A couple of weeks ago I went to see an exhibition at the Drill Hall by the cartoonist, David Shenton.
I first saw Shenton’s cartoons in the weekly gay newspaper Capital Gay back in the early 80’s. They were funny, thought-provoking, depicting a world of check shirt and leather-clad clones. This was back in the days of the Earls Court scene. The Coleherne, Harpoon Louie’s and the Copa were in their hey-day and the Earl’s Court Road was teeming with mustachioed men; shopping, drinking and cruising.
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Categories: Soho Stories
Tagged: clayton littlewood, david shenton
- Published:
- March 16, 2010 – 11:32
- Author:
- By Clayton Littlewood
Thursday 4th March
I’m outside the French House, drinking with Celine and her friend Dave.
I’ve just arrived and after a few pleasantries I ask them about the album they’re recording and they tell me it’s sounding good. Being mixed. And that it’s almost finished. It’s interesting to hear and they’re excited. Then Celine spots a guy in a long blonde wig and a black mini skirt and she goes off to speak to him, leaving Dave and I alone.
Dave was once in the band Soft Cell and although we’ve met a few times before, I’ve never thought to tell him how much his music meant to me when I was growing up. But a couple of things have happened recently that have made me change my mind.
The first is Gaga.
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Categories: Soho Stories
Tagged: clayton littlewood, lady gaga, soft cell
- Published:
- March 8, 2010 – 13:55
- Author:
- By Clayton Littlewood
As the clock chimed six the door to the coffee shop suddenly flew open and there stood David Benson looking like a windswept Bonnie Tyler.
‘Am I late darling?’
‘No, not at all.’
‘Oh good.’
Then he gave me a peck on the cheek and whisked me off to Soho’s Curzon cinema.
We were there to see A Prophet but, as David hates the adverts, we decided to have a hot chocolate in the upstairs café. And it was gorgeous. Like sipping melted chocolate. And as we chatted, too poor to buy a cake of our own, we dipped our fingers into the icing of the one the woman next to us had left behind and, five minutes later, we ‘sugar rushed’ ourselves downstairs to Screen 1.
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Categories: Soho Stories
Tagged: clayton littlewood, david benson, dirty white boy, london, sebastian horsely, soho
- Published:
- February 23, 2010 – 13:13
- Author:
- By Clayton Littlewood
I’m in my usual spot. Notebook on one side. Coffee on the other. Flicking through a newspaper. News. Gossip. Katie Price’s tits. Then I come across an interview with Tom Ford, discussing the film he just directed, A Single Man (based on the 1964 novella by Christopher Isherwood).
I’m a big Isherwood fan, so I’m really looking forward to seeing this film. But what has been disappointing is that this is now the third interview I’ve read where Ford has tried to distance himself from the film’s homosexuality ‘It’s not a gay movie. Absolutely not,’ he said in one interview. ‘We edited out the gay kiss from the trailer,’ said another. And then the phrase he keeps coming out with, ‘I don’t define myself by my sexuality.’ Given Isherwood’s disappointment over the way the homosexuality was trivialised in Cabaret he must be turning in his grave at this reticence.
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Categories: Soho Stories
Tagged: clayton littlewood, homosexuality, single man, tom ford
- Published:
- February 16, 2010 – 09:31
- Author:
- By Clayton Littlewood
8pm. I’m sitting on a small leather settee in a packed theatre bar. On my right sits ‘a sneezing’ David Benson, and on my left his friend Katy.
As they’re both actors the conversation revolves around plays, avant-garde performers and Katy’s recent one-woman show. You see, Katy is none other than Katy Manning. One of the original Dr Who girls. And as she talks, shaking her blonde locks from side-to-side, peppering her speech with show biz anecdotes, although it’s interesting, all I can think about are … the Daleks.
When I was growing up the Daleks were scary. I mean really scary. They were like the Terminators of their day. I must’ve been about eight when I first saw them and whenever they appeared on TV, like thousands of other kids, I’d hide behind my parent’s flower-patterned red velour sofa, peeping nervously from behind the arm-rest, pee spots permeating my pants. And now the actress who fought them, who controversially posed nude draped over one of them, is sitting right next me. It’s a real step-back-in-time moment; reminding me of my Mum serving the family’s dinner; of settling down in front of ‘The Box’; of that classic theme tune; of the noise of the Tardis and, of course, of those Daleks.
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Categories: Soho Stories
Tagged: clayton littlewood, daleks, david benson, dr who, katy manning
- Published:
- February 2, 2010 – 11:22
- Author:
- By Clayton Littlewood
I’m in a coffee shop. The blue one on the corner of Old Compton Street and Frith Street. I come here a lot. I like it here. It’s authentic. As if it’s been here for years. I don’t like the fake bohemia of Caffé Nero and Costa. If I come to Soho I like to be somewhere with a bit of history. So it’s The Stockpot not Balans. Comptons not The Village. The Colony (RIP) not The Groucho. And always this coffee shop. But what I also like about it is that you can always get a seat. I go for the corner one. By the window. It’s the perfect place to watch Soho life drift by.
Today the street is packed. There’re men with goatees, men with beards, men in jackets, men in coats, fit men, overweight men, camp men, butch men, men chatting, men laughing, men texting, solitary men, groups of men, cruising men. It’s Men Heaven.
But inside the coffee shop it’s quiet. Just a straight couple and me. The only sound, the gentle whirr of the coffee grinder and the news update coming from the tinny radio. I stir my coffee and open my notebook. Then the opening bars of a song. It’s Torch by Soft Cell. And as Marc sings, in that slightly off-key way that was once his trademark, his lyrics delicately walking the line between pure camp and basic emotion, I have a flashback moment.
It’s 1982 and I’m in Pete’s Record Shack.
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Categories: Soho Stories
Tagged: clayton littlewood, dirty white boy, soho, Soho Stories
- Published:
- January 27, 2010 – 10:32
- Author:
- By Clayton Littlewood
Those lovely Polari boys have asked me if I would like to write a column for their online magazine.
‘We can be fairly flexible,’ they said, which I took to mean, there’d be no deadlines, no pressure on subject matter and no spotty teenage sub-editors hacking away at my prose.
‘Great!’ I said. ‘I’ll knock something out at the weekend.’
What I didn’t tell them was that my last column ended in tears. I was employed by The London Paper and the column was entitled ‘Soho Stories’. Oh what a heartless bunch they were. I’d send them 400 words and then on Monday morning, an hour before they went to print, I’d receive a three word email.
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Categories: Soho Stories
Tagged: clayton littlewood, soho
- Published:
- January 18, 2010 – 10:04
- Author:
- By Clayton Littlewood
