Brits always add a Touch Of Class to Award Ceremonies

After the 'big yawn' of the latest around of Award Shows which were so predictable, totally unfunny (except for Chris Rock) and full of tedious speeches thanking  countless executives who none of us have ever heard off (and hardly care about) comes a perfect example of how to really accept an Award properly.

It's British (of course) and from 1994 when actor/comedian/playwright and something of a National Treasure, Spike Milligan was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the British Comedy Awards.  Milligan was best known for  being the co-creator, main writer and a principal cast member of The Goon Show the most successful radio show in the UK in the 1950's and in many ways a precursor to the Monty Python gang who also specialized in absurdist and eccentric British humor.

As Milligan accepted the Award he refused to thank anyone as he said he achieved it all on his own, and then Jonathan Ross the Presenter went on to read a special note of congratulations from a very important fan who couldn't attend the festivities.  Halfway through listening to all this praise being heaped on him, Milligan butted in and called the writer 'the little groveling bastard' which immediately brought the house down.   The letter had been written by none other than HRH The Prince of Wales, who we sure would have loved this response too.  (Milligan later faxed the prince, saying "I suppose a knighthood is out of the question now?")

Of course we Brits always know how to make people remember that we are real 'old-school' stars at Award Ceremonies, even when we may have had a little (!) too much to drink before we come on to the stage to announce the winner.  And who could possibly be annoyed with Elizabeth Taylor the very epitome of Hollywood Royalty when she got confused.  After all, as she reminded us, she was more used to winning Awards than handing them out to others.

Happy 70th Birthday Brenda Blethyn

                                                                                                                                                           Photo @Jack Barnes

No disrespect to Frances McDormand but in 1996 the Academy Award for Best Actress should have gone to Brenda Blethyn for her superlative performance as Cynthia Rose Purley the unforgettable, big-hearted cockney heroine in Mike Leigh's Secrets and Lies. She had already picked up the BAFTA, Golden Globe and Cannes Best Actress Award  for the role and in our eyes, the Oscar was hers for the taking.  It also marked the start of her becoming a treasured gay icon too. 

As this quintessential English Actress celebrates her 70th Birthday today, queerguru looks back at just five of our very favorite performances from this long career of this sheer genius of a woman who excels in these larger-than-life characters that always have a big heart. Such as her role as Mari Hoff in the movie adaption of Jim Cartwright's hit play Little Voice, which in 1998 earned Blethyn another Academy Award Nomination.

In 2000 Blethyn played a small-town widow in 'Saving Grace' facing financial difficulty when she is persuaded to go into agricultural and grow a very special 'crop' with very hilarious consequences.

In 2005 she played Mrs Bennett who takes to her bed with the vapors in 'Pride And Prejudice'. 

In the  2007 Australian movie 'Introducing The Dwights' Blethyn played a cafeteria worker by day who did stand up comedy by night, with yet another tour-de-force performance.

Happy 70th Birthday Brenda Blethyn.

Andrew Haigh Never Vague

Andrew Haigh is one the most inspired out-gay award-winning filmmakers of his generation, although back in 2009 his career got off to a shaky start with his first movie "Greek Pete". This documentary of a scrawny looking British rent boy who had the most uninteresting of lives was as about as erotic as a Sunday School Outing and one big yawn from start to finish. Who knew then that Haigh would re-emerge two years later with "Weekend" which became one of the definitive queer movies of the decade.

Next on his schedule was the HBO TV series "Looking" about three gay best friends who navigate life, relationships, family, and careers in modern-day San Francisco.  The series was hailed as been one of the most enlightened and relevant LGBT programs on TV,  with Haigh was its Executive Producer and also wrote and directed several episodes. Yet despite it's wild popularity HBO decided in its wisdom not to renew it for a third season, and allowed all the story strands to be tied up in one 2 Hour Special that Haigh has written and directed and that is due to be aired later this year.

For his third feature film "45 Years" Haigh has made yet another intimate drama, but unlike the previously two this time his subjects are neither young or gay. His story here centers on a retired middle-class couple leading a rather slow-paced idyllic life on the Norfolk Broads in England. Kate Mercer (Charlotte Rampling) and her husband Jeff (Tom Courtenay) are making plans to celebrate their 45th Wedding Anniversary at the end of the week. This most gentle of marital dramas between this quintessential English couple never ever wanes due mainly to the performances of the two superb veteran actors who add both such warmth and also pathos to their roles, and for Ms Rampling has garnered her a Best Actress Oscar Nomination.

With 45 Years still playing out in movie theaters, Haigh has announced that his 4th feature film will be a biopic on the legendary out-gay designer Alexander McQueen who so sadly took his own life six years ago aged just 40 years old. The movie will be scripted by Brit playwright Chris Urch  and produced by Damian Jones. 

McQueen had a meteoric rise to the top of the fashion industry and before becoming one of haute couture’s brightest stars, this  visionary was voted British Designer of the Year four times. It was evidently quite a troubled existence which makes it even more crucial than usual that the story is in an inspired and talented pair of hands that will do justice to McQueen's story.  Haigh is therefore a perfect choice, and this will sure to become one of the most highly anticipated movies of the year.

Tony Award winner Brian Bedford dies

The great British classical stage Tony Award winning actor  Brian Bedford who was a star on and off-Broadway for years, has died at the age of 80. He was a protégé of John Gielgud and a theater-school classmate of Alan Bates, Albert Finney and Peter O’Toole, but because he performed only occasionally in movies and on television he never shared their celebrity.

A regular fixture on the NY stage since the 1960's after making the US his home, he specialized in playing princes, kings, fops and faded aristocrats of Shakespeare, Molière and Chekhov. However even with this fine body of work, he will probably most fondly remembered for his last performance on Broadway in 2011 in which he played  Lady Bracknell in drag in Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest.” (which he also directed) and which won him his 7th Tony Best Actor Nomination.  Watch this clip of him superbly filling the shoes of the late Dame Edith Evans as Lady B.

Brian Bedford is survived by his partner of 30 years, the actor Tim MacDonald whom he married in 2013.

                                                                                                   Brian Bedford & Tim MacDonald

Brian Bedford (16 February 1935 – 13 January 2016)

Ab Fab's Edina & Patsy : shout out to their Homies

The Fashion Industry can take itself a tad too seriously at times and so when the British Fashion Awards Show was invaded by non other than Ab-Fab's very own Edina and Patsy last week it was heartwarming to see this (overdressed) audience leap to its feet and roar with laughter.

"I am in my spiritual home. Shout out to all my homies,” Edina aka Jennifer Saunders told the cheering crowd.  She was there to present the Award for the British Brand of the Year, and when she opened the envelope declared “The winner has literally come from nowhere. She’s been making bags out of the pubic hair of wheatgrass for years… it’s Stella McCartney!”

Edina and Patsy stayed in character throughout the ceremony and mugged their way through Stella's rather boring acceptance speech, and although we think this video is hilarious, we think that the slightly humorless Ms McCartney may not agree.

Jennifer Saunders is Vyle .....

If you simply cannot wait until next year to get a fix of Jennifer Saunders aka Edina Monsoon when Absolutely Fabulous the Movie is finally finished and released, then we have a tip for you. Check out The Life and Times of Vivienne Vyle which was a British TV sitcom that aired in 2007 and which followed both the on-screen and off-screen life of fictional TV talk show host Vivienne Vyle, played by Jennifer Saunders. 

The program follows Vyle as she tries to balance her newly ascendant fame with her personal life. The series was written by Saunders and psychologist Tanya Bryon and was  lauded as "a dark comedy and a show-within-a-show", The BBC described the show as "Ab Fab meets The Larry Sanders Show with quite a bit of Ricki Lake and Oprah thrown in".   

Saunders made just six episodes of the show which also aired in Canada and the US (Sundance Channel) before it quickly disappeared. However it garnered something  of a cult following due not to just Saunders, but also some of her co-stars and guests that included an hysterically funny performance by Miranda Richardson, plus Harriet Thorpe & Paul O'Grady.

Most of the programs are now available on You Tube and here is a hilarious clip from the final episode when she is forced to admit that her screaming queen of a husband is really gay!

Madam Cyn R.I.P.

The much beloved Cynthia Payne known by all simply as 'Madame Cyn' when she gained notoriety as Britain's most famous Brothel Madam and who singly-handed exposed the hypocrisy of the country's prudish and ridiculous morality laws back in the 1970s, has now died aged 82.

When the Police raided her very ordinary looking home in the London suburbs they found a sex party in full swing with naked middle-aged and elderly men waiting in line to exchange “luncheon vouchers” for food, drink, conversation, striptease shows, and a trip upstairs with the girl of their choice.  As no money was changing hands for sexual services, she was technically working within the law. Her "clients'" who she insisted must be older than 40, included businessmen, priests, MPs, lawyers, judges and even a Lord of the Realm who all considered Cynthia as the best hostess in town. 

The nation was outraged when after a Trial the Judge jailed her 'for 18 months for 'running the biggest disorderly house in the UK' and the matter was even raised in The Houses of Parliament where they passed a Motion deploring her imprisonment.

                               Cynthia Payne as she was released from Prison

When she appealed the sentence she was totally unrepentant and used the opportunity to lecture the Judge on the shortcomings on the laws on Prostitution.  At the same time Cynthia really endeared herself to the nation with her hilarious outspoken views on men and sex which filled the tabloid press every day. 

The case made her a Media Madam too and she was soon back in business throwing Sex Parties .  It was at one such party that she was hosting to celebrate the end of the filming of her hilarious biopic Personal Services (directed by Monty Python's Terry Jones and starring Julie Walters) that the Police raided her home for a second time.  The ensuing Court Case had the entire nation once again in stitches as Cynthia kept everyone amused with her lurid tales of sex slaves, transvestites and undercover policeman in very obvious disguises involving all these harmless ordinary old men.  She was cleared on all accounts of controlling prostitutes and Nicholas Fairbairn MP announced that Mrs Payne should have been mentioned in the Queens Honor List for keeping us all so throughly amused.

In fact a couple of years later in 1988 she actually stood as a Candidate for Parliament herself so that she could change Britain's archaic sex laws.  She formed her own Payne and Pleasure Party for the occasion.

She lived in the same house for the rest of her life and although always known as Mrs Cynthia Payne, she never married.  

Cynthia Payne : a national treasure, the likes of which we will never see again : December 24 1932 - November 15 2015 

Chemsex

Chemsex is the name given to the rising phenomenon which refers to the use of drugs in a sexual context. Often referring to group sex that can last for days, the allure of chemsex has lead to many young men being trapped in a vicious circle of sex, addiction and dependence.

Now there is a powerful and potent new film that tells the stories of gay men whose lives have been affected by the crisis; from self-confessed ‘slammers’ to sexual health workers, from those who deny there’s a problem to those who ‘got out alive’. Offering unprecedented access, Chemsex is a brave and unflinching journey into the dark underworld of modern, urban gay life.

Directed by William Fairman of VICE UK and Max Gogarty, the movie is being released by Peccadillo in UK & Irish Cinemas on 4th December 2015, and hopefully globally very soon after that. Watch this space.

Oh Deary Me : It's The High Life

Years before actor Alan Cumming had his breakthrough performance on Broadway playing the M.C. in 'Cabaret' and picking up Tony and Drama Desk Awards, he was back in Scotland writing and starring in a very low budget TV situation comedy that became a camp classic. With fellow actor Forbes Masson he created 'The High Life' that followed the cabin crew at a fictional airline Air Scotia flying out of Scotland's Prestwick Airport.

Cummings played Sebastian a sharped-tongue, narcissistic, alcohol-loving rather vindictive flight attendant, whilst Masson played his sex-obsessed colleague Steve.  The rest of the crew was made up of Siobhan Redmond as the uptight, man-hungry, bullying Chief Stewardess Shona, and Patrick Ryecart as the mad-as-a-hatter  Trekkie pilot Captain Duff.

They only got to make one series before Cumming's career took off and so the second one they had written never got made.  There is a wonderful sense of bonhomie with the cast as they play out the most silliest of plots on a set that screamed low budget that contributed to the faithful following that the 'The High Life' racked up for the BBC all chanting out their infamous catchphrase 'Oh Deary me!'  Now 20 years later, with all 7 episodes available on YouTube,  there is a whole new resurgence for Cumming's high camp performance all over again.  Be warned though, the cast all speak in a very heavy Scottish brogue which needs  to be 'translated' at times!

Joseph Wilson takes a Stance

With London's East End losing some of its most famous edgier gay pubs and clubs through a whole variety of reasons but mainly due to virulent gentrification, the alternative and anarchic drag culture that is a vibrant part of the area is looking to re-imagine itself by 'queering spaces' that had traditionally been very straight. One such example is 'Sink The Pink' a drag night that is held at the Bethnal Green Working Men's Club.  One of the organisers is Joseph Wilson who told 'It's Nice' about this new environment and added that 'going out and doing drag, you can't be frail or scared or embarrassed. You have to be a strong person'

Wilson takes this ethos one step further in a stunning new movie called 'Stance' that shows his perceptive observation that drag and vogue culture have a lot more in common with the tradition macho world of something like boxing.  This dazzling striking film has been dubbed 'tranny boxing' by Joseph and Vic Lentaigne who shot the stills that accompany the film.  Shot in Repton Boxing Club, a century old sports venue near Brick Lane, is an extraordinary fusion of contemporary drag and East End history.

Wilson, now a full time filmmaker, has an exceptional eye and a remarkable appreciation for a culture that he is a crucial part of. Alongside other filmmakers such as Colin Rothbart ('Dressed As A Girl') and Zoe Davis ('Fierce') he is helping insuring that not only does the alternative drag scene flourish but they all help push the boundaries to encourage even more exotic and idiosyncratic performers find their 'voices'. queerguru salutes both Wilson and his work and hopes they both find the audience that they so deserve.

www.viclentaigne.com

www.vimeo.com/josephw

Soft Lad : a new gritty Brit Drama

Peccadillo Pictures have just released the first trailer of a new gritty Brit gay drama starring three TV Soap Stars and  written and directed by a 4th one.  'Soft Lads' is the tale of a seventeen year old dancer who is in the midst of a torrid affair with his sister's husband when he gets a once-in-a lifetime dance opportunity and a new boyfriend to boot and he is ready to move on but his lover's dark secrets look like they may ruin things for everyone.

This tale of love, betrayal and deception looks very promising indeed with strong performances from Jonny Labey (Eastenders), Daniel Brocklebank (Coronation Street) and Suzanne Collins (Brookside) in a script written and directed by Leon Lopez (Brookside).  The movie is currently part of the POUTfest Tour but will be released in selected UK cinemas and DVD/VOD on November 9th.  Definitely one to put on our must-see list.

Rugby Player Keegan Hirst : I'm Gay.'

British professional rugby player 27 year old Keegan Hirst made giant waves in the media when he become the first ever league player to 'come out' as gay. Hirst, a father of two, candidly recounted to 'The Sunday Mirror' that his decision to go public about his sexuality because he wanted to alleviate the guilt his wife was feeling when their marriage broke down.

The 6' 4' Captain of Batley Bulldogs (a team in West Yorkshire in the North of the UK) said 'I tick every macho box. How could I be gay? I’m from Batley for goodness sake. No one is gay in Batley.' On the video he is self assured and talks calmly about the great relief that he feels now that he has come out 'I'm now comfortable in my own skin, probably for the first time ever'. He also opens up about the difficult journey that he had to get to this point and revealed that he had even considered taking his own life. 'On the worst days I'd think, I can't do this, I'd rather be dead than for all of it to come out' he said.

His announcement has been met with an outpouring of support from not just the general public but also his fellow players with several of them hitting social media to declare their respect to Hirst. He follows in the footsteps of ex Welsh Captain Gareth Thomas who played rugby union for years and then came out as gay after he retired. Hirst is however the very first one to come out publicly whilst still actively playing. We hope that by making this brave step he will empower others to do the same.