Hiya!

I should probably start updating this a bit more... Here are some bits that I've done recently which have since gone online.

The Mirror called me a 'celebrity expert' (fancy!)

I also wrote the Mutya Keisha Siobhan cover story for issue 4 of Ponystep:

I've got another thing in the next issue, so I expect I'll pop that up on here at some point too.

Heaven And Hell (Being Geri Halliwell)

(Originally published in Attitude magazine)

It’s all gone a bit wrong for poor Geri hasn’t it? The bolshiest Spice Girl was bordering on national treasure-dom for a while there (four solo number ones, a stint moonlighting as a UN Ambassador…) and it seemed as if she was the obvious choice to inherit the band’s pop legacy. After all, the Spice Girls group identity – from the catchphrases to the platform boots – had her DNA stamped across it more than any other member.

Sadly, these days it seems she can barely pop to Waitrose without being heckled. Her relationship with her public has become akin to one of those boyfriends whose grip gets tighter the more you try and shake them off. The more we turn on her, the more desperate she becomes for our love. The results are rarely pretty (witness her clambering on top of her car and addressing the crowds at X Factor through a megaphone) but always entertaining.

I love Geri. Sure, she’s comically needy and lacking in basic self-awareness, but there’s sincerity to her which is often missing in modern day pop. Her eccentricity isn’t stage-managed. Strip Katy Perry of her Smurfette wig and you’re left with a woman who you could comfortably imagine as a soccer mom, whereas it’s hard to decide whether Geri would be less or more bonkers had she never found fame.

Ginger Spice was amazing, from her outfits (she worked a bustle a good 10 years before Alison Goldfrapp) to the charming naivety which allowed her to become one of pop cultures most recognisable figures through sheer force of will alone. Would the Spice Girls have become a global brand with Victoria at the helm? Maybe not.

Love her or hate her, to celebrate Geri’s triumphant return to the global stage at the Olympic closing ceremony, here are some of her best/ worst moments:

• Her second album included arguably the best song title in the history of music: ‘Heaven And Hell (Being Geri Halliwell)’.

• Having served as a judge on Popstars: The Rivals, Geri credits herself with full responsibility for Cheryl Cole’s subsequent career, humbly professing that ‘I picked her so I’m really thrilled with her success.’

• When planning her aborted marriage, Geri wrote to the Queen to ask for permission to hold the ceremony in St Paul's. Why not?

• Not content with having eaten the contents of George Michaels bin, Geri documented the experience in her second autobiography. ‘A little voice said ‘why don’t you have some cake? I’m sure you can rescue it.’

• When Geri decided to name her dog after her deceased father, rather naming it Lawrence , she simply called it ‘Daddy’.

• In issue 3 of the Spice Girls official magazine Geri interviews herself, and ask questions like ‘what’s your assessment of the world today.’

• Despite having a Spanish mother, Geri’s commitment to embracing her roots hasn’t extended to learning the language. Not to be defeated, she has nonetheless sung in Spanish on several records. A Spanish fan comments ‘some of what she says aren’t even words.’

• Geri on her detractors: ‘Evil, dark people are repelled by me: ‘Ooh no! Too much sunlight.’

• Geri on her fame: ‘I’m famous enough that the paparazzi want to sit outside my house. They don’t sit outside Mel C’s house.’

Gay shame? Not likely.

(Originally published in Attitude magazine)

The way some people harp on about it, being homo is an affliction akin to leprosy, or waking up one day to unexpectedly discover that you’re Olly Murs - causing the sufferer nothing but misery from cradle to (early) grave. I thought perhaps my own delight at being gay was a generational thing, having been born at a time when professing my sexuality was, if not a picnic in a park, not exactly an assault in a back alley either. Then I saw that wonderful quote from novelist Alan Hollinghurst (33 years my senior), who recently admitted: ‘It has always struck me as a great stroke of luck to be gay.’ Just like him, I have always been GTBG - glad to be gay.

No doubt this is in part due to coming from a family which was neatly divided into two camps, the ones who were either supportive or indifferent at having a gay relative, and the ones who perhaps weren’t, but who, handily, I couldn’t give much of a toss about one way or the other. Call it luck, call it natural selection, but it’s worked fine for me. Even at school I derived a sense of smugness in knowing that I was destined for greater things than the other proles, belonging as I did to a pedigree which included every great from Michaelangelo to Oscar Wilde. Sometimes when I’m feeling low I visit the Facebook pages of my former contemporaries and cackle with glee at how the ones who were most small-minded at school have had the hardest time adjusting to life in the real world. Invariably they stayed put, terrified to venture outside their comfort zone and forced to copulate with an ever-decreasing pond of people that they wouldn’t look at twice were they not stuck in a hell of their own making (I’m making a sweeping generalization here, but being predisposed to unhappy childhoods does seem to give the average gay the gumption to get out, thank God).

Arguably, in this day and age being gay affords you more choice than not. If a straight woman decides she doesn’t want children she seems to be lumped in with two-headed lambs as a somewhat unsavory natural phenomena, whereas increasingly gay men can choose to reproduce or not without anybody batting an eye lid either way. There’s an argument that being gay allows you to be the architect of your own lifestyle – picking and choosing the bits you like in the manner of a bespoke kitchen. That’s without even getting me started on the cosmetic advantages, such as sharing your partners clothes, and having the freedom to gorge yourself to obesity and still be able to rely on a large cross-section of the gay population wanting to have sex with you (thank you bears). In the most miserable month of the year I can at least console myself that from where I’m sitting, being gay is the gift that just keeps on giving. Happy January!

The Only Way Is Not Mark Wright

My New Years resolution this year is a simple one. I want to overcome the short-circuit in my brain which only allows me to be attracted to men that I simultaneously despise. I’m going to ease myself in gently via my celebrity crushes, with I’m A Celebrity’s Mark Wright first on my agenda to be eradicated.

It is one of the most infuriating laws of nature that the most arrogant men are frequently the most fanciable. Usually I find this a bit of a chicken or the egg question, but I bet Mark Wright was conceited in Carol’s womb. In fact, with a mother as supernaturally cold as his, as a fetus it seems likely that Mark’s only nourishment was derived from his own smugness. He’s definitely the type of man who wanks in front of the mirror. Then again I’m the type of man who wanks in front of The Only Way Is Essex, so I’m probably not in a position to judge (that moment at his pool party where he brandished a bottle of champagne and gruffly asked a gaggle of slappers who wanted to ‘get sprayed’ is one of the single most erotic moments of my life. It’s possible that this says more about me than him but it’s always my policy never to dwell on your own failings).

In my head there’s a constant tug of war raging between the certain knowledge that if I’d been at school with Mark he would have brutalized me behind the bike sheds, and the niggling suspicion that I’d have been aroused. In fact, isn’t widely accepted that gay men grow up to be most attracted to the boys who were most mean to them during their formative years? It’s why half the gays in America end up wasting the best years of their lives going to the gym so they can look like jocks. Self-loathing, innit? I want to break the cycle of abuse, and to do that I simply have to stop fantasizing about Mark spitting in my face.

Problem is, I know Mark is a terrible person, but I constantly find ways to justify his fundamental vileness. Sure, he treated Lauren with the kind of contempt usually reserved by Daily Mail readers for peadophiles and benefit cheats, but she IS quite annoying. And from the neck up looks like a drag act loosely based on Ursula from The Little Mermaid. Frankly, Mark deserves better. At the very least he deserves an acknowledgment that he has somehow found a loophole in the natural order of the universe whereby he can wear a cap backwards and STILL make me want to have sex with him. Ditto cowl neck t-shirts. Ditto deep V t-shirts.... I digress.

My other new years resolution is to stop telling friends I’m busy when actually I’m eating ice-cream in the bath while listening to Stevie Nicks, but I think its best to cross one bridge at a time, don’t you?

Gay Men Dress Well? Since. When.

One of the most maddening myths about gay men is that they are unanimously handsome and stylish. Next time some halfwit wants to reiterate this falsehood I ask that they do so in a provincial gay bar, where I expect that the ratio of fit well-dressed men to degenerate slobs will be roughly the same as you’d find down your local Wetherspoons on a weekday afternoon. Gay men have been exercising their equal right to bad fashion for years, and anyone who disagrees has obviously never spent the day at a gay pride festival. In fact, it’s my firmly held belief that gays who populate dark rooms do so in order to overlook the fact that the person they’re noshing off is wearing jeans tucked into work boots.

Perhaps the difference is that until relatively recently straight men have been hardwired to be largely un-fussed by what they wear, whereas gays have tended to use their clothes as a means of self-expression. Unfortunately, what many have used it as a means of expressing is their incomprehension that attempts to re-create couture looks on a Topman budget rarely end well (Lady Gaga has a lot to answer for). In gay world it seems that often more is more, and that applies at both ends of the spectrum, whether it’s going hyper masculine or hyper feminine – meaning that whole pockets of gaydom end up looking like pastiches, either of straight men or women. That said, the most preening Soho gay around is Joey Essex, and he’s still my number one.

I am far from immune to bad dressing, and my own devotion to Ginger Spice as a style icon saw me carry a selection of Spice Girls lunch boxes to sixth form, pre-empting that horrific period of nu-rave by about 18-months. My most dramatic fashion faux-pas of recent years was in the Summer of 2009, when I elected to attend my University graduation ball in a tuxedo-style playsuit (if you’re having trouble picturing that, think yourself lucky, it was a bit like something Cher might’ve worn to one of her TV specials in the 70s). In my defense, I was on a student’s budget, and a one-piece felt like the economical choice. It still hangs in my wardrobe, as a stark reminder of how far I can wander from the gates of my own sanity.

When it comes to the fallacy that gay men always dress best, I think the gift that is Arlene Phillips put it best in an interview that I did with her last year; ‘gay men have a great dress sense? Since. When. Gay men like to throw on anything they want to, and it doesn’t always work. Those who wear little shorts? Not a good look, particularly when the socks come up a little too high on the calves. Give it up boys, give it up!’ Quite.

Who Or What Is Cher Lloyd?

I’m interested to see how it all pans out for Cher Lloyd. After her first X Factor audition she initially seemed destined to follow in Cheryl’s hallowed footsteps, and ironically I think that in some ways the same fate has ended up befalling them both. Both, through no fault of their own, were catapulted to a height of celebration which their comparatively modest talents were ill-equipped to sustain. Then when they fell short of the expectations heaped upon them (and in Cheryl’s case, what could she have possibly done to become properly deserving of her national adoration, short of harnessing the black arts to resurrect Diana?) they were torn down with equally vehement disdain, as if people were affronted that they had accepted the opportunities presented to them in the first place. Both instances seemed to be less about the girls themselves than the cyclical nature of the showbiz food chain.

Of course, that’s not the whole story, and Cher’s time on the show was punctuated with the type of brattish behaviour that saw her pictured threatening a production member with a spoon (a puzzling choice of weapon, but one which suggests an irrationality which you wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of). I didn’t actually mind scary Cher as a pop persona, and of her X Factor performances, my favourite was the one where she dressed up as the High Priestess of a coven in Croydon and sang Shakespeare’s Sister. There seems a lamentable shortage of present day pop stars who can inspire genuine terror (RIP Mutya), and to me, that was part of Cher’s initial appeal. Unfortunately, her debut single is scary for all the wrong reasons, and is in danger of rendering her a novelty act whose most comparable contemporary is failed pop joke Jentina (also a gypsy, took herself more seriously than anyone else and wasn’t as good at rapping out loud as in her head). The fact that the chorus seems to borrow heavily from Oh My Darling, Clementine doesn’t help, and neither does her lyrical preoccupation with her haterz (if it seems like your public don’t like you, probably best not to use your first release to draw attention to this on as grand a scale as possible).

When Cher played GAY there was a crush to see her, and maybe her cultivated air of defiance towards popular opinion has made her a mini gay icon to a certain type of gay. For me, her bravado reeks of someone who is simultaneously profoundly obnoxious and profoundly vulnerable – pretty much the definition of an average teenager (a typical Cher tweet reads “I come across as a hard faced bitch, but please give me a break”. I can’t work out which half of that sentence is more of a cry for help.) In her defense, is there anyone who wasn’t a bit of a twat when they were seventeen? Whatever happens with her pop career, for me her legacy will always be that - for a while at least - whenever hysterical gays rant about Cher they are forced to specify whether they’re referring to “Lloyd or regular.”

Rihanna: Pop Some Trousers On.

Originally published in Attitude magazine.

I’ve been trying to work out why I object so much to seeing Rihanna behave like a sex worker. After all, I didn’t mind Madonna’s persona during the Sex era. In the intervening years I’ve grown as tired of everyone else of her crotch becoming her star attraction, and can’t help but feel that her commitment to exposing herself has become less about her audience and more about her. Like with flashers. That said, in the early nineties Madonna’s allegiance to smut was groundbreaking if nothing else. In today’s climate, when you can google image Britney’s vagina and Christina wears a full gimp mask for LOLZ, the whole sorry palava is as exhausting to witness as I imagine it is to take part in. I expect that for Rihanna pouring herself into yet another PVC bodice arouses the same levels of excitement as a lollipop lady donning her tabard – after all, both are uniforms of sorts.

Perhaps the key difference between Rihanna now and Madonna back in the day is that Madonna, as Julie Burchill put it, looked like a prostitute and thought like a pimp - whereas to me Rihanna just looks like a prostitute. However misjudged Madonna’s routine may have been (and who wouldn’t foster a degree of regret at having simulated sex with Vanilla Ice in a coffee table book?), it always felt like Madonna was calling the shots. I mostly really enjoy Rihanna as a pop star, but I don’t think intelligence is one of her strengths (a notion that was reinforced during the Halloween episode of last years Xtra Factor when she emphatically informed Konnie Huq that she was an extremely superficial person, before having to be told that she meant superstitious). I just can’t help but feel that her decision to perform almost entirely in clothes that could be bought from a sex shop is less about artistic license, and more about surfing the current zeitgeist for sexualisation above all else.

It also feels that there are darker forces at play, which I can’t seem to fathom. It seems as if her image overhaul directly coincided with the aftermath of her attack at the hands of Chris Brown. During the campaign for her subsequent album, Rated R, it was all muzzles and tits bound in barbed wire – culminating in that charming duet with Eminen, in which she sings that she likes the way his love hurts. Her current release has seen her singing the praises of S&M and being raped in the music video for Man Down. Surely I can’t be alone in feeling uncomfortable at seeing a generation’s most high profile victim of domestic violence assuring her fan base that she likes for men to cause her pain. I might feel differently if I had once heard her eloquently justify her artistic direction, but as it stands I find her current persona even more sinister for seemingly being at her record companies bequest.

Maybe Madonna’s gusset baring antics are responsible for a whole wave of pop princesses who perpetuate the notion that to be a star is to be sexually aggressive 24/7. As a male feminist I obviously think that women should be able to wear what they want. As a pop enthusiast and gay man who likes to keep his top on in a club (am I alone?) I find the notion that the only way to truly express yourself is to wear as little as legally possible a little bit depressing.