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

453: The Fan’s Journal by Jean Genet

National Lampoon, May 1984
“The Fan’s Journal by Jean Genet” By Will Jacobs and Gerard Jones

A comic trick is to describe sports in the manner of something completely inapposite, such as football matches described in the language of a theatrical review – although that’s no longer so odd as the sports columns have been infiltrated by overly-educated humanities graduates who want to make some their high culture rub off on popular entertainment. Lookee me, lookeme, look at how cultivated my appreciation is. Match reports which come freighted with associations and similes more appropriate to a high church ceremony. In such a vein, here we get a parody of literary ne’er-do-well Jean Genet giving a baseball report. His usual orchids growing in a sewer metaphors are a unnatural occurrence on the baseball diamond. So in Genet’s florid scandalising poetic style of the bad streets, we get all his usual tricks (pun intended) such as Negroes, faggots, and sailor . Few sports reports will ever make so much of arseholes, semen, recreational drugs and homosexual attraction.

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.

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

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.

448: Woody Allen - Lancers

“Lancer – The Hair Conditioner for Men”
0.00 - 0.50

“Everything you always wanted to know about sex* (*but were afraid to ask)”

Written and directed by Woody Allen
Adapted from the book “Everything you always wanted to know about sex* (*but were afraid to ask)” by David Reuben M.D.

Tom Mack as Football Player
Don Chuy as Football Player

Two football players, their authenticity proven by their awkwardness reading their script, share grooming tips. You too need not worry about being concerned about you appearance, as men possessed of such hamfisted masculinity take the curse off . Nothing sissy here. British readers may remember almost identically crappy ads from the ‘70s with Keven Keegan and boxer Henry Cooper. What’s the joke other than these are crappy adds? It’s not until the football players walk into the background and out-of-focus that we get the pay-off which is a rather passionate clinch. Whammo, all the signifiers that have produced all the metrosexuality jokes for the last 15 years.

As to why this gay-themed sketch appears in the film’s “What Are Sex Perverts?” segment, well that derives from Reuben, not Woody Allen (though in his earliest films, he employs a few rather crude gay stereotypes”).

Dr Reuben’s book, “Everything you always wanted to know about sex* (*but were afraid to ask)” was published in 1970, when all mainstream medical authority followed the official definition of homosexuality as a mental disorder. To read any gay memoir of the sixties is to be struck by the fact that almost every gay man (in America, maybe not so much the UK) was in therapy grappling with his socially aberrant urges. If he was lucky his psychiatrist would gently coax his client to accept his homosexuality and live a healthy life. If he was unlucky then his shrink would blithely inform him that he could convert to heterosexuality, and that therefore any gay feelings and activities were a personal failing, with much resultant guilt and self-disgust. This element of Reuben’s book for the masses led to quite a few campaigns by gay groups in various countries to get the book banned (vide Rand Holmes’ 1971 Harold Hedd strip).

At the end of 1973 the board of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) voted unanimously to remove homosexuality from its list of psychiatric disorders. Thus rendering Dr Reuben exemplary strictures outdated. Which seems like the delightful cue for a relevant excerpt from Gore Vidal’s demolition job of Reuben’s book. Ta Da:

-------------------------------
New York Review of Books, June 4, 1970

On the subject of homosexuality, Dr. Reuben tries to be a good sport. Yet at heart he is angry with the homosexualist who perversely refuses to enter into it penis-vagina relationship. It would be so easy to straighten him out. If he would only visit "a psychiatrist who knows how to cure homosexuality, he has every chance of becoming a happy, well-adjusted heterosexual." I wonder if Dr. Reuben might be got up on a charge of violating the fair advertising practices act - on the ground that no such psychiatrist exists: It is true that the late Dr. Bergler enjoyed announcing "cures," but since no one knows what a homosexualist is (as opposed to a homosexual act), much less what the psychic life (as opposed to the sex life) of any of his patients was like, his triumphs must be taken on faith.

However, it should be noted that anyone so disturbed by society's condemnation of his' natural sexual instinct that he would want to pervert it in order to conform would, no doubt, be a candidate for some kind of "conversion" at the hands of a highly paid quack. Yet to change a man's homosexual instinct is as difficult (if not impossible) as changing a man's heterosexual instinct, and socially rather less desirable since it can hardly be argued, as it used to be - the clincher, in fact, of the natural lawyers - that if everyone practiced homosexuality the race would die out. The fact of course is that not everyone would, at least exclusively, and the race currently needs no more additions.

As a religious rather than a scientific man, Dr. Reuben believes that there is something wicked (he would say sick) about the homosexual act. Therefore those who say they really enjoy it must be lying. He also believes implicitly a set of old queens' tales that any high school boy in Iowa (if not the Bronx) could probably set him straight on. "Most homosexuals at one time or another in their lives act out some aspect of the female role." Aside from his usual inability to define anything (what is a male role? a female role?), he seems to mean that a man who enjoys relations with his own sex is really half a man, a travesty of woman.

This is not the case. The man involved in a: homosexual act is engaged in a natural male function; he is performing as a man, and so is his partner. That there are men who think of themselves as women is also a fact, as the visitor to any queer bar will have noticed (those Bette Davis types are with us from Third Avenue to Hong Kong), but they are a tiny, minority, not unlike those odd creatures who think of themselves as 100 percent he men on the order of Lyndon Johnson, another small and infinitely more depressing minority, which of course includes the thirty-sixth President.

Dr. Reuben is also horrified by what he thinks to be the promiscuity of all homosexualists. But then "homosexuals thrive on danger," he tells us, and of course their "primary interest is the penis, not the person." As usual no evidence is given. He takes as fact the prejudices of his race-religion-country, and, most important, as I shall point out, class. Reading him on homosexuality, I was reminded of the lurid anti-Semitic propaganda of the thirties: All Jews love money. All Jews are sensualists with a penchant for gentile virgins. All Jews are involved in a conspiracy to take over the financial and cultural life of whatever country they happen to be living in. Happily, Dr. Reuben is relatively innocent of making this last charge. The Homintern theory, however, is a constant obsession of certain journalists and crops up from time to time not only in the popular press but in the pages of otherwise respectable literary journals. Fag-baiting is the last form of minority baiting practiced at every level of American society. Dr. Reuben tends to gloss over the social pressures which condition the life of anyone who prefers, occasionally or exclusively, the company of his own sex. Homosexualists seldom settle down to cozy mature domesticity for an excellent reason: society forbids it. Two government workers living together in Washington, D.C., would very soon find themselves unemployed. They would be spied on, denounced secretly, and dismissed. Only a bachelor entirely above suspicion like J. Edgar Hoover can afford to live openly with another man. In any case, homosexual promiscuity differs from heterosexual only in the atmosphere of fear in which the homosexualist must operate. It is a nice joke if a Louisiana judge is caught in a motel with a call girl. It is a major tragedy if a government official with a family is caught in a men's room.

For someone like Dr. Reuben who believes that there is no' greater sin than avoidance of “heterosex - penis and vagina," two men who do live together must, somehow, be wretched. "'Mercifully for both of them, the life expectancy of their relationship together is brief." Prove? I wrote for the tenth time in the margin. But we are beyond mere empiricism. We are now involved in one of the major superstitions of our place and time and no evidence must be allowed to disturb simple faith.

Dr. Kinsey (dismissed by Dr. Reuben as a mere biologist) did try to find out what is actually going on. Whatever Kinsey's shortcomings as a researcher, he revealed for the first time the way things are. Everyone is potentially bisexual. In actual practice a minority never commits a homosexual act, others experiment with their own sex but settle for heterosexuality, still others swing back and forth to a greater or lesser degree, while another minority never gets around to performing the penis-vagina act. None of this is acceptable to either Dr. Bergler or Dr. Reuben because they know that there is no such thing as bisexuality. Therefore Dr. Kinsey's findings must be discredited. To the rabbinical mind, any man who admits to having enjoyed sexual relations with another man must be, sadly, consigned to the ranks of Sodom. That the same man spends the rest of his sex life in penis-vagina land means nothing because, having enjoyed what he ought not to have enjoyed, his relations with women are simply playacting. Paradoxically, in the interest of making money, the mental therapists are willing to work with any full-time homosexualist who has never had a penis-vagina relationship because deep down they know he does not enjoy men no matter what he says; This is the double standard with a vengeance.

Driving through Wyoming, a Jewish friend of mine picked up a young cow hand and had sex with him. Dr. Reuben will be pleased to note that my friend was, as usual, guilt-ridden; so much so that the boy finally turned to his seducer and with a certain wonder said, "You know, you guys from the East do this because you're sick and we do it because we're horny." My friend has never recovered from this insight into that polymorphic goyisher world best revealed some years ago in Boise, Idaho, where a number of businessmen were discovered frolicking with the local high school boys. Oddly enough (to the innocent), as husbands and fathers, the businessmen were all long-time homesteaders in penis-vagina land. So what were they up to? Bisexuality? No, it does not exist. Evidence dismissed, just as all accounts of other cultures are also unacceptable. Turks, Greeks, Moslems. . . Well, as one critic likes to say, that is another context (disgusting lot is what he means).

[We all know what the reference to J. Edgar Hoover means nowadays. The government official in a men’s room almost certainly refers to the scandal around President Lyndon B. Johnson’s advisor Walter Jenkins who was arrested for cottaging in October 1964.]

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.

429: A Choice of Viewing on Television

ABC. 10.30 P.M. (1)
NOT TONIGHT, CLYDE
Two FBI agents decide to move in together. Edgar has a headache and Clyde burns the roast.
Edgar: Paul Lynde. Clyde: Charles Nelson Reilly

SARKY AND BITCH (2)
Amalgamated Megalomaniacs in association with B.E.N.T. Television presents the week-by-week story of those tough-talking, go-getting bum-kissing boys on the Nancy-Squad: It’s “Sarky and Bitch!” Starring Michael Double-Glazing and David Arsehole as Lieutenants Sarky and Bitch. This week’s story: “Cum in San Francisco”. Sorry, “Come In, San Francisco!”

TUESDAY RTV2 9.30 (3)
Andy Warhol's GARBAGE
Trevor and Kevin, two gay garage attendants near Doncaster, learn that they have been refused admission into the WRAC. 'Heady' Bob ,a transvestite AA man, who is saving up to have the Operation and join the RAC, stops by to tell them his tests at the Special Clinic are positive. They spend the afternoon in desultory conversation, ringing up the Speaking Clock.
"Superb. Masterful. Yummy." The Lancet
Rating: Odd

SATURDAY RTV2 3.00
BLOOD ON CAMP ISLAND (Frog-Rank)
Close male friendship between chaps and Japs in raw tale of eye-scratching and savage bitchery. By the director who made “Horseguards in Love”.
Rating: Gayish

SUNDAY RTVI 8.30
CAMPARET
Liza Minelli ("the toast of kings, the delight of queens") plays Christopher Isherwood, a character created by W. H. Auden. Also starring Joel Gay as the naughty man in the funny make-up. Set in the bitchy days of Berlin in the early thirties, this is a treat for everybody in their early thirties.
Rating: Fab

LITTLE HOMO ON THE PRAIRIE (4)
Little Homo is kidnapped by a band of Cherokee Indians. Homo seduces the Cherokee chief and they plan a marriage. But the nuptials are spoiled by Little Homo’s dad, who steals the boy back. In the ensuing action, Dad falls in love with Chief as well. Little Homo: Tatum O’Neal. Dad: Roman Gabriel. Chief: Merv Griffin.

RECTUMA
Japanese-made sci-fi epic about an atomic mutation, a gigantic walking rectum the size of the World Trade Center who gases and besmirches the country before being subdued by an army of homosexuals.

MEIN CAMP (5)
Ken Russell's story of how Hitler's homosexual love affair with Rommel loses him the war. Rommel is played by Rudolph Nureyev, and Montgomery by Peter Pears

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A round-up of gay-related gags from various TV guide parodies

(1) National Lampoon, February 1978
Edgar and Clyde at the FBI are of course J. Edgar Hoover and his close associate Clyde Tolson, and this plays off the long-standing rumours about the actual nature of their relationship, recently raised in 1978’s “The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover. Paul Lynde and Charles Nelson Reilly are two rather camp American light entertainment actors

(2) “The Outer Limits” (written and performed by Nigel Planer and Peter Richardson), at The Comedy Store, 1979
“The Outer Limits” was the “Firesign Theatre”-inspired duo instrumental in the creation of alternative comedy, “The Comic Strip Presents” and “The Young Ones”. The bit above is actually the intro to a parody of close cop duo “Starsky and Hutch” (if you hadn’t guessed). For all that alternative comedy was about not indulging in the prejudices of old-fashioned comedy, this skit uses an awful lot of the milder slurs at the expense of the sensitive masculinity of the leads. The rest of it is just a parody of the shortcomings of Starsky and Hutch: the show’s senseless hyperkineticism, the character’s enthusiastic stupidity and emphatic stating of just how disgusted they are by crime to show how sensitive and intelligent they genuinely are. (Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy fans may remember Shooty and Bang-Bang). The characters are just played as stereotypical brash Americans, but without any apparent gay mannerisms or camping it up.

(3) “The Rutland Dirty Weekend Book”, Eric Idle, 1976
A parody of Andy Warhol films, long renowned for their gay subject matter, here transferred to the banality of Enlish life rather than New York bohemia. Then a parody inspired by a rearrangement of the title of classic British WWII POW film “Camp on Blood Island” with some jokes about bitchy gays, Ken Russell films ("Women in Love"'s naked male wrestling), and the long-standing rumours about the sexual availability of the Horseguards.

(4) “This Week’s TV Programs”, by Gerald Sussman, with Danny Abelson, Tony Hendra, and Ted Mann - National Lampoon, December 1978
A parody at the expense of “Little House on the Prairie”. Tatum O’Neal was actually a girl, but the Macauley Culkin child star of the day. Merv Griffin was an American talk show host about whom there long-standing (how many times have I written that now?) gay rumours.

(5) "After Star Wars, What?”, Barry Took - Punch, 4 January 1978
A throwaway gag from a whole selection of silly future movies. Not much done with the idea of gay Nazis, and instead says more about perceptions of Ken Russell's pictures during the 1970s. Took demonstrates the same paucity of possible names who would be recognised as gay. Really, I mean, Peter Pears.

424: Killjoy Was Here 3

“National Lampoon”, March 1979
from “Letters from the Editors”

Sirs:

We’ve had just about enough of your childish “homo” jokes. You sneer and giggle and hurl your little barbs at us. We’re a part of this society. Medical science says we’re normal; the law says we’re entitled to every right and privilege that you are. We’re human, we’re American, we have feelings, and if you don’t leave us alone, we’re going to come over and fuck your dad.

The Queers,
All Over Everywhere, Even Iowa

423: Killjoy Was Here 2

Punch, 15 Decemeber 76
By J.E. Hinder

I'M SORRY, I'LL WRITE THAT AGAIN
(Members of the Students Union recently voted to pulp this year's Bristol University Rag Magazine because of its "sexist, racist and anti-homosexual jokes", But an alternative suggestion has been made. According to a Bristol Evening Post report, a "leaflet of explanation intended to soften the effect" of the offending material may possibly be inserted.)

Page 6. We apologise for a misleading statement concerning "the boy who stood on the burning deck / His a*** against the mast / Who swore he would not move an inch / Till Oscar Wilde had passed." The boy in question, after a teach-in with fin-de-siecle predecessors of the Gay Liberation Movement, entered into a meaningful, open-ended, in-house dialogue with Mr Wilde, reaching complete agreement. Later, he became a member of the Fabian Society and was responsible for many of the lighter-hearted passages in "Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation" by Sidney and Beatrice Webb.

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Why, it's Political Correctness Gone Mad! And a parody of Political Correctness Gone Mad as well. All in the mid-70s too. Though in those days it was "consciousness-raising" and "humourless bloody lefties! Can't take a bloody joke." Plus ca change . . .

421: Not Gay Pride 2

"Punch" 30 March 1983

AGITORY - The helpful guide for the Committed Reactionary.

"Anti-Gay Movement"

Don't be afraid to express your distaste and revulsion.

Badges available saying "Sod off to Sodom", and car stickers, "I'm proud to be normal". £6 per dozen.

Support wanted for Anti-Gay Pride Week.

SAE to Decency Society, Tunbridge Wells.

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Gay Prides now being enough of an event that a supposed counter movement by decency-loving conservatives can be a joke. Tunbridge Wells, because as the heart of middle England and the Tory homelands, it has been the origin of the stereotypical reactionary, silent majority letter-writer sign-off "Disgusted of Tunbrudge Wells.

417: Queer Bashing 2

National Lampoon, April 1971
from “Real Balls Adventure Magazine” by Doug Kenney, Michael O’Donoghue, John Boni and Terry Catchpole

This is a just a little excerpt from this issue’s “Real Balls Adventure Magazine”, a parody of both the “Weasels Ripped My Flesh” brand of lurid adventure story pulp magazine and also the extreme anti-commie, far right-wing attitudes of their audience.

So here “fag casting” and “queer trolling” as treated as sports with tips from the “Volunteer Vigilantes against Homos”. Already Judy Garland allusions are de rigeur. My speculations about peacenik = faggot in Colin Wheeler's cartoon are made explicit here.

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.”

399: The Romans in Britain

“The Romans in Britain” was a play by Howard Brenton first staged in 1980 by the National Theatre. The play alternates between contemporary English troops in occupied Ireland, and the titular Romans in Britain as a study in imperialism and violence. The fact that all the ancient Celts appeared on stage naked was enough to raise a few hackles. But newspapers took a lot more interest in the scene in which a Celtic druid is raped by Roman troops.

Michael Heath
“Punch”, 29 October 1980
An opportunity for a little-same sex explains all these rather fey, twinkly-eyed persons on stage in a quasi-S&M scenario.

The play would probably have faded in the nether realm where most theatrical productions reside with just a few more sniggers given the sexual aspects and a little more outrage than usual given its pro-Irish independence theme. However it really hit the headlines due to the activities of censorious religiously motivated prude and all-around screw-face Mary Whitehouse. Never knowingly without sand in her vag, though Whitehouse knew nothing about politics (the subtleties of rape as a metaphor passed over her head with a sonic boom), she knew filth when she heard about it. If the depiction of sodomitical intercourse between men on stage wasn’t filth then nothing was. The self-appointed guardian of the nation’s morals didn’t go see the play, but did send one of her minions to attend a showing. He reported he had seen one of the actors insert his penis into another actor's rear. Despite Whitehouse’s urgings the Director of Public Prosecutions said no legal action would be taken, so Whitehouse initiated her own private prosecution against the director for having "procured an act of gross indecency” contrary to the Sexual Offences Act of 1956 – the same law used against cottaging.

Not the Nine O’Clock News, 1981
(First half is a parody of the somewhat raunchy dance troupe “Hot Gossip”, a few of whose members were fairly obviously gay. Here you can you see Rowan Atkinson, Griff Rhys-Jones and Mel Smith as “The Nancy Boys” swishing about to Blondie’s “Atomic” as some rather bored dancers more than just a little cheesed off with their lithe female colleagues tarting it about – whereas real gay dancers would probably try to outshine the females and hog the spotlight. This is closer to the cliche of male ballet dancers bored and envious of the attention given to then women).
Starts at 1.18
The play makes the perfect occasion for an “I’ll be buggered if I go out there” joke.

The trial went around with terrible consequences for the accused if found guilty. The prosecution though had only one witness, the minion who had reported to Whitehouse. His evidence was that he had seen a penis penetrate. Upon questioning it was revealed that he had purchased a cheap seat at the rear of the audience making him unreliable, so that he had not seen what had really happened on stage - the actor had in fact simply made a fist with his thumb sticking out and mimed penetration.

“Punch” 2 September 1981

The presiding judge said the case could still continue on the Act's grounds of obscenity as the tendency to deprave or corrupt, but then Whitehouse’s lawyer refused to proceed and the case collapsed in an unprecedented manner. Both sides claimed victory, although since she was the party who initiated a £40,000 law case on the basis of an obscured thumb, you can’t help but feel Whitehouse looks the more foolish.

Mile Kington, “The Times”, 24 Mar. 1982

383: Star Wars 2

"Star Roars"

Mad Magazine, January 1978

Writers: Larry Siegel and Dick De Bartolo

So if C3PO is a camp seeming robot, how do we ramp that up for parody? Well, draw him with one hand resting on his hip and the other thrown out limp-wristed. Will that do? Let’s have him swish it up like an interior designer too. Although quoting lyrics from Kismet (“Take my hand / I’m a stranger in paradise”) , a musical that was then 25 years old, probably has more to do with the age of the staff at Mad, then anything you might expect even from the most musicals-obsessed gay cliché. And then just in case anyone, anyone at all, might be oblivious to the point this parody is making, they come out and say C3PO is a “fag robot”. That’s the punchline for this little bit.

382: Gay Star Wars 1

"Star Spats"
By Laurence Gonzales
in "Playboy", December 1977

Back to the soul-sinking chronicle of fag jokes. I am Ixion. This is my wheel. If only I knew how to quit it.

The next few examples wouldn’t exist without Anthony Daniels’s performance as the android C3PO in “Star Wars”. A heritage of gay robot jokes is not quite the legacy any actor might hope to leave behind. Although George Lucas’s casting vision has to take some blame. Actually I was greatly tempted to give the following selections the overall title of “FAAAGS IN SPAAAAAAAACE!!!”, but that would be demeaning - to my childhood delight in the Muppets.

This parody is in the same vein as Harvard Lampoon’s “Bored of the Rings” and subsequent film parody franchises. Puns, heavy-handed sex jokes and contemporary life style references laboriously transposed into a science-fictionalised setting, while also deprecating the storytelling shortcomings of the original. Simply to cut down on space I left out all the Jewish and Yiddish jokes, though fans of Mel Brooks’s “Spaceballs” may feel deprived. The one atrocious racist joke I’ve left in for comparison.

Unsubtle probably best describes the overall impression. The title and picture pretty much let you know what to expect. Sissy gays don’t have wars, they have spats. I’m surprised they didn’t try to make Darth’s helmet look more like a penis, but then there are stories of Hefner getting weird about cartoons of penises in “Playboy”.

Discos, drugs, bitchy queens, s/m fashions, and hairdressers (“Mr” often being the title of choice for hairdressers). This is the contemporary Studio 54 lifestyle that the readers are expected to pick up on. With a “The Boys in the Band” allusion for those who can remember: “Who do you have to fuck....”

Suffice it to say this has never been collected in any anthology of gay science fiction.

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

STAR SPATS

Will Luke rescue Princess Orgasma?

Can a gay android find happiness in a bit part?

Will the universe be saved?

Does anybody have a valium?

Funny you should ask?




The erratic course of the galactic cruiser as it blasted through the constellation Tsooris was hardly intentional. Its captain had been hard by the Jack Daniel's for three days running. Coincidentally, this course was avoiding the long streaks of energy striking out from the Imperial cruiser. One of the beams touched the staggering, lurching ship and blew away its curb feelers and fender skirts. Then another distant explosion shook the ship and peeled away a layer of red-flocked wallpaper in the corridor - but it certainly didn't feel distant to Little Bo Peepio, the gay android, and his side-kick Panchoo DeeToo. To look at those two, you would have thought Little Bo Peepio, the tall, wispy machine wearing nothing but a necklace that said BITCH and a Porsche chronometer, was master of Panchoo DeeToo, the stubby, swarthy pistolero robot in the Two Fingers Tequila T-shirt; but while Bo Peepio might have thrown an absolute snit at the suggestion, they were actually equals in everything except that Bo Peepio gave better head and Panchoo DeeToo was the only Panchoo unit in the constellation of Tsooris that was running off a turquoise-and beaten-silver laser system.

Other explosions rocked the galactic cruiser. The low humming note that had been giving Bo Peepio a splitting headache suddenly stopped. Finally. Bo Peepio spoke:

"Who do you have to fuck to get a valium around here?" he asked.

Panchoo did not comment immediately. His barrel torso tilted backward, his three powerful hand-tooled leather cowboy boot gripping the deck. The meter-high Mexicano droid was suffering from severe postnasal drip sustained while sniffing some Peruvian graphite dust earlier in the flight, A series of short, chirping Spanish invectives issued from his speaker. To even a sensitive ear they would have sounded like just so much Third World gibberish, but to Bo Peepio they formed words as dear as a tequila sunrise.

"This butch captain of ours is definitely on a macho trip,' Bo Peepio said in a testy voice, thrusting out his metallic hips petulantly and patting down his chromium skullplate. "We're fucked for sure now.”

Suddenly a band of Imperial Storm Troopers appeared and began firing their weapons. One blast of energy threw Bo Peepio into a jumble of shredded cables, where dozens of currents turned him into a jerking, mincing, limp-wristed display of acrobatics.

"Help!" he screamed. "My servopelvic Accu-Jac!"

As Panchoo extended his switchblade mechanism to try to help cut away the cables, Bo Peepio's tone turned ultra-bitchy:

"This is all your fault! I should have known better than to trust the logic of an albino graphite-snorting, hand-held half-breed vibrator!"

Panchoo cut loose with a series of searching Spanish curses usually reserved for those who gang-rape your mother. One of them made an allusion to Bo Peepio's ancestral link to the Water Pik.

Then a violent explosion shook the corridor.

Two meters tall. Bipedal. Flowing black robes and a simple string of cultured pearls. Hair by Sassoon. Face forever masked by a black Tiffany breathing creation stunningly punctuated by pear diamond and rough-cut emeralds. A Dark Lord of Sith was a daunting shape as it snapped its tight little buns back and forth, heading down the corridors, glancing self-consciously at its reflection in the mirrored walls. Solidly into S/M, it normally sported heavy leather-and-chrome manacles and a set of expensive Spanish handcuffs. Once-resolute rebel crew members ceased resisting at the sight and threw themselves al its feet, crying:

"Where did you get your hair done?"

As it turned down another passageway, they could hear Mr. Darth's heavy breathing through the Tiffany mask. But who could resist?

Elsewhere, Bo Peepio and Panchoo were entering the lifeboat hatch. The explosive bolts fired after a loud warning and the pod ejected from the crippled fighter, sending the two droids to the surface of the planet below. Like much of the Promised Land, it was pretty grim compared with Fire Island.



Soon after Luke Starfucker had come into possession of Bo Peepio and Panchoo - and for no explainable reason - they were all fast friends, as if they'd known one another for eons. While Luke was valiantly trying to repair Panchoo, however, the little Latin pervert became horny and began showing dirty movies with his silver turquoise laser.

Luke who was only 20 years old, had lived a sheltered life and, consequently, was watching with rapt attention as Panchoo, who was a bit weirded out on some unnamed droid crystals, unabashedly flashed holographic movies of a beautiful young girl and her trusty exercise 'droid. She kept mumbling something about somebody's Kenobish.

"Boy," Luke said in awe, "look at the Kenobish on that dude."

Panchoo mumbled something in Spanish and kept showing the dirty loops.

"Oh, help me," the girl pleaded. "Slip me some Kenobish, Ben!"

"Who is that?” Luke asked Bo Peepio.

"I really don't know. She was a passenger on our last voyage. Had her own dressing room. A movie star of some importance, I think. Bitchin' wardrobe."

"Some movies," Luke allowed. Then suddenly, Panchoo ended the performance. "What kind of shit is that?" Luke asked angrily, jumping up.

Panchoo screeched and bleeped in incomprehensible but dearly obscene Latin aphorisms. Bo Peepio winced and translated some of them.

"He says before she got into heavy S/M movies like this, she used to co-star with the stud of the entire constellation of Tsooris, one of the last surviving Jewish Knights, Bennie Wadd Kenobish. He also says you can pay him fifty Imperial monetary units for an instant re¬play or else blow it out your Imperial ass."

"Bennie Wadd Kenobish," Luke said with a puzzled expression. "He's an old man now. He couldn't possibly get it up. And what in blazes is a Jewish Knight?"

"Don't ask me, deary,” Bo Peepio said, rolling his eyes seductively, "but if you know this Wadd character, I think I'd like to tag along."



Inside the bowels of the Imperial battle station, Princess Orgasma – intergalactically famous porn star - was being treated to the thrill of her life with a set of chromium molybdenum shackles by Mr. Darth.

"Tighter, Darth! Tighter!" she moaned, as one or Darth's minions moved forward to increase the pressure of the shackles on her pale wrists.

"You are my prisoner," Mr. Darth said, swirling his cape and fingering his strand of pearls. "I think what you need is a Farrah Fawcett cut."

"No, not that! Anything but that!" Princess Orgasma cried.

“How about a Linda Ronstadt?"



(omitted assorted Jewish stereotype jokes........)



Without even asking for any trouble from these Jewish Knights and gay robots, Luke suddenly found it in the middle of a real mess. He was out; riding toward Moishe Eisley Spaceport, a pretty nasty place according to Kenobish. It was imperative that they not be suspected by the Imperial Storm Troopers while searching the spaceport a pilot who could take them to rescue Princess Orgasma. But, as Kenobish had explained, the Force would be with them if they got into trouble.



(omitted Jewish Force jokes.........)

.

"Double Shirley Temple," Luke said across the bar.

They had entered the underground cantina and while Kenobish was scouting around for a pilot, Luke busied himself surveying the clientele. It was a sight like none he had ever seen. Lined against the bar three deep were men in hideous Palm Beach and Brooks Brothers suits. some of them with lethal-looking Bell System beepers attached to their alligator belts in case the hospital called for an emergency Caesarean section. Others carried American Tourister attaché cases. And all of them were knocking back deadly martinis without blinking an eye.

The bartender looked at him strangely when he placed his order but served it up anyway. Suddenly. Luke noticed that he was the subject of some unwanted attention. It must be these beige robes, he thought, and tried to ignore the stares. Something shoved him roughly nearly knocking him over. He turned angrily and then stopped in astonishment. It a little, stooped-over Polish janitor, myopically pushing a broom, trying to clean up some of the cigarette butts and peanut shells left behind by the rowdy business lunch crowd. Luke motioned to Kenobish and the wily old Jewish Knight deftly whipped out his sacred shotgun and blew the pushy little fucker into a thousand pieces, splattering brain and bone across the cantina floor.

Acting as if nothing had happened, Kenobish ushered Luke over to a table where an enormous monkey was sitting with a young man who was somewhat older than Luke.

"Who's the shvartzer?” Kenobish asked the man, indicating the monkey, as they approached the table.

"That's my monkey," the man said. "Leave him alone or I'll have him pull your head off. I'm Solo."

"And I'm Hetero:' Luke snapped.

"Listen. you little starfucker," Solo said, reaching across the table, "if you want to get to diddle the princess, you'd better watch your star mouth or you're going to be in for some star difficulties."



However, in spite of that thorny first encounter, the entire entourage - Kenobish, Luke, Bo Peepio, Panchoo, Solo and one big fullback type badly in need of a haircut - took off for a rendezvous with the Death Disco, a planet-size night spot that even now housed the Imperial cruiser commanded by Mr. Darth and a large number of rotating punk-rock groups.

Once cruising in Solo's speedy starship, the Millennium Chicken, in the calm of hyperspace and free of pursuing Imperial cruisers, Kenobish had a chance to give Luke some lessons with his newly found sacred weapon. "Pull!" Luke called and a clay bird flew out of the trap and smashed against the interior walls of the intergalactic cruiser before he could shoulder the shotgun.

"No, no, no," Kenobish was saying in disgust.”Here, put this on," he said, taking a large trash can from nearby and placing it over Luke's head.

"Mrgf! Gnlt butlts hbthblwsh!" Luke's Screams were unintelligible from inside the container.

"See,” Kenobish said, "You're already learning a new language. Ah, the Force."

Luke called for another bird and began firing wildly, scattering hot leaden revolutionary death all over the interior of the ship and sending everyone diving under tables and chain.



Having counted on the eternally inferior intelligence of people who wear Tiffany breathing devices and their armies and strategists in much the same way Pentagon generals counted on what they referred to in private as "gook stupidity," the star entourage entered the Death Disco and rescued Princess Orgasma by tantalizing her with her favorite sexual foreplay: a group grope in a warm garbage bath. Then, having hidden the architectural plans for the Death Disco - somewhere on her person - they headed back to the Millennium Chicken, using the “ancient Eskimo" plan of escape. This calls for taking an elderly member of the tribe and setting him on an ice floe until the polar bears are distracted and eat him, thus saving everyone else. In this case, alas, it was the noble Jewish Knight, Bennie Wadd Kenobish, who was attacked by Mr. Darth and chafed to death by Spanish handcuffs.



Luke hung back at a safe distance while fighter after fighter was chewed into molecular bits by Imperial energy weapons. As a matter of honor, he let his best friends go first. And even though they were getting dusted by the score, they were doing serious damage to the Death Disco, and finally Mr. Darth, seeing that Luke was coming in for the kill, boarded his own combat fighter to chase him down and, as he put it, “slap that bitch’s wrists but good.”

But once Luke's friends were all dead, he knew one thing for sure and no limp-wristed hairdresser was going to stop him. Visions of that first pornographic hologram of Princess Orgasma swam in his head as he homed in on the planetoid. Back at command center, Orgasma was hunched over the radar screen, watching Luke's progress. He was confident of the Force that he wasn't even using his computer aiming device. He just placed a trash can over his head, as Kenobish had taught him.

"Don't worry”' Orgasma’s voice came over the radio, "Solo has returned and he’s, um, right behind me," she panted, hunching more eagerly over the radar consol.

"That's right, kid," Luke heard Solo say, “I had a change of heart. And I'll keep things warm back here while you shoot your load."

And then, in unison, Luke could hear their voices cheenng, "Go, go. go, deeper, deeper, put it in, ye, “ until – trash can totally obscuring his vision - Luke made a slight miscalculation in his steering and rammed a gun tower, disintegrating into microscopic silvery fragments.

"Tough shit, kid," Solo said.

END

381: Golden Chestnuts III

Another long-running English joke.
“Heaven” is the gay London nightclub, established in 1979. The name is obviously a bit cheeky, and so provokes jokes. More mark of its success must be that it has crossed over into heterosexual awareness.
How many people would be expected to know the name of a gay nightclub in the early 1980s? Well here’s a demonstration.


From "Not 1983" calendar

And so for about thirty years, there have been, cartoons sketches, and bits and banter of the like:

Obviously gay man (preferable clone-style so no one is oblivious) says to vicar: See you in Heaven.

Or :

First figure: My friend’s gone to Heaven.
Second figure: (condolences) Oh I’m so sorry to hear that.
First figure: No, the club

380: Golden Chestnuts II

Oh please, Dr Freud, I enquire in a faux-naif fashion as a perfectly normal macho man, please tell me what my incessant dreams of phallic objects can mean?


From “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (Aren't You Sorry You Asked?)” by John Boni
in “National Lampoon”, July 1971


from “Not 1983” calendar

The latter one I include merely because over three years since the Jeremy Thorpe case and people are still making Liberal Party = Gay jokes (Clement Freud was a prominent Liberal MP, and need I explain Jeremy T?). This is what life was like before 24 hour constant media bombardment.

351: The Gay Daleks

from “TV Offal”, 31 October 1997, May 22nd – 19 June 1998
by Victor Lewis-Smith


Part 1, 31 October 1997


Part 2


Part 3


Part 4


Part 5


Part 6


Part 7

Neither big. Nor clever.
Here the tea-time terrors of children’s sci-fi “Dr Who” get the most immense of gayings-up in a manner which is deliberately calculated to offend. Indeed, in several instalments of these sketches Lewis Smith openly acknowledges just how offensive his stereotypes are. I think it’s fair to say Victor Lewis Smith is of the type that thinks the only real equality consists in bring equally offensive to everyone. So here we get a load of almost breathtakingly outrageous sexually predatory camp bitches who bicker incessantly. Indeed, if you want to be in on the joke then you probably revel in its tastelessness, whether you’re gay or not.
This dates from the mid-1990s, the same period as “The Ambiguous Duo” in America. Where those sketches were fairly broad in their innuendo, this lets no opportunity to be offensive go pass. “TV Offal” however had the benefit of being broadcast late at night, so it can transgress in oh so many more ways. Lord only knows how it bypassed Terry Nation though.
Victor Lewis Smithy is not entirely wrong that it doesn’t take much effort to turn the usual metallic shrieking of a Dalek into rather harsh camp banter. Indeed the first instalment is the best, with Victor Lewis Smith explaining why Daleks seem gay, and the final shot of a convoy of Daleks singing “YMCA”. The later episodes repeat the same catchphrases as it just descends into pantomimetic abuse, leavened by crass innuendo playing off science fiction terms.
A lot of it is quite explicit about the more extreme areas of gay sex – cottaging, rimming, rent boys, cruising on Hampstead Heath – everything then enumerated in the pages of the British tabloids for the public’s disapproval.
That it even starts off with the sniggering playground taunt of “Better watch your back” shows what level he’s aiming for, with cries of “White Wee-wee!” and the moderately ingenious “Ex-Sperm-inate!” (the Dalek’s catchphrase is “Exterminate!”) as the Dalek’s plungers mimic a hard-on. The two Daleks also address each other with a litany of slurs: “fagggot”, “arse bandit”, “shirtlifting”, “turd burglar”, etc.
Also of the period is the insinuation about Tory MP Michael Portillo. I remember rumours circulating about at that time, which he later publically confirmed about a decade later.
Even at two minutes apiece these sketches rather wear out their welcome. But then the same can probably be said of “Queer Duck” which mined much the same humour for a gay audience.

Addendum:

I found the following articles by Victor Lewis- Smith in which he reminisces (exhumes all the old gags) about these sketches.

The Mirror, February 1, 2003

TO my slight shame but also my enormous delight, I once co-wrote a disgracefully politically incorrect TV series called The Gay Daleks.
Featuring a pair of shirt-lifting pepperpots who travelled the universe in their five-dimensional cosmological superloo (the Turdis), everything about the show was just so, from the title music ("they're camp, they ex-sperminate... better watch your backs") to the closing announcement: "Join us next time for another adventure with the fudge-packers from the planet Mascaro, as they penetrate the mysteries of Uranus."
The extraterrestrial friends of Dorothy didn't know if they were Arthur or Martha as they camped around and, in their lispingly monotonal voices, talked of meeting Michael Portillo on Hampstead Heath and trolled along the High Street with their robotic dog called - what else? - KY.
I was concerned that the show might be misinterpreted as anti-gay but I needn't have worried.
The healthy postbag demonstrated that these weekly tales of the metallic homonauts quickly attracted a substantial gay audience, who enjoyed the surreal and absurd take on their lifestyle, particularly the scenes set in a public lavatory.
Until I researched for the series, the word "cottage" had, for me, conjured up images of Anne Hathaway, rather than have-it-away, and a "hole in the wall" was a place to seek fiscal rather than physical comfort.
But I soon discovered that the gentlemen's public lavatory is a focal point for many homosexuals, who find the sense of danger exciting and the smell of disinfectant more erotic than aftershave.
BEING as ocularly challenged as Mr Magoo and heterosexual and ugly to boot, I would been blissfully unaware of this alternative lifestyle taking place in public lavatories.
But I had occasionally read about male celebrities being arrested for "indecency in a public place", so I was interested to hear this week about the Sex Offences Bill, which will finally abolish much of the discriminatory legislation against gays, and will allow them to have sex in public lavatories, "provided the cubicle door is closed".
Which, unfortunately, wouldn't suit the Gay Daleks, because their plungers cannot achieve full tumescence unless the door is wide open.
The Bill seems well-intentioned but it will probably put an end to the ancient and furtive etiquette of cottaging, which gay friends once explained to me. Apparently, absolute silence at the urinal indicates interest, followed by eye contact and a quick dash to the nearest cubicle, where holes in the door are plugged with lavatory paper ("putting up the curtains") to evade prying eyes.
One man sits, while the other stands erect with his feet in a shopping bag, to confuse any members of the vice squad who might peer beneath the door in search of excessive legs (a great idea except that, in the throes of congress, the bag inevitably moves about like a sack of ferrets), and the deed is done. Well, I'm sorry if you are eating your breakfast but that's what happens.
Although the Bill will end the illegality of such practices, it still insists on a modicum of decency and discretion. And quite right, because who wants to enter a public karzy and hear what sounds like two asthma victims enjoying a wine-tasting in an adjacent cubicle? But my theory is that, once cottaging becomes legal, public lavatories will cease to be venues for such clandestine activities, because much of the excitement has always been about the fear of arrest.
Homosexuals will find there are hundreds of far more pleasant places in which to widen the circles of their friends.
The Bill is long overdue, because our society's once-intolerant attitude to homosexuality has greatly relaxed in recent decades.
That's why George Michael was able to laugh off his arrest for indecency in a lavatory a few years ago, unlike poor Peter Wyngarde, whose TV career as Jason King was ruined in the 1970s by a similarly innocuous incident in a gentlemen's lavatory at Gloucester bus station.
A court case. End of series, and of a TV career that was itself like lavatory paper. Off the wall.

The Mirror, March 22, 2003

Just in case you don't keep my old columns filed away for easy reference (and you'd be surprised how many readers use them as plant pot linings instead), let me remind you that I've been planning to relaunch The Gay Daleks, a "just so" duo who became something of a cult hit on a TV series I made in the 90s.
So once again I've been arranging for the pangalactic arse-bandits from the planet Mascaro to take to the skies, exploring Uranus, penetrating a red dwarf, and exsperminating all who cross their path as they travel around the universe in their interstellar cruiser, the Turdis.
I'd already found my animator (the brilliant Kevin Spark), agreed budgets with a TV channel, and sketched out several plots. In one, a dyslexic Dalek confuses an M&S store with an S&M parlour.
In another, a trip to a pet shop ends in tears when they ask for a cockatoo and get more than they bargained for.
I was confident that the new series would be even more popular with the gay community than the original one was, because their many letters and emails tell me that they love the campery and absurdity of it all (it's all firmly in the best traditions of the Carry On films).
But, sadly, I have to tell you that you'll never see the shirt-lifting pepperpots on TV again, and here's why. The Terry Nation estate (who happily gave me permission to use the Daleks five years ago) have now refused point-blank to let me use them again, and I am therefore unable to add to the Gaiety of Nations.
The refusal came from Terry Nation's wife, Kate, whose business affairs are handled by Roger Hancock Ltd. Considering that he's the brother of Tony Hancock, you'd think the company would have a sense of humour, but despite numerous requests for an explanation as to why they're preventing the return of my comedy series by not granting a "use of image" licence, I've had nothing more than a frosty "no". Presumably
they cannot be objecting to a Dalek appearing in a comedy context, because they recently allowed one to feature in a beer commercial.
I'm willing to pay them the going rate, so was there (I asked) perhaps a touch of homophobia at the root of their refusal?
No reply came the reply, and their silence leads me to suspect that what really irritates them is the depiction of a Dalek as a friend of Dorothy.
WHAT a delicious irony, because you only have to look objectively at a Dalek to realise that it wouldn't look out of place in the Village People.
There's the skirt, the all-male bonding, the plunger that's always getting erect when other Daleks are around, the obsession with discipline... isn't it obvious?
What's more, despite their quasi-fascist demeanour, they're actually as ridiculous as Viz's Pathetic Sharks and, although they used to look pretty scary on primitive 405-line black-and-white screens, the advent of higher-definition colour sets enabled us to see the hilarious truth.
Which is that Tim Hancock and Kate Nation are trying to preserve the "dignity" of something that's constructed from a sink plunger and a few spare parts from a Morris Minor.
So what exactly is it that they think they're protecting?
Dr Who has had its day, and if they keep saying "no" to ideas like mine, the Daleks will simply fade out of public consciousness altogether and become worthless to them.
But what's worse is that they're depriving viewers of the chance to watch the further adventures of what has proved to be one of my most popular creations.
So if you want to see the metallic homonauts back on your screen, probing the mysteries of a black hole once again, let the campaign begin. Bring Back the Gay Daleks.

347: Sherlock Holmes Is Only Sometimes Very Gay

This article, “Sherlock’s dear Watson” by Robbie Hudson is a decent run-down of various gay interpretations of Sherlock Holmes:
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article6959490.ece

Previously I had posted this full-page cartoon strip from Viz in 1992. “Sherlock Homo” was presumably inspired by the realisation that Holmes sounds like homo, and then they tried to see how many clichés could fit into available panels. It’s basically mincing and innuendo, but it isn’t sneering, unpleasant, or rapey (i.e. obsessed with unwanted butt sex), so the fun that they’re having trying to cram as much into this is effectively conveyed.

Holmes, his behaviour and mannerisms, lends himself to gay interpretation. Holme’s hauteur, emotional oddity and repression and sudden burst of flamboyancy (particularly in Jeremy Brett’s portrayal). The disdain for women. The penchant for dressing up. And of course there’s the Holmes-Watson partnership – which has a secure place in the popular consciousness. Two men living together, in what is an emotionally turbulent relationship. Watson subtly undermined, ever subject to Holmes’s whims, yet whenever Watson eventually rebukes him Holmes declares his fondness and admiration for his chum.


by Mike Williams
from “Playboy”, September 1976

Basically just a transvestite gag, but playing off the fact that a couple of times Holmes goes around dressed as beggar women.


by Roy Raymonde
from “Playboy”, date unknown

Again this cartoon plays off the cross-dressing aspect in Holmes’s history. But as in Cyril Connolly’s “Bond Strikes Camp”, it’s now employed as one element in a wider panorama of gay behaviours, all with the intention of sexually enticing the unwitting heterosexual. And that’s what makes it a particularly “Playboy” sort of cartoon. Once Hefner started allowing cartoons about homosexuals into the magazine then he also started slipping in cartoons about transvestites. In particular, how the male in the cartoon has been tricked by the canny tranny. Since, as various articles have led me to understand, the cartoon editors at “Playboy” only select the cartoons for Hefner to make the final decision, it’s fairly obvious that the prospect of accidentally fucking an attractive women who is really a man hits some sort of psychic sensitive spot for Hefner. One day I may do a round-up of tranny gags in “Playboy” – it’s certainly a bit of an obsession.



By Michael Heath
In “Punch” 13 February 1980

The other name associated with Holmes is his arch-enemy Moriarty. A quick gag about the most unlikely possible pairing. I like Holmes’s distraught expression.


from “Private Eye” 1 October 1965
This is mostly a piece mocking trendy British films of the period. But it takes its comic spin by changing “Elementary, my dear Watson” into “My Darling Watson”.


from “The Peter Serafinowicz Show”, 4 October 2007
Peter Serafinowicz as Sherlock Holmes
Alex Lowe as Dr Watson

And here we get actual-man-on-man action. Watson’s craven admiration only encouraging Holmes’s predations. A nice touch to have the sketch close with the camera panning away onto the portrait of the queen herself as Holmes’s repression and oddity finally gives way as Watson desperately but futilely resists.

342: parody of A. A. Milne

“The Change at Pooh Corner”
by Alan Coren
in “Punch” 13 October 1976

A contemporary updating of A.A. Milne’s children’s poem “Buckingham”, each verse closely parodying its equivalent in the original. Wised up about the ways and disappointments of the world. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere the Guards were fairly notorious for being available for sexual liaisons. This being 1976, “prominent MP” alludes to revelations about Jeremy Thorpe.

As far as depictions of a gay Guard go, this is par for the course for the mid-70s: a cocked hip, hand resting on that hip, and swinging a handbag. Which doesn’t excuse it, or make it any better than it actually is.