Radio
Special treatment
Michael Vestey
0 ut the Muckspreader would be a good title of a programme for queer farmers; the problem is, there aren't many of them. Down on the farm they're usually stub- bornly heterosexual, immune from metropolitan influences. No doubt the gov- ernment and the BBC will attempt to cor- rect this politically incorrect phenomenon but they'll have a hard job.
Out the Muckspreader, however, might help the BBC to redress its decision to cut almost to oblivion the only real daily. pro- gramme farmers had on radio, Farming Today. It now goes out for ten minutes before the Today programme begins at 6 a.m. It was typical of the BBC that it should relegate such a programme during the greatest crisis in farming this century while allowing gays and lesbians easy access to their own programme, Out This Week on Radio Five Live on Sunday evenings.
Heterosexuals do not appear to have their own programme. If they did it might have to be called In This Week. But I see no reason why they should, any more than gays and lesbians need to be promoted on the radio. Out This Week does that breath- lessly, though last Sunday it made one exception: it dared not speak the name of Peter Mandelson, the Trade Secretary. It was the columnist Matthew Parris, dis- cussing the Ron Davies affair on Newsnight, who said Mandelson was a homosexual. Mandelson, of course, is an old chum and colleague of the BBC direc- tor-general Sir John Bin and from then on no mention was to be made of his 'sexual orientation'.
I have some sympathy for this line, tak- ing the view that the sexual habits of peo- ple, whoever they are, are their own affair; I believe in privacy and as Mandelson, as far as I know, doesn't preach morality to us, it is right that what he does in his pri- vate life is no business of ours. However, the BBC should not turn a guideline into an injunction. Nor should it censor contrib- utors to Any Questions when the subject came up on Friday night. Which other POBs, friends of Birt, will receive the same favourable treatment, I wonder?
The presenter of Out This Week, Rebec- ca Sandies, announced primly, 'In line with BBC policy we have not named the minis- ter.' She was interviewing Parris, asking him why he had outed Mandelson on lsIewsnight. `Because it's true and perfectly well-known,' he replied. He didn't believe he had outed him because it wasn't a secret. He said there were other MPs who Were gay but who didn't want it known. Sensibly, he refused to name any. However, Mandelson did come out, on Monday's World at One, but it was a clip from a Speech in favour of joining the single cur- rency which is even more shocking. As I lis- tened to Out This Week I began to realise how difficult it is nowadays to write original satire, as fact itself is often more satirical than fiction. The programme told us that on Sunday morning war veterans had gath- ered at the Cenotaph in London for 'Queer Remembrance Day'. The ceremony was organised by that nauseating pressure group Outrage for lesbian and gay service- men. It made me wonder if there was a gay Bntish Legion somewhere or a lesbian Women's Institute.
The programme also told us mysteriously that American and German poofs in partic- ular are being urged by the travel trade to head for London next year for a spot of cruising and cottaging. London, said a woman from the travel trade, had a lot to offer them. I dare say the changing of the guard and the Tower of London give way in their glossy brochure to the delights of Clapham Common. There is, it seems, an annual event called the Gay and Lesbian Travel Exchange which is behind all this.
The Northern Ireland Secretary Mo Mowlam was interviewed and told gushing- ly that she was in the list of 'top ten gay icons', which was news to her. Irritating for a heterosexual and all she could do was tit- ter. She wisely side-stepped a question about the govemment giving gays and les- bians 'partnership rights'. Depressingly, the programme reminded us that plans for next year's Gay Pride march in London are well under way, and I remembered how much The Archers puffed a previous one while forgetting the Countryside rally until it was pointed out by listeners. We'll have to brace ourselves for similar treatment in the New Year when Ambridge might be in the grip of gay pride fever.
Out This Week is described as a news magazine and it certainly is that but it is also an unashamed advertisment for homo- sexuality as something desirable, and an air of gay triumphalism pervades it. It should not be on BBC Radio.
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