There’s Nowt So Queer As Brucie

Mine and Sofa’s TV offerings last night were split distinctly into two halves. Both feeling a little under the weather, we had independently come home from work early and – following a rather dull Murder She Wrote repeat (Chandler’s Mum From Friends did it), a dabble with The Notebook (blub) and a nap – we settled down to the last four episodes of Queer As Folk (UK version; season one).

Understandably, given that QAF wasn’t technically ON the TV yesterday, a critique of it here could be construed as a little self-righteous – but then, that’s me all over. Besides, I’m quite keen on channeling my 1999-era self to try and form some sort of opinion about the darned show, albeit with the added insight of now being older, wiser, and having rewatched it with a virgin-viewer.

You see, given that Sofa is of a certain age and is living with a gay man for the first time in her life, she has never seen QAF before; and given that I am a gay man of a certain age, I of course own the Definite Collector’s Edition of QAF: As such, we decided to settle down and watch it, episode by episode, night by night.

By this point we had got beyond the licking (Sofa struggled there), and beyond the obvious paedophilic connotations of Stuart and Nathan’s frisson in the early episodes, to come to the conclusion of the series.

In a separate telephone conversation with a gay friend (would we call him a friend?) mid-disc, I got into something of a discussion about whether QAF was a reasonable depiction of modern gay life. I like to think I made quite a sensible, valid argument in its favour. I will try and reconstruct this here:

“Surely the point is that it’s actually a very tongue in cheek (or arse) look at modern living, irrespective of homosexuality or not. The point is: Russell T Davis created a story about these characters: and its kind of irrelevant that they’re gay men at all. It’s a love story, at its core, between Vince and Stuart, the fact that they are two men – one a lovelorn supermarket worker, the other a sex-obsessed, rampant ad man – doesn’t really matter.

“The gay thing is actually just another level to the whole plot, a nod to the fact that some-10 years ago, when it first aired, there was such a distinct lack of gay characters in mainstream TV that this show was always going to be viewed as a portrayal of gay culture as whole. As such, the show is openly littered with stereotypes: the slut (Stuart), the closeted man at work (Vince), the camp guy (Alexander), the young boy exploding out of the closet (Nathan)… The reality is, it doesn’t matter that these characters are gay men: we all feel the same pride, exultation, embarrassment, horror and heartache that love brings.”

I found my point being clarified by the conversation that followed with Sofa: When QAF first aired I was 15 (FIFTEEN!), in the 10 years since I have been Stuart, I have been Vince, I have been Nathan, I have been Alexander, I have even been Hazel and Bernard and Donna and Romy. Fuck. “That’s alright. So have I”, said Sofa.

Part two of our evening’s entertainment was taken up by watching an 82-year-old doddery old codger walk around in the blistering sun in a failed attempt to remain an entertaining spectacle of yesteryear. Sadly, this wasn’t the case because we were looking out of our front window at the mad old bitch who lives across the road, but because we were watching Channel 4’s Living With Brucie.

The facts: Bruce Forsyth is a television icon, and Strictly Come Dancing quite frankly makes my little gay life complete. But my word he is old. So pre-programmed to the television style of years gone by, and so used to rehearsing before stepping out into the spotlight, the concept of a documentary left Brucie bamboozled, befuddled and downright confused.

In fact at times he just looked like that old man who lived in the nursing home with my grandmother, happy to sit and do not much at all.

From sprinkling blueberries into his porridge to ensure there was sufficient space between them (“What’s the point of having blueberries if they are all going to be in one big clump?”), to bombing around Puerto Rica in a golf buggy hell-bent on either crashing or severely offending the security officers at his holiday home complex, Bruce essentially came across as any regular OAP. The only difference being that, with a camera in front of him, he was determined to be the Showman.

Throughout the documentary, Bruce’s confused face continued to ask the filmmaker what he wanted him to do, where he should stand: and at one cringe-inducing moment, dear Brucie even planned what he was going to talk about with his (wonderful) wife Winnie as the pair walked up to camera.

While the documentary was certainly an interesting support to the debate from the end of last year (about whether Brucie really should still be fronting Saturday night live television, or whether he should retire), it failed to do much else. Winnie, meanwhile, came out trumps, proving to be a loving, supporting and downright patient woman: albeit while looking a bit like a carer for her dear old husband.

The saddest bit of all, however, happened in our own house when I turned to Sofa and said, “You know, I think if he did stop he’d just drop dead”. “I think you’re right,” came the response.

The reason this was so utterly devastating? (Aside from the obvious fact it was speculating the death of Bruce Fucking Forsyth) Well, it made the two of us realize that the same thing probably applied to us: only with us, we wouldn’t die if we stopped hosting light entertainment shows in front of millions of viewers but if we stopped drinking. So, where’s my gin?

As Robyn might say: this TV is killing me

So Sofa got home last night after a weekend away. We were discussing the fact we’re both single and I was lamenting about the fact that no one will ever fancy me again and Sofa managed to grossly offend me by saying, “You’re quite hot really though. You know, for a gay guy.” Classic foot-in-mouth moment. We both just sort of sat there for minute thinking ‘Can you really say that?’, ‘Is this okay?’ Turns out it was: it could be worse. I could be a lesbian.

Prior to this rather bizarre turn of events, my heinous excuse for a bank balance resulted in much TV watching this weekend. Personally, I think because of the way I spent my entire Sunday locked away watching Come Dine With Me (6 episodes! SIX!) makes me quite inadequate as a human being: as though I should be unemployed and signing-on, or, at the least, be a sort-of-Bridget-Jones character devouring ice cream and listening to 80s power ballads in a frugal attempt to feel ‘alive’ again. As it turns out, I was just broke and the company of vintage (get me) CDWM was too alluring.

The thing that bothers me about old-skool CDWM however, and, more importantly, More4’s frankly psychotic scheduling, is that the half-hour episodes that once made up a whole week of programming (5 of them! FIVE!) are here shown back-to-back, and after just one you’re hooked and forced to sit through all of them just because there’s nothing better to do (EastEnders omnibus? No thanks. T4 On The Beach? Rather Not). I drank four strong cups of black coffee yesterday while watching More4’s CDWM marathon (or, as I like to call it, Come Dine With Me: The Movie) and by the end of the exhausting “week” (2.5 hours of Dave Lamb), I actually had the shakes and palpitations. And they say computer games are bad for children.

The highlight was CDWM-host extraordinaire Angie, who not only was obsessed with Am Dram but also made a point of letting everyone know it at every opportunity. The truly magical moment was the way she named her 3 courses after 3 different musicals (Oliver! Carousel! The King & I!) and then proceeded to sing at her guests mid-meal and grossly offend some fat bird (who’s name was Zoe CONDOM - I think) throughout the week. At one point she called her “a thin Fern Britton” – it’s fair to assume this was recorded during the era of pre-gastric-band-Fern – and later Angie cast The Condom as Ursula in her mind’s eye version of The Little Mermaid. Score. A taster here.

Later, after Channel 4’s hour-long, more concise and up-to-date (i.e. new) modern CDWM offering, Sofa returned home and following our banter about the fact I’m a hot-gay-guy-but-an-ugly-straight-man, we turned our attention to Lewis on ITV1. As a Lewis-virgin before last night it took me about twenty minutes to remember why I knew who Kevin Whateley’s alter ego was (Morse. Dur.) and so was impressed when I managed to remember Morse’s first name (Endeavour. Dur. Again.) Anyway, I won’t be watching this poppycock again, given that I’d worked it out with 45 minutes to go and felt very cheated. Here endith my review.

So what’s this weekend’s lesson? Don’t ever let Sofa go away again – or, if she is going to go away, make sure I have some money and can actually do something to escape the wonderfully devilish world of Sunday TV. And, when she returns, ensure we don't talk about boys and/or my attractiveness.

Hello Roomie

Until a few months ago I was in a relationship with a guy I was beginning to think I was going to spend the rest of my life with. In short: life was cushy. Then, following a particularly heinous, abhorrent and altogether unpleasant blip on my otherwise untarnished record, we split up and I found myself instead facing a new outlook on life: namely, singledom.

To say I was absolutely terrified is something of understatement. I was anticipating visions of a cronky, wonky bedsit that smelt of cat piss (I don’t have a cat) with a mouldy bathroom, mouldy cheese in the fridge to match, stale cornflakes and a generally glum disposition. As it turns out, the prophecy has not been entirely fulfilled.

By chance (or fate, depending on your temperament) the aforementioned Sofa, an ex-colleague of mine, was also going through some changes. Returning from several months of traveling in South America – with a boy in toe – Sofa had now moved into a house share with her new Gypsy-lover, only for the romance to fall down around her and her to be left, stranded, alone, in a houseful of strangers.

(Okay, I’ll be honest: that last paragraph summarizes about 4 months of Sofa’s life, but I had to cut bits out and make it sound more dramatic for effect. You’ll get used to that. Embellishing the truth is a specialtiy of mine, and I have very little plans to share with you what bits of this blog are completely fabricated, what bits are just the trimmings to what really happened and what bits are the ugly, horrid truth. So there).

Anyway, at the same time as the meltdown of my life, one of Sofa’s stranger-danger housemates upsticks’ed and departed for the Continent (how very novel), and I found myself moving into the spare room, next to the kitchen, sleeping in single bed, in a room with a hole in the ceiling, a broken Roman blind and the sweet smell of rot coming at me from a) my over-worn trainers & b) the floorboards.

The house we lived in was pretty grotesque. In one of the drawers in the kitchen someone had left a half-opened packet of orange-flavored Fybrogel, the smell of which had fused with a pack of cheap incense sticks to give off an overpowering, almost medicinal smell that had managed to permeate through the drawer and seep into almost all of the cupboards in the otherwise spotless kitchen.

Oh who am I kidding? It was not spotless: in fact, the kitchen was so-far removed from clean (through no fault of Sofa or myself, or any of other current housemates either, it seemed), that no matter how many times we would scrub, polish, clean and wipe-down, it would forever remain filthy.

And, as a result of the medicinal-stench, the filth was also matched by the horror of almost being knocked-out by an migraine-inducing, all consuming presence that existed every time you bent down to open the glasses cupboard.

It wasn’t all bad though: In those first two months of living together we searched for a new house is haste – both because we only had two months left in the House of Horrors and because we were both desperate to escape its clutches – and we discovered some other interesting things too: Sofa can’t make poached eggs, Sofa can’t really work her iPhone, Sofa can’t stay up passed 11pm on a work night (unless drunk). We also found out we like to get drunk A LOT. I mean, we both knew this independently already, but by all evidence thus far, the combination of the two of us – together – is borderline alcoholism. George Best would be proud.

And so, after 8 weeks together, we are now in our new, sexy, slightly pokey flat, free of the dirty, festering meagerness of our old place and ready to take on the world. A word of warning to anyone planning to stick around for more: Sofa is a mean storyteller, and when her stories find their way onto this blog you will be agog with an utter compulsion to hear more. That or you’ll be hiding somewhere in absolute fear of being subjected to such garb.