Wednesday 19 August 2009

Knit yer own trannie

There’s a lovely article about Richard O’Brien, creator of the Rocky Horror Show, over at http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/theatre/article6799279.ece.
Anyone of about my age who had to spend part of their life in a right wing backwater has fond memories of this show, and will have taken O’Brien’s advice to “Don’t dream it, be it”.
While the US and the rest of Europe were happily dressing up, joining in and throwing toast at the cinema screen, even in the late 1980’s things were different when the film eventually got to Moaners Isle. No wonder me and a few other dissidents were slung out of the Palace Cinema for using our loaves!
For a start, homosexuality was totally illegal and redneck attitudes so ingrained that not even a kid in punk gear walked alone into an island pub. To compound the stupidity, Anderton’s protégé was running the Manx police and bringing ‘pretty policing’ entrapment tactics to the island (leading to a spate of suicides which handily avoided the police ever having to defend such tactics in court).
How much things have changed. For instance, the WI are the very pulse of middle class decency, so when you read of them knitting a 6ft Frank N. Furter for the local carnival (no, really, see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/west-news/WI-knit-6ft-transvestite.5526438.jp if you don't believe me), you know it’s all over……
Except amongst a few politicians who are convinced that, just because one or two godbothering flat-earthers can’t cope with humanity in all its varieties, we should be the last place in Europe to allow civil partnership ceremonies.
So, we are now officially the Third World, but the funny thing is, these days if I see a bloke with shaved legs walking round here in a basque and fishnets I just yawn, instead of fearing for his safety.
Honestly, what is it with these chartered accountants? Can’t they just loosen up a little?

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