Reasons to be cheerful
30th Anniversary Retrospective: Bootboy carefully compiles his guest list for the ultimate pink party....
, 20 Jun 2007
They’ve ordered me to be cheerful this week. Put out the party streamers. Be Happy and Gay. Callou, Callay, Oh Happy Day. A three-line whip, no slouching, chin up, ass in, tits out, don’t let the side down. Celebrate 30 years. Don’t rain on the parade. Smile and wave, smile and wave.
Yes, but you’ll always find me in the kitchen at parties. And the party I’m being asked to host, the “let’s celebrate in a light-hearted way 30 years of fabulous gay, lesbian and transgendered people in popular culture” party, is not one I’d particularly like to attend, never mind host. But, let’s not poop. I hate to disappoint. In random order, off the top of my head, guests I’d like to see walking up the pink carpet of celebratory 30-years-of-queerdom to the party include:
• Our own Graham Norton, the 21st century’s answer to Terry Wogan. (Not that Terry was ever asked the question.) Despite his current inane TV persona, he is reported to be wickedly funny in real life. In Heat magazine recently, our cheeky chappy has said he finds it difficult to form relationships. “I seem to appeal to people who are bound to disappoint” he says. “In fairness, the people I do sleep with are better-looking than the people I slept with prior to becoming famous. But I think it’s to do with being rich as well.” When we were both 17, the young Norton (although he wasn’t called that then) and I appeared on a young people’s programme on RTÉ, Youngline. I was talking about being gay, he was put on the spot by a couple of punks and forced to declare he had no problems meeting girls in discos. I still have that tape...
• Little Brian Dowling, the first openly gay children’s TV show presenter. (Although, that’s not strictly true. The late Philip Tyler used to present Bosco. The parents of Ireland, however, may not have been aware that he was a regular presence on the gay scene in the early ‘80s. Indeed, in a Christmas sketch show at the Hirschfeld Centre, directed by the late lamented film-maker Kieran Hickey, under the pseudonym Cissy Caffrey, he sent me up rotten as a sort of Pollyanna-type scout leader, when I was running the gay youth group. But, I digress. This isn’t about me. Really.) Dowling’s wit, chutzpah and tenderness won him the second series of Big Brother, roundly defeating his steely-eyed Soho pink-pounder rival Josh “Josh’n’Pecs” Rafter. In an interview on his official website, the doe-eyed 29-year-old former self-styled trolley-dolly says he would love to have a child before he’s 40, he’s “quite maternal”. But he “would probably want to do it” on his own. He thinks that relationships are “all hard” and worries that if he got to the age of “say, 30 maybe” and was still single, he “might have a nervous breakdown.”
Page 1/3 <Previous 1 2 3 Next>
©Hot Press 2012. Why be a member? | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | About Us Jobs @ Hot Press