Tag Archives: Stan Boardman
Oct 28, 2013 · 10:23 am
Journalist Garry Bushell talks about being accused of hating gay men
Yesterday's original blog
Yesterday's blog started as an I think interesting piece in which theatre producer David Johnson remembered Piers Morgan at the 1993 British Comedy Awards reacting to Julian Clary's joke about "fisting" the then Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont.
David posted the original fascinating piece (now removed) on his own Facebook page last Monday. I asked his permission to quote it, which is why I did not post my own blog about it until yesterday.
After I had posted yesterday's blog, very unusually, I added something to it – a further comment which David Johnson sent me. It said (I paraphrase) that it was the Sun's thuggish columnist Garry Bushell who actually wrote the anti-Clary piece the day after the "fisting" joke incident and who then ran homophobic articles campaigning against Julian Clary, Graham Norton etc.
David said in this added section that he was pleased it was ultimately Garry Bushell not Julian Clary who became unemployable, that Bushell had hardly worked since 2007 and is an active UKIP member.
David has since asked me to remove yesterday's blog. I have now re-posted the blog with David's directly quoted words replaced by paraphrased words.
David wanted the blog removed in general, as I understand it, because I told him I was going to ask Garry Bushell questions as a follow-up and (in my view) to allow GB a full come-back. David was also angry because I would not immediately post in public a private message Garry Bushell sent me. Garry Bushell has now given me permission to print the message, though I have cut out one well-known entertainer's name. The message read:
"I made my peace with Julian many years ago, John, even appearing on his TV show. I'm not sure how your claim of homophobia sits with my consistent support for talented gay artists, from Frankie Howerd and (another well-known entertainer) on. I am not an active member of UKIP and my column is still published nationally. Best wishes Garry"
David thinks I was unreasonable in not printing that immediately in a public forum without first asking Garry Bushell's permission and, because of that, he has deleted his original Facebook post which was about Piers Morgan. He is also offended that I have allowed Garry Bushell to respond to various claims.
So here, alas without any counterbalancing arguments or facts from David, is what Garry Bushell answered in reply to some questions I asked him:
Q: Aren't you ashamed of having destroyed Julian Clary's career for two years? You wrote a piece trying to get Julian banned from live TV. He must hate you.
Journalist Garry Bushell says what he thinks??
A: All I did after Julian's fisting gag was write an opinion piece reflecting the views of my editor (Kelvin MacKenzie). You have to put the incident in context. This happened shortly after Stan Boardman had been banned not just from live TV but from ITV completely for his Focke-Wulf gag. Des O'Connor's live show was cancelled because of that row. It seemed that there was one rule for mainstream comedians and another for fashionable ones.
I did later appear on Julian's TV show All Rise For Julian Clary in the 1990s. I wanted to bury the hatchet. I don't know what Julian thinks of me, but I don't hate him. Back at the start I felt that he was a single-entendre act who had been promoted beyond his abilities. I like him and his act a lot more now – I backed him to win Celebrity Big Brother in my column. He was the most entertaining housemate by far.
Q: You hate gays.
A: I don't hate anyone because of their sexuality and never have done. I first fell out with gay activists over a tasteless joke in my column back in the 1980s and, because I've always loved feuds, I took it too far. One of the first people who came to my defence was Patrick Newley who wrote Mrs Shufflewick's biography – now there was an act!
I've worked with gay people pretty much everywhere I've had a job, and championed gay acts for decades starting with Frankie Howerd (I was a lone voice in the press campaigning for his return to TV). I adore (the well-known entertainer mentioned in Garry Bushell's message quoted above). I like Craig Hill. I supported Alan Carr when he first appeared on the scene. I loved Lily Savage (Paul O'Grady's drag act) – I knew Paul's boyfriend Brendan Murphy from back when we'd both been members of the International Socialists a long time ago. And, at the risk of the old 'some of my best friends…' cliché, I'm still mates with Dale Winton and have been since the mid-1990s.
Q: In your youth, you joined the International Socialists/Socialist Workers Party and wrote for Socialist Worker. I have always thought Hitler was a good Socialist and, after all, he did form the National Socialist Party and did everything in the name of 'The People'…. So you were always a bit of a totalitarian?
A: I did join the IS and did write for Socialist Worker. But I think the threat to freedom now comes more from the far-Left than the far-Right, although in practice in power there is very little difference between them. It used to be rightwing Tories calling for things to be banned, now it's the middle class Left. I find it extraordinary that the comrades are so happy to march arm-in-arm with women (and gay) hating clerical fascists.
Q: Now you are an 'active' member of UKIP…
A: I'm not an active member of anything.
Q: On talkSPORT Radio, you said homosexuality was a "perversion".
A: I don't recall the actual phrasing, but it was a dumb thing to say and I apologise for it. It's no defence, but I had just come off the phone to my mate who is in Right Said Fred and I'd been winding him up about Fred getting punched by some Russian troglodyte.
Q: You were employed by the Sun as a 'thug' journalist. That's your image, isn't it? That's why you get paid.
A: Am I a thug? I don't think so. I've always liked acerbic humour, from Jackie Mason and Joan Rivers to Lily Savage, via Bernard Manning, and I think that if you don't realise that you might not 'get' my column. Male working class humour tends to be abrasive. My big mistake in the early days of writing the column was to caricature myself; the newspaper 'Bushell' was a comic exaggeration of my own views. I stopped doing that a long time ago.
Q: One of my Facebook Friends posted: Someone needs to dig up Bushell's review of the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert. The Sun gave him two pages to rant about how AIDS was a luvvies disease and how disgusting it was to see money raised for AIDS research when there was so little funding for proper diseases. It finished with his deathless advice on how to avoid contracting AIDS: "Don't do drugs and don't be gay."
A: All I can remember about that is I used it to slip in a tasteless Jimmy Jones ode – Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, If you'd stuck with fanny You'd still be with us. I think it was over a spread, me versus Piers Morgan. I loved Queen and Freddie was one of the great rock front-men. I do think the early AIDS campaign was misleading but I genuinely regret writing this piece. If I could make amends for it, by doing a benefit gig or whatever I would happily do so, although no doubt some smartarse would then accuse me of chasing the pink pound.
Q: Do you hate women as much as perverts and pooftahs?
A: Love women, don't know any perverts, although my old guitarist is a transvestite now – does that count?
Q: Did you ever encounter Jimmy Savile?
A: Yes. Horrible bastard, but cunning. You felt like you needed a wash after meeting him but were never quite sure why.
Q: How would you describe your novels?
A: Filthy.
Q: Do you want to create art with your writing?
A: No thanks. I want people to read it.
Q: In my blog yesterday, it was claimed you mounted "a relentless homophobic campaign against artists like Julian Clary and Graham Norton that lasted as long as Bushell was allowed air-time or column inches." So it backfired on you, didn't it? It destroyed your own Fleet Street career.
A: My column inches still pop up regularly and vigorously in the Daily Star Sunday, which last time I looked still outsells the Independent On Sunday.
Graham Norton's late night Channel 4 show was filthy, so I couldn't work out why BBC1 hired him – especially when they kept giving him flop early evening LE shows to host. He is however the smartest and funniest chat-show host in the country now – something I have been saying for years.
I don't accept the charge of homophobia. And to suggest I relentlessly campaigned against Julian Clary and Graham Norton is untrue. I relentlessly campaigned against Ben Elton because I felt he was both an unfunny dick and a complete fake.
I'm a TV critic which means I criticise shows and stars who don't float my boat. I moaned about Jo Brand for decades but as soon as she did something great, as she did with Getting On, I praised it to high heaven.
Tabloid readers like firm opinions. If I said everything was terrific no-one would read me.
Filed under Gay, Journalism, Newspapers, Racism
Tagged as Ben Elton, comedy, David Johnson, Freddie Mercury, Garry Bushell, gay, Graham Norton, homophobia, homosexual, Jimmy Jones, Jimmy Savile, Jo Brand, journalism, Julian Clary, Piers Morgan, racism, sex, Stan Boardman, TV
Jun 15, 2011 · 6:37 pm
How Bernard Manning was almost cast in a classic British children's story…
Comedian and actor Matt Roper is going to the Edinburgh Fringe in August and should have a baptism of fire, as he is performing in two separate productions – as his comedy character Wlfredo in Wilfredo – Erecto! at the Underbelly and as a Satanic and sometimes singing spin doctor in the satire Lucifer: My Part in the New Labour Project (And How I Invented Coalition Government)at The Phoenix.
Matt is the son of George Roper, one of The Comedians in what was at the time the startlingly original and cutting-edge 1970s ITV series which introduced the British Isles to the 'old school' likes of Bernard Manning, Frank Carson, Stan Boardman and Jim Bowen.
I went with Matt to Soho last night to see London-based New York comic Lewis Schaffer's extraordinary on-going thrice-a-week Free Until Famous show. It was Matt's third visit. I go to see the show maybe once every month – as Lewis Schaffer says, it is "never the same show twice".
Matt, though every inch a 'new-school' comedian, grew up hanging round the old school comics as a kid.
Granada TV producer Johnnie Hamp was a seminal figure in British comedy of the time – he is also credited with putting The Beatles on TV for the first time. But I did not know until Matt told me last night that Johnnie had also put a young Woody Allen on British TV screens for the first time.
The most surprising story Matt had, though, was that his dad George Roper and Bernard Manning were originally considered for the parts of Tweedledum and Tweedledee in the mega-all-star 1972 movie version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
At the time of the casting read-through in London, George Roper was starring nightly on stage at the Palace Theatre, Manchester. On the day of the read-through, train hold-ups in the North West of England delayed him to such an extent that getting down to London and back up again in time for his appearance on stage in Manchester was going to prove impossible, so he had to cancel his trip.
The ever-exuberant and straight-talking Bernard Manning did make it down to the session, though, striding brashly into the room where Dame Flora Robson, Sir Ralph Richardson, Sir Robert Helpmann, Dennis Price, Peter Bull and other creme de la creme of up-market British theatrical nobility was holding court.
With an outspoken fucking this and a What the fucking hell is that? and a right old fucking load of old fucking bollocks, Bernard soon made his presence felt and…
as a result, neither Bernard Manning nor George Roper were cast in the film.
The parts of Tweedledum and Tweedledee went to the Cox Twins
I can't help feeling that Bernard Manning and George Roper would have been a casting made in movie comedy heaven.
More Matt stories Here.
Filed under Comedy, Movies, Television
Tagged as 1970s, actor, Adventures, Alice, American, Beatles, Bernard Manning, Britain, british, British Isles, children, coalition government, comedian, comic, Cox Twins, Dame Flora Robson, Dennis Price, edinburgh fringe, Erecto, film, Frank Carson, Free Until Famous, Granada, ITV, Jim Bowen, Johnny Hamp, lewis schaffer, london, Lucifer, Manchester, Matt Roper, movie, New Labour, new school, new york, old school, Palace Theatre, Peter Bull, Phoenix, producer, project, satire, Sir Ralph Richardson, Sir Robert Helpmann, Soho, spin doctor, Stan Boardman, stand up, television, The Comedians, TV, Tweedledee, Tweedledum, uk, Underbelly, United Kingdom, Wilfredo, Wonderland, woody allen