March 11th - March 16th 2002
Sunday Exposed
Saturday This close
Friday No shit, Shylock
Thursday Seriously fjörd
Wednesday Soft as silk
Tuesday Kissing the pink
Monday Post-will
Sunday 17th March 2002
"Picking up strangers for sex in public.. cruising swim pools for conquests.. gay saunas and unprotected acts with Aids victims."
Yes indeed, the Big Gay Tabloid revelations just keep on coming.
This week, it's not the News of the World, it's the Sunday People. And no, sorry, not pop idol Will Young but "Scotland Yard's gay top cop" Commander Brian Paddick.
Paddick - Britain's most senior 'out' gay policeman - has been in and out of the headlines more or less since the beginning of his posting to Lambeth, where he outraged the self-appointed guardians of public morality by instructing his force to ignore minor drug prosecutions and concentrate their limited attention on more pressing matters like burglary, rape and the possession of big shiny guns.
Paddick further inflamed the Ignorant and the Stupid by going semi-public on an interwebnet chat-room, where he murmured about being somewhat "attracted to" anarchy - a perfectly respectable political movement which, needless to say, the Ignorant and the Stupid associate largely with poll-tax riots and wild-eyed derelicts with unlaundered clothing and dogs on strings.
"But now his dumped gay 'husband' has exposed the wild behaviour that Paddick conceals behind the respectable image of a Metropolitan Police Commander."
In the front page story in today's Sunday People Paddick's 36 year old ex-lover James Renolleau (variously described as a "French male model" and "a tour guide at Westminster Abbey", you choose) confirms that Paddick has not only been frank about being a gay man but has - shock! horror! - also been behaving like a gay man, inasmuch as he:
"CRUISED gay saunas and swimming pools for sex with strangers.
"ROMPED with Renolleau on a public beach while sunbathing.
"PICKED up men and had sex under Brighton Pier and in bushes.
"PANICKED that he had contracted AIDS after unprotected sex with an HIV positive stranger.
"WENT THROUGH a gay wedding ceremony with Renolleau in which they exchanged wedding rings."
The story continues (at considerable length) to scream and rant about other "revelations" unveiled by his ex's extended public hissy-fit - all of which, you might think, simply serve to confirm Paddick's almost sterotypical gay identity. It appears that Paddick:
- gave Renolleau his phone number when they first met in "a central London bar called Brief Encounters" (oh the horror!) and slept with him three days later,
- bought £600 suits (shock!) and rolled up significant debts despite eventually earning £93k a year
- took Renolleau to Heaven and G.A.Y. before they broke up, then shagged somone without a condom and worried himself sick about it.
Renolleau is quoted as saying: "It's his character to do stupid things and I told him."
What does not appear to have occurred to the embittered model-cum-tour-guide is that the two most stupid things Paddick ever seems to have done are:
TAKEN his phone number in the first place, and
TRUSTED him to keep schtum about it afterwards.
Saturday 16th March 2002
Me: "Do you by any chance work in the music industry?"
She: "Yes I do. How did you know?"
Me: "Oh, just some intuition based on the fact that for the entire length of this performance you've been busy either checking for text messages or talking loudly to your friends."
No, I didn't say it. But I came this close.
Friday 15th March 2002
Greater minds than mine will have, and will be entitled to, their own opinions about the sky-scratching Tribute in Light unveiled in New York this week. Here are some of my first impressions:
- It reminds me first of the buildings, and only then of the people that died in them.
- Unlike most memorials there are no names displayed. Indeed, no writing.
- The scale, the effect, the technology, the media-affect: as with the event that it commemorates, one's first instinct is (ironically) to think of Hollywood.
- Americans will perhaps be most reminded of the searchlights that rake the skies outside movie premieres. For Europeans of a certain age, reared on war-time bombing runs, it resembles (ironically) nothing so much as an anti-aircraft installation.
- If there is sentiment here, it is difficult to read. It's certainly not the usual stuff of memorials, no 'they died so that we might live.' The message is angrier than that: we are a nation that can, and will, rebuild its shattered skyscrapers with the flick of a switch.
But never mind my views: read what the man who designed it has to say.
No shit Sherlock:
"Young men are just as likely as women to be 'bitchy' gossips and to ignore former friends, a study into aggression has shown."
"Mr Brown said that banks... maintained a structure of charges that were 'not related to costs' failed to tell customers about potential benefits and made it hard for firms to compare deals offered by other banks."
"As bin Laden had several wives, she said he would visit them in rotation and she saw him once a week. 'Each wife lived in her own house. There were two wives in Kandahar, one in Kabul and the fourth in the Tora Bora mountains.' But later the visits became less frequent. 'During the last period, he was constantly worried and looked tired and exhausted.'"
"The controversial English National Opera production of Verdi's A Masked Ball, complete with homosexual rape and members of the chorus sitting on a row of lavatories, has alienated the traditional opera-going public, the company admitted yesterday. The homosexual rape scene in A Masked Ball is not in Verdi's original."
I've updated my gay London pages with the dates for this summer's festival dates:
Purple in the Park: Saturday June 1st 2002
Mardi Gras: Saturday July 6th 2002
Brighton Pride:Saturday August 10th 2002
Thursday 14th March 2002
"The vast majority are social drinkers who indulge in moderation and only when they are with others - but never before lunch - and prefer their alcohol to be diluted with fruit juice.
"Fifteen per cent drink regularly and heavily and prefer their alcohol neat or diluted with water. The same proportion drink little or no alcohol.
"Five per cent are classed as 'seriously abusive binge drinkers'. They get drunk, start fights and consume as much as they can until passing out."
No, not what you think; it's the result of an experiment involving 1,000 green vervet monkeys.
"Prof Ervin said: 'The parallels between the vervets' behaviour and human behaviour are striking. A cageful of drunken monkeys is like a cocktail party. You have one who gets aggressive, one who gets sexy, one who thinks everything's funny and one who gets really grumpy.
"'The binge drinkers gulp down the alcohol at a very fast rate and pass out on the floor. The next day they do it all over again.'"
(Draw your own conclusions from the fact that when I first read the story I thought it featured green velvet monkeys.)
Considerable dark laughter at work when we chose to hear reports of Scandinavians finding flaws in the electoral process in Zimbabwe as "Norwegian observers described the election as 'seriously fjörd'".
A: "This story about the man who raped the goat..."
B: "Excuse me, how do you know it was rape?"
Wednesday 13th March 2002
"Dr Joe Rosen, who works at the acclaimed Dartmouth Medical Centre, and has been a scientific advisor to Nasa, says: 'Human wings will be here. Mark my words.' He believes in all seriousness that within five years he will be able to graft wings on to a human being's body.
"Surgical techniques already in existence can be used to stretch torso fat and rejig rib bones to create a wing. Although no human would be able to fly, they would resemble angels and have full sensation in their new hanging, boned flaps of flesh. Rosen has designed blueprints."
Special offer for heirs to the throne: free ear-job with each wing.
17 JULY 17th. Arr. Dublin 6 a.m. In Phoenix Park after dinner at Zoo. Fine type. Stiff.
JULY 28th.
Hotel. £1.0/-. Splendid testemunhos - soft as silk and big and full of life - no bush to speak of. Good wine needs no bush. Very fine one, big, long, thick - wants awfully and likes very much.
JULY 29th. Hotel £1.0/-. Carlos Augusta Costa £1.10/-. Total £2.10/-. Last time Carlos 9 to 11. Huge Extension.
AUGUST 11th. Huge Caboclo thin 40 years. Antonio & Francisco out at Charcoal. Policeman at station.... No type - but at 12.30 Darkie policeman 'en paisana' - enormous = $5.
SEPTEMBER 9th. One half-white muchacho, magnificent display, and a young Cholo with erection as he carried heavy box. Down left leg about 6-8". They are far too good for their fate.
Sir Roger Casement's Black Diaries - circulated privately by British intelligence and widely credited with sending him to the gallows - turn out to be genuine after all.
Gay British bloggers, beware.
Got ten hours sleep for the first time in ages last night, hooray. Left my machine connected to the net for all ten of them (including six hours at peak dial-up rate), boo.
Tuesday 12th March 2002
Entirely unrelated to the previous entry, ahem, we bring you yesterday's picture of Helen Mirren - celebrating her Screen Actors Guild award for best supporting actress in Gosford Park.
(Note to self: must get that hepatitis jab.)
Naked under the duvet, reading the paper, idly running my free hand across my bare shoulders, something scratches.
Stroking again, something comes away on my finger.
Holding the loosened morsel up to the light, I find a tiny transparent pink plastic heart, no more than a couple of millimetres high.
And I wonder: where did that come from?
And think back. Oh. Sunday night...
As birthday greetings go, this is fairly robust:
"...awkward, cantankerous, cynical, bloody-minded, at times intrusive, at times inaccurate and at times deeply unfair..."
Yes, it's the chuckle-headed Chazter, his massive wings neatly folded beneath the broadcloth, celebrating Fleet Street's 300th anniversary.
"The Prince of Wales later visited the London Press Club.. and was photographed staring with bemusement at a News of the World front page about the Earl and Countess of Wessex giving up their jobs, headlined 'At Last'. The story was about 'Royal handouts'"
You think maybe he spotted the spelling mistakes?
Not just me that thought it was getting a bit crowded in here then.
Monday 11th March 2002
"He's devoted to his mother, loved appearing in musicals and, when asked his dream date, said he'd like to have tea with the Queen.
"Add in good manners and a gentle disposition and the news comes as less of a revelation than an explanation.
"What an admirable attitude. Who somebody chooses to go to bed with is entirely up to them and does nothing to compromise their skills as a singer, accountant or town planner.
"It's also of some salacious interest to lots of people, but not to everybody."
Pink Paper? Daily Express? No: no less than a leader in that traditional home of the homophobe The Daily Telegraph.
Nice quote from Pop Idol judge Simon Cowell, too: "To tell you the truth, I couldn't give a toss."
Meanwhile, in a (not-yet-online) story over at The Independent we find this quote:
"I think they... convinced themselves I had a former boyfriend. I didn't but I got calls from five Fleet Street editors who said they would top anyone else if I did have."
That's 'publicist' (for which, read 'scandal-broker') Max Clifford, with his own characteristic take on the Will Young story - he claims it was a pre-emptive response to a Fleet Street feeding frenzy fed by rumours about two other (totally unrelated) stories he was known to be touting.
He claims that Will's management heard that the Mail on Sunday had something saucy and started firing off solicitors' letters - which The Mail ignored, because they had no intention of outing Will.
Will's PR company, pressurised by this rising tide of tabloid speculation, persuaded Will that his best course of action was to out himself, cash in his number one hit, take the money and run - a strategy which has worked, to judge by the Telegraph piece, with startling success.
The Guardian apparently confines its Will coverage to a mere sentence in the nibs ('news in brief').
Elsewhere in the paper, blathering Julie Burchill dismisses 'the grinning monkey victor Will' whilst working herself into a warm wet frenzy over Gareth Gates:
"His voice is perfect - like an angel with a large collection of Westlife CDs.
"His looks are perfect - satin Latin skin, velvet brown eyes twice the size of those found on mere mortals, hair to launch a thousand gels and a mouth like the very physical embodiment of a kiss.
"His stammer is perfect - bringing to his already enchanted story echoes of Hans Christian Andersen's Little Mermaid, who could sing with heartbreaking beauty but could not speak until the kiss of true love transformed her."
Ick.
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