Queer as Art

We're making this programme

about queer artists since decriminalisation.

We're grouping people together from all across the arts.

What do you think about that idea?

This programme contains some strong language

I think the idea of grouping people together is really...

shit.

-INTERVIEWER GIGGLES

-I think it's really shit.

I don't think that people should be put into the women art lot,

or the queer art lot, or the straight art lot.

You know, art is art. Regardless.

This programme contains some scenes of a sexual nature

The arts have long provided a refuge for gay people in Britain.

A place they could express themselves.

And push back against the conventional society they'd fled.

He's sexy.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary

of the partial decriminalisation of male homosexuality,

23 leading figures from across the arts in Britain

have agreed to talk about how their sexuality

might have shaped their work...

SANDI LAUGHS

Absolute filth. I can't...

believe I wrote this stuff.

You know, if there's one thing worse than homosexual art,

it's heterosexual art.

It did feel important to write with relish about sex,

because that had been my experience.

The way I came to being gay

was through falling in love with another girl.

It was absolutely lovely.

..and how the work of queer artists has changed Britain.

When Bowie came out,

every young person in England was dressing like Bowie.

It was quite extraordinary.

For human sympathy,

we all need to have stood on the outside at some point in our lives.

And once that has happened to you, it's very difficult to be so rigid,

so prejudiced, so judgemental again,

and that's how we change as human beings.

There was always "lesbian Sandi Toksvig",

and now I'm honestly mostly just Sandi.

I don't know what's happened to my life!

DRUMS AND BRASS BAND PLAY

Britain in 1967 was a conservative place.

Divorce was still considered morally wrong.

And a woman's place was generally in the home.

Homosexuality had been partially decriminalised,

but many gay people were still forced

to live their lives in secret, in fear of judgement by society.

For many of us, this is revolting. Men dancing with men.

There were, however, three careers rumoured to offer

a relatively safe haven...

Hairdressing,

the civil service, and...

MUSIC DROWNS OUT LYRICS

# Singing and dancing and something for all... #

The stage was a sanctuary in an otherwise hostile world.

APPLAUSE

I was 19.

I was the smallest boy ever to have got in the Royal Ballet.

You could either dance or you couldn't,

and it didn't matter if you were gay, straight, or whatever.

You got the part if you were any good.

In 1969,

a young Wayne Sleep was offered a scholarship and ditched industrial

Hartlepool for the more liberal world of the ballet.

It was a wonderful freedom to be a part of that -

and I only felt sorry for men

who were becoming engineers, or draftsmen, or architects.

They all had to hide it completely,

whereas we could just, you know, let our wrist drop occasionally.

WAYNE LAUGHS

Actor Sir Antony Sher first trod the boards in Britain in 1968 -

a year after decriminalisation.

And it was in the theatre he would meet his partner,

Gregory Doran.

I was kind of half aware that theatre

had a reputation of having gay people in it,

but it was... It was very discreet.

Everybody loves you and respects you,

but, dear uncle, you ought to be silent.

You ought to hold your tongue.

Even though Gielgud had been arrested for cottaging,

it still didn't hang over his reputation in a significant way.

As long as you didn't shout about it...

Well, Roger. Come in!

..behind the scenes,

gay actors enjoyed a level of acceptance unimaginable elsewhere.

I think the theatre is one of the professions that -

and has been for the longest - the most easy to be queer in.

If you can't come out in the theatre,

then, God, it's the end, you know, really.

And although the characters on stage were predominantly straight,

a young gay audience would somehow sense a private language

that spoke directly to them.

Very early on, before I was sexually aware,

a little gay boy was in evidence.

Theatre was, for me, my first point of contact with a wider world

tantalizingly beyond reach.

What's mine is yours.

And what is yours...

is mine.

It kind of switched on circuits within me, which kind of picked up

gay data being transmitted,

sometimes obviously,

sometimes covertly.

But the acting didn't stop when you quit the stage.

Outside this cloistered world,

open discussion of your sexuality was still taboo.

In the visual arts, a group of maverick artists was emerging,

who paid no heed to the rules of conservative society.

I remember being asked, what was it like to come out in the '60s?

I said, "What do you mean come out? I've never been in!"

Maggi Hambling

has been an unstoppable force in the art world for over 50 years.

Does anyone tell you off about it?

If people want me, they provide ashtrays.

And this little self-portrait is, er, called Hangover,

and I'm trying to paint how it feels to have a really blinding hangover.

In 1964,

Hambling was offered a place at Camberwell College of Art -

and swapped rural Sussex for swinging London.

I had a sort of list - younger man, older man, black man, woman,

and I decided...

..the woman won.

Hambling quickly became part of a scene

whose liberal views about sexuality were far ahead

of the rest of the country.

We were rather fascinated by the word "gay" in the '60s,

so we had a gay table in the canteen and we wouldn't let anyone sit down

at it if they weren't gay or extra glamorous.

We had parties.

Francis Bacon came, David Hockney came.

Since the early '60s, David Hockney had been gaining recognition

for his exploration of a subject matter barely touched

by a major artist since the classical period -

erotic depictions of gay life and love.

I never hid anything.

I mean, that's what I didn't want to do.

I didn't want to hide anything.

I mean, I was an artist.

With his increasing success, Hockney had begun to have

a liberalising effect on London's network

of galleries and dealers.

If you wanted his work, you left your homophobia at the door.

I was painting for homosexual propaganda.

I didn't care whether it was illegal or not.

I'd begun to sell pictures,

so I bought cigarettes in packets of 20,

not tens any more.

Most people bought them in tens.

It was an exciting time.

But stifled by Britain's unfriendly attitude towards gay people,

in 1964 Hockney fled to the more progressive California.

I did feel very, very free here.

It was amazing.

I mean, absolutely amazing.

There was a real gay life here.

That's why I came.

I came for the space and sex.

And it was in California that Hockney produced

what would become his most celebrated works.

And he used his fame to bring an openness about sexuality

to the wider public.

When I was a teenager,

A Bigger Splash came out, the film of the painting, as it were,

and I remember going with a friend to see it.

I was about 14, maybe,

going to see it in London.

How could I describe Joe? He's...

..tall, he's about my size.

He's handsome.

Seeing David Hockney talking about the kind of men he fancied.

"Oh, I love Italians. Always so handsome, they've got lovely eyes."

He's...sexy.

And...

..what else?

He's artistic.

I've decided you're artistic, Joe.

Just the idea that someone could talk like that about

his desires for other man was extraordinary.

-INTERVIEWER:

-Did you sense that you were somehow maybe even

privileged to be able to live the life that you wanted to live?

I've always been privileged.

I know that because I have this talent.

It was one thing for David Hockney to be open.

A huge star in the bohemian world of the visual arts.

Pop music was aimed at a mass audience

and so gay people within it had to play a more careful game.

MUSIC: I Can't Explain by The Who

In the mid-'60s, we'd seen an explosion of swaggering,

hyper-masculine rock bands.

They looked like the height of heterosexuality,

but behind the scenes there was a secret to many

of the bands' success.

In the music industry in the '60s, there was tremendous openness.

Most of the managers were gay.

Nobody is going to look at a teenage boy with a closer similarity

to how a teenage girl would look at him than a gay manager.

Kit Lambert managed The Who and I managed The Yardbirds.

Brain Epstein managed The Beatles.

Anyone who knew gay life

knew that The Beatles looked like four boys

who'd found a sugar daddy and got set up at an apartment in Belgravia.

Robert Stigwood, who managed Cream, and Andrew Oldham,

who managed the Rolling Stones, was very straight.

They loved the gay culture and acted very camp.

Mick, like all great artists, is a great absorber,

he looks around at what's happening.

A lot of Mick's campness onstage came from what Andrew did

in the office and in the car.

Gay managers, they were very independent

and were very anti-establishment.

-INTERVIEWER:

-Why would gay managers be anti-establishment?

Well, when you wake up in the morning and look at your hard-on

and know that's leading you to jail,

you tend to be anti-establishment, don't you?

SCREAMING

Gay culture spread by gay managers.

It is as influential in all British pop music

as black culture has been to American pop music.

Whilst many gay men in music wielded power behind the scenes,

for a gay woman pop could be a lonely place.

# When I said I needed you

# You said you would always stay. #

Paradox with Dusty is that she appeared to wear her heart

on her sleeve, but of course she couldn't be open about who she was.

# You don't have to say you love me

# Just be close at hand. #

You felt that Dusty's life was reflected in the records.

You know, I'm In The Middle Of Nowhere,

I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself.

It seems as though there's a bit of autobiography going on.

# Believe me, believe me

# I can't help but love you. #

But for many young lesbians,

it was that very struggle between concealment and self-expression

that gave Dusty's music its power.

My first crush was probably Dusty Springfield.

I used to get a magazine called Girl and I had a picture

of Dusty Springfield taped to the side of my wardrobe.

Dusty was the last thing I saw at night and the first thing

I saw in the morning. She was so glamorous.

She had some fake eyelashes about a foot long, they were just amazing.

# I was only 24 hours from Tulsa

# Oh!

# Only one day away from your arms. #

She had a combination of strength and vulnerability that was

very attractive.

She wasn't clinging onto the arm of some boyfriend.

She wasn't relying on the guys in the band to support her.

She was just there, she was Dusty.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Ladies and gentlemen, the very exciting Marc Bolan.

# I'm gonna change Mad Donna

# I'm gonna change Mad Donna. #

At the turn of the '70s, a new breed of musicians emerged.

Taking their cue from the flamboyance of the art world,

they moved the gay aesthetic from the shadows to centre stage.

# Like the gods of old, I'm gonna get my teeth in you. #

I loved the glam rock period,

where people were being feminine, androgynous,

ambiguity is sexier.

I think it's a great place to be as an artist

because you're keeping people guessing.

But in 1972, for one radical artist, the guessing came to an end.

MUSIC: Queen Bitch by David Bowie

Bowie's coming out was incredibly radical.

It was quite extraordinary.

Yes, the law had been changed in 1967,

but not a single person in the music industry

had ever admitted they were gay.

That had a huge impact on me and creative people

of my generation, really.

Gay or bisexuality became fashionable.

Every young person in England was dressing like Bowie.

-What's your name?

-Ziggy Zoe.

-What was it before?

Well, my real name is Mandy, but that's a bit boring.

Why do you think they want to look like him?

Wouldn't you?

I loved watching friends Bowie-izing themselves,

and not dragging up, but giving that sort of glam rock

tinge to themselves.

They all played with the idea that their masculinity

could be refined and could be feminized without any loss

of dignity, control, charisma and so on.

And that's a good thing.

When you saw him do Ziggy onstage, what made you decide

to look like that?

Just brilliant.

Just everything you could imagine.

Just a dream, isn't it, really?

They all went into school dressed like Bowie every day

and then suddenly Bowie says "I'm gay" and then these people

are confronted with, "My God, everyone is going to

"think I'm gay, too." I would say that was a huge influence

on perfectly normally straight kids to just not care about gay.

-Why are you so upset?

-He's smashing!

-I kissed him!

-I kissed his hand!

-I kissed his hand!

-I kissed hand, I kissed him!

I went, "Oh!" Oh, he's lovely!

# When you're a boy, you can buy a home of your own

# When you're a boy

# Learn to drive and everything. #

For artists like Bowie, homosexuality wasn't so much

a way of life.

It was a splash of shocking colour in a drab, grey Britain.

-INTERVIEWER:

-Why do you think he did it?

He was sensational.

He had to do something new every day.

# Boys keep swinging

# Boys always work it out. #

He's a huge star, but the bigger you get,

the bigger the publicity has to be.

He was permanently in the public eye. He was very clever.

Whether or not he was fully gay didn't matter.

That's what pop's all about.

It's a place where you can play with identity, play with gender.

So that was much more about gender and the possibilities of

who you could be than it was about being gay.

For pop's teenage audience lurking in suburban bedrooms,

the gay aesthetic had a unique appeal.

More often than not, your parents hated it.

Oh, and she had such beautiful hair before she started dying it.

But TV was broadcasting to the whole family,

so any expression of a gay sensibility had to operate in code.

MUSIC: Coronation Street Theme

One gay man's sensibility was beaming its way into the

nation's living rooms without the public even suspecting it.

Off to what you laughingly call work, are you, love?

Yes, love, but we'll be finished by the time

-you've emptied the slops. Ta-ta.

-Oh!

-Common as muck.

-I don't know why we talk to them.

I've got a feeling that only a gay man

could have created something like Coronation Street.

Coronation Street was the creation of the late Tony Warren,

a young script writer at Granada,

who'd been open about being gay since long before decriminalisation.

He was just a barrel of fun.

He had a tremendous liking for strong women.

Warren spent much of his childhood with his mother

and grandmother while the men were away at war,

but there were other strong women he was influenced by, too.

MUSIC: Rain On My Parade by Barbara Streisand

He would go out on the burgeoning Manchester gay scene

and turn the drag queens he met into ever more

heightened female characters.

Betty, have you sold that sideboard to Hilda Ogden?

-No.

-Right.

I'll soon sort Hilda Ogden out.

Bet was a combination...

Come on, then, there might be a fight.

..all of the things that Tony loved.

The strength, the vulnerability, the comedy.

That was Bet.

You never was able to talk the Queen's English, was you, Hilda?

No, she just shouts it top of her flaming voice.

She were an air-raid siren in t'war.

Right, Bet Lynch, that does it!

Coronation Street's flamboyant women didn't just appeal

to millions of mostly straight British viewers,

they struck a very special chord with a generation

of young gay men.

Not on your nelly!

In visual material, especially, television and film,

there's a streak of camp that resonates with gay men

on a completely silent and unconscious level

that is not received from society.

You can grow up on a farm in the middle of Norfolk,

having no social contact,

13 years old, you could be sitting there being thrilled by Bet Lynch

and thrilled by Joan Collins.

I was sitting in a house in Swansea.

I had no idea that the Wizard Of Oz was a camp classic.

Those words didn't exist, but I watched it and loved it.

I loved her, I loved those strong women in the soaps.

What is it? One day we will understand.

# Somewhere over the rainbow

# Way up high. #

-INTERVIEWER:

-Bet Lynch was a straight woman

played by a straight woman. Why do you think she was such a gay icon?

I haven't got the slightest idea.

If you're writing Coronation Street,

literally, you'll be on your best when you're writing Bet Lynch.

Len Fairclough could have come in, rattling the dialogue off.

You've kind of got to raise your game when you come to Bet.

So, actually, in some ways, when we're admiring camp,

we're admiring the best.

Stuff that's more work put into it, more thought put into it.

Camp isn't a superficial thing.

It's really, really profound.

It's a profound connection between men and women.

I remember doing the Street Of Dreams at Manchester Arena.

Singing a song called There's Nowt A Bit Of Lippy Wouldn't Solve.

But the one thing that hit me when I walked on stage,

there were thousands - and I mean thousands - of drag queens.

All with beehives, all in leopard.

That is the ultimate accolade.

I'll tell you what really pissed me off a bit, though.

Most of them looked better than I bloody did.

However...

But it wasn't just in Coronation Street where a camp sensibility

was already with us in our living rooms.

Shut that door.

In light entertainment, a new generation of outrageously camp

comedians was bursting onto our screens.

The Generation Game, presented by Larry Grayson,

attracted audiences of 25 million viewers,

becoming the most watched game show ever on TV.

Well, I'm cock-a-hoop.

LAUGHTER

I can't tell you how thrilled I am to be here on the game...

-because... Listen.

-LAUGHTER

Riff-raff!

There were camp comics on the telly.

I felt slightly resentful of them...

because actually they just fuelled the language

in which I was abused kind of homophobically at school.

He seems a nice boy, as well.

There's a lot of gay men would talk about watching

those camp entertainments with shame.

I didn't feel any of that.

I used to love them, I used to think they were funny,

and they were immensely strong and powerful and important.

You used to be a member of a stunt team

-which entailed being blown up in a coffin?

-Yes.

LAUGHTER

One of the reasons why I think camp is so fascinating

is cos it both expresses a vulnerability -

this is who I really am -

but also is extremely well defended, too.

"This is who I am and fuck you."

The screaming queens of Saturday night entertainment were performing

a delicate tightrope act between what everyone could see

and what no-one could openly say.

# Good hard work is all that it takes

# That's why I'm a self-made man. #

There were people like Danny La Rue,

magnificently got up with wig and boobs and everything,

but no-one politely drew attention to the fact

that this man was a screaming queen.

A grown man walking around in a wig and a gown.

-Listen who's talking!

-Oh!

-INTERVIEWER:

-And did you know those people were gay?

People lived in a strange filter of thinking they knew no-one

who was gay when they did.

# Besides all that, he's as gay as can be

# Just watch him. #

I remember my mother very early on sort of saying,

"I don't know any homosexuals."

And about 20 years later, I kind of thought, "Yes, you did!"

There was, like, old Uncle Doug.

You knew he was never going to marry.

Doomed to never marry.

And you knew he was gay.

There were those two women who lived on the corner.

There are going to be one of these in each department for Christmas.

Ho-ho-ho, little boy, have I got a surprise for you!

LAUGHTER

You look at Are You Being Served? now,

and John Inman is so outrageously, obviously, screamingly gay.

But you got away with it at prime time, midweek on BBC One.

You kind of wonder, "Did they talk that through at all?

"Were there discussions at editorial level?"

Oh, look what's just come on, isn't he handsome?

Yes, that's Noblakov.

He's very big in Russia.

He's pretty big here, too.

Are You Being Served? is that classic British thing

of a sitcom full of unhappy people trapped in one place.

But he's the one happy character and he literally walks into some

episodes saying he was out with sailors last night,

or he was out with a priest or he was out with a body-builder.

What he's saying is, "I had sex with all of those people last night,

"and everyone else in our show is sexually frustrated."

They've created a sexually liberated and sexually active

gay man on screen. It's a miracle.

Although we may not have acknowledged it,

in the '70s gay characters were staring right at us.

But they shared one thing in common.

All of them were men.

When I was young, there was nothing.

Nobody talked about it.

I felt like there was just me, and every single thing that I looked at,

every film, every advert, every poster,

every piece of art seemed to suggest that I was this oddity.

That I was entirely alone.

Ron and his girlfriend Linda have been house-hunting

for over a year.

Lesbianism, although it had never been illegal,

was still considered an absolute taboo -

both in public and everyday life.

In Fife in the 1960s,

you were about as likely to come up against a unicorn as you

were to come up against an out lesbian.

The feeling of growing up on the outside of society

infused the writing of soon-to-be novelist Jeanette Winterson.

I had parents who were both deeply religious,

and in Mrs Winterson's case,

hyper-aware of sexual deviance, as she would have understood it.

Winterson drew heavily on her childhood

in an evangelical Pentecostal family when she wrote her first book,

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit,

published in 1985 and later adapted for TV.

I can't hear very well.

It'll be the Lord blocking your ears to all but the words of the spirit.

There's quite a lot of the world that she would rather keep out,

and gayness was certainly part of it.

The signs of those possessed

is that they will engage themselves in depraved sexual practises.

THEY GASP

Winterson's novel mirrors her own life.

The central character incurs the wrath of her family and community

when she falls in love with another girl.

I was just living in the strange Winterson world,

which was prescribed and narrow,

but in my imagination I wanted something different.

First of all, I didn't know how to hide it or that I needed to hide it,

because I had no experience of it being wrong,

because nobody ever talked about it.

You have to discover that something is wrong, don't you?

I didn't know that it was a problem, so I just went out there and said,

you know, "I'm really in love with Helen.

"This is so great. All I want to do is be with her."

In Winterson's novel,

the gay child's perspective did something entirely new -

it showed up the madness not of being gay,

but of those who had a problem with it.

This volcano erupted on my head.

There was an exorcism

because it was assumed that I was demon-possessed.

You know, very scary stuff.

I want you to think about Jesus.

Think about his goodness and his loving kindness.

There's no kindness here!

I hate you all!

Oh, Lord, come down among us.

End this girl's suffering.

Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit quickly garnered critical acclaim.

And at 25, Jeanette Winterson became a literary world celebrity.

I remember picking it up in a university book shop.

Suddenly here was a lesbian novel with the Penguin stamp of approval

on it. And it was really, really exciting.

You know, that for me was very enabling.

Suddenly, to think, "Well, if people are taking lesbian and gay stories

"seriously like this, then why shouldn't I write about them, too?"

In the early '80s, in pop music,

the children of Bowie were coming of age.

A new generation of artists was emerging,

and some were ready to go one step further than their heroes,

and talk openly about gay sex.

I had a bit of a vision for what Frankie Goes To Hollywood would be.

To create a group where the effect was not just lock up your daughters,

but lock up your sons, as well.

# Relax Don't do it

# When you want to go to it

# Relax... #

Frankie Goes To Hollywood's debut single took the frisson of the

gay leather scene and put it out there for all to see.

# Relax Don't do it

# When you wanna come

# When you wanna come

# Relax... #

Relax...

Yes, it was quite a... orgasmic ejaculatory moment.

I think the first time we had heard a male orgasm on record.

Relax was met by a frenzy of moral outrage,

and the BBC promptly refused to play the song

on any of its TV or radio stations.

I found the lyrics objectionable and I felt that the record could offend

the majority of our listening audience.

So I made the decision not to play it.

They are buying it out there and you're not letting them hear it.

I was very passionate about the work.

I felt slightly robbed by the BBC,

because your desires to be a pop star,

the fantasy includes multiple performances on Top Of The Pops,

which did not happen.

I am quite outraged by the way I've kind of almost been slandered,

and said, you know, "I think disgusting lyrics."

Which only someone with the mind of a sewer could see them as obscene.

HE CHUCKLES

That was my line at the time.

Well, I don't think there's any other interpretation

you can possibly put on those lyrics.

It is a description of a sexual act.

Come on, explain further.

But the BBC's stance had unintended consequences.

Relax has now been in the British charts for a staggering 28 weeks,

and has sold 1.2 million copies in the UK alone...

IMPRESSED WHISTLE

..where it was number one for five weeks.

And Holly Johnson and his band mates weren't alone.

The new crop of musicians took a more overtly political stance

on what it meant to be a gay artist in Britain,

and many felt it was crucial to talk honestly about their sexuality.

So put your hands together and please welcome The Communards.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

One of the reasons why I was in a pop band,

Jimmy and I, was precisely for activists reasons.

It was never a question in our minds that we would be anything other than

completely open about being gay.

# Oh, baby

# My heart is full of love and desire for you... #

We, in our rather vain, glorious way,

thought that popular culture might be a sort of entryist force

through which you could kind of achieve some sort of revolution

in the way people thought and felt about things.

For the first time in Britain, there were multiple artists at the

top of the charts who identified as gay.

Jimmy was like a huge, massive influence on me.

I don't know if I would have been brave enough to have made that step

if it wasn't for him.

I don't think I realised how...

brave it was.

You just sense that there were pressures beginning to break up

ideas about what it was to be a man, what it was to be a woman,

how people related.

-INTERVIEWER:

-The Queen video, I Want To Break Free...

Fantastic!

Wasn't it?

# I want to break free... #

Did you know, though, that the character that Freddy plays

is based on some of the women from Coronation Street - possibly you?

Really?

# You're so self-satisfied

# I don't need you. #

But it wasn't always as simple as just coming out.

Artists faced a sometimes impossible balancing act between

self-expression and selling to a mass audience,

60% of whom still thought gay sex was morally wrong.

# Hey, everybody Take a look at me

# I've got street credibility

# I may not have a job but I have a good time

# With the boys that I meet down on the line. #

I knew George was gay the first day I met Wham!.

Probably one of the reasons he signed with me is because he knew I

was gay. But if he chose not to talk about it, that's his business.

# Slam, bam I am a man. #

George was very practical about his career,

and very definite that it would be the wrong thing for Wham!

if he came out.

# Not me You can't hold me down

# Not me I'm gonna fool around. #

Wham! was a totally heterosexual image.

It was two lads about town, out on the razzle, having fun,

finding girls, going home with them.

Jimmy and I, we were quite pissed off when we were out on our own,

and we were sort of like thinking, like, "Oh, come on...

"you lot."

Sometimes, I kind of look at other people and look at their success,

and think maybe we might have had more commercial success -

especially in places like North America,

but I'm glad that I did it the way that I did it.

For me, it was just like you had to do something with your

music, there had to be a reason.

Regardless of when they came out, the explosion of gay sexuality

in music began to change social attitudes in Britain.

My dad always loved Elton John,

and always loved George Michael,

and my dad always loved Boy George.

He was a big Boy George, Culture Club fan.

I think that's why I can't remember it ever being, like, I'm gay

as an issue or I'm gay as to, like, having to come out.

Cos I never remember being encouraged to be in.

Being out in the public world of pop music

meant broadcasting your own sexuality to the nation.

The private realm of literature had long been creating

queer characters that each one of us read on our own.

But often their power was in the imagining of what was going unsaid.

Gay writers pre-1967, sort of canonical writers

like EM Forster, hadn't been able to write openly about

their sexuality.

You can often trace little sort of gay sub texts.

In the mid-'80s, novelist Alan Hollinghurst

was growing increasingly frustrated at the continued failure

of literature to reflect the reality of gay life,

nearly two decades after decriminalisation.

You have things which are either sort of medical, scientific,

at one pole, and at the other were pornography.

I think I did have a sense that here was this amazing area of human

interest which no-one really had explored.

In his debut novel, Hollinghurst goes one step further than his

predecessors and talks explicitly about gay sex.

The Swimming Pool Library follows the friendship

between an elderly aristocrat and the handsome young narrator.

The characters' exploits take them from private members' clubs

to cruising in parks and public lavatories.

I think it was always important to me from the start

to write completely unapologetically about gay men

getting on with their lives.

And I thought it would be very interesting, and indeed fun,

to write very explicitly about gay sex in the book.

Reading The Swimming Pool Library,

I was filled with admiration, but also startled at the boldness of it.

-INTERVIEWER:

-I was wondering, actually, if we could read a bit.

I can't read this!

It's all very well reading it on the page,

it's rather different reading it to the nation.

Erm...

Hmm.

Absolute filth!

I can't...

believe I wrote this stuff.

In February 1988,

a small first pressing hit the shops with little fanfare.

There was no expectation that it was going to do well.

Deep down, I mean, I believed in it.

I thought it was a good idea.

And I think, perhaps, a lot of people had not actually

had to imagine before what two gay men might get up to together.

"I had wanted to kiss him for such a long time that I clung on,

"forcing my long pointed tongue to the back of his throat,

"pulling out and biting his lips,

"till I tasted the blood on my tongue.

"He was powerless and amazed."

In the months after the novel's publication,

something incredible began to happen -

what Hollinghurst had feared would be a minority obsession

became a bestseller.

I got masses of letters from people who'd read it and said,

"I thought you might like to hear about a very similar experience

"I had last week..."

at Notting Hill Gate gents, or whatever it might have been.

Some of them actually quite interesting,

some of them things I really didn't need to know about.

I got a lot of letters from married women,

who seemed often much more sympathetic to it.

And I think some actually sort of found it quite sexy.

It was rather pleasing, actually, that sense that it struck

a chord with people.

And people had seen something described,

which they hadn't seen described before.

21 years after gay sex was decriminalised,

it seemed that Britain might finally be ready to embrace not just a coded

expression of a queer sensibility, but the open depiction of gay love.

MUSIC: Starlings by Elbow

Your feet are more...

back.

But all that was coming under threat.

The very moment gay people were becoming more confident,

and shamelessly libertine in their propensities,

that's when, bang, this thing came.

I was suddenly visiting people in hospital

with this mysterious illness.

It was a very horrific period with so many people dying.

Being openly HIV-positive was an extremely lonely place

within the music industry.

The phone didn't ring, literally, for many years.

The press in this country was really,

really atrocious and abominable in terms of how it treated gay people,

in a sense trying to criminalise gay people.

Quiet everywhere.

And action.

In the face of what they saw as a threat to their very existence,

many gay artists now use their work to fight back at the way their

community was being represented.

Visual artist and film-maker Derek Jarman

had been an uncompromising figure in the arts for over a decade.

He'd stoked controversy in the late-'70s

with a low-budget graphic film about the life of a gay saint.

None of us quite knew what we were up to.

I think if we'd known anything about film-making, seriously,

the films would never have been made.

In 1986, aged 46, he was diagnosed as HIV-positive.

And he spent the last years of his life

battling the blame being levelled to gay people for Aids.

If you don't necessarily feel that someone who's HIV-positive

should tell the person that they sleep with?

Why should they? How do they know?

Lots of people are HIV-positive that have not been tested.

Have you been tested?

I haven't been tested, no. I'm sure a lot of people haven't been.

Well, there you are. So, why and how

do we know that you're not HIV-positive?

I was very inspired by Derek Jarman. The way he didn't hesitate,

but tell people about his condition.

And, in fact, it seemed to give him extra wind to his creative sails.

And action!

-ALL:

-Fairy! Fairy! Fairy!

His film-making and his painting certainly blossomed.

Cut!

Blue was Jarman's last major film before he died.

It chronicles his declining health,

a blue screen echoing his failing eyesight.

I remember sort of sitting in the cinema and Derek put the film on,

and I have to say - it was such an amazing experience.

This sort of immersion in blue...

This meditative quality.

It's really quite sublime.

WAVES LAPPING

In the roaring waters, I hear the voices of dead friends.

Love is life that lasts for ever.

The paradox of Aids was that it made male gay sexuality inescapable to

the public at large.

There isn't much of the city wall of London left,

and what there is, frankly, could do with some serious re-pointing.

Gay women had remained largely invisible.

I didn't know of a single out, public, woman.

By 1994, Sandi Toksvig had come through the stand-up circuit

to television and was becoming an increasingly popular household name.

-Sandi, tell me...

-Yeah.

-..what is there in place of the cabbage?

-I was going latex...

LAUGHTER

..in a bouncy-castle sort of way.

One of the tabloid papers threatened to out me and I wasn't having it.

So I outed myself in an article in the Sunday Times.

I made the front page of the Daily Mail, something like,

"If God had meant lesbians to have children,

"he would have made it possible." And I thought,

"Well I've got three children. So, weirdly, it is possible."

Sandi, would you walk this way, please?

You've got a minute starting now.

First word...

-Cold.

-Cold!

Love. Embrace.

-Kiss.

-Ooh, warmer!

-Sex!

Everybody I spoke to said my career was over.

So, it's a point for Oz. Retirement for Sandi.

And how many points for Sandi's performance, please?

-AUDIENCE:

-Three!

People were afraid to hire me.

We got death threats and had to go into hiding.

It was pretty hellish, actually.

I would quite often feel like I was the lone lesbian,

waving a rainbow flag.

The world wasn't quite ready.

If Britain in the mid-'90s was still uncomfortable about a woman being

openly gay in public life...

..there was something about a rosy past that would make lesbian love

more palatable.

Domestic servants. I mean...

This is kind of brilliant for me.

At the time Sandi Toksvig came out,

a young academic called Sarah Waters was becoming fascinated by an

area so far little-explored in literature.

They look like they're having a nice time, don't they?

Do you know what I mean? It feels like there's something a bit extra

going on there.

What would the lives of gay women

have been like in a time when history

failed to record them?

I became very interested in pictures of male impersonators.

These would have been musical artistes.

At the time, in late Victorian, Edwardian era,

they were part of mainstream family entertainment.

Incredibly popular, but here you've got Deb St Welma.

Miss Metford, male impersonator.

Miss Louie Tracy. Miss Phyllis Fletcher. To us, of course, they

look like drag kings. They look queer, these images.

I began to... We took in a vow that, you know,

to imagine a male impersonator with a lesbian biography.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, a very special treat -

Miss Kitty Butler!

Sarah Waters' first novel, Tipping The Velvet, published in 1998,

tells the story of a working-class girl from Whitstable

who falls in love with a male impersonator.

What do you think? Pretty smart?

Not half bad, I should say.

It's the combination of sexuality and history that really excites me.

What happened to a genre that traditionally

was rather heterosexual, and the idea of taking that -

in a slightly cheeky way, really - and making it lesbian.

I do wish you'd tell me what it is you like so much.

I'm very vain, you see.

I do love to hear nice things about myself.

I like everything. Your costumes and your songs,

and the way you sing them,

and the way you move, and the way you smile, and your voice.

You seem so very gay and bold.

There is something kind of achingly sweet about our first

good sexual encounters.

And particularly if it's a gay thing, and you're...you know,

it's all a bit exciting and strange.

May I really...touch you?

Nan...

..I think I shall die if you don't.

When you're a teenager, the journey from a collar bone to a shoulder can

be very long and delicious.

It's nice to be reminded of that sometimes, I think.

THEY PANT

Tipping The Velvet quickly became a bestseller.

I do love you, Nan. Oh, so very much!

And the TV series was watched by over five million people.

Historical fiction, I think, and period drama.

It's kind of a safe way for talking about sexual transgression.

It makes it kind of sepia-coloured.

A year later, gay sex would go from sepia to glorious Technicolor.

When I wrote Queer As Folk, in 1998,

there's a 15-year-old gay school boy at the heart of that.

I did it the first time I went out.

I'm quite proud of that. I'm dead proud of that -

my first time out.

Stuart Alan Jones.

And, if I say so myself, that was extraordinary!

That was like writing a comet or a peacock or finding gold.

-Got somewhere to go?

-No.

Want to come back to mine?

Straight women were watching it.

A lot of straight women were getting off on it, actually.

What do you like doing in bed?

This is fine.

Rimming.

Yeah.

Excellent!

Rimming was important. Rimming was vital!

And I know, again... It sounds like I was having a laugh.

But it had to be a sexual experience that Nathan hadn't even imagined.

I mean, that scene has to be a mind-fuck for him.

Most dramas actually cut away from sex scenes because, actually,

you know what's going to happen.

And dramas are working when new stuff is happening

to the characters on screen.

HE GASPS AND PANTS

I was like, "Oh, my God!"

You know, I just couldn't believe it.

I was like, "How did they get away with that?!" You know.

HE PANTS

No-one told you about THAT, did they?

And he comes out of that a different boy in the morning.

So it was genuinely important to show.

I can't believe we did it.

Queer As Folk was a huge breakthrough.

Gay people could feel that they were the centre,

that our world was no more on the edges.

In a new millennium, when it came to attitudes towards gay people,

the British public showed themselves to have fundamentally changed.

A special Top Of The Pops treat for you now -

it's the man you voted for, Mr Pop Idol.

Here's the mighty Will Young!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

# I'm gonna take this moment... #

A TV talent show had propelled a 23-year-old gay man

to pop stardom.

And just like in the '80s,

music industry producers were worried about the impact on sales.

There was a lot of pressure to not talk about my sexuality -

quite continuously, as well.

And the thing was, I had come out and I'd been at university,

and I just remember saying to someone, "I'm not doing that again.

"I'm not going back into the closet."

It was like, "How dare you?" You know?

A tabloid wanted to out me,

so we decided, me and my litigation lawyer -

I mean, it was this serious -

to go with another tabloid the day before.

And, kind of, for me,

I just remember thinking the whole thing's so unnecessary.

It just bored me.

It kind of like... It ruined my weekend.

So I was like, "I just want to go to the pub."

I don't think anybody minds, actually.

Well, I think that's not true.

I think that genuinely people like Will. You don't think that's

-true?

-I don't think that's true all.

-You think that everyone's going to turn against him?

-No, not at all.

But I think the market is susceptible.

I think because singles are bought by, you know, ten-,

11- or 12-year-old girls. You know, I think once they're out,

and they realise he's not available at all,

I think the appeal will lessen.

-INTERVIEWER:

-Were you scared at that point for your career?

No.

Because I honestly didn't care.

Because I thought, "If you're not going listen to my music because I'm

"gay, then I don't want you listening to my music anyway."

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, he's here, he's live.

He is Top Of The Pops.

He's Will Young!

The public proved Will Young right not to be worried.

We brought over 1.7 million copies of his debut single,

making it the 11th bestselling song in UK chart history.

# I never thought I could be feeling this way... #

He definitely made my generation sit up and come out.

You know, so many gay boys came out because of Will Young.

In fact, I think people loved him more for being gay.

# Reaching the impossible... #

In a new era, the commercial pressures

that had kept George Michael and others in the closet

were now behind us.

# Oh, won't you stay with me?

# Cos you're all I need. #

And the last ten years have seen a proliferation of LGBT artists

in the mainstream.

# I'm holding it all tonight

# I'm folding it all tonight

# You know that you make it shine

# It's you that I've been waiting to find. #

I think there's been such a change in the last few years.

You know, people like, say, Cara Delevingne,

I don't think I'd ever read a paper on it to be like,

"Lesbian Cara Delevingne."

15, 20 years ago, that would have been what defined her character.

-INTERVIEWER:

-I wonder if, as the world becomes more accepting,

-and it becomes less of a big deal...

-Yeah.

-..whether...

Gay people become really boring...

MUSIC: Two Tribes by Frankie Goes To Hollywood

Gay acts in the '80s or '70s that were so outrageous,

and so over-the-top and exciting and revolutionary, you know,

their sexuality was kind of their creative drive,

or inspiration behind what they were doing.

And you don't have that any more.

Everything sort of has been middle-of-the-roaded a bit.

Oh, shit. I can't say that. I'll get fired.

FiFi, can I say everything's been a bit middle-of-the-roaded

-in pop music since the '80s?

-"Roaded"?

Like, everything's gone a bit, like...bland.

-INTERVIEWER:

-There's so many queer artists now, aren't there?

At the present moment,

it seems to be so bloody fashionable to be queer

that, frankly, I'm thinking of going straight.

The fact that queer now risks being boring is itself a triumph.

How do you do?

In Britain, in 2017, 50 years after decriminalisation,

gay artists have the freedom not to be outsiders...

Oh, it's not so bad in the mornings, is it?

LAUGHTER

..and to be open in their work and in their lives.

It's unimaginable to my younger self that we could live in this world.

We now have better food, better understanding, we are kinder,

and we allow men to love each other without interference.

It's the idea that I could get married has been the single most

significant thing for me.

To be allowed to say,

"This is my most significant other," publicly is amazing.

But in a world of greater acceptance in the mainstream,

is sexuality still important to talk about?

And is it of any relevance to an artist's work?

I'm so bored of it.

I'm so bored of people asking about it nowadays.

The public don't care as much as we...

..in the media think they do.

And actually, we should all shut up.

Of course, I've said that point by talking about it on television.

But this is the last time.

-INTERVIEWER:

-Do you think we still need to talk about it?

We're now in a world where fundamentalism is on the rise.

And in most of the world, if you're gay,

you cannot live a decent life. You're always hiding.

You're always in fear.

There's some deep prejudice still about homosexuality.

So we do need to keep talking about it,

and not to assume that everybody now feels that it's actually fine.

What people don't realise is that

we're sitting on this very thin layer.

Here's 2017 - lovely, marvellous!

That's such a thin layer on top of a mountain range of history.

Go through Dickens, you won't find gay people.

Go through 99% of cinema, you won't find gay people.

We sit on this bed of literature and culture,

that's at the heart of our society, that's straight.

That's why we've barely begun.

Bah!