Television
Town cottages
Jeffrey Bernard
he Man Alive (BBC 2) report on homosexuals and police persecution was an extremely serious affair in which selfconfessed 'gays' were confronted by 0o-faced interviewers, a member of the Police Federation, a lawyer and PC Bob Woodward, a sort of semi-sophisticated village policeman who hunted them down in public lavatories—'cottages'—plus a woman who's husband had committed suicide as a result of a police prosecution. For the umpteenth time I couldn't help wondering why on earth it is that homosexuals have chosen the word 'gay' as a collective noun. The homosexuals who appeared on the programme seemed either melancholy or manic and anyone who could be gay with PC Woodward breathing down his neck would have to be hysterical.
Of course, it's very difficult to talk to strangers and when they happen to be queer too it's almost impossible to talk to them without piling on the deference and reverence that's usually reserved for doctors, cripples, Jews, alcoholics and other groups that one's frightened, admiring or envious of. Since most people are convinced that homosexuals are more sensitive than heterosexuals, all the interviewers wore kid gloves and since some of my best acquaintances are homosexuals I sat back wearing my sympathetic smile and thinking cap and prepared for myself to be seriously enthralled by this serious social problem. Yes, very serious. It was then that someone asked the question, "How is homosexuality understood on the factory floor?" and I knew that I was in for fifty minutes of double meanings that would have wrung admiration out of Max Miller.
PC Woodward somehow took over as anchor man of the programme and although he was on the wrong side of the barricades, full of menace and totally unaware of his own ghastliness, it was hard not to laugh at him. He gave the impression that he'd parked his bicycle just out of shot in the studio and I half expected him to produce a notebook and take down a statement. Some of what he said was frightening; and some of it could have come out of Carry On Camping.
He said that the police weren't overzealous—they quite obviously are—and that most of their prosecutions follow complaints from the public who point out 'certain toilets' to them as being toilets where they have been molested or witnessed indecent behaviour.
One of the most depressing things about the programme, by the way, was everyone's insistence on the continual use of the word 'toilet'. Not once did anyone say 'lavatory'.) PC Woodward went on to say that he had spent fifteen years policing a toilet on a common somewhere or other—I forget where—but that he did other police work as well. You wondered how he'd had time for anything else. Rather pompously he said that when he was out trying to pinch homosexuals he dressed 'very sombrely'. Dressed as Harlequin, PC Woodward would still look like a policeman. Unfortunately, over the years, he'd managed to fool a staggering number of what must have been very gullible queers. His best remark was, "I have leant over backwards to be sure of my facts".
Of the homosexuals interviewed there were two interesting types. There were the sensitive ones who conveyed the impression of an appreciation of the arts, an ability to read and write etc, and two denim-jacketed lads who prowled the cottages looking for trade. The cottage boys surprised me by saying that it needed more nerve to go into a pub or club to pick someone up than it did to go into the sort of toilet haunted by the likes of the intrepid PC Woodward. And someone pointed out that as far as the old fear of queers molesting small boys went, we should all be just as frightened of heteros interfering with little girls. Well, we know that one, and at half-time it was Homosexuals 6, Police 0.
One of the interviewees, a professor of something, gave himself a very affectionate pat on the back when he talked about the time he'd been had up in court. He said, "The judge gave me a bad time. I thought I'd get a stiff talking to, but he sent me for six months to a psychiatrist who said, 'I can't talk to you, your imagery is too rich for me'." Someone who's imagery wasn't too rich was a charming woman who sat on the programme with her homosexual husband and said that she'd been initially attracted to him by his homosexual manner. She didn't explain exactly what that manner involved but one could guess what she meant. Homosexuals have got better manners than heterosexuals and they're probably much more considerate. Her husband illustrated the depth to which trained psychiatric thinking can reach when he said that he'd been told by a Jungian psycho-therapist that he was only psychologically homosexual. At the end of the session one of the interviewers said, "Homosexuals have a difficult life." Well, yes, of course they do. But believe me, so do heterosexuals.
It was after all this that I got considerably upset by Sue Lawley on Tonight (BBC I). Too many people must have told her that she's doing a great job because she's got a very serious case of taking herself too seriously. I understand that there aren't more women announcers because their voices are too high to utter important news, but the law will change all that. Anyway, I don't think it's got anything to do with the tenor of the voice. I think it's because women like Sue Lawley move their heads about to convey sincerity. Miss Lawley moves hers like a chicken. Like a hen, in fact, that's just laid a double-yolker. She should watch and learn from the only exception, the Maria Callas of announcers. The magnificent Angela Rippon who, if I were Parkinson, I would have on my show like a shot.
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