C3-P0, by Christopher Bryant.

To celebrate LGBT History Month, 2013, Polari is publishing a daily series of LGBT Heroes, selected by the magazine’s team of writers and special contributors.

“What set him apart was that he was not merely comedy relief, or the discontented villain (as in 1970s spy thrillers like The Eiger Sanction) but a key part of a team of heroes.”

Jefferson Airplane, ‘Volunteers’.

To mark LGBT History Month, 2013, Polari asked its contributors to recall a song that had an impact their own stories.

“My brother had me listen to Jefferson Airplane with the magic words, “Dude, trust me, this is cool”. Even though at the age of nine, the concepts of the ’60s social revolution eluded me, the music still stuck in my head.”

Madonna, by Nick Smith.

To celebrate LGBT History Month, 2013, Polari is publishing a daily series of LGBT Heroes, selected by the magazine’s team of writers and special contributors.

“Madonna is a trailblazer, and made it possible for artists such as Lady Gaga to follow in her path. She has always been an advocate for our views, our society and our right to be ourselves.”

Björk, ‘Pluto’

To mark LGBT History Month, 2013, Polari asked its contributors to recall a song that had an impact their own stories.

“The song’s metaphor of destroying oneself to start over brand new left a huge impression on me. I clung to the idea of being able to redefine your own identity and make new beginnings for yourself.”

Michel Foucault, by Jonathan Kemp.

To celebrate LGBT History Month, 2013, Polari is publishing a daily series of LGBT Heroes, selected by the magazine’s team of writers and special contributors.

“The exciting opportunities, for him, lay in the creative possibilities of non-normative sexual practices and new, alternative forms of organizing personal relationships; not in discovering who we are, but refusing who we are. “

Marc and the Mambas, ‘If You Go Away.’

To mark LGBT History Month, 2013, Polari asked its contributors to recall a song that had an impact their own stories.

“I can remember staring in wonder at Val Denham’s androgynous painting of Marc on the cover (while my boyfriend stared in wonder at my pert teenage bubble butt)..”

Get up … and go?

Gay Relationship Column. Scottie looks for “a guy who’s a bit of a bloke”, but what exactly does that mean … for him?

“There are different kinds of gyms, and just as gyms are like churches in gay culture, choosing one is like selecting which religion to follow.”

Instalment III: The world of ‘Wet and Messy’ (WAM).

Clark Rockerfeller, the virtual gay man trapped inside a woman’s body, learns from ‘Adult Themes’ about food play.

“Yes, the foreplay was protracted – an unspoken decision to get the pipes warmed up and the fruit pre-juiced before abandoning our own right hand/fruit/apendage trifecta, for a menage-a-six: two dicks, two tongues, a pineapple and a banana.”

To Be or Not To Be.

Terry Sanderson writes about how a gossip magazine called Confidential outed Marlene Dietrich in 1955.

“It was astonishing that Marlene’s career survived such an ‘outing’ in the buttoned up fifties. She was just in the process of reinventing herself as a successful concert artist when the Confidential article was published.”

Oscar Wilde, by Neil McKenna.

To celebrate LGBT History Month, 2013, Polari is publishing a daily series of LGBT Heroes, selected by the magazine’s team of writers and special contributors.

“Oscar Wilde was my introduction to my own cultural history. There was precious little else in those days. It was as if our lives and our histories had been expunged from the records, which in a very real sense they had. “