osbert Lancaster

Osbert Lancaster
Daily Express, 1 July 1960

A nifty exemplification of the hypocrisy underpinning the arguments about the illegality of homosexuality from the ever piquant Osbert Lancaster. As cartoonists go, Osbert Lancaster was infinitely more wordly and sophisticated than the conservative newspaper he appeared in. Lancaster was the companion and equal of the likes of Evelyn Waugh, the Mitfords and John Betjeman, hence he was a lot more clear-sighted and able to mock the moralising pettifogging of MPs and newspaper leader writers. Incidentally in its satirical manner, this cartoon is a knowing argument that homosexuals are just another part of society too.

441: Gay Boy Scouts

Punch, 18 May 1983
Mike Dickinson

From nearly thirty years ago, some cartoons about what a gay scout might be.

“Scouting for Boys” is the real title of one of the scouts guide books (raise you eyebrows if you will at this), and so Dickinson employs expecting his audience to bring the rather more base assumption.

So working down, then from left to right:

1. , First cliché: fussy gays like cocktail bars with torch singers (their gay scoutmaster limp as asparagus and with a rather contemporary bushy gay moustache) and a Noel Coward-type piano player.

2. Where would we be without a pun on “Queens”? And the first of the cartoons based on a fear of paedophilia.

3. Greenham Common was the American weapons base in England which was the site of a longrunning peace protest, mostly peopled by women, who were commonly thought to be a bunch of radical feminists – or “dykes” if you want to be less kindly about it.

4 and 5. The last two explicitly make jokes about little boys having sex – which is of course always the fear about letting gay men near the scouts: what exhausting depredations have the pair in #5 been subject to, being the joke.

Vide the line from Marty Feldman’s “Funny He Never Married” sketch from 1968:

1, He was very keen on scouting, wasn't he.
2. Even in his later years, he'd only have to see a troop of scouts go by and his eyes would light up.

438: Spike Milligan - The Melting Pot

The Melting Pot, 1975
Written by Spike Milligan and Neil Shand

A brief gay guardsman gag from Spike Milligan’s infamous cancelled 1975 sitcom “The Melting Pot”. The programme followed the hijinks of two illegal Pakistani immigrants in England, played by Spike Milligan and John Bird in brown-face. At that time, almost no Indian actors appeared on British television and such characters were usually played by English actors in make-up. However the point of the programme was in taking almost every conceivable racial and sexual stereotype and then exaggerating them to absurd and surreal proportions. So you get Scottish Jews, Chinese cockneys and African with Yorkshire accents. Many of the characters are also racist and bigoted, which given their various nationalities only makes their prejudices seem more ridiculous. However, the show’s premise and its implementation meant that it was always going to cross certain borders of taste even if it was lucky enough not to be perceived as racist. The entire series was recorded but after airing only the first episode, the BBC withdrew the whole programme. The series is too little known to join the roster of notorious / embarrassing British racial comedies of the time such as “Curry and Chips”, “Love Thy Neighbour”, “Mind Your language” and “It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum”. Milligan published “The Melting Pot” script as a book in 1983, and large chunks of material were recycled in Milligan’s 1987 novel “The Looney”.

This is a brief gag from a longer scene set in a laundry in the second episode, which would have aired in June 1975. A brief skit which is as in-yer-face and confrontational as the rest of the show. No delicacy or subtlety, which is the is the point. The butchness of the guardsman played off against the 1970s poof–cum-rentboy attire of his boyfriend. Aggressively blatant without apologies

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A very smart guardsman enters holding hands with a delightful gay boy. The gay boy wears flared red corduroys, sleeveless body vest, a pink ostrich feather-boa. They are holding hands and carrying a laundry bags. The gay wears an afro wig which he removes and puts in the washing machine. He sits back with the guardsman to the amazement of other Rembrandt and Van Gogh.

Guardsman: Wot you starin’ at? It’s legal now, isn’t it?