288: Gorey Goes Gay 3

In its own weirdly catch-as catch-can way, the most sexually concerned of Edward Gorey’s books is “The Curious Sofa: A Pornographic Work by Ogdred Weary” (1961).

In a style alternately abashed then declamatory, it traces the adventures of a young girl as she is embroiled in the sexual escapades of an every widening group of libertines, which is standard for a certain brand of high-cultured pornography. On each page the girl is introduced to some new character, and in a slightly coy, euphemistic phrasing, it is suggested that she is either party or witness to some new if unclear sexual encounter. The wit of the book lies in the fact that nothing sexual is ever shown or described. Everything is left to the reader’s imagination. Characters are only ever shown standing around. As the cast increases there are a few homosexually suggestive encounters.


Herbert and Harold are a wealthy young man and his butler from earlier on. All their attentions to date have been heterosexual, but in the in the typical pornotopia, no one ever says no to anything. To me, this picture is reminiscent of those late 19th/early 20th century swimming hole paintings - Henry Scott Tuke and Thomas Eakins, a homoerotic athleticism. Not so much paederasty, as ephebophilia, which makes for an unexpected element in the high-toned short stories of Guy Davenport. See, the three men are merely disporting themselves. What could be more disavowable?


Chasing someone with a whip is merely a romp? It’s the sort of understatement which achieves its apotheosis in “The Curios Sofa’s” immortal line, “Still later, Gerald did a terrible thing to Elsie with a saucepan”.

Notice the chap on the left, is effete and lithe, his hands casting about his head, as he is clad in light blowsy attire. Every single man who appears in “The Curious Sofa” Edward Gorey describes as well-formed, well-made, well-developed, well-proportioned, etc.

287: Gorey Goes Gay 2

from “The Listing Attic”, 1954

I’ve no intention of writing a study of homosexuality in Edward Gorey’s works. The art and appeal of Gorey’s pieces derive from his abstruse suggestions of sexual and violent oddity. Sacher-Masoch and the great notorious murderers skirt in the immense penumbra of overpowering late-Victorian propriety. If you can put a finger on precisely what’s happening then the joke is usually the poorer for it in Gorey’s works. His strength lies in his rich and ever deepening ability to allude to unspeakable or incomprehensible behaviour amidst the Edwardian haut monde. However a few pieces do feature some actual gay content (I almost wrote explicit there, but that wouldn’t be quite right). This is from only the second of his little books, when his career was barely starting. A collection of deliberately grim limericks. This scene reminds me more than a little of the beginning of Waugh’s “Decline and Fall”. And why Harvard? Well, the already eccentric Gorey was a student there, so there may be just a little exorcision of bad memories in this exaggeration of the worst fits of group-sanctioned prejudices.

286: Gorey Goes Gay 1

This is the American cover for the 1959 Anchor edition of the novel “A Room in Chelsea Square”. The novel was published anonymously in England in 1958. Eventually the author was revealed to be Michael Nelson. How then do we know that the slightly effete, foppish chaps on the cover are gay, and not just standard Gorey men? Easy. Because the characters in the novel are gay. “A Room in Chelsea Square” is a kind of homosexual fantasia about the main figures responsible for the wartime literary magazine “Horizon”. The publisher, Peter Watson, fabulous margarine heir, was gay, while Cyril Connolly and Stephen Spender ran the bisexual gamut at different times in their lives. So here, slightly more realistically rendered than usual, are two of Gorey’s ambiguous men. I think the hands are a bit more splayed and expressive then his usual manner. The one man stretched out is the picture dictionary definition of languorous, while the other with his unusual stance, drinks from a large glass of champagne. Is there something in the way their heads are turned to each other? Apparently, the illustration wraps around the back, and has a male nude statue. So even without reading the book, there are enough hints in this cover to alert those who may be attuned properly to suspect that this may be a book to somehow satisfy certain personal interests. Which given that this 1959 is about as much as one can hope for. As per this illustration by Ronald Searle a few years earlier.

Usually I like to point out if the creator of whatever I’m posting is gay. In Gorey’s case it’s a little more awkward. In interviews Gorey would make assorted self-deprecatory remarks about his underpowered and inchoate sexuality. His art and personal interests are almost the epitome of a certain type of camp. And it is the perverse sense of sexual inexplicability and complementary artistic inclinations, high culture and pop (before there even was a fetishising of pop culture) which underlies the few negative reviews he has received over the years, and likewise is the base of much of his appeal to a worshipful fan base. His personal artistic acquaintances are almost all drawn from a certain type of New York gay intellectual. Indeed the circles he moved in can be traced in a book like “The Crimson Letter: Harvard, Homosexuality, and the Shaping of American Culture” by Douglass Shand (if only to demonstrate that a tradition of overeducated aesthetic university pooves isn’t solely the province of Oxbridge nancy-types). If you like Gorey then you’ll probably want to track down his friend Frank O’Hara’s book of little plays, “Amorous Nightmares of Delay”. And if you’ve heard ever Gorey speak, then he’s undoubtedly possessed of what I always think of as the authentic voice of the Classic American Homo. I’m in no way prepared to speak for what the man did with his genitals, and neither should you. But gossip is fun, isn’t it? Actually, rereading the Searle/Gorer piece, doesn’t some of that sound rather descriptive of the balletomane Gorey to you?

285: More Gay Espionage 3 - James Bond

“The Spy Who Minced in from the Cold”
by Stanley Reynolds in “Punch” 30 July 1975

CHAPTER 1: Mince for Breakfast
'There’s the hell of a flap on," Miss Moneypenny said as Bond walked into M's office early that morning. "He's in a terrible tizz, I'll tell you."
Bond had been day-dreaming about his weekend in Paris with Jean-Paul from F Station and the evenings he had spent at Fouquet's drinking Americanos-Campari, Cinzano, a large slice of lemon peel and soda; always Bond stipulated Perrier - and the luncheons at the Cafe de la Paix where he always had luncheon in Paris when he wasn't having luncheon at the Rotunde or the Dome where the food was good enough and it was amusing to watch the people but they were not like Vefour, the Caneton, Lucas-Carton or the Cochon d'Or which were great restaurants without the tarnish of tourism of the Tour d'Argent or Maxims.
Paris and Jean-Paul had been fun. Bond was almost sorry Jean-Paul had turned out to be a double agent working for S.M.E.R.S.H. But then Bond had had the pleasure of strangling Jean-Paul with his own piano wire in a wood in the little village of Fourquex, just outside St Germain, on the N184 near the junction of the N307 to St Nom and the D98 which Bond always took to avoid the heavy traffic on the Paris-Nantes and Versailles autoroutes. Then there had been that incredible chase down the glistening ice mouth of the Gloria Express bob-run on a one-man skeleton bob with nothing to eat during all that Alpine chase but a foot of garlic sausage, a hunk of bread and a bottle of Pis-de-Chat - when up in the restaurant on the Zugspitze Emile would be doing his Krebsschwanze mit Dilltunke, crayfish tails with rice and a cream and dill sauce.
Now it was M who was doing his nut.
"Take a pew, luv," M said. M winced.
"Oh this job!" he said. "Sometimes I wish I were back in Austin Reed's. Honestly I do. Russell Harty wanted me on his show but I told him, 'It's the anonymity, dear, it must be preserved at all costs.' How was Paris? Hell, I suppose, in August. But at least, James, you have the fun of meeting those great big meaty boys from S.M.E.R.S.H. All those Slavonic cheekbones. Sheer Heaven! I was telling Mick the other day. . . but sometimes I don't think Mick really understands. I mean, not really. But what can you expect from someone like Mick? A dear boy but she was seconded from Special Branch. Trench coats galore! James, you'll never know the trouble I've had with her and her trench coats. 'There's more to spying, dear,' I told her, 'than looking like some grotty old man after a bit of rough outside the Sloan Square tube station gents,' I said, I did."
Suddenly M's manner changed. He tossed a report across the desk to Bond. "I suppose you've heard of this scandal A. J. P: Taylor has kicked up. Well, just between you, me and the Number 11 bus, ducks, Her Majesty's Secret Service has been dropped right in it. It's not that the Minister minds. He's a positive sweetie. So long as you keep her off the creme d'menthe. But these gruesome crewcuts over at the C.I.A. are getting more sweaty-palmed than usual about security. I had, if you'll excuse the expression, Lamont T. Knockwurst Junior in here yesterday telling me his boys are positively reluctant to liaise with the Firm ever since Taylor did the naughty on us. I mean, it's just too butch for words but you know what the crewcuts are like, all six packs of lager and Penthouse."
"Crash dive?" Bond asked, using the phrase the Firm had borrowed from the boys in the Submarine Service to mean bad news-or worse.
"Oh, crash crash crash!" cried M, waving his hands in despair.

CHAPTER 2: Fanny's Devine
BOND sat toying with a Rehrilcken mit Sahne and an Imperial Tokay. No matter what Richard Boston might say about the demise of real beer and the octopus tentacles of the brewery conglomerate with their plastic pint pots, Bond thought, there's a lot of life yet in your old British pub. But Bond's heart was, not in his
Rehrticken mit Sahne. His heart was in his Tricker's boots; 9½ triple A, made from the special last run up for him by a little Hungarian around the corner who also did a jim dandy boeuf Stroganoff every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Cleaved in twain by a buzz saw he had almost been by that Beastly Dr No, buried in sand up to his Egyptian cotton collar and breathed upon by S.M.E.R.S.H. men with borscht on their breaths - these exploits were mere bagatelles to the fate that awaited him now in the form of Miss Fanny Devine of Shaker Heights, Ohio, and the C.I.A.
M had arranged a piece of liaison work between the Firm and the C.I.A., putting Bond alongside the nubile and svelte Miss Fanny Devine, the Madame Bovary of the C.I.A., in the hope of dispelling Washington DC's fears of limp wrists in the old Firm with a masculine display of the old...
Bond recognised her immediately by the long golden hair, silk to the roots, the big wrap-a-round Mary Tyler Moore smile, and the tank top T-shirt with the words C.I.A. RULES NO MESS O.K.? emblazoned across Miss Fanny Devine's twin bows.
"Hi!" she said, coming to Bond's table. "You jus' gotta be Jimmy Bond. I'm Fanny Devine. Hey, you gonna spy with me, huh? Great! Say, what's that guk you're eatin'? Looks like saddle of roebuck with a smitane sauce or I never read Fanny Farmer's Boston Cookbook. Hey, you some kind of a food freak? You into that gourmet jazz? Kinda fifties that trip, know what I mean? Do they do a peanut butter 'n' lettuce sandwich here?"
Bond felt a distinct rising of the gorge.
"Actually," Fanny said, "I packed some jelly sandwiches before I skyed in from D.C. this ayem." She produced this noxious fare. Bond's gorge rose. M! M! M! he thought, how could you do this to me? Can you still be jealous that I stole that 19-year-old Corcian with the eyes black as beluga away from you? Bond ordered a martini and. . . shook it.

CHAPTER 3: AC From DC -With Jelly
BOND wondered if he wouldn't have been better off staying in men's wear at Austin Reed's.
He put an arm gingerly round Fanny Devine's neck and puller her close to him and kissed her long and passionately, trying to think of pleasant things like firing a hot Walther into M's face or thoughts of Hans, who had had the antique shop near the Nymphreburg Palace, and how awful he (Bond) had felt when he had to get Hans with a poison Weisswurst in the Franziskaner Keller that night drinking Steinhager when he learned Hans was from S.M.E.R.S.H. and actually had a wife, three kids, a dog, and a turret lathe in a shed in the back garden of his semi-detached in No 10 the Vier Jahreszeiten.
Bond could feel Fanny Devine's breath coming in hot pants, pre-shrunk blue denim with fashionably ragged edges, £7.99 at better boutiques everywhere. Bond knew what the Firm expected of him. This was. . . Crash Dive!
Trembling he felt for those twin orbs so like the real honey dews you could only get at Kristato's round the corner from the Excelsio bar where they served a Negroni with Gordon's, which was the only way to serve it. Bond felt a stinging slap and opened his eyes. To his amazement Fanny Devine's eyes blazed with fury.
"Fresh guy!" she spat angrily. "Men! men! men! they are all the same, after one thing 'n' one thing only. An' we thought you wuz all different over here in London, England."
Bond dared not hope. "You mean ?"
"That's right. I'm Woman's Lib 'n' th' only true liberation for us gals is to make a complete break 'n' rupture with a male orientated 'n' masculine structured society. "
"Fanny, you mean you are. . ."
"Yes, gowan 'n' laff. I'm gay. Or tryin' to be. It's kinda hard for a normal average girl from Shaker Heights but I have taken my cue from the leaders of Woman's Lib 'n' have shaken off the grubby gropin' paws of men, men, men - all except Dads 'n' President Ford of course." Fanny rose and saluted then sat again.
Bond was thunderstruck.
"As soon as I finish my current tour of duty," Miss Devine said, "I'm goin' back to Bennington to get my Ph.D in modern free association dance 'n' I'm comin' outta th' closet, yes siree bob, I am. But until then mum is th' word, schlepp. Unnerstan'?'
Bond felt Fanny Devine, munching a jelly sandwich, which he had prepared himself, sipping a frosty bottle of 7-Up, and he returned to M where he found his chief busily dressing for the Liza Minelli Look Alike Contest scheduled for that evening at the Bosun's Mate.
"Well?" snapped M eagerly.
"Do I ever miss?" Bond replied, a secret smile playing about the corners of his lips, for M's seams were crooked.
"Not that, ducks," M said. "I mean this rhinestone choker.. Do you think it's too tacky? Mick thinks so but I said, 'Listen, cheri, is tat the essence of Liza or is tat the essence of Liza?' He's turned nasty ever since I got honourable mention in the Julie Christie Look Alike last April. 'Dear boy,' I said, 'what's the use of being a spy if you can't get yourself disguised when duty calls?' "
Bond tossed his report on the desk and headed for the door.
"So you squared us on that Taylor rumour? That was peachy of you, ducks,"
M said. "The Firm won't forget. Beyond the call, and all that. But tell me, James," M's voice dropped into a serious key, "how. . . was. . . it?"
"Not too bad," 007 replied, "but nothing like the real thing."
"Well, toujour gay, duckie," M said, "see you at the Bosun's Mate and if you wear a rhinestone choker too, I'll take away your licence to kill, honestly I will."

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

This follows Alan Coren’s lead in “Punch”. Coren’s comedy homosexuals are bitchy and only concerned about fashion. This is written in response to public comments made by the historian A.J.P Taylor that British intelligence was riddled with homosexuals. Despite being a James Bond parody, the title is a parody of le Carre’s “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold”. Unlike Cyril Connolly’s “Bond Strikes Camp” parody, the campness here is immediate and up-front. Never having read one, I don’t know how this compares to “The Man from C.A.M.P.” books, although those were written in the late 1960s for a gay audience. If I didn’t know that this had been written for “Punch” but instead thought it had appeared in “Christopher Street” or “Jeremy”, early gay magazines, how would I feel about it then? Since the gay dialogue is overplayed, and M as a drag queen is going it a bit far, I think I’d conclude it wasn’t intended as a funny parody featuring homosexuals, but that it was being funny about an idea of homosexuals. The parodying of homosexual attitudes, not of Bond as gay, is the joke. In the same way that “toujours gai” becomes “toujours gay”. Unlike Connolly, here the gays have to play straight, rather than straights as gay. As in Connolly’s piece, all the concern in Fleming’s novels about connoisseurship and international travel does transfer easily into a gay lifestyle. The “Liza” stuff ties its to its time. While the Lesbian conscious-raising is not entirely wrong in general, but certainly isn’t quite right in its specifics. Of course, lesbians aren’t unknown in Bond, so it maybe Reynold’s attempt to subvert the kinky lesbians of Bond-world with the more earnest politicised lesbians who were making themselves known.

284: More Gay Espionage 2

by Mahood in “Punch” 21 May 1975
From “A Paler Shade of Pink: Lefties in the Civil Service”

The only gay-themed entry in a sequence of cartoons about the influence of left wing politics in UK bureaucracy. You’ll notice it runs a variation on the same “Reds under the Bed” slogan as the “Burkiss Way” piece. This particular cartoon is inspired by 1975 publication of John Vassall’s “Vassall: The Autobiography of a Spy”. Not a hint in the cartoon that the two characters are that way inclined though, either gossiping or passing on a warning, which seems like a trick missed. Just makes a connection between homosexuality and communism through a rapidly dating pun.

283: More Gay Espionage

(Academia and espionage make strange bedfellows. But of course so did Oscar Wilde. And the spirit of Wilde would seem to have been one of the guiding influences during those heady, seamy years of varsity shortly before the last war - years when, as we are now only too aware, the enemy began to infiltrate British seats of learning in a most literal manner. ERIC PODE OF CROYDON takes a look back at what went wrong in our failure to counter the Soviet thrust.)

“Beds Under the Reds”

(Academia and espionage make strange bedfellows. But of course so did Oscar Wilde. And the spirit of Wilde would seem to have been one of the guiding influences during those heady, seamy years of varsity shortly before the last war - years when, as we are now only too aware, the enemy began to infiltrate British seats of learning in a most literal manner. ERIC PODE OF CROYDON takes a look back at what went wrong in our failure to counter the Soviet thrust.)


Quentin “Whoopsy” Rampton: Rugby and showers afterwards. Descended from a long line of sailors, usually on Sunday afternoons. Was the first man to reduce dandruff to its present size. His plan to introduce homosexuality as a safe contraceptive for men never caught on.

Quentin "Whoopsy" Rampton recalls those early carefree days spent punting and picknicking by the Cam with wistful nostalgia: "They were undoubtedly the happiest days of one's life. The very idea, though, that Vladimirovich Sovietspy- or Jerry as he become known to me - might be a Russian was at the time unthinkable. He was so frightfully charming . . . gave me lifts to college in his tank, let me try on his fur hat at weekends, that sort of thing."
But beneath the surface a deadly game was being played. In 1934 Sovietspy met William Celery Purse, a second-year embroidery student and the son of three high-ranking brigadiers: auspicious military connections which were strengthened further by an uncle in the navy, Rear Admirer Sir Horatio Purse. After a deep personal relationship lasting close on seven and a half minutes Sovietspy claimed he had photos of Purse winning medals at ice-skating. For Purse, this was the end. His reputation in tatters, he was forced to tell all he knew about British Intelligence.
Again, Rampton claims he had still not begun to suspect. "How was one to know? He was such a frail, sensitive man. He used to catch potato blight from packets of crisps. No, I would never have believed him capable of such outrages."
I put it to Dr Rampton that he was arguably the most outrageous old fairy in the history of Creation.
"Well, yes."
As a leading poove of that period, therefore, what leaks did he know about?
"Well of course we all knew that Guy Rogerson was handing the Russians the Red Army... who until that time were working on the bacon counter at Sainsbury's. And we later discovered that Jocelyn Beddowes was secretly passing them East Germany. He used to smuggle it over a lump at a time inside copies of Bertrand Russell."
Shocking revelations indeed. And were there any others, who even to this day have not yet been exposed?
"Well there was one other colleague who was working as an agent - I believe he entered journalism and became an editor. His name was

---------------------------
from “Best-seller! : The Life and Death of Eric Pode of Croydon” by Andrew Marshall and David Renwick (1981)

A parody newspaper article from a book collecting many of the best sketches from the late 1970s radio comedy programme “The Burkiss Way”. The programme was a blend of pinpoint accurate media parodies, surrealism and self-referential metafictional conceits, and expertly deployed hoary old gags. Eric Pode of Croydon was a recurring, ghastly, incompetent character, and it is his exploits on which the book is hung. “The Burkiss Way” is regularly repeated on Radio 7 in the UK and well worth a listen.

Anyway, here it’s a parody of the fellow-travelling 1930s and Oxbridge educated gay spies. I don’t think it would disgrace Woody Allen in the pages of the New Yorker, with its sex jokes, and forays into silliness. The sudden ending is a deliberate joke, not a scanning error. I think it captures the various ways that the public thinks that upper-class university types have of indulging homoeroticism, which would only be confirmed by the production of “Brideshead Revisited” a year or two later. The picture they use for Rampton is of W.H.Auden. Who was gay, Oxbridge educated, knocking about in the 1930s, of fellow-travelling lefty inclinations, and even a friend of Burgess and Maclean. “Whoopsy” captures nicely those university-type nicknames, while being blatant about homosexuality. Obligatory mention of Wilde? Check. The ice skater might seem a deliberately silly interjection, but probably refers to John Curry, the 1976 British Olympic skating champion, who had been outed about the time of his victory.

282: Anthony Blunt 3

At the beginning of November 1979 Anthony Boyle published “The Climate of Treason”. The book could not explicitly refer to Blunt, but it still raised suspicions that Anthony Blunt was the Fourth Man. That Blunt employed a lawyer to demand that the copy be vetted for any possible references was a disastrous action since it only drew further attention and at last gave reasonable grounds for journalists to make public comment. On 15 November 1979 the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, prompted by questions from a Labour MP, confirmed in the House of Commons that Blunt had been an agent and talent spotter for Russian intelligence. Immediately Buckingham Palace, where Blunt in his capacity as a respected art historian had been employed as personal advisor on art, announced that Blunt’s knighthood was cancelled and annulled. On 20 November 1979 Anthony Blunt gave a wholly unexpected interview to “The Times”, so providing his personal account. Thus the sudden if slightly belated interest in homosexual matters that results in everything below. Comment about commie queers prior to Blunt’s statements might have been a tad libellous. Blunt was rightly vilified across the press, although in the abuse heaped on him there may be some undigested elements of class hatred and homophobia. So what follows is a test of ingenuity as cartoonists and humorists vie for as many ways as possible to spin gags out of the idea that gay = spy


Mac in “Daily Mail”, 19 November 1979

So first off it’s a Russian boyfriend. For an aging civil servant, as Blunt was. Possibly some aspect of the idea we’ve seen before that the civil service is packed with ‘em, that the high-end of the bureaucracy is a veritable boy’s club for well-educated pooves. Although the humour lies in that it’s a phone call from a lover at the most inopportune moment.


Bill Caldwell in “Daily Star”, 20 November 1979

Then it’s a subversion of the previous macho spy stereotype of James Bond. Which we’ve seen Cyril Connolly do already fifteen years earlier. Besides a “Punch” parody from the mid-1970s when someone or other said the intelligence service was stuffed full of homosexuals: “The Spy Who Minced In”, it wa.


JAK in “Evening Standard”, 20 November 1979

As we’ve seen before, when homosexuality is the problem then Jak can be relied upon to turn the situation on its head, replacing the institutionalised homosexual – vicar, sailor, or whatever, with some definite instance of heterosexuality.


Cover to “Private Eye”, 23 November 1979

Can’t you see? Are you blind? It’s a pun – queen, her royal majesty, and queen, homosexual.


Michael Heath in “Private Eye”, 23 November 1979



Michael Heath in “Spectator”, 24 November 1979


Michael Heath in “Spectator”, 19 January 1980

This is Michael Heath’s regular trick of blanket assumptions of equivalency. Both of these assume that anything gay is therefore automatically associated with spying.



Mahood, in “Punch”, 28 November 1979

Assorted suggestive pictures to append speech bubbles to. You’ll notice that two men together in a semi-intimate setting could be either spies conspiring to pass confidential information or else a homosexual clinch. The phrase “fellow traveller” was used to describe the Communist sympathisers who sprang up in England in the 1930s


from “Punch”, 19 December 1979
a spoof article about the events of the 1980s
speech bubble reads “Shut that file!” – a play on Grayson’s catchphrase “Shut that door”.

It was sheer coincidence, but both Larry Grayson, the well-known camp British entertainer and Blunt had the same horse-faced mien. So here the writers employ Grayson’s camp, luvvie tones to retrospectively interpret the scandal of the previous weeks. So some of it is an attack on Grayson’s persona, his behaviour on TV, his treatment of his guests and his limp wrists. There’s also a slight denigration to Blunt in suggesting Grayson was the ideal man to play him. It’s the acceptable face of homosexuality, without hinting at any bedroom shenanigans.




The first 1979 series of “Not the Nine O’Clock News” had a sketch about the Communists and Western forces trading spies at a checkpoint. After the exchange, the camera follows the Russian spymaster leading his English double agent back to Russia. The English spy thanks his spymaster (Mel Smith), and enquires what work he will get in Mother Russia. The spymaster says “Don’t be foolish. No boyfriend of mine works”. So it’s back to the same assumption that any spy must be gay.

281: The Beatles - John Hughes / Eric Idle

“National Lampoon” October 1977
Written by John Hughes
Art by Ernie Chan

Well, this is rather “qu’est-ce que fuck?”
From an issue of “National Lampoon” devoted to the Beatles.
By the later 70s the history of the Beatles had been worked over, and reworked over, and turned over yet again, so that every tittle of fact relating to their careers had been brought to light. This also included Brian Epstein’s homosexuality, which gets worked into the grand unifying history.
Eric Idle’s “The Rutles” (1978) has a piece which also plays on the idea that Epstein (Leggy Mountbatten in the alternative fantasy world of “The Rutles”) was not wholly attracted to the Beatles’ simply because of their musical talents.

Mrs. Mountbatten: "Leggy told me he'd been to see these young men in a dark cellar. He was always very interested in young men-- youth clubs, boy scouts , that sort of thing. But these he said were different."
Brian Fowl: "In what way?"
Mrs. Mountbatten: "Well, their hair, their music, their presence.
Brian Fowl: He liked it?.
Mrs. Mountbatten: "No, he hated it.
Brian Fowl: What did he like?
Mrs. Mountbatten: "Well......their trousers.
Brian Fowl: What about their trousers?
Mrs. Mountbatten: "Well they were very.......tight.
Brian Fowl: Tight?
Mrs. Mountbatten: "Yes, you could see quite clearly. . .
Brian Fowl: Oh I see.
Mrs. Mountbatten: "Everything. Outlines. The lot.
Brian Fowl: Oh. Yes thank you.
Mrs. Mountbatten: "Clear as day.
Brian Fowl: Thank you very much.
Mrs. Mountbatten: "Nothing left to the imagination.
Brian Fowl: Yes thank you very much indeed, Mrs. Mountbatten.
Mrs. Mountbatten: "Not at all.

It doesn’t spell everything out. Coy is maybe even the word. But it’s evident, in an Alan Bennettish sort of a way.

Quite what the fuck Hughes is after is rather more up for grabs. But then everything’s up for grabs in this comic parody, as long as it’s offensive. It’s one thing to offer stereotypes of predatory homosexuals, its then rather working the odds in your favour to write other characters abusing them for that homosexuality. There’s also a little racism and anti-Semitism , from a supposed Nazi to boot. And even if you like the Beatles Hughes is offensive about them too, beside suggesting they might have murdered this fictional Epstein. And that’s beside the incidentals of evisceration and rape, which don't normally make for comedy. A rather "Deliverance" style gay anxiety there. At best you can say this piece is the comedic equivalent of somebody deliberately working themselves up to vomit in their host’s face. The plot makes no sense, and what sensibilities Hughes thinks he is offending for laughs is unclear either. I suppose he’s offending my sensibilities. The unpleasantness about homosexuals, but then I’m offended even more by the fact that it’s just a stinking pile of shit. The only thing I can compare it to is the Nazi atrocity “Meng and Ecker” comics brought out by Savoy Books.

Honestly, for all the talk of the last few days that’s cropped up about the absence of gay characters in Hughes movies, homosexuals and gay Hughes fans in particular are better off for it. If Hughes had featured any they would almost certainly have been of a piece with The Donger.

The casual throwing around of “fag” and “homo” is par for high school life. So when Hughes characters do the same, it’s just verisimilitude for the audience, and I don’t blame Hughes. It’s when you see the stuff he wrote for the “National Lampoon” in the late 70s that you realise what a lucky escape gay fans had. Between the two of them Hughes and P.J.O’Rourke filled dozens of pages of every issue, and you can see them staking their territory of conventional, middle America, it’s styles, mores and prejudices. Indeed quite a few bits in Hughes films started off in the “National Lampoon”.

But when Hughes wrote about fags and homos for NL, it was the same deliberate lack of concern that he wrote about funny foreigners. That’s not to suggest that Hughes was some rampant homophobe, but I don’t think that the man who wrote those sort of “screw you” style pieces was the man who was going to write an accepting study of gay teenage life. At best his pieces are animated by slight irritation at homosexuals and finds their encroaching lifestyles a little amusing (like “Private Eye” at the same period). At worst it’s a torrent of bizarre offence such as the above.

280: Anthony Blunt 2

in “Private Eye” 24 June 1977

At one point the “The Times” thought it had a scoop. There was a rumour that the “Fourth Man” was an academic, whose last name was five letters beginning with “B”. They managed to get it completely wrong, though, and ran with a front page story accusing one Donald Beves, a man who had died in 1961. Which was lucky, as it turned out, because you can’t libel the dead.

It was big story, as you might imagine. And lots of Establishment figures wrote to “The Times”, rightly defending their maligned colleague. It was a campaign led by George “Dadie” Rylands (hence the letter), fellow of Kings College (easily turned in “Queens” for comic effect). Rylands’s homosexuality wasn’t exactly a closed secret anyway, which I think is obvious in the letter. E.M. Forster is a perfectly suitable comic replacement as another dead, gay Cambridge academic. Onan is a pun on Lord Annan, an academic of the time. And of course, Beves becomes Poovis. So the piece plays about with assumptions of a certain type of bachelor, whose inclinations could as easily take him to homosexuality or spying as makes no difference. But really it’s about giving a damn good kicking to the editor of the Times, William Rees-Mogg.


in “Private Eye”, 8 July 1977

And of course, Rees-Mogg had to back down and apologise. So here the “Private Eye” writers are mocking him for apologising for his mistake. Great when you can have it both ways.
“The Rt. Rev” is because Mogg had a tendency to adopt a certain church-going sanctity to himself in his claims of editorial propriety and vision for the newspaper. As usual, these sort of pieces are all about blurring and confusing of facts. “Lord Bradwell” (Tom Driberg) was indeed a roaring old poof, and had been outed by the Times as such in their obituary of him. Gradually it rattles through a whole series of associations, until it reaches its conclusion which is a complete unapology, and another reference to EM Forster’s homosexuality again, confirming yet again the Time’s inability to gets it stories straight.

279: Anthony Blunt 1

One of the great journalistic hunts of the 1960s and 70s was to find the legendary “Fourth man”. The spies Burgess and Maclean had defected to Russia in the 1950s, then Kim Philby followed them in 1963. Everyone suspected there was a “fourth man” who had been assisting them in passing information and providing other support. This spy ring was confirmed by intelligence from Russian spies. But who was the “fourth man”? As it turned out, his identity had been known by a select Establishment few by the early 1950s, but it had been covered up. There were assorted eruptions of interest over the years. But almost all of them were tinged by the suspicion that homosexuality would be one of the clues. As it turned out, this wasn’t an erroneous assumption. Following the Vassall affair, there was now a strong connection in the public imagination between treacherous spies and homosexuality. It’s all the same kind of duplicitous behaviour by chaps trying to pass as something they’re not, donchaknow.


in “Private Eye”
29 May 1964
A nicely thought out play on bugging and buggery playing on ambivalence and Establishment stupidity. I suspect that Peter Cook may have some input in a few of the jokes. Don’t forget to read the titles of the books in Willie Rushton’s illustration.