It’s October 1977 and five members from the group Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE) have rocked up outside The Corn Exchange in Brighton to picket John Inman’s new show.
Why? Because they believed his flamboyant character from hit TV show Are You Being Served? isn’t helping their cause. But what do John Inman and Russell Tovey, the homosexual actor from TV shows Looking and Being Human, have in common?
John Inman is most famous for his limp-wristed character, Mr Humphries, in the hit TV show Are You Being Served? and his infamous catchphrase I’m Free! was bringing laughs to TV viewers up and down the UK.
In October 1977, a handful of members from the group CHE disagreed with the millions of TV viewers and picketed his Brighton show. CHE was set up to promote equality for lesbians, gay men and bisexuals in England and Wales so you’d think a homosexual character on a prime time TV show would be great right?…Well no.
The few individuals from the group handed out leaflets to passers-by blaming Mr Inman for depicting homosexuals as sexually obsessed, too extravagant in manner and too easily eager to ‘drag up’. The group insisted that most homosexuals did not behave like Mr Humphries and that Inman was contributing to television’s distortion of their image.
John Inman in an interview about the subject, said: “they thought I was over exaggerating the gay character. But I don’t think I do. In fact there are people far more camp than Mr.Humphries walking around this country. Anyway, I know for a fact that an enormous number of viewers like Mr. Humphries and don’t really care whether he’s camp or not. So far from doing harm to the homosexual image, I feel I might be doing some good.”
It’s also interesting to note that the sexuality of Mr Humphries was never explicitly stated in the show and according to Inman and David Croft, a cowriter of Are you Being Served?, actually stated the character was “just a mother’s boy”. Inman carried on with the camp mannerisms to his live performances and said that if he didn’t, the audiences soon became disappointed.
Fast forward 38 years and the out gay actor, Russell Tovey, is pulled up for a recent interview he did with The Observer. His crimes? For his comments on effeminacy and suggesting that there is something wrong with being camp.
During an interview with The Observer newspaper he said: “I feel like I could have been really effeminate, if I hadn’t gone to the school I went to. Where I felt like I had to toughen up. If I’d have been able to relax, prance around, sing in the street, I might be a different person now. I thank my dad for that, for not allowing me to go down that path. Because it’s probably given me the unique quality that people think I have.”
You may be asking what is wrong with that comment? Well let me break it down for you, it suggests that there’s something wrong with being camp because he is glad he isn’t. “If I’d have been able to relax, prance around, sing in the street”, it also paints camp in a certain light that all camp people prance and sing. It casts effeminacy in a scornful light.
So what exactly is wrong with that comment? Well let’s have a look at it.
What Tovey is implying here is that there’s something wrong with effeminate men that the guys who ‘prance around’ as he so eloquently puts it, are perhaps lesser to the more masculine gay guys in this world. The comment instantly puts camp as a lesser, casting a scornful light on people’s natural state. Our gay society is already fractured and comments from influential famous, out, actors like this turn those fractures into full on cracks.
Tovey continues… “I surrender. You got me. I’m sat baffled and saddened that a misfired inarticulate quote of mine has branded me worst gay ever” he took to Twitter “I’m proud to be who I am and proud for others. We’re in this together, I want you to know whatever you think I meant, I didn’t.” which doesn’t sound like much of an apology.
Instead of wording his interview better by saying “I’m butch and get used to it”, he took to offending the effeminate crowd, something with the growing Grindr trend of “no fat, no femmes” is becoming more apparent but that’s for entirely different blog!
Instead of wording his interview better by, perhaps saying something like ‘I’m masc, deal with it’, he went off on a rant, riling the more effeminate crowd. Sadly, he’s not alone. It only takes one scroll through hook up apps like Grindr to be faced with ‘no fat, no femmes’ which is a really worrying phrase. How can we look for acceptance if we can’t accept ourselves?
I wonder what Russell Tovey makes of effeminate characters on TV? Perhaps he would have been in that crowd outside Inman’s Brighton show, berating the representation of gays. In the words of Shirley Bassey,“sounds like a little bit of history repeating”.
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