BE GAY YOUR OWN WAY

ON SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 17TH, MY FILM ABOUT GEORGE MICHAEL GETS ITS FIRST UK BROADCAST - CHANNEL FOUR AT 9PM.

Tomorrow, the film I made about George Michael will belatedly get its first UK TV showing.  Called "George Michael: Portrait of an Artist", it started out as a broad-based film titled "The Artist v. The Music Industry v. Himself",  and in many ways it hasn't changed much from that concept. It looks at his life strictly as a creative artist, in the same way one might follow the creative life of Van Gogh, or Stravinsky, or Proust.

Towards the end of making it, I saw a comment Elton John made in a TV interview, saying that when it came to being gay George was "not happy in his own skin”. I felt Elton had got it wrong, and was pleased when George's late sister, Melanie, responded by saying, "he was my 'very proud-to-be-gay' brother, contrary to what you may have read recently."

The fact is - if you mean by “being gay”, being sexually attracted to the same sex, George was never in the least uncomfortable about it. In the movie we see how he constantly talked about and accepted his gayness, and how active he was in defending it and in supporting LGBTQ causes. Stephen Fry, Peter Tatchell and Rufus Wainwright all have great stories to tell about this, and George himself vigorously extols the virtues of gay people, saying, "they’re some of the most interesting and brilliant people on the planet”.

George's problem was that he saw no reason why his being attracted to the same sex should automatically put him in a homogenous category with every other gay person, the way the media so often present us. Because of course, we're simply NOT like that.

For instance, despite being gay myself and finding a great deal of camp comedy wonderfully fun, and having many friends who make a point of presenting themselves in an overtly gay way, I nevertheless find I  can't stand "Queer Eye" - that Netflix quintet of mince-tarty, makeover gurus. To you they may seem woke and funny, and that's fine, I have no objections, but can't we all be different please? Because to me they seem simply to be the gay equivalent of Jeremy Clarkson and his machismo Top Gear trio of car obsessives. In fact, I would definitely feel far more comfortable spending a day with Clarkson's motor gang than spending even a minute with those fashion-flapping wisecrackers talking in outdated camp cliches.

But to come back to Elton's remark. To me, not a single one of the "Queer Eye" gang looks “happy in his own skin”. The programme's need for them to overplay their gayness ends up making them look like trashy actors. It was that which George disliked so much about the media's presentation of gay life and made him feel uncomfortable with it - not his own sexuality.

I'm surprised Elton can't see it. Especially because he himself seems so comfortable in his own skin, and in being so presents, as George did, such an excellent role model for young gays to look up to.

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