LGBT

Glasgow Comedy Festival - Lesbian comedians

28 Feb 2008

Stand-up comedy has always provided a platform for historically oppressed minorities. From the self-deprecatory Borscht belt humour of Mel Brooks and Rodney Dangerfield through Richard Pryor’s fearless exploration of racism to the feminist material of…

Amy Lamé’s Mama Cass Family Singers

18 Oct 2007

THEATRE Tron Theatre, Glasgow, Thu 25–Sat 27 Oct ‘I came up with the idea of a misremembered memoir which is what the show is,’ says Amy Lamé of her one-woman show Mama Cass Family Singers. ‘A lot of it is real, some of it’s made up, but it’s all…

Various, The Book of Boy Trouble - comic review

Various artists

9 Jan 2007

GAY Edited by two of its contributors, Robert Kirby and David Kelly, The Book of Boy Trouble brings together selected highlights of the first ten years of the alternative fanzine of the same title (minus the ‘book’ bit). It’s a collection whose…

Glasgay! - Tennessee Williams

18 Sep 2008

Some years ago, I attended a conference where a debate about the work of Tennessee Williams came very nearly to blows. The bone of contention involved Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, in which the character Brick confesses an attraction to a friend that surpasses…

Glasgay! - Highlights

18 Sep 2008

David Trullo’s Ecce Homo & Gregor Laird’s Plastic Pastorals These two rising stars of the European art circuit display their wares at the Q! Gallery. Spanish photographer Trullo unpicks the enduring Western obsession with beauty while Scot Laird…

Preview of the year 2007

2007 is about the future. And about the past. It’

3 Jan 2007

THE FUTURE Cyberspace invaders We may not be flying around in hover cars or wearing spangly all-silver outfits, but thanks to the internet the future has truly arrived. And the revolution will continue apace in 2007, argues Suzanne Black. A…

Mika

Nice'n'Sleazy, Glasgow, Fri 17 Nov 6

22 Nov 2006

POP First mentioned in the same places as fellow quirk-pop doyens Lily Allen and The Pipettes, it’s unlikely that the Beirut-born, London-raised Mika will be playing many more venues as intimate as Sleazy’s. As he played here, he was also making his…

GHQ

15 Nov 2007

NEW VENUE Allan Radcliffe savours a gay venue with a difference in the capital According to a recent study by Washington’s Urban Institute, which highlighted indicators of a city’s economic success, one of the marks of a thriving urban economy…

Gay movie round-up

Gay screen

12 Feb 2007

The Glasgow Film Festival programmes five films with a queer bent this year. It’s unbearably hot in The Wayward Cloud , where Taiwan’s heatwave causes the sales of watermelons to shoot up. Hsiao-Kang tries to hide the fact that he’s a porn actor from…

Glasgay! Film Strand

2 Oct 2008

From heart-warming and cheering to heart wrenching and chilling, the film strand at this year’s Glasgay! could be seen as a nod to the glory of diversity. Featuring only five feature films (three of them accompanied by shorts) it’s a small collection of…

Colette: The Secrets of the Flesh

Glasgay!

4 Oct 2007

Glasgay! 2007, Scotland’s annual celebration of queer culture, features four exciting weeks of new contemporary boutique theatre from emerging artists at the new studio space at the Q! Gallery. Opening this mini-season is a new play written and…

Cryptic Productions

2 Oct 2008

Cathie Boyd takes her research seriously. She wasn’t comfortable directing a modern opera set in the Caribbean without getting a proper sense of the place. So, at the start of this year, she took a trip to Haiti. ‘I wanted to know what Haiti looks and…

LGBT DVD Round-Up

18 Sep 2008

International interest in the sciences may have been piqued by the recent, less-exciting-than-it sounds Big Bang experiment but let’s face it – the most important question is: ‘If time and space are curved, where do all of the straight people come…

Kylie – The Exhibition

20 Sep 2007

EXHIBITION Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow, Fri 21 Sep–Sun 23 Jan 2008 ‘The interesting thing about Kylie is that she represents that world of glitter and glamour and sparkle that so many gay people wrap around themselves as a form of…

Rebecca Drysdale

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

19 Jul 2007

Edinburgh Festival Fringe Bits & pieces An award-winning show with nudity, lesbianism and racial politics sounds like pretty standard Fringe fare these days. But Brian Donaldson reckons Rebecca Drysdale has quite a few cheeky tricks up her sleeve

Gregor Laird: Plastic Pastorals

2 Oct 2008

ART GALLERY SHOW ‘Living in Edinburgh,’ says artist Gregor Laird, ‘I’m kind of surrounded by the romantic ideal of Scotland on a daily basis, all the picture postcards with this beautiful scenery on them.’ Sending up these chocolate box images…

Film Round-up

18 Oct 2007

Gay screen Sandra Marron casts an eye over Glasgay!’s film programme Glasgay!’s film programme is a much smaller affair this year. Specialist releases have been replaced by a handful of more mainstream movies. This is due to low audience figures and…

Rhona Cameron

The Naked Drinking Club (Ebury)

13 Mar 2007

AUSTRALIAN ADVENTURE In 1979, the chronicle of a year in Cameron’s teenage life, she’s an adopted Lothians lassie who fixates on girls, lets the boys take advantage of her, and watches her father die. In her first novel, The Naked Drinking Club, the…

Patrick Wolf

Do you believe in magic?

12 Feb 2007

Vicious little Dorothy Parker got it right when she said that the term ‘artist’ is overused, and that the category of ‘art’ is not elastic. It isn’t fashionable to say this, of course, where a restrictive version of ‘inclusion’ has meant that we can all…

Profile - Paul Sinha

2 Oct 2008

1 The doctor is out He is indeed. Sinha might not be the UK’s only gay GP, but he is the world’s only gay Bengali GP who moonlights as a stand-up comic. This situation, as you might imagine, gives him plenty of material to go on. 2 He’s a Fringe…

Licence Pending

4 Sep 2008

Drew Taylor, compere and promoter of the Tron’s Licence Pending night, is outlining the ideas behind the event when he stops and checks himself. He’s just used the words ‘performance poetry industry’ and he feels the urge to add the caveat ‘if you can…

Edinburgh Fringe - LGBT Highlights

17 Jul 2008

Allan Radcliffe selects the best the Fringe has to offer in comedy, theatre and music

Bang Bang

19 Jun 2008

CLUB NIGHT The Ivy, Glasgow, Thu 19 Jun Ladyfest has a lot to answer for. The annual celebration of female achievement in the arts drew enthusiastic crowds to its club nights and gigs when it pitched its tent in Glasgow last month. Once the circus had…

LGBT TV Special

8 May 2008

Televised gay kisses may have come a long way since Beth Jordache on Brookside but mainstream programming still lacks fair representation (for the supposed 10% of us) with only the occasional out and proud offering, mainly The L Word and Queer as Folk.

From Saturn to Glasgow: a celebration of Edwin Morgan

28 Feb 2008

POETRY EVENT Mitchell Library, Glasgow, Sun 9 Mar While the guid folk of Edinburgh are enjoying Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, this year’s Glasgow City Read focuses on a new poetry collection, From Saturn to Glasgow: Fifty Favourite Poems by Edwin…

Little Johnny’s Big Gay Musical

18 Oct 2007

Random Accomplice’s Julie Brown and Johnny McKnight have resurrected the loveable, if diminutive anti-hero of Little Johnny’s Big Gay Adventure, the deserved hit of Glasgay! in 2005. This time out they bring us an all-singing, all-dancing escapade as…

Neil Bartlett

Skin Lane (Serpent’s Tail)

13 Mar 2007

PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER Author and theatre director Neil Bartlett explores the link between repressed sexual desire and social envy in this disappointing follow-up novel to the Whitbread-shortlisted Mr Clive and Mr Page. London, 1967. Mr F is a…

Gayharhar

28 Feb 2007

In this fortnight’s hamper of homo-friendly delicacies at the Glasgow Comedy Festival (Thu 8 Mar - Sat 24 Mar) sit such shrink-wrapped Scottish favourites as Craig Hill and Karen Dunbar, alongside extra-matured, expensive import Joan Rivers, and new…

Shortbus - review

Shortbus

27 Nov 2006

GRAPHIC ROMANCE Part love letter to New York and part exploration of the birth, sustenance and death of intimate relationships, Shortbus is replete with graphic, unsimulated scenes of all combinations: men, women, men and women, threesomes, group…

Shortbus - interview

Real sex in the city

21 Nov 2006

New York City rom-com Shortbus is John Cameron Mitchell’s (writer, director and star of the stage musical and subsequent Sundance Film Festival favourite Hedwig and the Angry Inch) new film. It might sound a rather conventional follow-up to his riotous…

Glasgow Pride

Out and proud

21 Aug 2008

It’s that time of year again. Dig out the cowboy hats, the feather boas and anything whatsoever with a rainbow on it. Oh, and dig out your conviction about your sexuality because this is one of the best days of the year to make a statement, celebrate…

The Gossip - Live In Liverpool

27 Mar 2008

LIVE ALBUM (Columbia) The Gossip may have been catapulted to fame on the back of an advert for E4 teen-soap Skins, but they’ve been playing spine-tingling gigs on the underground for years, and this live performance, recorded in Liverpool’s Carling…

LGBT-Friendly Sports Clubs

4 Jan 2008

ACTIVITIES ROUND-UP Bloated from the Christmas blow-out? Struggling to downsize following excessive festive feasting? Instead of adding your name to the waiting list for an emergency tummy tuck why not fight the flab and extend your social network by…

World AIDS Day

29 Nov 2007

AWARENESS-RAISING Various events, Sat 1 Dec Now in its 20th year, World AIDS Day is dedicated to raising awareness of the AIDS pandemic and related issues. The event, which takes place annually on 1 December, is the culmination of a year-round…

Hitlist - The best LGBT events

1 Nov 2007

Scott Capurro’s Premature Gift The San Francisco funnyman is back with a huge comedy gift for Glasgow. The Stand, Glasgow, Sun 11 Nov. Robopop Trendy Wendy and pals visit Edinburgh’s newest gay venue every Thursday with a bag-full of records. GHQ…

Venus as a Boy

18 Oct 2007

THEATRE Citizens’ Theatre, Glasgow, Tue 30 Oct–Sat 10 Nov Tam Dean Burn is no stranger to Glasgay! and certainly no stranger to adapting explosive and controversial tales for the stage. After bringing Louise Welsh’s The Cutting Room as part of the…

Glittering Shadows

Glasgay!

4 Oct 2007

Dani Marti studied fine art in Sydney before gaining an MFA at the Glasgow School of Art in 2006. His exhibition, Glittering Shadows, which is being presented as part of Glasgay!, is essentially a series of portraits brought to life through the media of…

Music With a Twist

2 Jul 2007

Earlier this year mammoth record label Columbia sprung the offshoot Music With A Twist, which styles itself as ‘a home for gay artists of all genres to experience mainstream success without having to compromise any part of their identity.’ The label has…

Priscilla, Queen Of Glasgow

Profile

23 Apr 2007

What’s this all about? In the very best Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert tradition, Glasgow’s bonniest lassies (well ten of them and don’t check their birth certificates) will go breast-to-fake-breast to duke it out for the title of…

Shortbus - review

Shortbus

27 Nov 2006

GRAPHIC ROMANCE Part love letter to New York and part exploration of the birth, sustenance and death of intimate relationships, Shortbus is replete with graphic, unsimulated scenes of all combinations: men, women, men and women, threesomes, group…

Gaydar

News and events

26 Oct 2006

A new Scottish Executive initiative combating bullying in schools will involve LGBT Youth Scotland, the Edinburgh-based charity that works with young gay people. The Better Futures programme will be run in partnership with the Scottish Association for…

Diane Torr: Donald Does Dusty

Drag king and performer Diane Torr explains why sh

10 Oct 2006

My brother, growing up in Mastrick on the outskirts of Aberdeen in the late 1950s and early 1960s, aware of his sexuality but with no representation of gay identity in the neighbourhood, focused on Dusty Springfield. It was Dusty and him on the queer…

Hard times - Gladder to be Gay?

Festival of Politics

22 Jul 2008

Simon Callow is heading our way with both Stonewall and Dickens on his mind. Anna Millar chats to one of theatre’s hardest working men about his love of acting and support for gay rights Mere minutes out of London rehearsals for The Magic Flute and…

LGBT Youth Scotland National Gathering 2008

3 Jul 2008

YOUNG PEOPLE’S EVENT Westpark Conference Centre, Dundee, Sat 5 & Sun 6 Jul This year’s LGBT Youth Scotland National Gathering, ‘In Control, Your Life. Your Choices’, is a Scotland-wide event for LGBT young people up to the age of 26, their friends and…

Tick Tock Lullaby

3 Jul 2008

DRAMA (15) 72min (Peccadillo DVD retail) In one particular scene of this film, a good looking thirty-something notices that he’s been trailed by a couple of ladies, and comments that it’s the first time he’s been cruised by two gay women, and that…

Kalup Linzy

24 Apr 2008

FILM, PERFORMANCE AND PAINTING Washington Garcia, Glasgow, until Sun 27 Apr New-York based Kalup Linzy is more Vaginal Davis than a ‘Paris is Burning’ starlet, more Judy la Bruce (Bruce’s alter-ego) than Hedwig. But it cannot be denied that all of…

Profile - Gus Van Sant

24 Apr 2008

PROFILE Suzanne Black considers the work of one of Queer cinema’s great auteurs as two of his key films are released on DVD Gus Van Sant is one of a handful of directors to have crossed from arthouse credibility to mainstream pennies and back again.

Jaime Hernandez - The Education of Hopey Glass

10 Apr 2008

SOCIAL DRAMA (Fantagraphics) This 24th collection of the three decades – and counting – run of Los Bros Hernandez’s seminal comic book series Love & Rockets, archives in handsome hardback 15 short stories focusing on the supporting and peripheral…

OurSpace

31 Jan 2008

What better way of rescuing the neglected history of the nation’s LGBT community than through the great Scottish tradition of storytelling? OurSpace: Making Inner and Outer Space for LGBT Lives presents a wide array of LGBT lives through oral histories…

Hitlist - The best LGBT events

18 Oct 2007

• Beyond the Surface An exhibition by Andrew Printer, whose work addresses issues facing the queer community including the nature of intimacy in a community still reeling from the AIDS epidemic. Street Level Photo Works, Glasgow, until 27 Oct.…

Hitlist - the best LGBT events

4 Oct 2007

The Bubble A beautiful love story set against the backdrop of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Noam lives and works in a secular, prosperous Tel Aviv suburb. On military service he meets attractive Palestinian, Ashraf. The political divide is the least…

Angels In America, Parts 1 & 2

Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, Tue 1-Sat 12 May

23 Apr 2007

REVIVAL There’s little doubt that in the future, when the great histories of theatre post-1950 are written, Tony Kushner’s classic will take a prominent role. Reckoned by many a critic to be the greatest play of the 1990s, its cultural shockwaves…

Little Johnny’s Big Gay Adventure

Arches, Glasgow, Thu 10-Sat 12 May

23 Apr 2007

ONE-MAN THEATRE SHOW It’s been 18 months since Johnny McKnight last performed his squirmingly honest solo show at the Arches and things have changed. ‘Thirty’s looming, Madonna’s adopted a black baby and designed a range for H&M, and I’ve been to…

Trashed

Cruz, Edinburgh, Sat 21 Apr

9 Apr 2007

CLUB NIGHT (From left: Morgan, Jon Pleased Wimmin, Slim Boy Fat and Lick It) It is handy that Edinburgh’s gay and gay-friendly clubs, bars and general venues of debauchery are clustered around the Leith Walk area. This means that starting the…

Augusten Burroughs

Possible Side Effects (Atlantic Books)

13 Mar 2007

SHORT STORIES It’s queerly satisfying to know that other gay men lead equally uninspiring and uninspired lives, where mopping up dog pee, checking on eBay bids and having bad dates are the highlights of the day. Augusten Burroughs’ new book, a…

Bildwechsel - feminist film collective

Bildwechsel

20 Dec 2006

FEMINIST FILM COLLECTIVE A Hungarian lesbian-transgender Western and the recurrent story of two Lebanese lesbians are the highlights of the latest Bildwechsel screening night, showing short films and celluloid vignettes involving women from all…

Festive listings

13 Dec 2006

Go to the what's on listings , click 'gay', choose your city and date and marvel at your festive options.

Gaydar - bar news

Gaydar

27 Nov 2006

The garish but loveable Cuban-themed decor of Habana has been replaced, with a bright style bar interior of cream walls and chunky dark wood furniture. Gone is the elaborate metalwork staircase and balcony, to be replaced by new steps with a toughened…

Bent Double

10 Oct 2006

Zoe Lyons won the Funny Women competition in 2004, and with residencies in Brighton and London, she’s much in demand. After gaining a degree in psychology she turned to acting, and now finds herself in the even less serious business of comedy. Bent…

Gay Against You

2 Oct 2006

POST PUNK The Subway, Edinburgh, Mon 11 Sep What to do with a sparse audience on a soggy Monday night? If you’re electro-saccharine noise terrorists Gay Against You, you drag all 20-odd onstage with you, thus immediately quelling the venue’s…

Glasgay!

A doubling in funding means three new productions

2 Oct 2006

There’s one event in the Glasgay! 2006 programme that doesn’t quite fit. Graffiti Brasil , a series of photographs of spray painting from the South American country, showing ‘fanatical vandalism’ and ‘jaw-droppingly elaborate murals’, doesn’t seem to…

Hitlist

The most fabulous events this fortnight

28 Sep 2006

Alan Cumming Not content with producing a cologne and having the brass neck to call it Cumming the Fragrance, the actor and X-Men star returns to Glasgow to talk about his career (which began in a Tron production of Macbeth) as part of the theatre’s…

Echo Park LA - review

Echo Park LA - review LA (Quinceanera)

18 Sep 2006

DRAMA Tony Richardson/Shelagh Delaney’s 1961 drama A Taste of Honey is the direct inspiration for this beautifully composed teenage drama. Young Latina Magdalena (Emily Rios) is blissfully preparing for her Quinceañera (15th birthday celebration…

HIV - The Comeback Tour

All venues, Edinburgh, Glasgow and beyond

18 Sep 2006

HEALTH & RELATIONSHIPS Remember that disease that was big in the 80s? You know - AIDS it was called - all over the telly at the time. They said it would be absolutely massive in the UK, but it never quite happened. You don’t hear much about it now. I…

Rough Cuts

Film news

18 Sep 2006

Rough Cuts would like to dedicate this issue of The List to the memory of Shirley Gilmour (pictured). Gilmour was one of the cornerstones of the Filmhouse throughout the 1990s where her tireless administration of everything from the day to day running…

The Truman Capote Talk Show

Tron Theatre, Glasgow, Tue 12-Sat 16 Sep

1 Sep 2006

THEATRE In Murder By Death, the daft 1976 spoof whodunnit based on a Neil Simon screenplay, five sleuths arrive at the mansion of eccentric millionaire Lionel Twain. He plans dinner, and then a murder, which they must solve. Aided (and hampered) by…

Tropical Malady

14 Aug 2008

DRAMA/FANTASY (12A) 118min (Second Run DVD retail) Thai architect, artist, writer and filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul has made a handful of experimental documentaries and fictional films that are so wayward and quirky in structure that they…

Social networking

Single files

31 Jul 2008

Recent Pixar smash Wall-E imagines a future in which lumpen humans only engage with each other through computer screens. Worryingly, this seems all too plausible a prospect. Online interaction and social networking are two of this year’s Fringe hot…

Edinburgh International Film Festival - LGBT

5 Jun 2008

LGBT-INTEREST CINEMA Various venues, Edinburgh, Wed 18–Sun 29 Jun This year’s EIFF programme includes a handful of intriguing films featuring gay characters or themes. If it’s a mix of high camp, glamour and drama you’re after, look no further than…

Painted Eggs

22 May 2008

THEATRE St Bride’s Centre, Edinburgh, Thu 29–Sat 31 May Gay-themed theatre is a rare beast, but drama based around the experience of transsexuals is even more exceptional. This fortnight, The Luvvies, Scotland’s LGBT community theatre company, are set…

Glasgay! announces Tennessee Williams Festival

1 May 2008

The Glasgow-based LGBT festival Glasgay! has announced a new Tennessee Williams Festival for Autumn 2008, to commemorate the author on the 25th anniversary of his death. Among the events scheduled for the Williams Festival are four UK premieres of…

Eurobeat – Almost Eurovision

10 Apr 2008

MUSICAL King’s Theatre, Glasgow, Tue 22–Sat 26 Apr The Eurovision Song Contest has always been a beast of wild contradictions. The annual competition is regular derided for its middle-of-the-road compositions, political voting and the never-ending…

Four Minutes

10 Apr 2008

DRAMA (15) 115min How about this for an enjoyably overwrought contemporary German melodrama? Traude Kruger (Monica Bleibtreu) suffered the trauma of seeing her female communist lover hung by the Nazis during WWII, and has spent the last 60 years…

Wotever

13 Mar 2008

CLUB, FILM & WORKSHOP Various venues, Glasgow, Thu 27 & Fri 28 Mar The name may bring to mind the nonchalant brush-off of disaffected youth, but Wotever is in fact a lively, long-running London-based club and arts movement run by LGBT performers and…

Glasgow Film Festival - LGBT

14 Feb 2008

LGBT CINEMA Various venues and times, Thu 14–Sun 24 Feb From early, openly queer flicks such as Victim, through the work of landmark filmmakers Derek Jarman, Todd Haynes and Gus Van Sant, to the recent mainstream success of Ang Lee’s Brokeback…

Queer Mutiny

17 Jan 2008

ALTERNATIVE GAY NIGHT Forest Café, Edinburgh, Fri 18 Jan The dark nooks and free’n’easy hedonism of gay venues such as the Polo Lounge and CC Blooms aren’t for everyone. Queer Mutiny and Queeruption groups are springing up across the world. Their…

Christmas Clubbing

13 Dec 2007

Various venues, Glasgow and Edinburgh ROUND-UP It’s a sad and oft-remarked fact that the original meaning of Christmas is often eschewed in favour of rampant consumerism and institutionalised gluttony. We at The List feel it’s time to redress…

Funny lady

1 Nov 2007

The Glasgay! comedy wagon rolls back into town this year with a cargo of comedic talent for your pleasure. Wicked Wenches features Lucy Porter, AL Kennedy, Susan Calman and the utterly charming Zoe Lyons, a finalist on Channel 4’s So You Think You’re…

Palmstar Poppy

1 Nov 2007

Composer, pianist and vocalist David Paul Jones returns to his roots as a solo artist with his new piece for piano and voice, Palmstar Poppy as part of Glasgay! The title of the piece is inspired by a fleet of Norwegian oil tankers individually named…

Pride Scotia

18 Jun 2007

Pride is back in Edinburgh on Sat 23 June after last year’s Glasgow outing, with a whole host of official and off-the-parade-route events. This year, many of the Sisters and Brothers of the Order of Perpetual Indulgence (ie men and women dressed as…

Angels in America

8 May 2007

Theory without practice, like sex without love, is a pretty barren affair. But a combination, in both cases, is problematic in a secular age. This seems to be the bottom line of Tony Kushner’s mighty, epoch-defining epic, a sprawling theatrical poem of…

International Day Against Homophobia

7 May 2007

News

Gaydar

26 Mar 2007

Not long after club night Velvet closed its doors in the wee small hours of Sunday 4 February, a fire broke out at the venue, Mariners, in Leith, and destroyed the interior. The inferno was so intense the roof fell in. Alas, the next week’s gay club…

Will Davis

My Side of the Story (Bloomsbury)

13 Mar 2007

COMING-OF-AGE TALE The horror, uncertainty and exasperation of being a teenager are supposed to be character-building. And so the horror of coming out, the uncertainty of running away to Brighton on a binge of pills and powder, and the…

Zeus

Mariners, Edinburgh, Sat 10 Mar

28 Feb 2007

CLUB NIGHT While some clubs wind down due to changing tastes, and others change venue in an attempt to rejuvenate, one Edinburgh club is expanding its remit, with a new night aimed at the boys. Velvet, based at Mariners (a classy banqueting…

Out of the Bedroom - Out of the Closet

The Canon’s Gait, Edinburgh, Tue 20 Feb

12 Feb 2007

MUSIC The acoustic musician is a sensitive soul, and according to James Whyte, who runs the Out of the Bedroom open mic nights, not all of them are writing love songs about the opposite sex. ‘Quite a lot of the regular performers at Out of the…

* Hitlist - LGBT History Month

Hitlist

29 Jan 2007

The Celluloid Closet A history of homo Hollywood, as told in this 1995 film based on Vito Russo’s book. From secretly gay actors like Rock Hudson (pictured, in Pillow Talk, where he played a straight man pretending to be gay to charm Doris Day’s…

LGBT History Month

Back to the future

29 Jan 2007

Love and life for LGBT people in the UK is looking a particularly rosy shade of pink in 2007. Civil partnerships have failed to wreck the institution of marriage, same-sex couples have the legal right to adopt children jointly, and the Equality Bill…

Rainbow faith

29 Jan 2007

The open-minded Metropolitan Community Church congregation bring history into their regular service this month, discussing queer heroes in the Bible, the MCC’s formation, spirituality and sexuality. A special inter-faith event will be held on Sun 25…

Fit for 2007

All venues, all year, times vary

15 Jan 2007

HEALTH AND WELLBEING As I write, the sun kisses rain-damp pavements outside my window, but it’s likely to be only a respite in a month of cashless gloom and bad weather-induced misery. Indeed, University of Cardiff psychologist Dr Cliff Arnall…

Books for Christmas

21 Nov 2006

Hitlist Butt Book Jop van Bennekom It’s five years since the pink pamphlet Butt first came out of Amsterdam. Defining a literate, visceral, edgy aesthetic - eschewing the waxed, gym-buffed and airbrushed models of glossy mainstream gay mags - it…

A Right Royal Rumpus

Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh, Thu 23 Nov

11 Nov 2006

CHARITY CLUB NIGHT Even those who can’t stand her music might have felt a twinge of concern when it was announced that Kylie Minogue had breast cancer, and it’s heartening to hear she’s in remission, out and about, and getting back to normal. Yet…

An Audience with Adrienne

Performer Adrian Howells catches up with his close (some say inseparable) friend, confidante and paragon of domesticity, Adrienne.

26 Oct 2006

Adrian It strikes me that you’ve spent most of your life trying to be somebody you’re not. You’re now 44 and I would have thought that you’d resolved your sense of identity, but it’s clearly not the case. Why do you think this is?

Martha @ Tramway/What Tammy Needs to Know

Tramway / CCA, Glasgow, both runs ended

26 Oct 2006

DANCE & THEATRE Glasgay’s live strand begins with two meditations on the nature of performance: one a more direct essay, and the other reflected through the prism of an homage to a great figure in contemporary dance. Each is warm and appealing, yet…

Hitlist

This fortnight's highlights

10 Oct 2006

Donald Does Dusty Bittersweet tribute to the life of actor, dancer, antiques dealer, property magnate and Dusty Springfield obsessive Donald Torr, who died of AIDS in 1992, by his sister Diane, a performer and drag king herself. CCA, Glasgow, Wed 25-Sat…

Scissor Sisters - album review

Scissor Sisters

2 Oct 2006

GLAM ROCK DISCO POP How does one follow an album that sold more than anyone else’s in the UK in 2004 and seamlessly concatenated every genre from 1972 to 1981, short of heavy metal? On Ta-Dah, there are co-writing credits for Bowie’s 70s guitarist…

Glasgay! film season

A selection of fine, exciting (and occasionally un

28 Sep 2006

This year’s programme is strong, and though it lacks the big US names (Todd Haynes, Gregg Araki, John Walters) there is still plenty to savour. Check out Argentinean filmmaker Pablo Sofovich’s tale of turkey basters, lesbian parentage and familial farce…

Gregor Laird: Lost in the Forest

Brunswick Hotel, Glasgow, Sun 1-Sun 29 Oct

28 Sep 2006

NEW ART TALENT Maybe not a sheep, but definitely dressed in wolf’s clothing, young Edinburgh artist Gregor Laird is taking a trip to where the wild things are for his Glasgay! premiere. Piecing together large collage work for his first show since…

Women's Nights

Velvet and Fur Burger

28 Sep 2006

EDINBURGH WOMEN’S CLUBS Clublife for lady-loving ladies in Edinburgh has been rejuvenated of late, with a change of DJs for both monthly nights Velvet and Fur Burger, a change of venue for the latter, and the addition of regular live performances and…

Gaydar

18 Sep 2006

Glasgay! may not begin in earnest until 14 October, but several exhibitions open this fortnight. In Graffiti Brasil, the country’s spray scene is shown through photographs of works by daredevil pichadores and the internationally renowned Os Gemeos…