Home About Articles Videos Contact

My Recent Work

Gay Star News •

How Hair Fashion Designer Charlie Le Mindu Created Chappell Roan’s Iconic 'Subway' Look

The world’s most famous hair right now is not in a museum, or styling academy, or even on someone’s head. It’s in Charlie Le Mindu’s personal archive in Brooklyn.


The French fashion designer is the creator of Chappell Roan’s “hair costume” and hair set design for The Subway music video, which was formally released last week after a year of live-exclusive performances. The video sees a forlorn and heartbroken Chappell roam through New York, her iconic red curls exaggeratedly long and piling up...
Gay Star News •

Go Easy On JoJo Siwa – We Were All Down Bad Teens Once

So it’s ok for Taylor Swift to cry at the gym but not for JoJo to perfect tea? I won’t accept it. One of the worst technological advancements in social media is the introduction of Facebook’s ‘Memories’ feature. You know the scene: you load up Facebook because you need to ask for a gardener in your neighbourhood discussion group. But before getting visually assaulted by photos of dog poo and AI slop, you see a post you made 10 years ago at the top of the news feed, triggering a visceral, full bo...
Gay Star News •

Liniker: "It’s Impossible To Do Art, To Perform, To Sing, Without Presence."

One thing you can rely on from South American fans is enthusiasm, and tonight is no exception. The artist on the bill at Electric Brixton is relatively unknown in the UK, but the gig is sold out, because it seems like every Brazilian in London has come out to party this evening.


Performing tonight is Liniker, a Black Trans singer and musician from Ararquara in the south of Brazil, who I had come to know as a deeply moving and sultry soul singer. But to my slight surprise, the crowd is dancing...
Gay Star News •

The Radical Optimism Of Queer 70s Cinema

Alex Davidson, curator of the upcoming Queer 1970s film season at the Barbican, discusses his inspiration for the programme. Did someone say cheese and pineapple? The Barbican are going back in time, with a film season dedicated to Queer cinema of the 1970s. Queer 70s: LGBTQ+ Cinema in the Decade after Stonewall is a poetic theme for Britain’s most famous brutalist building, but this programme is anything but hard and functional. Rather, it’s an unexpected reveal of a lush Queer world. Decrimina...
Gay Star News •

Sublime Society: London’s Exclusive New Club For Queer Bondage Performance Art

There are certain events that can only happen in Mayfair. A luxury erotic performance art salon is one of them. Down the carpeted stairs and wood-pannelled walls of Dear Darling, the Sublime Society is about to make its London debut. It would not be at home in a grubby warehouse, or on a cabaret stage to an audience of sweaty, sticky club-goers. It has the heady flavour which is all too-often missing in modern sex: opulence. 


I enter the main bar of Dear Darling shortly before the show is due...
Gay Star News •

'Playfight' Explores The Anxiety, Jealousy, And Lust Of Teenage Girlhood

Every Queer woman I know has wondered the same thing at some point: was I in love with my high school best friend? Sometimes this is felt in the moment, but more often, from my experience, it’s a reflection, pondered about many years after leaving school. Playfight is a story about that feeling, the knotty ball of anxiety between teen friendship, lust, jealousy and love.


The play, written by Julia Grogan and currently on at the Soho Theatre in London, centres on the lives of three girls, Zain...
Gay Star News •

Edward II: Queer Rebellion Leads To Political Breakdown In The RSC's Latest Production

Edward II is a play which considers the question: what would happen if the King of England was in love with a demon twunk?


The RSC’s new adaptation of Christopher Marlowe’s classic historical play tells the tragic true story of King Edward II, whose love of “favourite” Piers Gaveston led to a political breakdown between himself and his magnates. Though historians disagree on whether their love was “brotherly” or if they were in a homosexual relationship, the result was the same – the nobility...
Gay Star News •

Catherine McGann's Photos Are A Love Letter To Queer New York Nightlife

For 16 years, Catherine McGann was the photographer for notorious New York nightlife columnist Michael Musto. But she has her own stories to tell. “Not to toot my own horn, but I actually did those pictures before Paris is Burning came out,” says the woman I’m speaking to over Zoom. She has thick-rimmed green glasses and straightened dark pink hair, framed by baby pink money pieces. It’s been 24 years since Catherine McGann left The Village Voice newspaper, but you can tell she’s still a punk-ro...
Gay Star News •

Trump Will Tear Us Apart: How Political Anxiety Has Changed 'Love Is Blind' Forever

Since its debut in 2020, Netflix dating show Love Is Blind has been asking: can you really fall in love with someone sight unseen? Eight seasons later we can comfortably say: yes! But it will often go downhill the minute you meet in real life.


But in Minneapolis, it wasn’t lack of attraction that caused issues. Three out of the four brides who made it to the altar said “no”, with two citing political differences as fundamental incompatibilities. The season was shot in the lead up to the 2024...
Gay Star News •

"MONTOYA, POR FAVOR": Why We Need More Batshit Reality TV Moments

The year 2016 marked a huge change for the world. Britain voted to leave the EU, America voted an orange into office, and David Bowie died. Also, ITV broadcast the second season of their Love Island revival series, before it became a global phenomenon. But one night catapulted the show into super stardom, bringing about an entire renaissance of TV shows in which hot people hook up on the beach – the night when former Miss Great Britain Zara Holland gave Alex Bowen a BJ, and lost her title as a r...
Gay Star News •

REVIEW: 'The Importance Of Being Earnest' at the National Theatre

This play would fall flat on its face if it didn’t feel totally silly. But that’s not an issue here. Ncuti Gatwa and Hugh Skinner as Algernon and Jack in 'The Importance Of Being Earnest' / Image courtesy of the National TheatreBy this point, performances of The Importance Of Being Earnest are as regular as afternoon tea. But the new National Theatre production stands out, invigorating Oscar Wilde’s 1895 romantic comedy of errors with more bawdiness, colour, camp and stupidity than ever before....
Gay Star News •

The Straight Couple Who Photographed Queer 1980s America

“We wanted to make these people heroic. Beautiful. And to photograph them with the dignity and that they deserved.” On the streets of San Francisco, California, a man stands on the steps outside a building. He’s looking sideways, chest facing forward. His skin shimmers through black and white shadows, chest gleaming and hairless. The wrestling singlet he’s wearing is microscopic, so low cut as to start below his pectorals, revealing a broad physique. His aesthetic, complete with a sweat band, is...
Gay Star News •

Why The World Can't Stop Looking At Chappell Roan

For a brief period last year, there was a trend of women asking their boyfriends how often they think about the Roman Empire. The results, though initially surprising (they often admitted to thinking about it at least a few times a day), shed light on something intangible about the straight male psyche. War, construction, politics, military aestheticism, civilisation, philosophy, how it all can come crashing down – the Roman Empire tickled all those special interest areas of a man’s brain. 


T...
Gay Star News •

The Femme Bisexuals Dating Nerd Men Phenomenon Explained

The internet is divided and confused. A white man in a suit has skidded into our lives and we can’t decide if he’s hot or not. Enter The Dare, AKA Harrison Patrick Smith, musician, DJ and producer behind the TikTok viral sound du-jour, Girls. You may also know him as the recipient of Charli XCX’s underwear (“send it to The Dare yeah I think he’s with it”). He produced Guess featuring Billie Eilish and can be seen snogging girls, DJing and driving the tractor in the music video. 


Girls, like G...
Gay Star News •

SWers Deserve Pride. Now They Have It.

Queer sex worker rave Riot Party and all women and non-binary event series One Night are teaming up for a Sex Worker Pride festival at Electrowerkz. There’s a lot that non-sex working citizens will never understand about the industry. They can probably guess that the work is stigmatised, if they’re not participating in the prejudice themselves. But that it can be joyful, celebrated, something to be proud of – that’s the part that’s often overlooked. 


“Sex workers are never allowed to be proud...
Gay Star News •

The Queer Cabaret Paradise Hidden In The English Countryside

Wilderness Festival in Cornbury Park is well-known as a music festival with a bit more creature comfort than Glasto. Celebs relax to house DJs in immaculate tents put up by Veuve Clicquot and Audi, while a secret 18+ area called The Riddle, new for this year, clearly took its inspiration from the Saltburn birthday party – lots of places to hide behind trees, a broken bed covered in grass, a Mirabeau van, etc. I loved it there.


However, it’s also gained a reputation as having one of the best...
Gay Star News •

A Love Letter To The Freaky, Underground Drag Queens Of Athens

Filmmaker Fil Ieropoulos collages the work of punk drag performers in his surreal documentary, ‘Avant-Drag!’. This is not the Athens of an in-flight magazine. One of the criticisms of modern drag is that it’s become a bit normie. A bit pay to play. That maybe the ancient art of using makeup and lace fronts to lampoon gender norms has become somewhat mainstream.


But far from the polished queens you might see under studio lights, a very different kind of drag has taken root in the birthplace o...
Gay Star News •

The Hot Wing King: A Gay Love Story About Race, Masculinity And Chicken

What makes a strong man? Is it being a good dad? Providing financially? Or just eating a really, really spicy chicken wing?


On a low lit porch, a Black teen watches a Black man soaking wood chips. The boy asks the man about his identity, and the awkward journey it took him to get here. Cordell had a long heterosexual marriage, two sons and a seemingly perfect life, so why did he leave that all behind to move states and shack up with another guy? The answer is complicated, but trying to please...
Gay Star News •

The Thing Making Pop Fun Again? The Female Gaze, And Gays

Something’s shifting in the world of pop. Social media is awash with people of all genders, but especially women and Queer people, celebrating the dawn of “brat girl summer”, Chappell Roan’s Gay femme anthems, and the inescapable chart dominance of Sabrina Carpenter.


The endless rain and vague sense of doom that came along with the general election campaign have made it hard to get summer off the ground. But at the mid-point of July, we finally have a non-Tory government, France have avoided...
Gay Star News •

Mid-Century Modern Men: What Life Was Like For London’s Post-War Gay Community

“When you joined a guard’s regiment, you were often told the places to go if you wanted to pick up men.” LEFT: A badly sun-burned holidaymaker admires his friend's leopard-print briefs, while standing at the bar of a holiday camp on Corfu. 1954 (Photo by Kurt Hutton/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images). RIGHT: Conservative Party politician Ian Harvey (1914 – 1987) outside Bow Street Magistrates' Court in London after being charged with gross indecency, December 10th 1958. Harvey had been fo...
Gay Star News •

Why Do Bisexuals Like Having Multiple Beverages At Once?

Is there any science to the stereotype that Bisexuals like to have three drinks in front of them at all times? Today while at the cafe with my editor, I drank an iced coffee and a fresh orange juice. I’d planned to finish one (coffee first), then the other, then take a cursory sip of the glass of water. But my desires got the better of me, and I interrupted the coffee midway with a sip of orange juice. They clashed. 


Editor: “What just happened in your mouth?” Me: “Wow, eugh. That was weird....
Gay Star News •

The End of The L Word: How Lesbians Are Reclaiming The Word ‘Lesbian’

“The word ‘Lesbian’, I think especially to other women, it feels like something I’m really proud to say.” This spring, the BBC’s all-female dating show I Kissed A Girl got its first viral moment. Sat on a group of candy striped deck chairs around the pool, one contestant asked the other girls how they feel about the word ‘Lesbian’, wincing slightly. 


“I just say I’m Gay,” said masc girl Naee.


“I just say I’m into girls. Or I say I’m Queer,” added Abbie. 


The scene then cut to a confessi...
Gay Star News •

His Life On a Wall: Elton’s New Photo Exhibition Breathes Life Into Queer Stories

The V&A’s new exhibition highlights some of the best pieces from Elton John and David Furnish’s photography collection. The male form is everywhere in museums. A naked man is never shocking when he’s presented in white marble, staring back at you with empty white eyes. The winged phallus of Pompeii warrants a giggle, but it doesn’t feel out of place. But at the newly opened Fragile Beauty exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London’s South Kensington, I feel like I’ve never had the expe...
VICE •

Naloxone Man: The IRL Superhero Teaching People How to Reverse Overdoses

Please note this article features graphic mentions of self harm.

A community centre in a suburban market town isn’t the first place you think of when it comes to the frontlines of Britain’s opioid crisis, but that’s where I am on a cold December morning. One Recovery Bucks has all the usual decor of a drug and alcohol addiction support service – education pamphlets on various substances, a weekly timetable of social drop-in events, and a large kitchen where tea, coffee and biscuits are in endle...
Load More