Rochdale Town Hall

Rochdale Town Hall is a Victorian-era municipal building and is “widely recognised as being one of the finest municipal buildings in the country”.

We travelled by train and tram and had lunch in the Regal Moon (originally used as the Regal cinema) before our visit to the Grade I listed building.

Construction was completed by 1871 although the cost had, by then, increased beyond expectations from the projected £40,000 to £160,000 (£15,850,000 in 2024).

Previously, Rochdale Council met in all sorts of different buildings to conduct the town’s business. The council chamber was purpose-built and here the Council could discuss, debate and often disagree in style. There used to be a screen to keep the public separate. This kept the noise out and stopped tomatoes being thrown at the councillors!

The council offices are now based at Number One, Riverside and in 2021 work began to restore the building to its former glory, some 150 years after it was first completed. The work has recently been completed and the Town Hall is once again open to the public as a remarkable space that’s accessible to everyone.

More photos can be seen here.

Levy Queer Club!

New group coming to Levenshulme – a fun and informal intersectional drop-in where all members of our LGBTQIA+ community are welcome to come down, grab a brew, build some connections and find new ways to flourish.

The first Levy Queer Club will take place on Tuesday 30 April from 7.30pm to 9.00pm in Studio Room, Levenshulme Old Library.

Come and meet other local LGBTQIA+ folk and decide what you want your local Queer Club to offer!

Behind the Movement that Brought Homosexuality – and Psychiatry’s Power – to a Vote 50 years ago

A Yale historian argues in a new book that post-war psychiatrists had pathologised homosexuality to legitimise and hold on to their raw yet fading political power.

Fifty years ago, the United State’s psychiatrists effectively put gay people’s mental health – and their very place in society – to a vote.

Five months prior, on 15 December 1973, the 15-member board of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) had voted unanimously, with two abstentions, that homosexuality should no longer be considered a mental illness.

The epochal elimination of the homosexuality diagnosis from the APA’s influential bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, made the front page of The New York Times and The Washington Post. The Chicago Gay Crusader ran the cheeky, if world-weary, banner headline, “20,000,000 Gay People Cured!”

But the policy shift was met with dismay by prominent APA members who remained wedded to their conviction that homosexuality was a pathology warranting “reparative” treatment. They prompted a ballot referendum of the organisation’s rank and file to repeal the board’s vote.

On 8 April 1974, the APA reported the tally: 58% of the more than 10,000 members to cast a ballot had supported upholding the vote. 

Gay people remained “cured.”

“It was a sea change in LGBT rights,” said the APA’s current president, Dr Petros Levounis, who as an openly gay man represents a prime product of that change.

Loosening psychiatry’s grip on homosexuality

Those two crucial votes were the culmination of years of both external gay-activist pressure on the APA and an internal reform campaign, fuelled by the myriad civil rights movements that bloomed out of the 1960s. These revolutionaries sought to release the repressive grip that Freud-descended psychoanalysis held over post-war American society. 

“Psychiatry really set the conditions within which people had to make sense of themselves,” said Regina Kunzel, a professor of history and women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Yale University, referring to the period, from about 1940 through the 1970s, when psychoanalysis dominated the psychiatry field and enjoyed its cultural and political zenith.

Kunzel is the author of a new academic text, “In the Shadow of Diagnosis: Psychiatric Power and Queer Life,” in which she argues that historians have under-recognised psychiatry’s sweeping influence over the perception and treatment of gays and lesbians during the mid-20th century.

The word “power” is littered across the pages of Kunzel’s tidy and at times harrowing account of the mistreatment and torment sustained by gay and gender-nonconforming Americans at the hands of the psychiatric establishment. Psychiatrists, Kunzel asserts, were not merely interested in caring for distressed patients or exerting their influence on the culture at large. They also sought to bolster their own power and authority by proclaiming subject-matter expertise regarding homosexuality and enforcing the heterosexual nuclear family as a Cold War-era bulwark against the existential threat of communism.

“Psychiatry wasn’t just doctors in hospitals, in clinics,” said Kunzel, who sourced copious documentation of gay people being locked in such asylums for years against their will. “They really made bargains with the state to enhance their authority.” 

Psychiatrists did so by partnering with the military to weed homosexuals out of the armed forces, and with the criminal justice system to aid in the policing and sodomy prosecutions of gay people. Their pathologising of homosexuality also influenced the federal government’s campaign to flush gays from the civil service during the Lavender Scare (recently depicted in the limited series “Fellow Travellers”). 

This swell of criminalisation of gay Americans came in the wake of the Kinsey reports and their bombshell findings. In 1948, Alfred Kinsey published “Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male,” shocking Americans with his finding that 37% of men reported a history of sex with other men. The cultural backlash to Kinsey was driven at least in part by psychoanalysts.

As a countervailing anti-psychiatry movement eventually began to take hold, psychiatrists stoked homophobic anxieties with one hand while offering a solution – reparative therapy, also known as conversion therapy – with the other, fuelling a feedback loop that bolstered their central and supposedly indispensable place in society. 

Gay activism’s ascent thus became dependent on psychoanalysis’ decline. The Mattachine Society, founded in 1950, saw the APA’s categorisation of homosexuality as a disease as the linchpin obstructing gay liberation.

“Off the couches and into the streets!” became a popular liberationist slogan, emphasising that gay people were not mentally ill and were a force to be reckoned with.

Psychiatry ‘legitimised a great deal of horrors’

By defining homosexuality as a pathology – the diagnosis appeared in the DSM’s first edition in 1952 – the APA “legitimised a great deal of the horrors,” said Andrew Scull, a sociology professor at the University of California, San Diego, and an expert on the history of psychiatry.

Such horrors, many of which were imposed by coercion or during forced institutionalisation in the name of curing homosexual urges and behaviours, included lobotomy, insulin shock, what’s now known as electroconvulsive therapy and aversion-therapy treatment (including the use of emetics and electric shocks including to the genitals).

One company that made shock-therapy devices even had a regular booth at the APA’s annual conference. 

In 1970, the year after the Stonewall uprising, infuriated gay activists began infiltrating these conferences and raucously demanding an end to such mistreatment and the delisting of homosexuality as a psychiatric disorder. In 1972, a gay psychiatrist stunned conference attendees when he appeared on a panel anonymously – dressed in an oversize tuxedo, a ghoulish mask and a wig – and spoke of the anguish of working in the profession from within the closet.

During this same period, Kunzel writes, the APA top brass was seeking to defend psychiatry as an evidence-based science in the face of mounting attacks on the field’s legitimacy. So when gay advocates presented to the organisation newer research suggesting that homosexuality was not a sickness but a normal variant of human sexuality, they found a receptive audience among key APA leaders. 

“Organised psychiatry was scuttling for safety,” Dr Richard Pillard, who at the time was a young APA member and a very rare openly gay psychiatrist, recalled in “Cured,” a recent documentary about this moment in the organisation’s history.

Dr Lawrence Hartmann’s APA membership also dates back to that era. Speaking about the appeals he and others made to the organisation’s leadership to reconsider its stance on homosexuality during this historic window, he said: “It took some persuading. Sometimes science and politics can cooperate.” Even as he remained professionally in the closet, Hartmann in 1970 helped found what became an influential group of APA members who sought to reform and modernise the organisation and make it more responsive to the array of recent socio-political upheavals.

Hartmann recalled his crucial efforts to master the bylaws and byzantine bureaucracy of the APA. He marshalled through the proper internal channels a position paper he had written with Pillard arguing for the APA to remove homosexuality from the DSM and become an actual champion of gay civil rights. Ultimately, Hartmann got the measure passed by the APA assembly and sent on to the board for the pivotal, and successful, December 1973 vote.

At that time, the APA also put its weight behind civil rights protections for gay people and supported the repeal of state sodomy laws then on the books in 42 states and Washington, D.C. (When the Supreme Court finally struck down all such statutes in 2003, 14 states still had them.)

“With various populations, it was taken as a sign of a reasonable scientific health that a large organisation could be open to real discussion and real rethinking,” said Hartmann, who gradually came out as gay over the next two decades and served as president of the APA from 1991 to 1992.

The sea change

Asked about his own reaction 50 years ago to this sea change in the APA, Hartman said, “We at the time didn’t know what it would mean. It turned out to be very influential.”

That’s putting it mildly. The full parade of barriers to gay civil rights – including housing and employment discrimination, laws governing sex between consenting adults, and the bans on gay people immigrating, adopting children and marrying – all hinged on whether gay people were defined as constitutionally well or as psychologically sick, clinical pariahs at a time when all manner of psychiatric disorders were magnets for stigma and discrimination. And so, the APA’s policy change sent off shockwaves that continue to course across the legal landscape.

The APA did not, however, make a clean break from pathologising homosexuality with the 1973 board vote. As a compromise in the face of resistance, the leadership allowed for a new diagnosis to enter the DSM at that time: “sexual orientation disturbance,” for people who were distressed over their homosexuality, including those who wished to change it. This diagnosis was then replaced by “ego-dystonic homosexuality” in 1980. That diagnosis was struck in 1986; but at that time, the symptom of “marked distress about one’s sexual orientation” was newly included in the diagnosis of “sexual disorders not otherwise specified.” That last vestige of pathologised homosexuality wouldn’t finally be deleted until 2013.

Critics say those various diagnoses helped legitimise decades of conversion therapy efforts. Research that began to emerge in the mid-1990s ultimately discredited this practice, which although still carried out, is now widely condemned as harmful and ineffective by mainstream mental health professionals and is banned for minors in 22 states and Washington, DC.

The new frontier

Kunzel is among those who look at homosexuality’s decades long evolution in the DSM and see at least a partial parallel to the more recent effort to depathologise transgender identities.

“Transsexualism” first entered the manual in 1980, enraging many trans activists for, they argued, turning their identity into a sickness. This was replaced in 1994 by “gender identity disorder” – an effort by the APA to mitigate stigma that nevertheless left many trans people unappeased. Then, in 2013, that diagnosis was replaced by the current “gender dysphoria,” which distances the source of distress from the core sense of self and attributes it more to society’s stigma toward gender nonconformity.

Today, there is sustained pressure on the APA to discard the gender dysphoria diagnosis and, just as with gay and lesbian people, totally depathologise trans people in the eyes of psychiatry. However, because receiving hormones and transition-related surgeries is key for many trans people to fully realise their identities, and given that insurance companies require a diagnosis to cover such treatment, a tension remains that may prove irreconcilable.

Levounis, the current APA president, declined to take a position on what should become of the gender dysphoria diagnosis.

“It’s a very active debate within our field,” Levounis said. “Unlike other discussions within the APA of yesteryear, we do involve a lot of lived experience in our work – people who are transgender,” including psychiatrists and non-psychiatrists alike, “who do help inform us in these discussions.”

Hartmann said the effort to depathologise homosexuality has “a mixed relevance to the present, very lively and argumentative field” of gender identity – one in which he hopes to see further research that will yield clearer insights. Surveying the fruits of his own efforts five decades ago to strike homosexuality from the DSM, Hartmann said, “I think it has helped an enormous number of people’s self-esteem. I think it has helped them face real problems in their life, including psychiatric problems. I think it has helped them fight for justice in other realms. And I think there are some people who came around and became thoughtful about what other things are unfair.”

The Pioneer of British Soul: Celebrating Dusty Springfield’s Legacy, 25 Years After Her Death

‘When I first heard Dusty’s voice, I fell in love,’ said Elton John.

Shortly after her first solo single, “I Only Want To Be With You”, became a top five hit in the UK, Dusty Springfield was asked how she was enjoying her success. “It’s marvellous to be popular,” she said. “But foolish to think it will last.”

It was typically self-effacing remark from a woman who would go on to become one of the most important British singers of all time. Whether it was calling her classic album Dusty in Memphis “rather overrated”, cranking up the volume in her headphones in the studio to drown out the sound of her own voice or anxiety over her appearance, Dusty could never seem to see in herself what others could. But, just over 25 years since her death on 2 March 1999, her status as a musical icon is undeniable.

Over the course of her lifetime, Dusty Springfield was many things: a symbol of the swinging 60s; the woman who helped introduce the UK to soul; an LGBT+ icon; an anti-apartheid activist; and an unexpected ’80s pop star. She was also a bundle of contradictions. She was the white English convent girl who loved singing Black American music. She frequently hated the sound of her own voice – and yet had one of the best in the business. She was painfully shy, yet willing to stand up to the South African government. She was known for her pranks and love of food fights, but prone to enormous bouts of melancholy. Also an instantly recognisable figure, who was always an enigma.

Dusty was born Mary Isabel Catherine Bernadette O’Brien to Irish parents on 16 April 1939, in Hampstead, London. Family life was far from happy. Her father, a tax advisor, verbally abused his daughter and her mother was dependent on drink. But they did instill in her and her older brother, Dion (later known as Tom), a love of music. At her convent school, she told her teacher she wanted to be a blues singer when she grew up – even if it looked unlikely at the time. “You’d never in a hundred years have picked her out as someone who was going to be famous,” a classmate told writer Lucy O’Brien in her book Dusty: The Classic Biography (recently reissued in an updated edition).

Dusty – whose nickname came from playing football with the boys – was worried she would end up as a librarian. “I had awful glasses, unstyled hair and thick ankles,” she said. But a fascination with Hollywood stars sparked the idea that she could transform herself into something else. As she said to Lucy O’Brien: “I just decided I wanted to become someone else … so I became someone else. I had to change Mary O’Brien to be successful.”

And so the invention of Dusty Springfield began. In 1958 she answered an advert in the newspaper and joined a band called The Lana Sisters – calling herself Shann Lana – and toured with Cliff Richard, Adam Faith and Morecambe & Wise. She then formed a folk-trio with her brother and another friend, called The Springfields. In 1962 their cover of Wanda Jackson’s 1956 record “Silver Threads and Golden Needles” reached number 20 on the Billboard chart – the first by a British band to do so. In 1963, their single “Island of Dreams” was the fourth best-selling song in the UK. It was Dusty’s voice, though, that was the main attraction – and she had plans for her career beyond singing folksy songs.

In 1963 she went solo as Dusty Springfield. Her first single, “I Only Want To Be With You”, was a top five hit in the UK. The timing was perfect for Dusty to be part of the British Invasion in America, and the song reached No 12 in the US. Her first album, A Girl Called Dusty, came out in the spring of 1964 and stayed in the UK top ten for 23 weeks.

Her look – platinum blonde hair backcombed to within an inch of its life (“I used so much hairspray that I feel personally responsible for global warming,” she later told the New York Times), eyes painted as black as a panda – was already in place. Dusty had a specific vision for her music, too. Though she didn’t write songs, she had an instinct for picking great ones and interpreting them brilliantly.

Her British contemporaries were Sandi Shaw, Lulu and Cilla Black. But the music that excited Dusty most was that of Black American artists in the early ’60s – bands like The Ronettes, The Chiffons, The Shirelles and Martha & The Vandellas. She loved the music on the Stax, Atlantic and Motown labels – in fact, she loved Motown so much she named her dog after it.

Speaking in a 1989 radio interview she said: “I wanted to do Motown but I also wanted to be the Exciters, I wanted to be The Shirelles. I wanted to be the Scepter label as well. I wanted to be a cross-section of all of it.” Dusty was later dubbed “the queen of blue-eyed soul” but, reflecting on how she and other British artists like The Beatles tried to emulate the rhythm and blues sound of Black America, she says she had to accept that it was impossible. “In hindsight what gave (our music) its peculiar charm is that we made a lot of mistakes, we couldn’t quite cop it. We did it in an English fashion, which used to drive me crazy because I wanted to be totally accurate. But I was white, I couldn’t be.”

Still, she played a vital part in popularising soul music in the UK. In 1965 she hosted the Ready Steady Go: The Sound of Motown special, which introduced The Supremes, the Miracles, Martha & the Vandellas and the Temptations to a primetime UK audience.

She once said that she felt more affinity with Black artists. “When it comes to singing and feeling, I just want to be one of them and not me,” she said. “Then again, I see how some of them are treated and I thank God I’m white.” Before she toured South Africa in 1964, she had it written into her contract that she wouldn’t play to any segregated audiences – a clause she steadfastly refused to break, and which led to her being deported from the country. The South African government said that Springfield had failed to observe “the South African way of life.”

By the mid-sixties Dusty was one of the biggest stars of the British pop scene. In 1965 she performed at the NME Poll Winners concert alongside The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. In 1966 she scored her biggest hit so far with “You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me” (its vocals recorded in a stairwell) – which made number one in the UK and the top five in the US. Her voice was a beguiling combination of power and vulnerability; Bette Midler called it “haunting and husky, full of secrets and promises.”

The exuberant look she’d created was the perfect symbol of Swinging Sixties London – and the newspapers lapped up stories about her notorious parties and legendary food fights – including the time she hurled a bread roll at a waiter in a fancy restaurant. But behind the bubbly persona she was dealing with mental health struggles and an often crippling lack of confidence – coupled with the pressure of hiding that she was gay. “She was very insecure,” said Lulu. “She was a hard taskmaster in the studio because she was such a perfectionist, but that’s why she was so great too.”

By the late ‘60s, Dusty’s career had stalled in the States. Despite early hits, she’d struggled to have a proper breakthrough, so in 1968 she decided to try something new. She signed with Atlantic Records – home of her idol Aretha Franklin – and began working with the producer Jerry Wexler on her fifth solo album. The result, Dusty in Memphis, is considered her musical masterpiece. It featured contributions from Carole King, Gerry Goffin, Burt Bacharach, Hal David and Randy Newman. Dusty’s voice is at its most soulful and seductive – further elevating songs like “Just a Little Lovin’”, “I Don’t Want to Hear Anymore” and “Son of a Preacher Man”. Writing about the album for Rolling Stone, Greil Marcus said: “Most white female singers in today’s music are still searching for music they can call their own. Dusty is not searching – she just shows up.”

Despite the album’s obvious quality, it was somehow a commercial flop on its initial release, only reaching 99 on the US chart and failing to make the top 40 back home. Dusty would only record one more album with Atlantic, 1970’s A Brand New Me (released in the UK as From Dusty With Love), which failed to crack the top 100 in America.

She might not have been dominating the charts in 1970 – but, thanks to an interview in the Evening Standard, she was still all over the UK press. Talking to Ray Connolly, she addressed the speculation about her sexual preferences. “I know that I’m perfectly capable of being swayed by a girl as by a boy,” she said. “More and more people feel that way and I don’t see why I shouldn’t.”

It was an enormously brave, and unusual, statement for a public figure to make at the time. It would set her on the way to being the LGBT+ icon she later became – but at the time, Middle England was still rife with homophobia.

That same year she decided to leave the UK and start a new life in the US. Dusty had once dreamed of being a Hollywood star but, after moving to Los Angeles, she faded into obscurity. She continued, intermittently, to release music, but it didn’t sell well. “I started to lose my way,” she said. “I stopped listening to the voice in me that knows what’s right for me.” Feeling adrift in a new country, and with her career waning, she increasingly turned to drink and drugs, and often self-harmed. By 1985, in a new low, she was signed to nightclub owner Peter Stringfellow’s record label and released an album that reached No 85 in the UK charts. It looked like there was no way back.

Then in 1987, long time Dusty fans the Pet Shop Boys asked her to appear on one of their singles. The band – coming off the back of their second number one single, “It’s A Sin” – were warned off the idea by their record company, who told them they could get Tina Turner or Barbra Streisand instead. “But we wanted her,” Neil Tennant said in the BBC’s Reel Stories. Dusty asked them what they wanted her to sound like – to which they said: like Dusty Springfield. “Oh, I think I can do that,” she said. “All of her life feels like it goes into that song,” said Tennant. “It’s that thing where someone takes your song and makes it ten times better.”

“What Have I Done To Deserve This?” went to No 2 in both the UK and American charts. It was Dusty’s first major hit in 20 years. She recorded more songs with the band, including two more top twenty singles: “Nothing Has Been Proved”, the soundtrack to the 1989 film Scandal, and “In Private”. They also co-produced her 1990 album Reputation.

In 1994, Dusty would get another boost to her career when “Son of a Preacher Man” was included on the soundtrack to Pulp Fiction, introducing a whole new generation to her music (a re-release of the song even went to number one in Iceland). In 1995 she released another new album, A Very Fine Love – but it would turn out to be her last. During its recording Dusty was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she beat it the first time, it soon returned. She died on 2 March 1999 at her home in Oxfordshire – just weeks before her 60th birthday.

Less than a fortnight after her death, Elton John inducted her into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame. “When I first heard Dusty’s voice, I fell in love,” he said.

From asserting control over her music, even when it meant she was labelled difficult; to taking a stance against racism when many of her peers turned a blind eye; to transforming her persona through her image, Dusty was ahead of her time in so many ways.

She laid a path for female British soul, influencing stars like Annie Lennox, Amy Winehouse and Adele, not only with her voice, but with her spirit and her refusal to fit the mould. She was hard to pigeonhole, it’s true. But there’s one label she can easily be filed under: as one of the world’s greatest ever female vocalists.

Project to Replace Damaged Trans Memorial Reaches Milestone

Two years ago, a memorial that was used as a place to remember members of the trans community and gender-diverse people that have since passed away was destroyed in a fire. For eight years, the sycamore tree, based in Manchester’s Sackville Gardens, had been a powerful place for people to contemplate and was decorated with plaques full of memories dedicated to people.

With the fire, which took place during Manchester Pride, causing ‘irreparable damage’, it was decided it was impossible to recover it and instead plans were put in motion to find a suitable replacement that carried on the important message of the memorial.

Following an extensive open-call to artists, designers and architects, Sparkle, the national trans charity, has now unveiled the plans to replace the sculpture with a new design that symbolises the strength and spirit of the trans community and gender diverse people.

Sparkle – The National Transgender Charity in partnership with New Practice, an LGBTQIA+ and women-led architectural practice and global professional services firm Arup, have submitted a planning permission application for a new National Trans Monument.

The design, ‘Passing on Light’, was conceived by Bek Ziola (they/he), Lead Architect of New Practice, following a bespoke, person-centred and experience-led consultation process by Arup to capture the needs and wishes of diverse trans and gender non-conforming communities in Greater Manchester and across the UK. 

The new monument draws together three key themes identified by the consultation; a site for contemplation and reflection, whilst also symbolising the strength and spirit of trans and gender diverse people.

Bek Ziola said, “The National Transgender Monument is a project that I hold very dear to my heart and have personal interest in getting delivered.”

Jay Crawford (he/they), Chair of Sparkle said “It was important to the Charity that the views and lived experience of the communities we serve helped shape the project to replace the previous memorial, so it’s fantastic that a trans person and their allies submitted a visionary design which fulfilled the original brief in such a captivating and uplifting way. We’d like to thank everyone at Arup, the LGBT Consortium, AECOM, Mott MacDonald, and, of course, Bek and Samuel at New Practice, for getting the project to this exciting stage.

As well as welcoming donations from community members and allies, we’re also exploring public funding streams and talking to private sector benefactors to ensure that we’re able to deliver the new National Trans Monument within such an ambitious timeframe.”

Vote With Pride

If you are voting at a polling station, you will need photo ID.

If you don’t have photo ID (eg passport, driving licence) then you need to apply for free photo ID now:

https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/voterID

The deadline to apply for free voter ID for the elections on Thursday, 2 May 2024 is Wednesday, 24 April 2024 at 5.00pm.

Find out what you need to do if you’re planning to vote by post in the local and GMCA Mayoral elections on 2 May:

https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/waystovote

Jodrell Bank

Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire hosts a number of radio telescopes as part of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester.

The observatory was established in 1945 by Bernard Lovell, a radio astronomer at the university, to investigate cosmic rays after his work on radar in the Second World War. It has since played an important role in the research of meteoroids, quasars, pulsars, masers, and gravitational lenses, and was heavily involved with the tracking of space probes at the start of the Space Age.

It took us just fifty minutes from Manchester by coach to arrive at this atmospheric place. We had to turn our telephones off or on flight mode whilst on site. A member of staff greeted us and distributed site maps and a timetable of events.

The first building we came to – the First Light Pavilion – featured the First Light Exhibition and the Space Dome which was showing a film “The Story of Jodrell Bank”. This architecturally-stunning building is the same shape and scale of the Lovell Telescope. The building also houses The Angle café where we had our lunch.

Despite some slight rain we explored the beautiful grounds and discovered the Whispering Dishes – a pair of dishes, separated by a distance, but in which whispers can be heard clearly.

Dominating the landscape is the amazing Lovell Telescope, the main telescope at the observatory. Its diameter of 250 ft (76 m) makes it the third largest steerable radio telescope in the world.

It was a very enjoyable day out and more photos can be seen here.

How We Met: ‘I Ordered a Book from his Shop so I Could Give Him my Phone Number’

Neil and Mark, both in their 60s, met at an LGBT+ bookshop in 1987, when Neil kept coming to browse the shelves and chat to the ‘hot clerk’. They hit it off on their first date and married in 2011.

Coming out wasn’t easy for Neil. Although he’d been on a few dates with men while studying at medical school, he worried about people’s reactions. By the spring of 1987 he finally plucked up the courage to tell his parents. “I was living in New York, working as a pathologist, and they were based in Connecticut,” he says. Before visiting them, he stopped to pick up a book that he hoped would help his parents to understand and accept his sexuality.

When he walked into A Different Light, a popular LGBT+ bookshop, he spotted Mark. “He helped me to find what I was looking for and I went to see my parents,” says Neil. “When I told a friend where I had been, he asked if I’d seen the ‘hot clerk’. I realised it was the man who served me.”

Neil returned to the shop soon after but didn’t feel comfortable asking for a date. “Instead, I ordered a book that I knew would take ages to arrive so I had to give him my phone number,” he laughs. Neil continued to return to the store over the next few weeks so he’d have an excuse to speak to Mark.

“We were chatting a lot but it became clear he just wasn’t going to ask me out,” says Mark. “Eventually I called him to ask if pathologists like beer and we went out for a drink.”

They hit it off straight away and went back to Mark’s apartment that night. But Neil already had a date with another man lined up for the next day. “I lied and told Mark I had an autopsy I had to do and that’s why I had to leave,” he says. “The date was really bad, though, and made me realise how much I liked Mark.” At the time, Neil was house sitting at a duplex apartment with a wine cellar. “I invited Mark to come and stay, and we spent the next few weeks together. It was like a honeymoon.”

When Neil moved back to his own apartment in Washington Heights, Mark came to stay. They ended up living there for five years, before moving to the East Village in 1992, then on to the Lower East Side in 2003, where they have lived ever since. A year after they began dating, Mark came out to his mother and introduced her to Neil. “She accepted it and eventually both our mothers became friends. I think they wanted to talk about us,” he laughs.

Although they loved going out with friends and exploring New York together, living in the shadow of the Aids crisis was hard. “We lost 75 friends and we went to a memorial service every week,” says Mark. “It wasn’t until the late 1980s that there were tests, so although people practised safe sex, you never really knew who was infected. In the 90s, I even wrote a play about gay life and activism.” Neil also remembers enjoying a lot of fun times. “The club scene was crazy. There was a feeling of living every moment like it was your last,” he says.

In 1992, they held a commitment ceremony, then married in 2011 when it became legal. “We never wanted a wedding because it seemed heteronormative, but we wanted to get married for legal and tax reasons,” says Neil. “We knew a rabbi and he married us. It was just him, two witnesses and some good food.”

Neil says that Mark is his favourite person. “Even when he’s in the toughest emotional state, he takes care of people. He is always supportive of the Jewish holidays I want to celebrate, as well as my interests.” Mark, for his part, is attracted to his partner’s intelligence. “The minute we met, there was a physical connection but also a profound intellectual connection,” he says. “We got together at a very difficult time but we’ve taken care of each other. I found someone who will always be there for me.”

Thursday, 18 April 8.00pm – LOUD Cabaret

A new monthly queer cabaret night hosted at The Met!

We’re delighted to announce a new queer cabaret night where we will be showcasing the most fabulous of rising stars from across Bury and beyond.

Expect tantalising musicians, side-splitting comedians, captivating dancers and a line-up of talented additions for your delight on a monthly basis. Thursdays have never been so exciting!

Our first event will feature Hunter Millington, who will present his one-man musical exploration of gender and their transition through a western lens. Expect rootin’ tootin’ Cowboys and Cowgirls and everything in-between. Ye-ha!

The event will be hosted by Nathaniel Hall and will also feature mandla rae and Minute Taker.

Supported by The Greater Manchester LGBTQ+ Network and Dibby Theatre

£11 standard / £9 subsidised / £13 supporters (including fees)

Standard What we need most people to pay.

Subsidised For people currently unable to pay the standard price.

Supporters The extra you pay goes directly towards the subsidised ticket option.

Doors open 7.00pm / first act on-stage 8.00pm

Book here

Hat Works Museum

Stockport has tipped its hat to its rich industrial history with the reopening of the Hat Works Museum.

The Hat Works Museum, the UK’s only museum dedicated to the hatting industry, hats, and headwear, relaunched on 21 March 2024, after an extensive refurbishment and reinterpretation of its collection.

Stockport has been a centre for the hatting industry since the 17th Century and was famous for its high-class fur felt hats.

Stockport developed a reputation for quality in the early 19th Century and hatting grew into one of the town’s main employers, as it mechanised.

Rabbit was the preferred fur and a large factory could produce around 5,000 felt hats a week, with pelts imported from around the world as local suppliers could no longer meet demand.

In fact, the mercuric nitrate the furriers applied to the pelts was highly toxic, commonly causing confusion, mental distress and even death, which led to the common phrase we all now use – ‘Mad as a Hatter’ and, of course, Stockport County owes its nickname of The Hatters to the hatting industry.

During a 60-year hatting boom (1875 to 1935), Stockport was home to around 30 major hat factories.

However, since World War One and the Great Depression, the industry declined as cheaper alternatives and new fashions drastically altered hat demand marking the end of over four centuries of local production.

Stockport’s Hat Works first took up residence in Wellington Mill in 2000 with previously a small collection of hats on display.

The Grade-II listed Wellington Mill was built as a fireproof cotton spinning mill in the 1830s but switched to hats during Stockport’s hatting heyday in the 1890s.

Visitors can now discover more than 1,300 hats and related objects, with an array of hat types from military and practical to high-end and artistic and while many were manufactured in Stockport, the collection includes hats from around the world.

Thanks to a grant from the Association for Industrial Archaeology, which promotes the study, preservation and presentation of Britain’s industrial heritage, visitors can see the Victorian hat making machines in motion for the first time since 2016.

Lots more photos can be seen here.

Plans to ‘Preserve and Protect’ Manchester’s Iconic Gay Village Revealed

From being a haven and a sanctuary from discrimination, to a place of protest, the focal point of Manchester Pride celebrations, and so much more, Manchester’s Gay Village has been an essential safe space for members of the LGBTQ+ community who have made this city their home for several decades now.

The globally-recognised neighbourhood draws in tens of thousands of visitors each year, and there’s no doubt it’s truly one of the most welcoming and inclusive spaces in the city centre.

Which is why Manchester City Council says it’s keen to celebrate the role the area has played over the years.

And so, in a bid to do just that, an ‘action plan’ has been created to address how the character and spirit of the area can be maintained and preserved, as well as what improvements can be made to ensure the needs of the LGBTQ+ community are “at the heart” of everything that takes place down in the Village. 

The Council says it’s “intensely proud” of the Village’s reputation, both across the UK and throughout the rest of the world too, and it hopes to “enhance and promote” this reputation for years well into the future.

A range of proposals have already been identified to enhance the area, both in the short and long term, but on top of this, as part of the Council’s “commitment” to the Gay Village, several consultations have also taken place to better understand what the “priorities, desires, and needs” are for those who visit, live, and work there.

Collaboration will remain key during the roll-out of any changes, and action groups will be utilised to engage with all involved too, according to the Council.

So, What Enhancement Proposals are on the Cards Then?

Well, according to the Council, these include the development of a neighbourhood management plan to bring improvements to the physical environment, the conducting of a CCTV audit to ensure coverage is being met, and plans to enhance relationships with Greater Manchester Police (GMP) to make sure residents and businesses are safe.

Damaged trees in Canal Street will also be replaced, alongside the developing of an exciting new social history and heritage trail for the Village as a whole.

New opportunities for street art and murals will also be identified. You can find out more, and see the ‘Gay Village Action Plan’ in full on the Manchester City Council website here.

The Secret Life of Paul O’Grady – By His Friends

He rose to fame as foul-mouthed drag star, Lily Savage, then abandoned the wig and became a national treasure. Friends including Sandi Toksvig, Amanda Holden and Gaby Roslin remember a true, terrific one-off.

I can’t believe it’s been a year,” says Malcolm Prince, the producer of Paul O’Grady’s long-running Sunday teatime Radio 2 show. “Awful, awful, awful, awful. It’s been such a very difficult year. I’m embarrassed to say how tricky it’s been.”

O’Grady’s death on 28 March 2023, from sudden cardiac arrhythmia, came as a shock to the world. For decades, he had achieved the rare feat of presenting himself to the public as he truly was: funny, sharp, outspoken and compassionate in roughly equal measure. To some, he was best known as a comedian, to others a gameshow host, or an animal lover, or a political firebrand, or an LGBT+ pioneer.

O’Grady’s appeal was so broad that people argued about what his legacy should be after he died; even ITV’s big Good Friday show this year, a documentary entitled The Life and Death of Lily Savage, can’t begin to contain the multitudes in O’Grady’s life, instead choosing to focus on the years he spent in drag.

Everyone wanted to emphasise what a loyal friend he was. “He was a brilliant raconteur,” says TV and radio presenter Amanda Holden, who joined O’Grady as an ambassador for Battersea Dogs Home. “I can’t remember what I did last week, and then he would tell me a story about when he was in the clubs and you just go: ‘How do you remember all that?’ – especially knowing his lifestyle at the time. I absolutely adored him. His number’s still saved in my phone. I can’t delete it. I just won’t.”

Owen-Taylor first encountered O’Grady at the Black Cap pub in Camden, north London, in the early 90s, almost a decade after O’Grady had begun to perform as his alter ego Lily Savage. Owen-Taylor had just returned from Australia, where he had been making costumes for Perth’s local drag scene, centred on the town’s only gay club, a venue named Connections that was, as he recalls, located in “a room above a kebab shop”. At the Black Cap, Owen-Taylor began circulating among the performers, touting his wares. “Nikkie Vixen was the first drag artist to trust me, so I made a costume for her,” he explains. “The second one was Regina Fong. And then the third dress I ever made in Britain was for Lily Savage.”

By this stage, Savage was starting to push against the margins of her club fame. Her longstanding residency at the Vauxhall Tavern in south London had attracted a feverishly devoted audience, but O’Grady wanted more. “When I met him, Paul had hired a theatre with his own money,” says Owen-Taylor. “He was trying to see what he could do and if he could fill a theatre. He and (his partner-manager Brendan Murphy) wanted to set their sights higher.”

This led to the Edinburgh festival, where Savage was nominated for the Perrier award. After his return to London, O’Grady appeared at the Hackney Empire’s Best of the Fest night, where he met Brenda Gilhooly, who was then performing as Page 3 girl Gayle Tuesday. “I came off stage and this guy was in the wings, and said: ‘I really like your act’. He had such a strong Liverpudlian accent that halfway through the conversation I went, ‘Oh my God, are you Lily Savage?’,” says Gilhooly. “You don’t know when you meet someone that it is going to be the beginning of a lifelong friendship, do you? But that was it. We were just really good friends after that. When he went on tour, he asked me to be a support act.”

He’d come in in the morning and go: ‘What sort of time is this? Oh my God,’ because he was more of a late-night person

Gaby Roslin

What was the tour like? “It’s so sad, I saw Paul about three weeks before he died,” Gilhooly says. “He made these, like, world war two sandwiches for us. White sliced bread with tinned salmon, and a cup of tea. We didn’t even think about alcohol. But on tour we were really hungover all the time. We’d be like: ‘Right, we’re not doing that tonight,’ and then go out and get really drunk. We’d be lying in all the outfits, on the ground, in the wings before the show. And then the music would start and we would just get up like puppets.”

This is also where she encountered O’Grady’s dramatic flair. “We were doing these 2,000-seat theatres and it was sold out all around the country. I remember coming into the dressing room one night and I went, ‘Hi Paul,’ and he said, ‘I’m not going on.’ The wig came off, and then the beads and I said, ‘But what about the audience?’ and Paul said, ‘Fuck ’em. Fuck ’em!’ I was in an absolute state about it. And then two minutes later, he said, ‘Ah, all right. I’ll go on.’ Afterwards he’s in the bar, talking to people and taking photos, all that. So it’s just kind of what happens when you get to know him. The rants and raves were never genuine.”

“He could be grumpy, but he said it as it was,” recalls Gaby Roslin. “There was no fluff around it. He’d come in in the morning and go: ‘What sort of time is this? Oh my God,’ because he was more of a late-night person than an early morning person.” Roslin was O’Grady’s co-host during his big leap to the mainstream, as Savage became a presenter on Channel 4’s The Big Breakfast. The show “brought Lily to a whole new generation,” says Roslin. “Before, the people that knew Lily knew Lily, you know? They realised that Lily could be naughty, but on our show she could show her complete and utter respect and love for all ages.”

This era of The Big Breakfast was marked by an affectionate kinship between Roslin and Savage. “He used to call me ‘Gaby Roselyn the Tooting Tassle-Twirler’,” recalls Roslin. “I even played the part of her in the Lily Savage Show. Me, Bella Emberg and June Brown. I showed my children a photograph where they had coloured in my roots black. They gave me a can of lager and I had my feet up and my kids were pissing themselves laughing.”

Not that success would blunt O’Grady’s sharper edges. “I remember him telling me that, even though he had a TV show at the time, he couldn’t get a mortgage to buy a nice place to live,” Owen-Taylor remembers of this era. “They told him to get a guarantor. So he got Ian McKellen and Elton John to do it. ‘There you go, a multimillionaire global pop star and a knight of the realm, stick that up your arse.’”

But as Lily Savage’s star was rising, O’Grady decided to walk away and forge a career as himself. “His decision to stop being Savage was sort of mentioned to me as an aside,” recalls Owen-Taylor, who by that point had made upwards of 300 costumes for her. “It was a little bit of a shock, because, you know, I was ramped up for doing it every year. But he explained his decision and I totally understood, because he’d done 10 years-plus on the gay scene and 10 years on telly, and it was hard work. To have to be in all that makeup and the costumes and the wig, it’s a lot to put on and to be doing it continually. He saw other people just sort of waltz into work, sit for 20 minutes in the makeup chair and they were in front of the camera. He wanted that, and he had the talent for it, so good on him. It was a sad loss for the gay scene, but we’ve got all the videos.”

“The thing about Lily was a lot of it was Paul anyway,” says Gilhooly. “I mean, it was an act, obviously. But, and I know this is a cliche, he really was as funny off stage as on.”

Incredibly, O’Grady’s career as himself would soon eclipse that of Savage. He had his own show on ITV and Channel 4 over several years, which quickly assuaged any doubts that he would be less forthright as himself – witness the infamous clip from 2010, where O’Grady rants about the Tories.

Paul’s rant was one of the finest and most dexterous uses of expletives I have ever heard. I deeply regret not writing it down

Sandi Toksvig

It was around this time that O’Grady wrote a sitcom with Sandi Toksvig, entitled Nellie and Melba, where he would play Sheila Hancock’s son. “I have co-written with many people but never like that,” recalls Toksvig. “He would send me handwritten scribbles of thoughts, such as referring to his mother as ‘Eleanor of Aquitaine with a chip pan’. Sometimes we met and he just talked at me as I hurried to dash it down before going home to try to make some kind of sense of it in the form of a script.” Nellie and Melba never made it to screen but, as Toksvig remembers, “When the powers that be proved to be unsurprising idiots and decided not to make the series, Paul’s ensuing rant was one of the finest and most dexterous uses of expletives I have ever heard. I deeply regret not writing it down.”

Not that this left O’Grady with little to do, since at this point he also held down his Radio 2 show. “Radio was the job he did the longest,” explains Prince. “He did it for 14 years. He did 1,000 hours of radio and more, and he absolutely loved it. He was good at it, because he understood that there’s just one person listening at home, and he had that real connection. He was a natural. He didn’t need to be taught how to do it. He could just do it. And that’s a real skill.”

It was on the Radio 2 show that Prince became one of O’Grady’s most enduring sidekicks, too. “At first, I was just silent when he mentioned me on air,” he says. “But then one day the talkback thing went wrong and I spoke on air, and the rest is history. He encouraged me to interrupt him. He took the piss out of me and I took the piss out of him. If you think about it, going back to the Vauxhall Tavern, Lily role.”

O’Grady and Prince were such a double act that, when O’Grady left the station, Prince went with him. “I was so lucky, because you can work with people and not necessarily get on with them. But I live very near to Paul’s now. I’m 17 minutes from his house. He would drive his Mini round, park downstairs, bring the dog in, have a cup of tea, slice of cake. It was lovely. Absolutely lovely.”

Between them, O’Grady and Prince signed up for a show on Boom radio. In the latter stages of preparation, Prince paid O’Grady a visit. “I saw him for two hours on the day he died,” Prince recalls. “I was there. We were having tea. And we put the world to rights as we always did, and he said how excited he was about doing Boom. This was the day before we were going to do the first episode. Apparently, when the medics went in there, the mic was all still set up.”

“I really miss him, says Gilhooly, tearing up. “Apart from being the most talented, wonderful, hilarious comedian – I mean, he was born to be a comedian – he was just such a dear person, a really lovely human being. He was a really good friend and fantastic company. Having a cup of tea with him was as entertaining as any show. He was an incredible man.”

“I got a new show recently,” says Roslin. “I’d always ring Savage to discuss new shows – I always called him Savage – so I went to call him. But then I had that split second where you think: ‘Oh no, I can’t.’ But I know that he’s haunting me. He always said he was going to haunt everyone, that he was going to come back and keep an eye on us all.

He knew how much we all loved him, because at the end of every phone call I’d go: ‘Oh, my God, you know how much I love you,’ and he’d go, ‘You know I love you too. Now fuck off.’”

Canal Street: Then and Now

Today Canal Street in Manchester is a world famous safe space and centre of LGBTQ+ culture, but it took years of struggle to achieve equality.

Watch the video here.

You are Never Too Old For an STI

Infectious disease experts say more needs to be done to address rising sexually transmitted infections (STI) rates in older people. By 2030 1 in 6 individuals worldwide will be aged 60 and older.

The call to action will be presented at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Disease in Barcelona, Spain to be held from 27 to 30 April 2024.

In advance of the conference, they explained what was happening … and suggested some reasons.

For example, STIs in Americans aged 55 to 64 years have more than doubled over the past decade. It’s even worse for gonorrhea, rising from 15 cases per 100,000 people in 2015 to 57 per 100,000 in 2019.

In England, the number of over 45s diagnosed with gonorrhea and syphilis doubled between 2015 and 2019. The majority of that rise has been in gay men.

Professor Justyna Kowalska from the Medical University of Warsaw, who leads the research offers some reasons. These include the rise of dating apps, and erectile dysfunction medication such as Viagra. An increasing number of people are having sex at a later stage in life.

“Rising divorce rates, foregoing condoms as there is no risk of pregnancy, the availability of drugs for sexual dysfunction, the large number of older adults living together in retirement communities, and the increased use of dating apps are likely to have contributed to the growing incidence of STIs in the over 50s”, says Professor Kowalska.

It’s known that some men are foregoing condoms due to advances in HIV treatment and prevention.

“These data likely underestimate the true extent of the problem as limited access to sexual health services for the over 50s, and trying to avoid the stigma and embarrassment both on the part of older people and healthcare professionals, is leading to this age group not seeking help for STIs,” continued Kowalska.

“People do not become asexual with age”

She says assumptions that people stop having sex as they age need to be challenged. For many people, sex remains an important part of their life into old age.

In a study in England, 50% of men aged 70 and over reported being sexually active. In a Swedish study, 10% of those aged 90 and over said they still had sex.

“People do not become asexual with age,” says Kowalska. “In fact, with preventive medicine and improved lifestyles people are enjoying a healthy life and sex life for longer. Older people often find greater satisfaction in their sex lives due to experience and known expectations.”

Kowalska says health professionals need to talk more to older people about sexual health.

“Sexual health campaigns are focused on young people and overlook the needs and experiences of those aged 50 and older,” she says.

“Health promotion messages give the impression that condoms and concerns about STIs only apply to young people. But the dangers of undiagnosed and untreated STIs such as HPV-related cancers and onwards transmission are very real, particularly in this age group who are more likely to have underlying conditions such as heart disease and stroke.”

Although the rates of STIs in older people are lower than those in younger age groups, health awareness material aimed at elders remains rare.

While the over 65-year-olds have caught the headlines for seeing the largest percentage increase in gonorrhea (68 percent increase) and chlamydia (40 percent increase), the absolute numbers in both cases pale in comparison to those of younger age brackets.

Amsterdam

Amsterdam in the Netherlands had dramatically reduced its HIV transmission rates. It recorded just nine new cases in 2022. Part of the approach was a multi-pronged awareness campaign that included older people.

RHS Garden Bridgewater

Sunday, 5 May – RHS Garden Bridgewater – LGBTQIA+ Groups Growing Session – 1.00pm – 4.00pm

Occupation Road, Worsley, Manchester M28 2LJ

Meet at the venue at 1.00pm. There is a large car park or you can catch Bus X50 Bee Network Bus Service from Piccadilly Gardens – Stand K (11.46am and every 30 minutes – free with concessionary pass or £2.00 single journey)

Have fun learning to grow some garden plants from seed and get advice on planning any growing this year, see RHS Garden Bridgewater and take away with you some seeds for home. All free, no cost to access the workshops and all materials provided.

Limited places available – please reserve a place by 15 April.

Contact us here.