“Anyone had any dirty phone calls lately?” Apparently that’s what a lascivious John Gielgud would be asking if he were still alive. Since he’s dead as dead can be, I’ll ask instead: Anyone had any dirty phone calls lately? I haven’t.
A few days ago I picked up on the third or fourth ring and was greeted by heavy breathing that was ultimately revealed as the work of my grandfather, who sucks in air like Darth Vader over the phone (when he isn’t coughing and loudly repeating everything he’s told to my poor, disinterested grandmother). Was I disappointed? Perhaps, but only a little. You never know what obscene phone calls tomorrow might bring, and I’m always hoping for something that mirrors the famous “212 Fuck You” exchange from Serial Mom.
Anyway, writer Michael Thornton wants everyone to know that Gielgud was a dirty birdy (TM Misery) who liked younger men, didn’t practice monogamy (is that like practicing the clarinet—the longer you do it, the better you get?), and (presumably) whacked it to pictures of a nude Iggy Pop. And then told Judi Dench about it, perhaps.
Duncan James of the British band Blue has come out as bisexual (warning: the link will take you to a trashy UK tabloid website that will hurt your eyes and possibly your intellect). The best part of any pop idol coming out is always reading the comments his borderline-illiterate fans make online afterward (witness the reactions of Claymates to Clay Aiken coming out here), so let’s sample some of the reaction to his announcement:
“this news is brill!!!!”
“NO, NOT DUNCAN!!! I loved him, OMG! I was a huge fan! What i can say? It shouldn’t be this way. What is happening? I don’t think being Bi is a good thing….”
“no such thing as bisexual. you smoke a pipe – youre gay. end of!”*
“It was SO obvious!!!”
“Well as Duncan is always walking up and down Compton Street in London’s gay village, there was no shock to this news.”
“absolute filth. You should be locked up for putting women at risk from your dirty sordid antics. mind you, you would probably enjoy dropping the soap in the showers!!! disgusting human being”
“you seem like a top bloke mate that’s all that matters well done for being brave and talking about it good luck”
Overall, there were lots of “Duh!” responses, which makes a modicum of sense if you’re familiar with the hair and posture (more pictures here) of this particular boy bander. Honestly, I found the reactions to be disappointing, perhaps because Blue hasn’t been relevant for years. What I’d really like to happen in the near future, just to see if the Internet can withstand it, is for a current heartthrob with mass tween and teen appeal—a Daniel Radcliffe or Robert Pattinson—to come screaming out of the closet. If that could be timed for December, it would make for the greatest holiday season ever.
British reality TV star Jade Goody died this morning of cervical cancer, as almost everyone with a working Internet connection must know by now, and what does the ever-respectful Sun newspaper have to say about it? I didn’t read the body of the article, but I think you’ll agree that the headline speaks for itself: “Jade Goody loses cancer fight — Mum was a lesbian, Dad was a drug addict burglar who hid guns under her cot.”
It’s been a while since we last flipped through the pages of British tabloids (one can only stomach so many stories about little boys who might be fathers; and previously reviled cancer-stricken reality TV stars who are contemplating dying on camera), but today I saw a headline I couldn’t resist: “Gay City Roller.”
If you think you know where this is headed — that a member of the Bay City Rollers, a group I’m more familiar with as a punch line than as musicians (my middle-aged mom was more of a Carole King and Carly Simon girl in her youth) — has come out of the closet, you’re right. Sort of.
Singer Les McKeown, who fronted the band for most of the ’70s, admitted during an appearance on the British TV show Rehab (which is apparently similar to VH1’s Celebrity Rehab, a program I hope that none of you watch — there are much better things you could be doing with your time, and it wouldn’t kill you to read a book or take your dog for a walk or something) that he’s been shtupping guys throughout his lengthy marriage to a woman.
The revelation struck the Daily Mail as scandalous, but in reviewing the old photos of McKeown that accompany the article, I’m finding their shock a wee bit disingenuous. For a less tabloidy take on McKeown and his struggles with substance abuse, Scotland on Sunday has an interview with him that doesn’t feature any sidebar links to stories about Posh Spice or Kylie Minogue.
For anyone too lazy or disinterested to click the links, McKeown would like to stay married to his wife despite his interest in men, which is the only thing that prevented me from calling this post “Pop Star Everyone Thought Was Gay Shocks World By Revealing He’s Gay (And It’s Not Ricky Martin).” I mean, I may not be familiar with their music, but who hasn’t heard the “Gay City Rollers” jokes a million times by now?
As a parting bonus, here’s a 30-year-old picture of Les doing a somewhat drunken and dim-witted looking version of jazz hands.
“Just because a woman owns all eight seasons of Bad Girls…”
You can file this one under breaking news: Valerie Singelton, the beloved British TV and radio host, wants you to know she likes guys. A lot. She loves penis the way Mel Gibson hates Jews. She’s had affairs with men, lots of men, and that talk you heard about her having a relationship with Joan Armatrading thirty years ago? A bunch of bollocks. All she ever did was interview her, and though she doesn’t specify, it sounds like they had their clothes on the whole time and kept their hands to themselves.
Still, the rumor, which Singelton thought was so silly that it would eventually go away on its own, settled in like an unwelcome houseguest — like Monty Woolley in The Man Who Came to Dinner, if you will — making Valerie self-conscious to the point of public rudeness. As she tells The Daily Mail‘s Peter Robertson:
“Many years later, I was approached by Joan as I was leaving Broadcasting House after presenting PM. She said: ‘Hello Val, do you remember me? I’m Joan Armatrading.’
“I thought: ‘Oh my God, I can’t be seen talking to her in the middle of the BBC reception,’ so I rudely rushed past her shouting: ‘Sorry, but I can’t stop as I’m late for the theatre.’
“She must have thought me very abrupt. Apologies, Joan.”
Misconceptions about her sexuality, she claims, plagued her to the point that bartenders and receptionists she’d never met before just assumed she was a lesbian:
“Every single friend of mine has at some point had to deny the rumour. And, even when there’s a denial, you get reactions such as: ‘There’s no smoke without fire.’
“It really is rubbish. I’m very honest and if I were that way inclined I’d have said so.
“The truth is I have always been the complete opposite of gay.”
And just in case there is any lingering confusion about her sexuality following those remarks, Singelton proceeds to list men she’s found attractive (including “gorgeous older cousins”), men she’s made out with (including a young Albert Finney), and men she’s had relationships with (a married coworker and a TV broadcaster who later paid for her to have an abortion).
It must be a real pain in the ass to have everyone think you’re gay when you’re not. I know that from the time I was born it was just assumed I was heterosexual, and that got rather tedious after awhile. Coming out hardly seemed to help anything; it just resulted in classmates and relatives asking “Are you sure?”
“Are you sure?”, for the record, is what you ask when someone suggests doing something crazy, like seeing the new Tim Allen movie. It is not what you ask when someone tells you they’re gay. (We’re not always sure how to spend our movie-going dollars; more often than not, we’re sure what our genitals respond to.) And once you’re fully out of the closet, that thing, that having to declare yourself, never really goes away. You still meet new people almost every day who simply take it for granted that you’re heterosexual.
The only way to avoid having to constantly come out, I think, is to permanently wear a sandwich board that states, in bold letters, “I’m Gay,” and even then you’d have illiterates and people who left their glasses at home to deal with. But Valerie Singelton, she has access that most of us don’t. She can take to the pages of publications as noxious but compulsively readable as The Daily Mail to assure the public of her heterosexuality, even if the end result seems oddly Onion-esque.
Is this big daddy a dangerously overweight cat or the furry dwarf cousin of incorrigible comic and former Hollywood Squares personality Bruce Vilanch? View all the pics and then you make the call.
