This is rather embarrassing to admit, but I watched nine hours of the doc Center Seat: 55 Years of Star Trek. And there’s no Bill Shatner – probably they couldn’t afford his newly minted sub-orbital astronaut ass (at 90-years-young). As I’m really only a proper Trekkie – or so I… Read More »Warped Drives: 55 (ish) Years of Star Trek Kinkery
Football may not be coming home, after England’s Euros finals defeat earlier this year. But football’s greatest star, and perhaps the world’s most famous face and body, is going to be ‘back where I belong’. In England. According to his recent Insta post (336m followers). The striking Portuguese striker Cristiano… Read More »Ronaldo’s Coming Home
Mark Simpson on lavender marriage – between the closeted star & the public. (Independent on Sunday, August 1995) [One from the vaults for LBGTQIA++ Pride. Probably because it came on the cowboy heels of Male Impersonators (1994), it’s rather more pretentious – and with fewer gags – than later work.… Read More »Purple Passions
Mark Simpson interviews Neil LaBute about his film ‘In the Company of Men’ – twenty years before ‘toxic masculinity’ went ‘hegemonic’ (Originally appeared in Attitude, 1998) Women are made of sugar and spice. While men are made from slugs and snails and puppy dogs’ tails. This would appear to be… Read More »Men Make Terrible Company – Neil LaBute interview
We’re all living in Nick Kamen’s Launderette now Another fondly remembered part of the 1980s finished its last cycle last week. Nick Kamen, real name Ivor Neville Kamen, the Essex-born much-gasped-over star of the famous 1985 Levi’s 501 male striptease ‘Launderette’ TV ad, checked out. He was just fifty-nine. Sadly,… Read More »Jeans-Genie – The Lecherous Legacy of Those 80s Levi’s Ads