Mark Simpson's Blog, page 12
January 31, 2019
“Never Before Have I Seen Such A Blatant Display Of Poofery!!”
This month, the Welsh actor Windsor Davies, 88, most famous for playing the very shouty Battery Sgt Major Williams in the now unthinkably un-PC – and unrepeatable – 1970s BBC comedy series Ain’t Half Hot Mum, was summoned to the CO’s office in the sky. AHHM was written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft, the duo behind the [...]
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January 30, 2019
Toxic Hegemonic Masculinity Ideology
‘Toxic masculinity’ may not be terribly appetising, but it does seem to be on everyone’s lips these days. The concept originally derives from the gender studies theory of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ – described on Wikipedia as the ‘stereotypic notion of masculinity that shapes the socialization and aspirations of young males’. Although hegemonic masculinity is, as the [...]
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January 16, 2019
Funny Men & Lover Boys
I’ve yet to see it, but the just-released Stan & Ollie film about Laurel and Hardy’s disastrous, almost-posthumous tour of postwar Britain seems to be about their love for one another – or our investment in the idea of it. Back in the no-homo early 1990s me and my pal Nick Haeffner wrote a newspaper piece [...]
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December 28, 2018
Traffic Triffids
Traffic lights are now 150 years old. Is it time to unplug them? Are you sitting uncomfortably? In an endless queue for your local traffic lights? Lights that seem to multiply in numbers weekly? Good. Here’s a fairy tale that will brighten your dreary day. Once upon a time in Wales, a set of lovely [...]
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December 19, 2018
Fight Them On The Beaches
Mark Simpson tests Essex’s coastal defences against renovation (The Times Magazine, 2001) Whitstable, Broadstairs, Brighton and most of Suffolk have gone already. Swept away forever under a tsunami of renovation. These once proudly tatty towns have been lost forever to the unsmiling, unfriendly, label-dressed invaders who prey on coastal towns (but curiously always seem to [...]
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December 8, 2018
Glenn Or Glennda?
Last month I spent a stimulating and highly satisfying weekend with Glennda Orgasm. Or rather, the artiste formerly known as Glennda Orgasm, my old (but forever youthful) pal Glenn Belverio, who wise-cracked and bang-flicked his way to fame in the early 1990s, his svelte frame clad in couture frocks on a NYC cable TV public access [...]
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November 29, 2018
Slit-Trenches & Eternal Comradeship
Mark Simpson totally related to the author’s 1970s childhood war-fetish, but had to draw the line at Ernest Hemingway. (Originally appeared Independent on Sunday, 31 March 2002) Robert Twigger is a man who wins awards. The jacket of Being a Man… In The Lousy Modern World boasts of the Newdigate Prize for poetry, the Somerset [...]
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November 11, 2018
Spornos Go To War
NATO brings out the big guns. And huge, pumped bazookas. Spornosexuals (and man buns) have been mobilised in the propaganda war. The North Atlantic alliance would like you to meet, like, share and follow Lasse Matberg. Model, influencer, ‘modern Viking’ and hench, hot-oiled Lieutenant in the Royal Norwegian Navy. To quote the Duke of Wellington, [...]
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November 10, 2018
Back On The Chain Gang
Morrissey appeared this week on The Late, Late Show With James Corden, giving a bravura, if clap-happy, performance of his new single, a cover version of ‘Back On The Chain Gang’. Originally released in 1982 by The Pretenders, written and sung by the indomitable Chrissie Hynde, I’ve always liked this up-tempo melancholic pop song musing [...]
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October 10, 2018
Shag Night
Mark Simpson probes the twilight world of heterosexual stag parties – with a heavy-duty rubber glove “They aren’t usually stiff, but sometimes they do surprise you,” says Penny, and then turns to her partner, Sarah. “Remember that one at the rugby club which whipped past my nose when I pulled his pants down and slapped [...]
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