You never fail to satisfy

Does my bum look big in this..?

Another long, drawn out week of dealing with trivia and absolute idiots is almost over. To quote Malcolm Tucker from The Thick Of It, and dedicated to this week: “Yeah, yeah. Andy Murray, Andy Pandy, fucking Ghandi, have a hand-shandy, whatever, just FUCK OFF out of my life!”

Now, breathe...

It is, after all, the day we look forward to (or at least dream about) getting in a party mood - and what better way to do so than with a proper Funk-fest?!

Sharing the day with another wildly disparate assemblage of "names", such as Jo Stafford, Grace Kelly, Sun Yat-sen, Les McKeown, Anne Hathaway, Booker T, Lucia Popp, Mariella Frostrup, Neil Young, Megan Mullally, Brian Hyland, Ryan Gosling, Nadia Comăneci (who is 60), Alexander Borodin, Tonya Harding, and - erm - Charles Manson, it would have been one of the masters of Funking, my eternal "secret teenage crush", the late, great Errol Brown's birthday today!

To herald in the impending weekend, let's have a portion [I wish!] of the great man and his incredible performing trousers - and Thank Disco It's Friday!

Hot Chocolate - Every 1’s A Winner

I never tire of it...

Have a great weekend, dear reader!

---

Footnote:

If you need your party a bit more "ramped-up", however...

This week, we lost two great contributors to the rich tapestry of "party music" - founder-member of UB40 Astro and Andrew Barker of 808 State. So, by way of a tribute, how about the "meeting of true minds" that was this techno oddity?!

808 State Vs UB40 - One In Ten

Wickid!

Totty du Jour

In the long-gone comedy Someone Like You, Hugh Jackman and Ashley Judd were in underwear. As he remembers it: “Men’s drawers have this little slot around the front. My button had come off. I wasn’t hanging out but, looking down, the shorts had flapped open.

“Embarrassed, I explained, ‘My fly was open and you could see everything. Sorry. I apologise. Did you see that during the take?’

“She said, ‘No, I didn’t.’ Then she added, ‘But two takes before I did.’”

Lucky Ashley Judd, I say!

My gorgeous future husband Hugh Jackman is 50 years old today, and is still hotter than all the members of One Direction, or Years & Years, or any of the tweeny singers or so-called "reality-TV-celebrities" around today. And we know a most appropriate song to help him blow his candle...

Hot Chocolate - You Sexy Thing

Thank Disco It's Friday!

...and many happy returns, Mr Hugh Michael Jackman (born 12th October 1968)

'Cause baby, I believe that you're a star

Hot Chocolate - Emma

Hot Chocolate - Every 1's a Winner

Hot Chocolate - So You Win Again

RIP one of my childhood crushes, Errol Brown and his tremendous performing trousers.

Lester Errol Brown MBE (12th November 1943 – 6th May 2015)

I believe in miracles

Convoluted connections #973 in a series...

It is Easter weekend - four whole days off work (yay!).

It's traditionally also the time of year for a celebration - of all things chocolate!

This gives me a perfect excuse to play another classic from the era of glitter, satin and flares from a highly appropriately named band.

Here's Hot Chocolate and You Sexy Thing. Thank Disco It's Friday!

Hot Chocolate - You Sexy Thing

You can most definitely tell where Errol Brown's keeping his Easter Eggs in those trousers...

Have a fantabulosa break, sweeties!

Every place I've ever been, every place I'm going to...

As the countdown continues to World Pride on Saturday - and the stupid stories and mud-slinging occupy gay news sites - I thought I'd take us on another trip down memory lane...

It is forty years since the first Gay Pride rally was held in the centre of London - but what were the significant Number 1 songs through the decades at this Gay Xmas time of year?

1972 - Take Me Bak 'Ome by Slade [in an exceptionally odd clip from Spanish TV - wtf are those girl dancers doing?]:

Slade - Take Me Bak 'Ome

1977 - So You Win Again by Hot Chocolate [featuring the very "proud" Mr Errol Brown and his incredible performing trousers again]:

Hot Chocolate - So You Win Again

1982 - Happy Talk by Captain Sensible:

Captain Sensible - Happy Talk

1987 - It's A Sin by Pet Shop Boys [Highly appropriate, methinks!]:

Pet Shop Boys - It's A Sin (Live in Rio, 1994)

1992 - Abba-esque (EP) by Erasure [You really can't get much more camp than this!]:

Erasure - Take a Chance on Me

1997 - Ecuador by Sash! [actually at #2, held off the top slot by that pompous twat Puff Daddy, but I'll never play I'll Be Missing You on this blog.] [I remember dancing my tits off to this one, in a dance tent in Clapham, no less...]:



2002 - A Little Less Conversation by JXL [Possibly the very first song featuring Elvis I ever liked]:

Elvis vs JXL - A Little Less Conversation

2007 - The Girls by Calvin Harris [It was actually bloody Rihanna and her Umbrella at #1, but I can't stand that.] [I am not much of a fan of Mr Harris's song tbh, so instead here's the much more "gay-friendly" cover version by Dragonette]:

And today? Bloody Will.i.am (and I most certainly am not playing him!). In fact, I cannot see anything in today's chart that I would even want to listen to, let alone feature here. How sad...

The love that now forever dares to speak its name

Thirty-four years ago today, the reprehensible Mary Whitehouse won a battle. She succeeded in a private prosecution against the editor and publishers of the then only gay magazine in Britain, Gay News for publishing a poem that she found "blasphemous". The paper's late editor Dennis Lemon was convicted and received a suspended prison sentence. The paper almost closed down due to the £10,000 fine levied by the court.



It is appalling to think that even in the so-called "liberated" 1970s, at the height of the punk and disco era, such archaic legal redress was still possible. It was the very last case of its kind to succeed. Yet it was only in the current century that the common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel were abolished by the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008!

For better or worse, love it or hate it, here is that offending poem in full:

The Love That Dares To Speak Its Name
by James Kirkup

As they took him from the cross
I, the centurion, took him in my arms-
the tough lean body
of a man no longer young,
beardless, breathless,
but well hung.

He was still warm.
While they prepared the tomb
I kept guard over him.
His mother and the Magdalen
had gone to fetch clean linen
to shroud his nakedness.

I was alone with him.
For the last time
I kissed his mouth. My tongue
found his, bitter with death.
I licked his wound-
the blood was harsh

For the last time
I laid my lips around the tip
of that great cock, the instrument
of our salvation, our eternal joy.
The shaft, still throbbed, anointed
with death's final ejaculation.

I knew he'd had it off with other men-
with Herod's guards, with Pontius Pilate,
With John the Baptist, with Paul of Tarsus
with foxy Judas, a great kisser, with
the rest of the Twelve, together and apart.
He loved all men, body, soul and spirit - even me.

So now I took off my uniform, and, naked,
lay together with him in his desolation,
caressing every shadow of his cooling flesh,
hugging him and trying to warm him back to life.
Slowly the fire in his thighs went out,
while I grew hotter with unearthly love.

It was the only way I knew to speak our love's proud name,
to tell him of my long devotion, my desire, my dread-
something we had never talked about. My spear, wet with blood,
his dear, broken body all open wounds,
and in each wound his side, his back,
his mouth - I came and came and came

as if each coming was my last.
And then the miracle possessed us.
I felt him enter into me, and fiercely spend
his spirit's final seed within my hole, my soul,
pulse upon pulse, unto the ends of the earth-
he crucified me with him into kingdom come.

This is the passionate and blissful crucifixion
same-sex lovers suffer, patiently and gladly.
They inflict these loving injuries of joy and grace
one upon the other, till they die of lust and pain
within the horny paradise of one another's limbs,
with one voice cry to heaven in a last divine release.

Then lie long together, peacefully entwined, with hope
of resurrection, as we did, on that green hill far away.
But before we rose again, they came and took him from me.
They knew what we had done, but felt
no shame or anger. Rather they were glad for us,
and blessed us, as would he, who loved all men.

And after three long, lonely days, like years,
in which I roamed the gardens of my grief
seeking for him, my one friend who had gone from me,
he rose from sleep, at dawn, and showed himself to me before
all others. And took me to him with the love that now forever dares to speak its name.

Thank heavens times have changed!

Read more on the BBC

And with a massive twist of irony, the Number One in the charts on this date in 1977?

Hot Chocolate - So You Win Again

You win again, indeed.

You never fail to satisfy-i...

"Le Weekend" approaches, and it's time for glitterballs and strobe lighting again!

Megastars of the Disco era were Hot Chocolate - with their impeccably classy funky sound they were hugely successful, and indeed were one of only three acts to have a hit in every year of the 1970s (in fact every year between 1970 and 1984) in the UK. And what classics! So You Win Again, Brother Louie, You Sexy Thing, No Doubt About It, Emma, and this one...

Thank Disco It's Friday! (Oh Errol! Those trousers...)

Hot Chocolate - Every 1's A Winner