Le Gateau Chocolat at Contact

It’s been several years coming but Manchester finally got a taste of Le Gateau Chocolat’s sweet sweet award-winning talent at Contact last night. Forget lip-syncing for your life, the big, bearded and beautiful Le Gateau Chocolat is first and foremost a vocalist of genuine power, and while she might like to cheekily introduce herself as a ‘complete asshole’, her stage persona is life-giving and full of heart – but let’s talk about that voice… Baritone, velvet, dextrous, LOUD – you have never heard the Great American Songbook performed like this. Breakneck trips through the best of the musicals are punctuated with heart-breaking interludes where wigs and music are stripped back for moments of real tenderness. At one point a delicate ‘Hoppipolla’-style piano scale underpins the most touching Whitney Houston interpretation you might ever hear.

The best drag performers have comedy and tragedy at the tips of their gloves, and the music of Ms Chocolat moves deftly between the two. The potted version of Les Miserables will make you want to fast forward through every musical film ever with Gateau on the couch bedside you – hilarious. It’s offset emotionally with moments such as an astonishing tribute to Paul Robeson, where Gateau brings her basso profundo to the painful, beautiful, dignified slave narrative of Robeson’s ‘Old Man River’. It’s a very moving and special moment to see a large, powerful and adored black queer body and voice in all their power.  Queer culture should always be about celebrating that which the mainstream designates as ‘odd’ and ‘other’. Le Gateau Chocolat celebrates herself, and the audience follows lovingly. ‘I have a law degree you know,’ she says, as she switches from one dazzling lycra creation to the next. Defying expectations is where great art begins, of course.

My talk from The Queer Forum #2 on 7 December 2014

The Queer Forum is an event that I co-host in Manchester in which people who identify as Queer/LGBT can come and talk to an audience for fifteen minutes or so about anything they like. People have spoken about ACT-UP New York, about their intersectional identity, about life modelling, about dementia, about erotic art and more besides. We also show very short films and we meet new people and we are hoping this event will grow. We are mainly all about the love. At the second Queer Forum event I thought it only right that I give a talk too, rather than just encouraging others to talk, so I wrote this to talk about the very confusing but enlightening year I have had, and some opinions and hopes and some personal anecdotes. I finished by reading an extract from Andrew Holleran's novel Dancer From The Dance which I can't reproduce here but which I recommend everyone reads. Here is my talk:

My name is Greg. I’ve lived in Manchester for eighteen years. I came to University here. I used to work in advertising and publishing. I’m now a freelance writer, a DJ and a club promoter. I’m also an event organiser. I also copyedit academic books and write fiction and reviews. I also do research and writing for artists and art institutions, and for the last six years I’ve written a blog about all of this stuff, and more stuff besides. I am a bit of a jack of all trades, which has as many drawbacks as benefits, but for that reason, and because I enjoy analysis more than conclusion, my talk today, given partly in homage to James McCourt’s book Queer Street, is anecdotal and personal and has several themes and is entitled:

‘Where I am and what I’ve learned and am learning as a queer gay man in the twenty first century’

I am 36 years old. Twelve years I stopped eating meat. Two years ago I got rid of my television and stopped buying newspapers. I am from a working class family who are now middle class because they have a car each, and I am middle class too because I’ve been to University twice and I work in the arts, even though I sometimes struggle to make the rent. I am, like many people, trying to work out what it is that makes me tick, what it is I should do, how to be good, how to be happy, how to contribute.

The Projects

This summer I had a cycling accident. I spent some time in hospital, far from home and delirious with morphine. At one point I thought I could speak Maltese. I had lots of time to think. In the last couple of years, two amazing people who I was lucky enough to know both died very young. Because of these experiences I have decided that if something should happen to me, I don’t ever want to have to say that I regret not doing x, y and z. So instead I have made a list entitled ‘The Projects’, describing all the things that I think I might want to accomplish. Some of them have been long-standing, others are accidental ambitions and are already underway, such as creating a club night, becoming a DJ, getting paid to write, hosting an event like The Queer Forum; some I haven’t tried yet, like stand-up comedy or staging a play; some might never happen at all, like getting my novel published… I just don’t want to have regrets.

Learning about social justice

A lot of my work and my life happens online. I am an enthusiastic user of Twitter and Tumblr and online writing, one of the main reasons being that it keeps me politically conscious and cuts out media bias when listening to other people’s voices. Here are 5 things I am learning online from social justice activists:

1. Racism has never gone away, it has only changed shape as society has changed shape. Capitalism needs racism.

2. The politics of, ‘We will come back for you’ doesn’t work. ‘When we get full marriage rights as gender conforming gay people, and we can adopt children, and we have equal everything else, we promise will make sure that everyone gets the same rights and protection too. We will come back for you.’ It doesn’t work.

3. Learning about your own privilege is vital and enlightening, but how do you use that awareness to help and make a difference? You need to find out.

4. There is an epidemic of violence happening against women worldwide and against poor trans women of colour especially. It isn’t going away.

5.  Social justice doesn’t mean a thing if there’s no clean air to breathe and your town floods and the ocean is poisoned.

Having therapy

When I was 24 I spent a year having therapy. My counsellor was a young lesbian and the message I left on her answering machine, long since erased, was the first time that I had ever said out loud the words, ‘I am gay’. In our first session she asked me to describe what I would like to work through in my therapy. I told her that:

1. I need to deal with the fact my Dad left, and:

2. I’m gay and I don’t want to be gay.

A year later anyone who mattered in my life knew that I was gay. My therapist once said to me, ‘As a lesbian, my sexuality is central to who I am and how I live, and at the same time it’s of absolutely no consequence.’ I had no idea what she meant at the time, but now I do. Everyone should get some therapy.

Why I don’t think Alan Turing should have been pardoned

Alan Turing was a bona fide genius with a singular mind who should have lived a long and productive life, excelling in his many fields. Instead of being allowed to meet this extraordinary potential, he met a guy outside The Dancehouse Theatre on Oxford Road in December 1951 and three months later the two of them were facing prosecution for gross indecency. A little over two years after that, Alan killed himself. A popular campaign succeeded in gaining a Royal pardon for Turing one year ago for the crime of gross indecency. I think this act pardons the State of responsibility for what it did to Alan Turing, rather than pardoning Turing himself. Alan didn’t need a pardon because he never did anything wrong in the first place. If he hadn’t been of use to the State there would have been no petition to start with. The original petition read, ‘This may act as an apology to many of the other gay men, not as well-known as Alan Turing, who were subjected to these laws.’ I strongly disagree. Turing’s usefulness to the State singles him out from the countless prosecuted and silenced men who suffered the same fate. I would be so angry to learn that a grandfather of mine had jumped off a bridge for the same reason but wasn’t deemed fit to be pardoned. In December 1952 Alan Turing was a criminal, the State should wear its shame for making him one. If only useful homosexuals get pardoned, I don’t want to be useful.

Having a partner

In 2011 I saw a movie called Weekend. The set design and cinematography of the film was based on the work of a pair of photographers working under the name Quinnford and Scout. Their work set the visual tone of the film and they were also invited to do the set photography, eventually resulting in the film poster image which graces the walls of so many gay men’s bedrooms. The film had a big impact on me, one that I was not ready to deal with. I had decided at some point to no longer make emotional commitments to anyone and for the first few weeks of the film’s release, various gay men, about six of them, with whom I had had some kind of relationship in the preceding years, each messaged me to find out if I had seen the film, and if not they urged me to do so right away as there was a lesson in it that I sorely needed to learn. They were mostly not very kind about it, but I knew exactly what they meant. So, because of the film, I decided to make a change and open my mind to at least the possibility of a relationship, maybe some time in the future. Not long after I made this decision I met a guy named Oisín Share who was one half of the photography duo Quinnford and Scout who had worked on the movie. In March we will have been together for three years. There is a strange synchronicity sometimes to life.

Am I gay or am I queer?

I am very attached to the political, social and cultural history of men who have identified as gay but when I look at anything that is labelled as gay culture today, I feel alienated. My body is wrong, my politics are wrong, I can’t afford anything they advertise, I don’t want anything they advertise, everything is badly designed and nobody wants to talk about books. Thinking queerly helps me to square all of this. Thinking queerly is a way to critique not just gay culture, but all culture, society, capitalism. When I find gay culture threatening or trivial, queer culture says to me to take what I like, give what I can, be something better. Gay is what I am, but queer I think is something closer to who I am.

Thank you.

The Queer Forum

My friend Siobhan and I have started a venture called The Queer Forum. Inspired by the TED Talks, we are hosting irregular get-togethers in which we invite half a dozen LGBTQI/Queer-identified people to give an informal talk to a friendly audience about something of importance or interest to them, and/or to our community. We might also show some short films, time permitting. It's not-for-profit, community focused and aimed at bringing queer folk together for education and fun.

We held our first event during Pride weekend and it was a really lovely, warm, eye-opening and well-received event. We learned about the film critic Vito Russo, about being a visiting covert lesbian in Bolivia, about gay erotic art, LGBTQI Muslim life, and more. You can see videos of some of our talks at our Vimeo channel.

Our next event is on Sunday 7th December at 6pm at Bangkok Restaurant on Princess Street, Manchester.

If you want more of a taste of what we're about, here's the Introduction I gave to our first event:


Hello. Thank you to everyone for coming to our first ever Queer Forum event. A special thanks to Rachele and the team here at Bangkok for giving us this lovely space to work in, and for including us in the Queer We Are program of events. Rachele approached myself and Siobhan separately to do an event here and, because great minds think alike, we both came up with the same idea; to do something like the TED talks that was for, by and about LGBTQI people. We both feel strongly that making yourself heard is an important thing for queer people. Stephen Beresford, who wrote the movie Pride, which no doubt you’ll all be going to see next month, said the other day how hard he’d found it as a gay man to make himself heard about anything other than sex; and that’s as a middle class white guy. There are voices everywhere that should be heard and we want The Queer Forum to be one of the places you’ll hear them.

Of course it’s no good making yourself heard if there’s nobody to listen, so this project is also about bringing people together, for support, for sharing, and to bear witness. We should be able to come together and share ideas in an environment that’s fun and intellectual, and that’s not just about partying while Rome, or indeed Paris, burns. Laverne Cox has said that it’s important to always remain teachable in the face of ignorance; including your own. So let’s all promise ourselves to remain teachable. It takes a lot of courage to talk in front of an audience and I know you’re all going to be supportive and welcoming. I hope you’re inspired by what you hear today; perhaps inspiredenough to come and be one of the speakers at a future event.

So, I’m going to put my money where my mouth is, andbe today’s warm up act and give you a selection of great quotations from queer people:

Join us as we explore Manchester’s Gay Village. It’s meaning. What is it saying to us? Is it a powder keg of the avante-garde?
The Divine David Hoyle

Straight people aren’t the enemy. Gay people aren’t the enemy. Ignorance is the enemy.
Anonymous dancer from Flesh at The Hacienda

The only ‘queer’ people are those who don't love anybody.
Rita Mae Brown

It is a rather amazing fact that, of the very many dimensions along which the genital activity of one person can be differentiated from that of another, precisely one, the gender of the object choice, emerged from the turn of the century, and has remained, as THE dimension denoted by the now ubiquitous category of' sexual orientation.
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

I think God is a callous bitch not making me a lesbian. I'm deeply disappointed by my sexual interest in men.
Diamanda Galás

My name is Martin Boyce, and in 1969 I was a drag queen known as Miss Martin. I remember on that night, when we saw the riot police, all of us drag queens, we linked arms like the Rockettes and sang this song we used to sing: "We are the Village girls, we wear our hair in curls. We wear our dungarees above our nellie knees." And the police went crazy hearing that, and they justimmediately rushed us. We gave one kick and fled.
Martin Boyce

We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.
Alan Turing

I remember much of it as if it were yesterday. It is difficult to celebrate when one has such potent, painful tragic memories. We held so many of each other in our arms. One never forgets love like that. Make no mistake, AIDS was and is a terrible tragedy that need not have escalated into a worldwide plague. There were 41 cases when I started. There are 75 million now. It takes a lot of help from a lot of enemies to rack up a tally like that.
Larry Kramer

The dead are still here holding our hands.
Jackie Kay

Manchester Pride: Pick of the best from the Fringe and beyond the Village

That’s right, there’s enough good stuff going on over this year’s Pride that it warrants a guide to the ‘best of’, and here it is. Between Pride’s Official Fringe, the Queer Alt Manchester collective and the Queer We Are takeover of Bangkok on Princess Street, here's everything amazing you want from this year’s Pride happening outside the Village enclave. This is how Pride should always be, and here’s where you need to be…

Hercules and Geryon by Maurice Vellekoop.

14 August–13 September...

Cockadoodle: The Erogenous Art of Maurice Vellekoop … 2022NQ hosts a delightfully titled exhibition of this eclectic Canadian illustrator of fantasy, humour and (homo)eroticism.; a coup for Manchester; it’s his first solo European show …

15 August–22 August...

Love: Music Exhibition … Men capture men as four Manchester photographers display images of musicians and dancers …

15 August...

Naked Boys Reading: does what it says on the tin, an array of body-positive not-at-all-shy gentlemen read from selected texts before an assembled audience willing to have their self-consciousness challenged …

16 August...
Got Lead: Drawing Sex, Arousal and Desire with Maurice Vellekoop ... get up close with the visiting artist as he shares his tips, methods and inspirations ...

19 August...

Coming Out: From Script to Screen … Legendary Corrie creator Tony Warren is joined by Jonathan Harvey and writers and actors from the soap to discuss the portrayal of gay characters on primetime telly …

22 August...

LGBT History Tour … A queer perspective on the People’s History Museum …

Pride, the Film: Cast Q&A … Meet the cast of a new movie chronicling the relationship between gay activists and striking miners in Thatcher’s crumbling Britain …

Mother’s Ruin: Roadhouse Rehab … Mother never brings a less than stellar line-up, and this Roadhouse bonanza follows suit with David Hoyle, Grace ‘The Face’ Oni Smith, Sheela Blige, The Niallist and more, all under JonJo’s watchful eye …

Bollox Is The New Black: Just guess the theme of this years’ Bollox Pride party at the Star & Garter …?

Grace Oni Smith by Lee Baxter.

23 August … 

Drunk At Vogue: The Boat Party / The Love Party … Two parties, one love, as Drunk At Vogue sail the Princess Katherine boat in the afternoon and disco hard at Kraak in the evening …

Rapture vs Black Angel:  Manchester’s premier women’s clubnight meets the original gay girls RnB party at an epic session for Queer We Are …

24 August … 

BANG! Yard Party Social: All-day full-on backstreet Northern Quarter party with local DJs and party people, all for FREE, outside Kraak …

Madonna Aid: 1984 Loft Party … Wall-to-wall Queen of Pop on the speakers and in the dress up box, all night long at Kraak …

HomoElectric owns (Paradise) Factory once again for three floors of intense partying, with special guests Little Boots and the Crazy P Soundsystem …

25 August … 

Queerchester Film Screenings showcases a diverse selection of DIY films from Manchester’s alt queer scene plus a slection of queer shorts …

The Queer Forum: Like the TED talks but for LGBTQI people, seven fascinating talks from all walks of queer life, plus music, short films and a chance to mingle…

Candlelit Vigil … Sackville Park is the setting for candlelit reflection for those lost to HIV/AIDS and those living with the diseases worldwide …

Related: Gay Icons

Pride: afterthoughts

I thought this year I’d wait until the dust settled. It seems it’s very important in Manchester to have an opinion about the annual Gay Pride festival, or at least to tell everyone about it on Facebook. If you run a gay night or two, like I do, some people want to perceive you as some kind of spokesperson. I’m not, but I was needled several times to say something scandalous in the direction of Manchester Pride. I don’t have it in me. I think it boils down to this: Pride as a party, or Pride as a protest/political consciousness raiser? Doing both isn’t really working. At least not for me.

Don’t get me wrong, we need big gay cultural happenings, and we have them: Homotopia, Queer Up North, Duckie at Southbank, Queer Contact... These sorts of events are by and for LGBT people and have been brilliant over the years. Go and find out. Buy tickets. Support them. But spending bundles of pink pounds to hire The Feeling and a reformed Sugababes under a banner of ‘Gay Pride’? How exactly does it ‘celebrate LGBT life’?  I’m not sure I get it. Or want it. If you must attend a Kate Nash concert, just go to one, like everyone else does. I go to gigs all year round, I don’t need Pride for that. I need Pride for something else.

We might be about to get marriage equality in the UK, but worldwide the net is closing in on gay people. It’s real and I am frightened by it. If you don’t have a global perspective about yourself as a gay person, the concept of perceiving yourself as a group at all – which is, after all, the essence of Pride –falters. Except that Pride itself isn’t the place to talk about this, and I wonder if it should be. I am pleased that Manchester Pride expanded its Fringe program to include smaller arts and cultural events, including, crucially, some that take place outside the ghetto. I am glad the Pride Board has a trans* individual on it. I am glad they erected a ‘To Russia With Love’ wall in the Village to show Mancunian’s support towards persecuted people in our twinned city of St Petersburg. I hope they leave it up beyond Pride, I’d like to see it myself. But why Russia now, and not Uganda any other year, or any one of the dozens of ex British colonies where we exported homophobia to in the first place, at any other Pride? It’s complicated, and I’m trying to dance here.

During Manchester Pride, only a paid wristband gets you access onto Canal Street, unless you live there, and even bar staff who work in the Village can’t see the big bands without paying. I put parties on for gay (and non-gay) people outside the Gay Village. I do it all year round and I do it over Pride too. You might think this is somehow divisive, luring punters away from the gay enclave. But sexuality has no postcode, and the Village itself has barely any club space anyway, while the bars during Pride weekend – it has to be said – are overcrowded, overpriced, riddled with bad beer and bad music. I moved away from Blackpool a long time ago to get away from that. It’s not for me.

This year, I’m part of a newly-formed and loose collective of promoters under the name Queer Alt. Manchester who hosted a roster of alternative and non-Village gay and queer events during Pride. If you think we’re cashing in; yes, we absolutely are. Every last one of us donated cash to charities, and paid our performers. As for Pride itself, I’m not sitting in judgement, it would be the height of hypocrisy. It was only a few years ago I went out on the Thursday of Pride, and with very few breaks, kept going one way or another until the Monday. Trust me, I wasn’t thinking about St Petersburg then.

Besides, I’m not sure what form a more politicised Pride would take anyway. For the most part I’m an armchair activist. The odd demonstration aside, I’m all about petitions, letters, angry Tweets, political discussions, charity donations, that kind of thing. Are you much different? But I would like another way to get to meet the community sometimes, one that didn’t involve booze. Especially now, when I feel so powerless to contribute to any kind of positive change in the world. I feel hopeless when I think about Uganda or Moscow, never mind Damascus or Cairo or Palestine. But this has happened to me before, and the way I got out of it? Reading Angela Davis and listening to Larry Kramer. Watching REDS. Reading about mass resistance and small victories. Watching TED lectures about community action and feminism. Watching ACT-UP videos on YouTube. Watching We Were Here. This is where something like Gay Pride should come in, to bolster that feeling of insurmountable human aggression and oppression, to tackle the apathy that inevitably follows. Watching Barclays Bank drive a truck down Deansgate decked out in this year’s designated Pride theme (‘The 1980s’) was never going to do that for me. And I really need it.