WLTM - Daniel Boys

Not one of the most well known names in celebrity-land, Daniel Boys is someone who interests me. For those who do not know, he was one of the contestants on the 2007 BBC television program, Any Dream Will Do, that chose a new star to headline Andrew Lloyd-Webber's production of Joseph and the Amazing Techicolour Dreamcoat.

Not quite the amateur that you expect from the type of show that made him a household name (for a few weeks in 2007 at least), Daniel had previously starred in several hit productions including Grease and Rent. While watching the show he was one of my favourite singers, but he just didn't have the right look for playing Joseph. He was eliminated in seventh place overall, with the great Lee Mead winning the show in the end.

Daniel has since gone on to more good things and he can be seen on posters all over London and beyond as the face of Avenue Q, a musical in which he needs to use all of his skills as a singer, actor and performer, as well as learning the skills of a puppeteer!

What I would like to know from Daniel is how he coped with the massive boost in recognition he had when he appeared on the show, how he coped with his relatively early exit and how he has managed his career since. I would like to know if the relationship between all the of the potential Josephs was as close as it appeared to be.

I was not aware of his sexuality while he was in the show, and in fact one newspaper apparently reported that he was "looking forward to meeting women" which annoyed him as it gave the impression, to those who knew his true sexuality, that he was hiding the fact that he is gay. In a show such as Any Dream Will Do sexuality would probably have nothing to do with the end result, but with the Great British public you never can tell. To be honest as well, with the amount of sobbing that ALL of the guys did during the show, any one of them could have been mistaken for being a Nancy (Oh no, that was a completely different show!)! I do wonder, and would love to ask him, how being in the show, with its intense scrutiny and invasion of his previous anonymity affected whatever relationship he was in at the time.

WLTM - RIcky Martin

I've been thinking about Ricky Martin all day today, since the news that he has come out as being gay as of yesterday.
I first hears about him around 1997, when my then housemate Alexis gave me a tape of his to listen to. I was slightly dubious as it was in Spanish and I thought that I would hate it. Alexis told me that he had first heard Ricky (and seen him on television) while on holiday in Gran Canaria and thought that I would like him physically as well as musically. He was right. Though I didn't understand the words of his songs on that album (A Medio Vivir), they were all beautiful songs infused with emotion. I made sure that I had a copy of my own immediately. I've just found them again on Spotify and still love them.
I didn't hear anything else about him until a couple of years late, after I had moved away from Torquay and was living in Hertfordshire, when Ricky hit the worldwide big-time with the (mostly) English language "Livin' la Vida Loca." His sex appeal was apparent immediately especially now that his hair was shorter.
A few years later, once I had my computer, I discovered that rumours were rife about him being gay. Apparently something that Ricky himself was not ready to discuss, though I don't think he denied it outright.
After over a decade of rumours Ricky had now decided it is the right for him to be honest with his fans and the rest of the world. He apparently made this decision while writing his memoirs and deciding that he no longer felt comfortable hiding his sexuality.
I hope that he doesn't receive any negative backlash, from homophobes or from the gay community for "hiding" it for so long. Everyone has to make the decision of when to come out for themselves and though I feel that celebrities have some responsibility to their fans to set an example, now that he is "out" those looking for inspiration need look no further for an example of a decent human being who works hard and provides for disadvantaged people too (having founded the Ricky Martin Foundation which works in several areas especially in combating child trafficking and relief aid).
I look forward to seeing and hearing Ricky's music in the future.

WLTM - John Partridge

John Partridge is another celebrity that I have been aware of for a while but had not known much about them. I had a video, yes VIDEO, of the Cats anniversary celebration "film," in which he performed as Rum Tum Tugger (unfortunately, one of my least favourite songs of the set), but from that I couldn't even tell what he looked like.
He first came to my full attention, as he did to most of the population of the UK, when he first appeared in the soap Eastenders. It was immediately apparent that he was a gorgeous-looking man, with a nice build and it was known that he was a gay man playing a gay man. Despite his character's initial shallowness and stereotypical behaviour I liked the character, in the few scenes that I saw (not being a big fan of the show).
I eagerly anticipated watching the first television interview that I saw, but was a bot disappointed that he came across as more camp than I liked and more camp than his character was. I wasn't sure whether this was a performance or his real self, either way I was disappointed at the possibility of him being camp as this isn't my type of guy.
I have just watched the first episode of the new BBC1 series Over the Rainbow in which John is one of the celebrity judging panel hoping to find the new Dorothy for Andrew Lloyd Webber's new version of The Wizard of Oz. In this, although there were not many opportunities to hear him talk, he did not come across as being camp as I has seen previously. I was also made more aware of his incredibly sexy deep voice.
He has also just appeared in an interview and photo shoot for Attitude magazine in which he sounds interesting and surprisingly normal (for a scene-queen) and the photos, though incredibly homosexually arousing, are beautiful and masculine.
As you may have guessed, I had been attracted to John from first seeing him (sans body suit and cat make-up). The campness that I may have perceived had put me off, but this latest photo shoot has shown that he has an amazing body, with a great hairy chest, amazing arms (always a plus with me) and is still gorgeous.
Why would I like to meet him? Well, I believe that he is happily partnered and I have no interest in splitting a couple, so the relationship / sex reason is out. After reading his interview in Attitude and learning about his travels and career struggles, I believe that he would have a plethora of stories to tell and gossip to spill.

John, dish the dirt!

WLTM - Russell Tovey

I've written before about Russell Tovey and my wish to speak to him just the once to confirm a theory I have. I wanted to expand on this, to explain it a bit more.
I can't actually remember when I first heard of Russell, but it was a few years back. By the time he appeared in the Christmas special of Doctor Who, "Voyage of the Damned," he was already known to me. This was 2007 and the very next year he was one of the stars of the brilliant Being Human. It felt like he was already an established star, and his talent was undoubtable.
My interest in Russell initially came when I first heard that he originated in Essex, not from the fact that he is gay. I was intrigued because I am from Essex too and I used to work with a woman whose married surname was the same as his. Tovey is not a common name and I was further intrigued when I learned that he was from the same general area that this woman lived at the time I knew her.
I have seen him drinking in Soho, usually at Rupert Street bar, several times and have been tempted to go and speak to him and ask him the simple question:

"Are you, in any way, related to Denise Tovey?"

As I Grew Older

I came across this poem last night while I was at work researching:

As I Grew Older by Langston Hughes

It was a long time ago.
I have almost forgotten my dream.
But it was there then,
In front of me,
Bright like a sun
My dream.
And then the wall rose,
Rose slowly,
Slowly,
Between me and my dream.
Rose until it touched the sky
The wall.
Shadow.
I am black.
I lie down in the shadow.
No longer the light of my dream before me,
Above me.
Only the thick wall.
Only the shadow.
My hands!
My dark hands!
Break through the wall!
Find my dream!
Help me to shatter this darkness,
To smash this night,
To break this shadow
Into a thousand lights of sun,
Into a thousand whirling dreams
Of sun!

This poem, by Langston Hughes, was undoubtedly written about being black, as most of Hughes' work dealt with his pride in and love of his colour. But, I doubt that anyone who reads it truthfully feels that this is all that he was expressing when he wrote it.

"As I Grow Older" relates to something that we all experience in our lives, and can empathise with, at whatever age we are. He expresses almost forgetting his dream. I'm sure that we all, at some point in our lives, have had a dream of one sort or another. A hope or a wish for what we would do, or what would happen, when we were older. When I grow up I will…..

Somehow, somewhere in our lives there will always be an obstacle to us achieving that dream, or to us just living how we want and deserve to. The analogy can be made to numerous situations. Barriers because of race, gender, age, religion, mobility, or the reason I chose this poem of his for this article, sexual orientation.

The struggle for equality for black people is a similar one to that of LGBT people, though there is one major difference: visibility. LGBT people are not always immediately visible, and so can chose to remain in the shadows, closeted, as a form of defence against attack. Though this does not make the barriers any less obstructive, the isolation can be more harmful than facing the oppression head-on. In fact, hiding in the shadows just means that you often have to find the courage to emerge from the shadows first before you can tackle the barriers themselves.

When walls are created against you because of your skin colour, it is rarely possible to remain "closeted." The reason for your exclusion is there for all to see. Therefore you need to find the courage to deal with the obstructions day in and day out before you can begin to break through the barriers themselves.

Neither is an enviable position to be in and so should not be allowed to remain a burden for anyone to bear. As well as relating it to matters of sexuality or colour, the poem can also be applied broadly to the whole human race. We are all born with immense potential and the barriers that arise in each of our lives are solely created by humanity. As mankind evolves, so do we see that discrimination of any kind is unnatural and unacceptable. We can all develop and learn to bring down the barriers between us, to help ourselves and our fellow man emerge into the brightness of the sun. To find enlightenment.

Hughes is telling us that our dreams will always be there, it is just our view of them may change or be obscured at some point. Whether the walls are of our own making, or built by others to hinder us, there are always ways to break them down so that we can achieve whatever we want to in our lives. We can all have our day in the sun, but it will mean working together, uniting as one people, to achieve this for everyone.

IDAHo

IDAHo
International Day Against Homophobia

Celebrating the day, on 17th May 1990, when the World Health Organisation finally took homosexuality off their list of mental illnesses.
Yes, it was only 18 years ago

I am a 35 year old gay male who has been out on the scene for about 16 years, been out to work colleagues for about 14 years and to family for about 7 years. In all that time I have experienced 5 instances of homophobia, of various levels of severity, that I can recall, though obviously all are unacceptable.

My first experience of abuse of this nature was when I was about 20. I was living in Grays, in Essex at the time and on a day off, a Sunday if I recall correctly, I was walking across a main road on my way to a cash point before heading into London for some drinks.
Just as I'd crossed the road a car sped past and someone yelled out of the window, "Fuckin' Poof!”
It may well have been obvious that I was gay, I was wearing jeans that accentuated my arse and a tight, ribbed white t-shirt, but even so, that sort of abuse isn't acceptable.

Probably the same year, while I was working at Ravel, in the Lakeside shopping centre, the shop was “invaded” by a group of travellers trying to get money back on a pair of stolen shoes. When they realised that they wouldn't get their way they began to leave and insulted every member of staff, and some customers.
I was singled out a bit when one of the women said to me, “And you! You're a poof!” To which I replied, “Yeah! And?”
She was taken aback that I had agreed with her and said, “I'm gonna get my dad in to sort you out!” To which I replied, “Only if he's good looking!”
It was while regaling this story to the weekend staff on the following Saturday that everyone who worked there came to know I was gay. So they did me a favour really.

A few months later we had a particularly grumpy and disagreeable young woman working with us. She walked out one evening saying that she quit. She came back the next day demanding her job back, but the manageress refused, which resulted in her getting some abuse from the woman's boyfriend who was doing all the talking. He then turned on me with a few special words, "As for you! You're just a fucking pervert!”
Ravel took the easy option for this woman and gave her a job at a fairly local branch, though it was at a lower hourly rate, shorter hours and the manageress, who knew and liked me, made sure that she quit within the week!

The next incident I experienced was, by a long way, the most serious that I have personally experienced.
I'd moved to Torquay by this point and had been enjoying a night out with friends at Munroe's night club.
Originally, Munroe's had opened as a gay club, but over time more and more straight people were going as the music and atmosphere were so great, oh and the fact that drugs were easy to come by probably had something to do with it!
This particular night, as I began to leave with my boyfriend and my mate, who I was renting a room off at the time, we saw a can of beer fly across outside the front door! We thought nothing much of it, but then got verbal abuse, the details of which I cannot recall, as we walked out. We just ignored it being uninterested and a bit merry.
As we had got a couple of minutes along the road, just out of sight of the club, I heard a noise and looked around to see three guys running at us. I managed to warn my companions just in time for my friend to get punched right in the face by the leader of the trio. He was a big bodybuilder type guy and was standing over my friend just pummelling him with punches. The other two acolytes didn't do anything, just egged him on.
At the time, I was a skinny 10 stone weakling who had never been in a fight outside of the school yard, and so I couldn't take on this guy. I did manage to place myself in between him and my friend until he got bored of punching us and ran off with his mates.
All the while this was going on, there was a young couple leaning out of the bedroom window of the nearest house watching. I had yelled for them to phone the police, but they didn't seem bothered. “We haven't got a phone!” was the excuse, and this was in the days before everyone had mobiles, but his tone said it all.
My friend suffered a fractured jaw and tons of bruises and was off work for about two weeks. I was off just the next day with shock, though I only had a few bruises and bumps to show for the ordeal.
We did hear a few months later that the leader of this group had been attacked himself, over drugs we think, and was in a vegetative state in hospital. Strangely we had little sympathy for him.

My latest experience of homophobia was one I covered recently on the blog. A new work colleague, still in training, had interrupted a conversation I was having with another work mate about Heath Ledger, just after he had died. His comment was along the lines of:
“He topped himself because he was fed up with comments about that batty boy film!” meaning Brokeback Mountain.
He then told us that he had tried to watch the film with his girlfriend but couldn't as it made him "feel sick!” He then added that "Gays are wrong! Just wrong!”
He apologised afterwards when I had informed him that I was gay and didn't appreciate being told I was “wrong.” But he left early that day and, when my supervisor and the building manager found out what had happened, they banned him from the site.
My employers still kept him on though, sending him to another site, their justification for this being that he hadn't actually insulted me directly and he had been given a final warning! Which is hardly going to get them on Stonewall's list of good gay employers is it?

I have said that these are the only incidents of homophobia that I recall, but what do you class as homophobia? Should I have included the time when a long-time friend refused to discuss my sexuality when I tried to come out to her?
What about the fact that my sister has still not told her kids that I am gay, even though I've told her that it is alright to do so?

I look back at these events and think to myself in 16 years I haven't experienced that many incidents of homophobia and consider myself lucky.

Lucky?

I feel lucky that I have had to endure only a few of these incidents? That says quite a lot about my expectations of today's society doesn't it. I should expect to be treated as an equal and not to be judge on who I am attracted to, or what happens, or doesn't, in my bedroom!
Attitudes need to change throughout society. Acceptance and tolerance are bad words for the gay community to use. Do we accept redheads? Do we tolerate people with blue eyes? No, because it isn't an issue.

Being gay needs to become a non-issue, just a description. We should be able to say:

"I fancy girls with long legs!”
“I like big boobs!”
“I like my men tall dark and handsome”

Whether we are male, female or transsexual and it shouldn't matter.

As the latest slogan says:

Michael John Cahill

I originally honoured Michael John Cahill in 2006 for the Project: 2996 tribute and have been granted the honour again. As before, I hope this tribute honours him as much he deserves. Grief is such a personal thing it affects us all in different ways. Grief can affect you for people you do not know as well as those you do. I have experienced a fair amount of loss in my life, but you can never truly equate your loss with that of someone else. It is also difficult to pay tribute to someone you didn’t know and never met. All you can do is research and hope you get all the facts straight. I could, however, find no fresh information about Michael since my original tribute.

Michael John Cahill was in Tower 1 of the World Trade Centre, based on the 99th floor. This floor was in the upper area of where the first plane hit the tower.
I can’t even begin to imagine what Colleen, his wife, must have been thinking when she first heard the news and saw the pictures.
Michael was 37 years old and, from what I can tell, a REAL family man. He had a wife he loved and two young kids who he loved spending time with and wanted to be a good role model for. To this end he rejoined his high school cross country running team as its captain, as he believed that sports were important in their development.
Michael worked hard, often out of his house for more than 12 hours and regularly taking work home with him, but his family knew that it was all for them. Colleen, his wife said, “We knew we came first. He would always make a point to tell me, ‘I know it’s hard for you being home with the kids,’ so he would always make time to be with them so I could take a break.”
Even his sister, Denise Troise, was amazed at her brother’s devotion to his family, saying “I can’t even imagine a more dedicated father and husband.”
He was known for his weekend barbecues which usually brought together his close-knit family, neighbours and friends.

Posthumously, Michael has been awarded a promotion to Managing Director by his firm, Marsh & McLennan. He has also been awarded the Dean Award from St John’s University Law School, from which he graduated in 1991.
But, possibly the most telling award made to this loving family man is the bench and plaque placed in his East Williston village green by his friends and neighbours, and the fact that around 1000 friends attended the memorial mass at St Aidan’s Roman Catholic Church in Williston Park.
Jim & Evelyn be proud of your son, you must have done good raising him.
Colleen be proud of your husband, you picked a good one. One who loved you enough to spend time away from you to provide the things you needed and deserved.
Connor & Fiona, be proud of your daddy. He was a good man. Ask your family about him. Find out all that you can and fix him in your mind, that way, he will always be with you.

You will never forget.
We will never forget.
Michael John Cahill

Please don’t forget to check out Project 2996 for all the other tributes that have been made today to honour those who died on that awful day.