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?

356: Camp Comedy Cash-In Records

When I posted about the 1966 single, “Boy Wonder I Love You”, I wondered as to whether people picked up on the odd suggestion of rabid homosexual fannishness it proposes at one point.

Well here some other records from the same period that go a lot further
What both the LP “These are The Hits, You Silly Savage!” and the single “Kay, Why?” are capitalising on is the new trend for camp humour on both sides of the Atlantic, growing throughout 1965 – 1966. Before 1965 camp comedy meant a humorous incident that took place in the army, the scouts or at little league (although this quote from a review of Kenneth Williams by Ken Tynan from April 1961 may or may not have been titivated for collection in 1967, but is proof that camp had a refuge in the theatre all along). What it’s also worth pointing out is that for some time tv and film critics and audiences were ambivalent, not entirely sure who camp humour was aimed at. Is it something that mainstream audiences can participate in, merely the latest exploitation, or is there still some secret homo code that deliberately excludes the uninitiated? Straight audiences in the UK enjoyed “Julian and Sandy”, not necessarily aware of how gay all the Polari words were. Contemporary reviews of the film of “The Loved One” were often unsure as to whether the film was pandering to a gay in-crowd or was intended for a mainstream audience. But judging from audience reaction, by late 1966, suggestions of homosexuality and “camp” were enough to get big comic rewards. At this time Alan Bennett can get a big laugh from his sophisticated BBC2 audience just by acknowledging the word “Camp”, let alone camping it up, and radio show “I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again” gets showstopping guffaws from a few camp mannerisms and puns, because presenting camp characters is the cutting edge of humour.


“These are The Hits, You Silly Savage!” by Teddy and Darrel
from Mira, a LA-based studio
Dec 1966/Jan 1967?

If you really, really want, you can listen to the tracks here:
http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2005/11/the_hits_of_196.html

“Teddy and Darrel” were Theodore Charach and Darrell Dee. Theodore Charach appears as the narrator and one of the characters in the 1967 documentary “Mondo Hollywood” 1967. This may or may not be related to the fact that the film was music directed by Mike Curb, who was also the producer of this LP. Besides narrating, Charach also performs various novelty horror songs in the film, after openly admitting that he’s looking for a schtick (which I think explains “These are The Hits, You Silly Savage”). Charach would appear to have a natural thick-tongued lisp (a la Percy Dovetonsils), and an overly dramatic declamatory manner, so camping it up on this LP only requires so much effort.

To put any amount of effort into producing any LP would suggest those involved think they have some commercial possibility, that this campness is something au courant to which they can hitch their delusional wagon. It’s all put on in such a way that it’s more of a novelty intended for a straight audience.
When I describe this album of consisting of a load of lisping, purring, and camping through a selection of recent hits, with additional comments, and the occasional thrown in rough-trade appreciation, then it’s exactly what you think it’s going to be. In practical terms, camping it up means Charach doesn’t even have to try to sing, just camply speak his way through the lyrics in a slightly high sissy voice with impromptu side comments. When he’s really camping it up I think he sounds more like Peter Lorre having a psychotic fit (hence possibly the attempt at horror novelty songs). Those songs which have become gay bar standards get the best results, so you can at least give Teddy and Darrel some credit for spotting potential this early on. Unusual, is that in the last track, “Hold On, I’m Coming” degenerates into a sequence of groaning and panting predating “Je t’aime” by a couple of years, and a final acknowledgement of the sexual component which has been only semi-suppressed through out this entire enterprise since unlike the English there’s not much actual innuendo or double-entendre.
“Silly” has been a word with unmanly connotations in America for a very long time. “Savage” too when used in a camp manner seems to crop up repeatedly. So “Silly Savage” gets reused a couple of years later as a band name by “Ben Gay & The Silly Savages”, 1973


1967 – “Kay, Why?” single by The Brothers Butch


This novelty I suspect is intended more for a gay audience. Well, how much is a straight audience willing to listen to a song which is a sequence of hardly disguised allusions to the practicals of sodomy?
“Kay, Why?”, yep, as the cover makes clear, alludes to KY Jelly, and then a lyrics which include “you made a mess/ slip through my fingers/ little squeeze / come again/ get to the bottom/ can’t get through”. Choruses of camp oohing. Just prior to piano solo, there’s a spoken part where encouragement sounds more like someone like sexually coaching a virgin – with the follow-up “Didn’t hurt a bit, did it?”
It's some escalation on the genial world of “Julian and Sandy”, more of an unacknowledged precursor to the single-entendres of Julian Clary.
Comparing these bitching, passive-aggressive London queens to Julian and Sandy, I think they sound more like Mick Jagger actually


Oh, and during a Christmas episode broadcast on 25 December 1967 The Monkees highlight the phrase “gay apparel” with a flash of limp wrists during a performance “Deck the Halls”. No laughter but then to highlight it too much, might have been to alert Network Standards.

216: Quean magazine

from "Private Eye" 27 December 1963

And to confirm how useful the word quean is:
This parody cover of “Queen” magazine, one-time rag of the London smartset. Fashion must mean gay, and so this rather impish little Father Christmas is portrayed by "Private Eye" editor Richard Ingrams.

213: Christmas 6

from “Punch”, 10 December 1980
by Stan McMurtry

A rather belated follow-up to Michael Heath’s Gay Christmas from 1974. And no more relevant or contemporary a depiction of gay men. These could all have been drawn anytime in the previous 5-8 years: self-proclaimed queens, fairies, would-be transsexuals, and a broad selection of catty types in figure-hugging trousers and flouncy shirts.

212: Christmas 5

from “Punch” 19 Dec 1984
“New Recitations for Your Party” by E.S. Turner

THE WONDER BOY

"'E was young and 'e was tender,
Much inclined to preen and pout,
Not too certain of 'is gender -
There's a lot of it about.

Sorely did 'is father clout 'im,
Saying, "'Op it! On yer bike!"
Telling all who asked about him,
"'E's a bloody pervert, like."

Up to London goes the sinner,
London, stuffed with moral wrecks!
Now 'e knows 'e's on a winner -
'Alf the town is unisex.

Cast your eyes on Master Pretty,
Painted like a circus freak,
Belting out a filthy ditty,
Earning thousands every week.

Fans go mad in every disco!
Leaders in the Daily Mail!
Troops called out in San Francisco!
Even trendy bishops quail.

Every week 'e presses money
On 'is 'ard-up Dad and Mum.
Now their life is beer and 'oney.
Blimey, it's all right for some.

Dad will 'ear no talk of "phoneys",
As 'e spends the ill-earned pelf,
Oft confiding to his cronies,
"Wish I'd tried that lark myself!"

But the girl the boy once fancied
Grieves to let 'er 'ero go,
Weeps to 'ear 'im telling rancid
Stories on the South Bank Show;

Ow she 'ates the late night chatter!
Wogan treats 'im far too nice,
Goggling at 'is Golden Platter
Garnered from the fruits of vice.

'E 'as gone from 'er for ever,
And 'er 'eart is 'ard as frost.
Will she find another? Never
One as rich as she has lost.

See 'er now, 'er nosegay gnawing,
As she weds a lazy git,
Fated to a life of drawing
Supplement'ry Benefit.

She will 'ave a string of kiddies
In a frowzy council flat,
Gossiping with daft old biddies,
And there ain't much joy in that.

It's the same the whole world over,
It's the straights what lose the race
It's the bent what live in clover.
Ain't it all a blind disgrace!

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Before the days of television, people were forced to make their own Christmas entertainment, so each member of the family would have their party piece. Comic monologues and recitations, usually in rhyming verse and performed in either cockney or Northern working class accents, were a staple from the days of the music hall. “The Lion and Albert” and “The Green Eye of the Yellow God” are classics of their kind. Probably the most famous performer of these kind of pieces was Stanley Holloway.
By 1984 this is deliberately anachronistic, although since E.S Turner had been writing for “Punch” for some 30 years, he was probably entering into his dotage. Gender-bending pop stars had been a staple of the last 10-15 years, so nothing new there, although these is springboards off the popularity of Boy George and co. I suppose you could argue the piece is about the comic incongruity of musical hall meeting modern pop. It starts off just describing the trend, but the conclusion is a little unexpectedly harsh in its moralising, although these recitations usually finished with some sort of moral.

211: Christmas 4

“Harry Enfield and His Christmas Chums”, BBC1, 24 December 1997



Poor old Modern Dad was Richard Preddy and Gary Howe's idea. It appealed to me because I've lots of gay friends who've been through similar experiences. Few parents over sixty understand the 'progressive' comings and goings of their children, but they love them, so they try their best. I based my character on my father, who is from a much more traditional generation, and always tried just-that-little-bit-too-hard with my girlfriends, knowing that, in the modern world, he mustn't voice his old-fashioned disapproval of relationships outside wedlock. If you've ever seen my dad on Watchdog, you'll know how similar Modern Dad is to him. Modern Dad worked so well because Ben, who played my son, and his boyfriend Ewan (Spud from Trainspotting) were so sympathetic. They didn't 'camp it up' - they were just a normal, nice couple. You feel sorry for them, for me and for Mum. The sketch was basically “What if a gay couple had come to stay at Fawlty Towers?”

- afterword from “Harry Enfield and His Humorous Chums”, Penguin Books, 1997

-------------------

Like the previous piece from “Punch”, this exhumes almost every common gay pun imaginable. The “Punch” parody uses theses clichés because for that public that’s largely what people thought homosexuals were. Gays are funny because this is what gays actually are.

By the times of this sketch, they’re acknowledged to be rather worn-out hack clichés. Each of the clichés is expertly deployed to humiliate the well-meaning but horrifically anxious father for his cluelessness.

210: Christmas 3

from "Punch”, 15 December 1976

From a series of Christmas-themed parodies of assorted minority and specialist journals. “Gay Times”, a minority publication if ever there was one to parody, had recently made the mainstream news because of Mary Whitehouse’s case against the “Gay Times” for blasphemy, which would come to trial in 1977. Never having seen a copy of “Gay News”, I still doubt that this is an accurate parody, since most of the many gay magazines I’ve seen from this period are torn between the need for leftish politics and positive representations. The public’s idea of gay frivolity, as exemplified by Mr Humphries, has little to do with the actual gay world of the time. This is a rather detailed piece, which besides obvious gay clichés and puns (queen, mince, faggots, fairy, etc), probably provides some sort of measure as to how much the generally-informed public could recall about homosexuals.

Quentin Crisp was a minor cult personality at this time, conspicuous for his homosexuality and his contrarian nature. John Hurt had performed as Crisp in the ITV drama “The Naked Civil servant” in 1975. About this time, Crisp was writing occasional reviews and essays for “Punch”.
Proust and Wilde (and an allusion to Reading Gaol) are there as homosexuals whom even the most clueless public will identify.
Casement Diary of course refers to the infamous Black diary of Roger Casement which revealed the Irish politician to have been a promiscuous homosexual.
St Sebastian gets several mentions since Derek Jarman’s film “Sebastian” had been released in 1976.
“British Guards” with phone numbers, refers to the fact that Guards used often to be commonly rumoured to be readily available for cash for a little light nocturnal adult pleasuring.
Several references show that the idea of butch has now extended into actual s&m, to contrast against prissy, effeminated style-obsessed gay clichés.
“Noel” probably is to suggest Noel Coward.
“British Home Stores”, a once popular British chain store becomes “Homo Stores”.

209: Christmas 2

“The Gays” by Michael Heath in “Private Eye”, 14 December 1984

For what is such a deliberately scratchy and messy style, I think Heath catches something of the blissful epicene self-regard on the face of the twink on the far right.

208: Christmas 1

by Arthur Horner in “Punch”, 7 January 1976

Caricatures of Sir Frederick Ashton (left) and Robert Helpmann (right) as the Ugly Step-Sisters in their annual performance of Prokofiev’s “Cinderella”. Their performance drew a lot from English Christmas pantomimes. It’s not a bad caricature, and only goes to show that when many other cartoonists are attempting a homosexual, it’s based on preconceptions from an actual camp performance such as this. Whether the comment is Helpmann in character as the ugly sisters or just the two real and elderly queens with their sly eyes on the leading man in tights is probably deliberately ambiguous.

36 - Michael Heath: I'm Dreaming of a Gay Christmas

in "Punch" 4 December 1974
"The 'Punch' Cartoons of Heath" by Michael Heath, Harrap, 1976