Innholdsfortegnelse for November/December 2023 i Attitude Magazine

Joseph Ryan-Hicks COLUMNIST A queer Doctor Who was not on my 2023 bingo card, but when soon-to-be 15th Doctor Ncuti Gatwa came out as queer earlier this year, the 10-year-old in me was bursting with pride. Not only will Gatwa be the first Black male actor to take on the role of the 900-year-old Time Lord, (seriously, drop that regeneration skincare routine!), but the first LGBTQ+ actor in the lead role too. Since the show’s revival in 2005 by Queer as Folk and It’s a Sin writer Russell T Davies, the iconic BBC series has been ground breaking in its representation. As a young kid watching at home, the series normalised LGBTQ+ relationships for me and taught fundamental lessons on acceptance and kindness. With Davies’ return and the promise of…

BREAK FREE Twenty years ago, Axel Hotels was born in Barcelona as the first urban LGBTQ+ hotel in the world. Since then, the company has grown, the world has changed, society is different, and the community has overcome many obstacles. For this reason, the hotel chain is now celebrating its landmark 20th anniversary by embarking on a completely new era, with a much more open, authentic, creative and diverse outlook. It does so by launching a new brand ethos. “Celebrating freedom inside” continues its commitment to ensuring that every Axel Hotel is a safe space, where you can be yourself and do whatever you want. axelhotels.com YOUR FLEXIBLE FRIEND One of the only real negatives about Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 5 is that you’ll never want to go back to…

I am thrilled that Virgin Atlantic is partnering with Attitude magazine for the 12th year, for its fantastic awards event. As Virgin Atlantic approaches its 40th birthday in June next year, it’s time to reflect on the airline’s history with the LGBTQ+ community. When I joined the company in 2019, it was the first time in my career that I’d felt comfortable and proud sharing exactly who I was: Juha, a Finnish-born man with a love of travel, running and hot yoga, and lastly — but most importantly — happily married to my husband, Jussi. The airline’s history of inclusivity was embedded by our founder, Sir Richard Branson. In the 1960s, when he was just 16, Richard set up a Student Advisory Centre, which helped young gay people get the…

The booming voice of Jacob Lusk almost perforates the dressing room’s brick wall as it travels across the photography studio: “Man of God!” he calls out in delight. “This jacket is everything!” His eyes beam as we follow Attitude’s fashion director into the dressing room where Lusk is running his eyes across the rails of clothes comprised mostly of elaborate capes that have become the singer-songwriter’s signature look. “Can I have this? I have to have this,” Lusk says excitedly, wrapping the voluminous yellow Patrick McDowell jacket around his shoulders, that, to be fair, I’m having a similar reaction to. At 6ft 3ins, Lusk is an imposing presence in the room, but his demeanour is every bit the gentle giant. There’s not an ounce of the diva that one might…

‘I’m about to do something.” Alex Scott knew the gravity of what was about to happen when she sent this text to best pal Leah Williamson in the minutes leading up to England’s opening game in the 2022 Qatar World Cup, which Scott was presenting for the BBC. In a build-up interview that took place minutes after sending the text, the former England and Arsenal captain — who has not labelled her sexuality but shared that she’s been in relationships with men and women — donned a OneLove armband in a visual protest against homosexuality being illegal and punishable with prison sentences and death in the host nation. Despite promises by the captains of nine European countries to wear the armband, all the nations had later made a joint U-turn…

Affable, charming and self-deprecating are all descriptions you can apply to Joe Lycett, whether you’re watching him perform or getting to spend time with him in person. When we meet in a coffee shop in London’s Covent Garden, he regales me with snippets from his personal life that range from his current gym obsession “I want to get so much muscle that people start to worry” to “I literally shit myself yesterday. Thank God I was at home!” It’s this genuine persona that’s not only won him this and numerous other awards, but also a broad spectrum of fans across the country. While most sections of the mainstream press still somewhat clumsily label Joe a ‘gay comic’, it’s not something he worries about too much. “I feel ‘bisexual’ is the…

Eight years on from Jack Taylor’s death at 25 at the hands of serial killer Stephen Port, the pain for his parents and two older sisters is still as fresh as it was in September 2015 when they learnt of his death. “We still miss him every day,” his sister Jenny Taylor shares. “It still hurts just as much as when it first happened. It’s always going to be like that. Jack was funny. Very loving and [he] cared about everybody,” she remembers of him. “He was our younger brother, but he treated us like he was an older brother, always looking after us.” “We were very close,” Jack’s other sister, Donna Taylor, adds of the three siblings’ relationship. She recalls family holidays, playing pranks on each other, and dressing…

London-based Claudia Brind-Woody is a force — both in business and in the LGBTQ+ community. Sometimes described as “the most powerful gay woman in business”, she’s played a vital role in ensuring LGBTQ+ visibility and equality within one of the world’s biggest corporations — and beyond. Here, she shares with Attitude her journey from small-town Virginia girl with no knowledge of the word ‘gay’ to becoming one of the most important queer figures in the corporate world. What was IBM like when you joined? I came into a company that had a lot of history of supporting women, so supporting difference and valuing difference. When I joined [in 1996], one of the things I determined for myself in my career was that authenticity mattered. And as it turned out, it…

CC Blooms Open daily, 1pm-3am 23-24 Greenside Place, Edinburgh EH1 3AA ccblooms.co.uk It’s a balmy Saturday night, and the streets of Edinburgh are curiously devoid of drunken partygoers. We’re sure it’s a different sight during Edinburgh Fringe — and maybe even tonight, over in New Town — but the smart, classical streets of Old Town, at least, are free of the traffic, smog and litter doubtlessly plaguing every other major UK city at this very moment. The walk back to our hotel — the chic, swish Virgin Hotels Edinburgh — is the perfect wind down after a night of cocktails at CC Blooms, Edinburgh’s best-known LGBTQ+ bar. In this city of 500,000 people, it’s sadly one of only a handful of queer bars, several of which are, like CCs, dotted…

Nothing Ever Just Disappears: Seven Hidden Stories Diarmuid Hester/Allen Lane This riveting and evocative new biographical history of seven queer artists and writers charts their relationship with the places they lived, forming a dazzling and personable new history of LGBTQ+ culture and identity over the past 125 years. Some of the portraits are of establishment names like E. M. Forster, whose classic story of homosexual love and repression, Maurice, would be published in 1971, the year after its author died. Others are less well-known counter-cultural figures, such as the flamboyant New York underground filmmaker and contemporary of Andy Warhol, Jack Smith. Each is rendered in this beautifully written and fascinating book with absorbing clarity. We encounter the gutsy lesbians of the suffragette movement: Vera ‘Jack’ Holme, Cicely Hamilton, Edith Craig,…

‘Here You Come Again (Dumplin’ Remix)’ This is not just one of Parton’s most loved hits, but a country and western classic. This remix — from coming-of-age movie Dumplin’ — twists a traditional piano track into an upbeat dance number with a sense of camp that only Parton and the movie’s many drag queens can conjure. ‘The Pain of Loving You’ feat Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris Could there be a more legendary trio of country singers than Dolly, Linda and Emmylou? This sublime B-side could — perhaps even should — have been a single, thanks to its emotive and soaring harmonies that capture both the beauty and the agony of truly loving someone. The Fire Medley (‘Baby I’m Burning’ / ‘Great Balls of Fire’ / ‘Girl on Fire’) —…

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If you asked me what my hopes were for the future five years ago, it would have been that we would continue progressing with the great strides already made in LGBTQ+ equality. The reality has sadly proved different. Last month’s British Social Attitudes survey revealed that the proportion of people that characterise themselves as “not at all prejudiced” against people who are transgender has fallen from 82 per cent to 64 per cent since 2019. An unbelievable amount of media coverage is given over to discussing in quite vitriolic detail how trans people, who make up less than 0.4 per cent of the UK population, should be allowed to live. The last time the LGBTQ+ community’s identity was being attacked so vociferously was during the AIDS crisis, when gay men…

‘Cool dad’ vibes abounded in April 2020 when Starmer the charmer won his Labour Party leadership bid, ending Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘extremely eccentric uncle’ era. But three years on, and with the next UK general election on the horizon, is the honeymoon period officially ✅ March 2019 Starmer is one of 538 MPs to back a proposal to make LGBTQ+-inclusive education mandatory in school curriculums. ✅ July 2019 Starmer votes for marriage equality in Northern Ireland. ✅ November 2020 Starmer posts on Facebook that “trans rights are human rights, and your fight is our fight too. The Labour Party stands proudly with the trans community.” In the words of Kim Petras, the future starts now! ✅ June 2021 Starmer tells PinkNews: “Trans people are one of the most discriminated groups in…

What would your All Stars entrance line be? I just don’t see myself back on Drag Race, which isn’t a very fun answer. But a fun answer would be, “I’m here to suck dick and eat lollipops. And bitch, I’m out of lollipops.” What’s your favourite Madonna era? I’d say 2002—2010, especially when she had ‘Girl Gone Wild’. The MDNA tour was just so fun. It was truly her campest era. What’s the best thing about the UK? I love Nando’s. I’m gonna get that Peri-Peri Chicken, honey, and the Wing Roulette, and it’s gonna be popping. And I love a good Tesco’s Meal Deal. And the worst? The food — except Peri-Peri Chicken. The pasties and the beans on toast. Who from Drag Race would you fuck/marry/kill? Me and…

‘She is born to do this,” I catch myself whispering under my breath as I am taken aback by another response of Dylan Mulvaney’s. Even across time zones, while dealing with temperamental internet connections and rushed timings, the exuberant 26-year-old’s star quality can be felt beaming through the computer screen into my muggy backstage dressing room where, just after coming off-stage in Berlin, I am chatting to her over Zoom. I find myself captivated — an inevitable response when in the presence of someone who exudes talent, wisdom and star quality from their every pore. Mulvaney burst into the public consciousness through her incredibly popular, extremely infectious and addictively joyous social media project ‘365 Days of Girlhood’. In preparation for this interview, I scrolled through scores of the daily updates…

It’s a drizzly morning at a photo studio in London’s trendy East End. But pop’s best-kept secret turned bonafide pop star Becky Hill is radiating human sunshine. “Hi, I’m Becky,” she announces as I arrive while she is having her nails done. “Thank you so much for inviting me to do this. I feel honoured.” The 29-year-old has had a busy year. Kicking things off with a second BRIT Award win in February, the singer, who came out publicly as queer just two years ago, has spent most of the year on the road playing shows on the UK festival circuit and dance music’s spiritual home of Ibiza, where she headlined the legendary Ibiza Rocks for a mammoth nine-week residency, a rave “curated with inclusivity and diversity at its heart”.…

‘My whole 20 years of drag, every time I got called a slur or was picked on as a queer kid, I was feeding that child; I was nurturing that child.” I’ve just asked Sasha Colby what was going through her mind during her now-legendary winning lip sync performance on the finale of RuPaul’s Drag Race season 15. At a time when real hatred against trans people and drag performers was — and still is — looming large in the US, her participation on the show as an out trans woman felt especially relevant. “I knew that what I was doing was going to make history,” she says. “In that time of them enacting all those drag bans, all these trans bans, and wanting to eradicate us, that’s why I…

With more than 140 million records sold, and as the first British female artist to score seven top 40 albums across seven decades, there is only one Dame Shirley Bassey. Blessed with a voice that can roar louder than thunder one moment and then emote the fragility of a broken heart the next, Bassey is not just one of the UK’s most legendary singers, but the embodiment of defiance and resilience too. The girl from Tiger Bay in Cardiff was a groundbreaker in every way. One of seven children, she was born to a Black Nigerian father and a white mother from North Yorkshire. As a young working-class girl, Bassey defied the odds to become one of the UK’s most successful recording artists. Her discography includes such classics as ‘This…

‘Is it as manic as you expected?” Layla Moran, Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, asks me in her Westminster office. She’s just been working on a speech ahead of a poignant Westminster Hall debate about the use of non disclosure agreements in the workplace, all stemming from the #MeToo movement. I’m interviewing her on the second day back after Parliament’s summer recess, and “manic” is definitely the word of the day. Twenty-four hours ago, Education Secretary Gillian Keegan was caught making a sensational off-the-cuff remark after an ITV interview, spelling a chaotic return to the House for the Tory party. Parliament is well and truly back. But there’s an air of calm in Moran’s sphere, and the Lib Dems in general, who are hoping that the decline…

I’ve never been to France. It’s a fact that shocks many and earns me a pitying, forlorn expression from most. “You’ve never been to Paris? How about Cannes? Nice? Didn’t everyone go to Normandy on a school trip?” The closest I’ve been to La Tour Eiffel is Blackpool Tower. I’ve also never been on a cruise, so by embarking on Princess Cruises’ seven-night, five-stop odyssey around France and Italy, I’m getting thrown in at the deep end, so to speak. Our ship, Enchanted Princess, is dauntingly vast. With up to 3,660 people journeying with me, the jury is still out on how I’m going to take to the experience, but I leave my preconceived ideas behind in Barcelona, where we board. One of Princess Cruises’ newest Royal-Class ships, Enchanted Princess…

The Harness Room L. P. Hartley/Valancourt Books. First published 1971 This short novel about the burgeoning relationship between a sensitive upper middle-class 17-year-old, Fergus, and his father’s brawny 28-year-old chauffeur, Fred, was the last and only explicitly homosexual book by the successful English writer Leslie Poles Hartley. Fergus’s father, the stoic widower Colonel Macready, dreams of a military career at Sandhurst for his son, but suspects he isn’t quite bold enough for life in the army. As well as making preparations for his impending marriage to his young fiancée, Sonia, the Colonel enlists the help of his athletic chauffeur, ex-Guardsman Fred Carrington to see if some boxing sessions might do Fergus some good. The pair’s sparring bouts lead first to a deepening friendship, and then, after some regular rub-downs and…

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October 1996, Ant and Dec ‘Cocks of the North’ ran our (retrospectively inelegant!) cover line about Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly: then-rising stars of gritty teen drama Byker Grove, and now TV-presenting veterans responsible for everything from Britain’s Got Talent to I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!. “Yes, I suppose we are quite camp,” admitted Dec of the cheeky double act that’s stood them in remarkably good showbiz stead. Ant, meanwhile, displayed an impressively openminded attitude when he told us: “I’m not too rigid — but I’ve always fancied girls since I was a little kid.” We also ran a quick Q&A with Cathy Dennis — then pop star, now-songwriter responsible for ‘Toxic’ and ‘I Kissed a Girl’ — (“What would you be doing if you weren’t doing…

Do we need to be in relationships? I’ve been pondering this question a lot lately. Let me explain. The past year has been my chaos era, marked by a breakup that could easily have had its own Netflix series. But it’s also been a time of incredible personal growth and happiness. I’ve been hitting gym classes, diving into therapy, travelling, chugging water like I’m at a bukkake party, and I even downloaded Duolingo to try and learn some French. I’m like a new, revitalised version of myself, ready to take on the world. So, as cuffing season descends, the big question is: am I ripe for the picking? As I arrived at my friend’s gay wedding on the hottest day of the year (in September?!), I felt that the answer…

The Great British weather is beginning to turn as Jake Daniels sits down with me on a grey and miserable looking September evening. The Blackpool FC player has been in a training session before a match against Nottingham County the following day. Calling in from his Blackpool home, the 18-year-old striker would probably like to put his feet up, but instead I’m asking him to reflect on the past 17 months since he came out as gay. After taking a deep breath, he says, “Last year was kind of a whirlwind.” And in a statement that shows he has no regrets, he adds, “Coming out was the best thing I’ve ever done.” Daniels made his announcement on 16 May 2022, the same month that he made his professional debut for…

After graduating from Central Saint Martins in 2015, Daniel Fletcher hit the catwalk running and hasn’t stopped since. Fletcher, who hails from the North West, has had stints at Louis Vuitton and Victoria Beckham and has also dipped his toe in television, becoming the runner-up in season one of Netflix’s Next in Fashion. He’s seen his own brand, Daniel w. Fletcher, thrive over the past decade, becoming a favourite with the likes of Harry Styles and Red, White & Royal Blue’s Taylor Zakhar Perez. Fletcher has also breathed new life into Italian heritage brand Fiorucci. After four years at the Italian label as artistic director, he’s now decided to focus once more on his own brand. We spoke to Daniel about his plans for 2024 as well as his fashion…

Actor Rob Madge has been treading the boards since they were nine, when they made their professional debut as Michael Banks in Mary Poppins in the West End. They went on to appear in Oliver!, Les Misérables and Matilda before building a solid career as an adult. Onstage, they had roles in Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Leave a Light On and Roles We’ll Never Play, while TV credits include The Sarah Jane Adventures, The Armstrong and Miller Show and Poirot: Appointment with Death. Always destined for the stage and screen, as a child, Madge loved to dress up as the likes of Belle from Beauty and the Beast and would enlist family members to take part in theatre shows in their living room. It was the rediscovery of home videos of…

A unique performer, Le Gateau Chocolat’s work spans drag, cabaret, opera, musical and children’s theatre, and live art. Visit his website and you’ll get a snapshot of just some of the extraordinary things the Britain-born/Nigeria-raised multitasker has achieved. After returning to the UK to study law, he partied on the Brighton gay scene and made his drag debut in his twenties. He’s now a global icon who goes around the world spreading a message of joy on what he says is “the most extraordinary adventure”. Congratulations on your Attitude Culture Award. What does it mean to you? That’s a most fascinating question because nothing about how I’ve arrived at where I am today was something I plotted or aspired to do. It is the most extraordinary adventure that continues to…

Yasmin Benoit is a one woman powerhouse in the world of asexual awareness. After creating the #ThisIsWhatAsexualLooksLike movement in 2019, she’s been bringing into the spotlight a corner of the queer community so often left out of the dialogue. Almost four years on, and Benoit is hoping to steer the conversation away from just social media and into the words of law. This is the aim of the Stonewall x Yasmin Benoit Ace Project, a first-of-its-kind research initiative on asexuality, which was part-funded by the Attitude Magazine Foundation. Spearheaded by Benoit, the project aims to achieve parity for asexual people in areas such as healthcare and the workplace. With Ace [asexual] Week falling this month, between 22 and 28 October, the project has just released the results of a study…

A row of police vehicles is not an everyday scene, but that is what greets me and the two travel writers I’m with as a taxi drives us down 8th Street, Washington, D.C., just a few blocks away from Capitol Hill. We are perplexed by the sight of a dozen or so people holding large, rainbow-coloured umbrellas together to form a defensive wall on the pavement just behind the police cars. I get out of the cab to investigate and see two lone protesters with a megaphone shouting anti-LGBTQ+ insults at the brolly holders. As I get closer, I spot families shielded by the umbrellas as they enter Crazy Aunt Helen’s restaurant, where, it turns out, a drag story-time event is taking place. The episode encapsulates the tensions that LGBTQ+s…

‘It’s impenetrable!” bellows Sir Ian McKellen, attacking his rock-hard chocolate brownie with the gusto of Gandalf plunging his staff into the ground and declaring “You shall not pass!” His magisterial voice echoes around the (otherwise empty) Manchester restaurant in which I’m lucky enough to be dining with the national treasure for this interview. “Has this been microwaved?!” he asks aloud. Sheepish looking waiting staff, within earshot, pretend not to hear him. This only intensifies his disdain and my laughter. I’m close enough to see the twinkle in his eye. The brownie may be impenetrable, but McKellen isn’t angry about it — he’s merely playing the role of a hilariously naughty and endlessly entertaining dinner companion. And it’s an Oscar-worthy performance. He’s just as withering when I inform him that my…

If Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed stokes your curiosity about Hollywood’s queer past, this landmark 1995 documentary by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (the team behind the essential AIDS doc Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt) is essential viewing. Produced by Channel 4, it zeroes in specifically on how LGBTQ+ people have been represented — or not — in the movies from the silent era to the then-present, offering a perceptive, wittier primer on subtext, coding and more blatant stereotyping, from camp villains to gay best friends. Now that the documentary itself is something of a period piece, it prompts a consideration of how the movies — and indeed their audiences — have evolved since. Available on demand at Amazon and Apple TV…

The 1980s was a redemptive period for fading female idols in music. By the mid-80s, Tina Turner had pulled off one of the greatest comebacks in pop history, and the likes of Aretha Franklin and Dusty Springfield were both enjoying chart-topping success once more. As George Michael had with Franklin, the already well established Pet Shop Boys pulled Springfield out of pop retirement for 1987’s ‘What Have I Done to Deserve This’. Following the single’s colossal success, the two-piece called upon another showbiz legend — Liza ‘With a Z’ Minnelli — and offered to produce the star’s first studio album in over a decade. The collaboration would prove unexpected and utterly brilliant. Make no mistake, 1989’s Results is very much a Pet Shop Boys record sung by Minnelli. While Neil…