Bernard Levin

[scottycelt]

There was a famous occasion when a cheerful group of gay campaigners went dressed as nuns to a Festival of Light event with Mary Whitehouse The trick was that every time she opened her mouth, her remarks were greeted with tumultuous cheers. As for her having homosexual friends, I imagine that they would have been well and truly in the closet.
It's curious how those who profess deep religious faith and conviction seem to need need to defend it over such trivial issues as a poem in a magazine.

Isn't that just a teeny-weeny bit unfair, Ferret ... ?

Do you seriously expect us to believe that you, Ams and Floss would be roaring in the aisles with laughter after.reading a poem mocking and sneering at homosexuals?

Many who have a strong faith will naturally do everything they can to uphold and sustain their convictions in the face of what often amounts to aggressive anti-religious bigotry, masquerading as 'freedom of expression'....

[rauschwerk]

I remember very little of BL's non-musical writings, but a sentence in his Times column which made me laugh concerned the TV show Stars on Sunday. The presenter, Wilfred Pickles, had reassured viewers that there would be no references in the show to Almighty God or Jesus Christ, and Levin tartly observed that of course that did not rule out the possibility of mentioning Enfeebled God or Fred Christ.

[Ferretfancy]

Oh dear, scotty, do you really think that homosexual people are as thin skinned as you? Believe me, they are well accustomed to the jokes of bigots, and sadly they sometimes join in if they are still burdoned with the guilt that they have been trained to feel since childhood. Now, there's a thing ! Trained in guilt ? Now I wonder which organisation does that ?

[amateur51]

His memorable 'supportive comment' to Gay News in 1976/77 was that Mary Whitehouses's name rhymed with a toilet?

A towering figure is our Billy .. !

You had to be there, scotty.

[amateur51]

I used to see him at the RFH often accompanied by a very attractive female, by no means always the same one. On one occasion he and she were sitiing opposite me and tucking into large slices of gateau during the interval. Whilst he enchanted her with a witticism, the forkful of cake waiting to be popped into her mouth dropped with a barely audible splash into her coffee. Neither noticed, but the silent comedy of the young woman glancing down, seeing no cake and wondering where it had landed, whilst maintaining perfect composure and rapt attention to the great man's bon mots, stays with me.

Wonderful story, beautifully told gradus!

[amateur51]

Classic! Wish I'd seen that.

BL was a bit of a babe magnet, wasn't he? Which must prove the old adage that the intellect is the most powerful sexual organ of them all. :)

No need to be so rude about scotty, Mandy

[amateur51]

Connolly was a leftist when he was younger and, I believe, campagined for Labour in the mid-seventies. More recently, though, I've read that he's become disillusioned with politics and now no longer actively supports anyone. In the last thirty years or so, he's also become extremely rich and presumably now holds a considerable stake in the society that he, as a young, disenfranchised man, wished to overthrow....so maybe that explains his position.

I don't know where people get the strange idea that Mary Whitehouse was homophobic....she brought her action for prosecution on grounds of blasphemy, the offensive thing (to her) being the disrespect shown to the corpse of Christ; if the poem had been about a woman with similar hots for JC, I'd imagine she'd have done the same thing. Besides, Whitehouse had plenty of homosexual friends, who presumably didn't find her homophobic at all.

The poem in question was dreadful, anwyay: Lemon should have gone to the slammer for bad writing, never mind any 'sexual' content.

Ah Mandy, we can always rely on you to sum up the historic moment - truly you are the Toby Young of 1976

[amateur51]

Connolly was a leftist when he was younger and, I believe, campagined for Labour in the mid-seventies. More recently, though, I've read that he's become disillusioned with politics and now no longer actively supports anyone. In the last thirty years or so, he's also become extremely rich and presumably now holds a considerable stake in the society that he, as a young, disenfranchised man, wished to overthrow....so maybe that explains his position.

I don't know where people get the strange idea that Mary Whitehouse was homophobic....she brought her action for prosecution on grounds of blasphemy, the offensive thing (to her) being the disrespect shown to the corpse of Christ; if the poem had been about a woman with similar hots for JC, I'd imagine she'd have done the same thing. Besides, Whitehouse had plenty of homosexual friends, who presumably didn't find her homophobic at all.
.

Did anyone say she was homophobic? She was just a good old-fashioned Kinder, Küche, Kirche bigot Her friends probably felt safe from rebuke under her skirts

[amateur51]

There was a famous occasion when a cheerful group of gay campaigners went dressed as nuns to a Festival of Light event with Mary Whitehouse The trick was that every time she opened her mouth, her remarks were greeted with tumultuous cheers. As for her having homosexual friends, I imagine that they would have been well and truly in the closet.
It's curious how those who profess deep religious faith and conviction seem to need need to defend it over such trivial issues as a poem in a magazine.

At a meeting of FoL, these nuns released many mice, resulting in the rest of the meeting acquiring an 'elvated' status

[amateur51]

No, the friends in question were openly homosexual - I think some of them were neighbours of hers from Colchester.

A 'committed Christian'

You want them committed now?!?: Steady on, Mandy, censorship is one thing but ...

[amateur51]

Isn't that just a teeny-weeny bit unfair, Ferret ... ?

Do you seriously expect us to believe that you, Ams and Floss would be roaring in the aisles with laughter after.reading a poem mocking and sneering at homosexuals?

Many who have a strong faith will naturally do everything they can to uphold and sustain their convictions in the face of what often amounts to aggressive anti-religious bigotry, masquerading as 'freedom of expression'....

You've clearly not read the poem, scotty. What a state of bliss you must be in.

[amateur51]

Oh dear, scotty, do you really think that homosexual people are as thin skinned as you? Believe me, they are well accustomed to the jokes of bigots, and sadly they sometimes join in if they are still burdoned with the guilt that they have been trained to feel since childhood. Now, there's a thing ! Trained in guilt ? Now I wonder which organisation does that ?

Interesting recent development on that front:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-15637611

[Serial_Apologist]

My only problem with Levin's writing, elegant though it was, elegance of course being a term more subject than others to a subectivity of opinion that on occasions tended to veer towards the excessive, and paying due regard to the occasionally trenchant nature of his views, of which the North Thames Gas Board in particular was more often than not the victim, which was indeed surely justified, as he himself proved on more than one occasion in one of his not infrequent columns devoted in part or whole to that body's treatment of his mother, was that he had a habit, one presumably he either deliberately cultivated or was incapable of breaking, if indeed he was actually aware of it, of introducing a lot of subordinate clauses into many of his sentences, which consequently, as has been pointed out by more than critic - not without justification, it could be argued - tended to be on the long side.

[Serial_Apologist]

Isn't that just a teeny-weeny bit unfair, Ferret ... ?

Do you seriously expect us to believe that you, Ams and Floss would be roaring in the aisles with laughter after.reading a poem mocking and sneering at homosexuals?

Many who have a strong faith will naturally do everything they can to uphold and sustain their convictions in the face of what often amounts to aggressive anti-religious bigotry, masquerading as 'freedom of expression'....

And there was me believeing there to be a difference between religious belief and natural endowment... I must be missing something there

[scottycelt]

You've clearly not read the poem, scotty. What a state of bliss you must be in.

No, I have to confess I haven't read the poem, amateur, just like I've never read, say, Mein Kampf ... one really musn''t try and tackle too much in the short span we've been allotted, eh?

Btw, did you ever meet and talk to Mary Whitehouse ... ? ...