Drew Payne

They were dotted throughout the London Pride march. On all different types of banners and placards, some very professionally produced and others homemade but often more pithy. All of them demanding the same thing: BAN CONVERSION THERAPY! Every time I saw one, I would smile, partly to show my support and gratitude to the person carrying the banner, and partly to myself. To see the dangerous threat of conversion therapy so openly denounced by the LGBTQ community was so reassuring. It was on the tube ride home, that the thought struck me, why the hell hasn’t it already been banned? Weren’t we promised that it would be? Conversion therapy is described as “an attempt to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity”. It has been deeply discredited and shown to be extremely dangerous and damaging to those who have experienced it. Back in July 2018, Theresa May promised to ban it. In July 2020, Boris Johnson said it was "absolutely abhorrent" and "[had] no place in this country". In May 2021, it was announced in the Queen’s Speech that the government planned to ban it, but only after consultation with “key stakeholders”. Then in March 2022, Johnson dropped any plans for a ban. But the next month, April 2022, plans for a ban were back on. In June this year, we were told that all it needed was for Rishi Sunak to sign the bill and the ban would be law, but it is now July and he still hasn’t signed it. What is happening? Why is the government dragging its feet? Is it that difficult to ban conversion therapy? Sasha Misra, associate director of communications at Stonewall, said: “Five years and four prime ministers later and we are still waiting for this ban to come to fruition. In the meantime, lives have continued to be ruined while these damaging attempts to ‘cure’ LGBTQ+ of being themselves remain legal.” But the ban would only be a partial ban and a very weak one, under the government’s proposals. It wouldn’t cover trans people and wouldn’t apply to anyone who “consented” to it. These is such huge loopholes and render the ban useless. The person only has to agree to it and/or say they are confused about their gender and the conversion therapy is legal. Conversion therapy preys on people who are vulnerable, confused about their sexuality and/or their gender, and this ban will do nothing to protect them. I survived conversion therapy, as a late teenager, but it left me very damaged. My twenties were marred by PTSD, depression, suicide attempts and an inability to form relationships. I lost ten years of my life to the harm it caused me. Yet this ban would not have protected me because I contacted the ex-gay organisation and agreed to be “cured” by them, because I was so afraid of my sexuality back then. Therefore, it could be argued I consented to it. But my opinion alone, of the harm it does, should not be what policy is based on. It should be based on the evidence and the evidence against conversion therapy is huge. D Haldeman identified that it causes poor self-esteem, depression, social withdrawal, and sexual dysfunction. Anna Forsythe’s research found that survivors of conversion therapy experienced 50% more mental health problems, twice as much depression, 25% more substance use, 50% higher rate of attempted suicide and 67% more experienced moderate to severe injury from those attempts, than someone who hasn’t been through it. But these are not the only, scientific evidence of the harm it does, and how useless it is. Here is a list of scientific and healthcare professional articles that identify the harm conversion therapy causes. References that conversion therapy is harmful: Beckstead & Morrow (2004) Haldeman (2002) Shidlo & Schroeder (2002) Forsythe, Pick, Tremblay, et al (2022) Human Rights Campaign (2021) American Psychological Association (2009) American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (2018) American Medical Association (2019) American Psychiatric Association (2018) Committee On Adolescence (2013) American Counselling Association (2017) United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner (2019) Independent Forensic Expert Group (2020) Higbee, Wright & Roemerman (2022) Wolf & Platt (2022) Campbell & Rodgers (2023) References that conversion therapy doesn’t work: Beckstead (2012) Adelson (2012) American Psychological Association (2009) American Psychiatric Association (2000) American Psychological Association (2013) Jacob (2015) Drescher, Schwartz, Casoy et al (2016) Haldeman (1994) Conine, Campau & Petronelli et al (2021) Kinitz, Salway, Dromer E, et al (2021) This is by no way a comprehensive list of the evidence. It is the result of only a brief literature search, of only a few databases, carried out on a Sunday afternoon, on my laptop. A much more in-depth literature search would produce a much more comprehensive and much longer list of evidence. All the above references are from peer reviewed publications or professional bodies. Countries that have banned conversion therapy Brazil in 1999, Samoa in 2007, Fiji in 2010, Argentina in 2010, Ecuador in 2014 Malta in 2016. Uruguay in 2017, Spain in 2017 Taiwan in 2018 Germany in 2020, Queensland State in Australia 2020, followed by Victoria State, Chile, India and Canada in 2021, Since 2013, 20 states, two territories, and multiple local counties or municipalities in the United States. If we have so much evidence and so many other countries before us have banned it, why hasn’t the British government already done so? I am sure someone will make the argument that legislating to ban conversion therapy isn’t easy. My reply would always be, it’s the government’s job to write and implement difficult legislation, and to do it well. They have all the resources to do it. But this government is now deliberately dragging their feet over this. I wonder if this is part of their “war on woke” attitude? This government’s strategy to blame and attack unpopular minorities, such as trans people, immigrants, and anyone else the Daily Mail newspaper doesn’t like, to try and appeal to their right-wing base voters. Whatever the reason, the government’s reluctance/refusal to ban conversion therapy speaks volumes about how little they value LGBTQ people. I do know that if there was a quack therapy that tried to “cure” Evangelical Christians of their believes, but failed to do so and left its victims very damaged, or dead from suicide, then Evangelical Christians would be screaming for it to be banned. Would this government be so slow to ban it? Drew. PS. I do not like the term “conversion therapy”. It gives this dangerous and completely unethical bullying a veneer of respectability, implying that it is somehow medical/clinical. I prefer to call it “ex-gay”, which tells us how impossible it is.

Thank you.

This is a story of modern family life, told through the diaries of three different members of a family. Mo, the mother and child psychologist, who is rapidly approaching fifty and stuck in a rut, and her two teenage children, Dora, who may have finally found a man worthy of her affections, but she has never met him, and Peter, who now wants to be known as “Oscar” after his idol, Oscar Wilde. The mother is the most well-drawn character in this story and she falls into the far too well treaded cliché, the psychologist/psychiatrist who is unable to relate to their own children. The daughter and the son are so cliched that their characters chafed with me. The daughter was the stereotype of a teenage girl, every other word she wrote was “literally”. She seemed to have no other concern in her life than that she didn’t have a boyfriend. The son behaved like the cliché of an affected fifty-two year old gay man. His biggest desire was to get a smoking jacket. Even if he was hiding behind an affected exterior, as a defence against a homophobic world, would he keep this up in his own personal diary? But in this story, he seemed completely unaffected by any homophobia. Dawn French has shown herself to be an insightful and talented performer. Unfortunately, I found so little of that in this novel. I wish she had used that insight here with her characters, instead of falling back on easy stereotypes and quick jokes. This was French’s first novel but I feel that it needed more work on it, more work on her characters and more work on a plot twist I saw coming far too early. I wished that this book had been more than a tiny bit better. Find it here on Amazon

It was London Pride last weekend and again we attended it. It has been a tradition in my life ever since I first moved to London. It is “our day” when LGBTQ people can celebrate out and openly on London’s streets. This year again I noticed a trend that I first saw at last year’s London Pride, the teenager attending their first Pride, but they aren’t alone. I saw fourteen, fifteen and sixteen year olds so obviously on their first Pride and accompanied by their mothers. The mother was dressed up for the day, wearing rainbow flags in her hair, or a rainbow garland around her neck, or a rainbow t-shirt, or a rainbow waistcoat, or a rainbow skirt, or a rainbow flag draped around her shoulders, or all of the above. And she’s having so much fun. She hasn’t had so much fun since her uncle married his boyfriend. And walking a few paces behind her is her child, who wanted to go to their first Pride, wearing that very familiar teenage expression, “Mum! You’re such an embarrassment! You’re so uncool!” I went to my first Pride March when I was twenty-two. I’d moved to London just under a year before. I’d made the move so I could finally be gay, something I’d never felt I could fully do back home in Liverpool. There I was at my first Pride March and I almost couldn’t believe what I saw. Everywhere I looked were LGBTQ people, so many of them, all looking so different and looking so happy. It was one thing to be surrounded by gay man in a club, but this was different because it was out on London’s streets and I was surrounded by LGBTQ people. That was back in 1988 and the London Pride March was a very different thing. London, and Britain, was a very homophobic place. Homosexuality had only been partly decriminalised, but only partly, and there were no protections against homophobia in law. Politicians, religious leaders and tabloid newspaper editors were using AIDS to attack and punish the LGBTQ community. And the march was much more of a protest march, there were a lot of campaign banners and many of us chanted as we marched. The route was lined by police offices, as if they were protecting the “normal” people from us. And the only people wearing drag were men, the women were almost uniformly dressed in jeans and t-shirts. With all that, I loved every moment of it. It was our day, I could be openly gay on the streets of London without fear, without having to look over my shoulder, without worrying about being too gay and drawing attention to myself. I was also surrounded by “my people”, or so it felt. As much as I enjoyed that day, it never occurred to me to invite my parents to it, I didn’t even tell them I had been to it. They were the last people I would have imagined there. We had such an awkward relationship with my sexuality, I’d come out to them, but after their initial shock, they had ignored it. I’ve been to almost all London Pride Marches since then, but never with my parents. The first change I noticed, somewhere in the mid-1990s, was that more and more women were dressing up in costumes and even drag, and with that slowly came a change in the atmosphere there too. Slowly, by degrees, it changed from a protest March, us being defiantly out on the streets, into a celebration parade, a joyous celebration of our difference. The slogans on the banners changed from cries of protest into ones of celebration, and the humour there increased. Now London Pride is such a celebration of the diversity of LGBTQ life, this year there was a group of LGBTQ farmers on the march, and people are there to have a good time. I love it. I love the spirit of celebration. I still hear people complaining about the change in London Pride, looking back to the protest march it was. To me, I welcome this change, it is a sign of the change that has happened in society at large. Since my first Pride March we have seen such changes in Britain. LGBT couples can now adopt, we have equal marriage, the Equality Act has given us so many protections, Combination Therapy has changed the landscape of HIV & AIDS, and the tabloids are now pillared if they use blunt homophobia the way they did. But we don’t live in a LGBTQ utopia. We are experiencing an almost tsunami of Transphobia, nasty and many of it old and illogical, this Government still hasn’t banned Conversion Therapy, five years after they said they would, and internationally we are seeing so many countries enacting homophobic laws. We still have a long way to go, and London Pride reflected that too, this year. There were many banners and signs supporting Trans Rights, the float for Diva magazine brightly proclaimed their support for Trans Rights. Many marchers supported Black Lives Matter too. There was a sit-down protest outside the Ugandan High Commission in Trafalgar Square, against Uganda’s obscene anti-gay laws. And so many banners demanded that Conversion Therapy is banned now. Those first years I attended London Pride, the only parents I saw there were a small group marching as parents of lesbian and gay children (that’s what they called themselves) and the very occasional couple of same-sex parents. This year I saw so many parents attending with their LGBTQ children, and not just teenagers but adult children too. London Pride has evolved and changed over the years and that is only a good thing because it keeps it relevant, unlike the small number of homophobes who tried to protest against it. Drew

He had a poor appetite that Tuesday lunchtime. He would eat a few mouthfuls and then just pushed his food around his plate as his interest in it disappeared. It was a chicken pie, and usually he liked them - they had some degree of flavour, but this one tasted like cardboard in his mouth. What was wrong with him? He didn’t know how he felt but his mood was strange after that interview with Robert Roud. The man had accused him so quickly, as if Robert Roud had already decided he was guilty.

Unless someone gives you a free copy, and don't expect much then, I'd avoid it. It was a very simplistic book.

In Britain, men make-up just under 10% of nurses and yet the image of nursing still firmly remains female. So what does it mean to be a man in a female dominated profession? Ruth Simpson (Professor in Management at Brunel Business School) undertook research looking at gender roles in employment. She looked at the experiences of men in four different traditionally female dominated professions (which were cabin crew on airplanes, nurses, primary school teachers and librarians). This research forms the second part of this book, the first part is given over to a discussion of gender roles in employment. Simpson is a professor in management and this book is very much geared towards managers and management theory, this is not a book aimed at healthcare professionals. Also, the choice of her research’s professions seems strange; they are certainly not similar and have very different experiences for men working in them. Are cabin crews and librarians really “caring professions”? In the last thirty years many men have entered nursing, so how has that changed the profession? What have been the experiences of both men and women and how has it benefited the profession? This book doesn’t answer these questions for any of the professions looked at. It feels as though Simpson missed an opportunity here to look deeply into her subject. This book does raise general questions about gender roles but we need research and study specifically on men in nursing, which this book doesn’t provide. (This review was originally written as a commission by the Nursing Standard magazine and published there in April 2009) Find it here on Amazon

Thank you, it is a fascinating one.

Thank you. This is one of those books that I first read as a teenager and have since re-read in the last year or so. I was so surprised at the plot and psychology of this book when I re-read it. It was not a "classic" Poirot novel.

Hercule Poirot is ill, he is dying, and he invites his old friend, Arthur Hastings, to stay with him at the Styles guesthouse, for one, last investigation. Poirot, though now an invalid, is chasing his one last case, a serial killer with a terrible modus operandi, known only as X. Here Christie returned to the location of the very first Poirot novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, except this is not the glamorous life of the upper-class people who filled Christie’s novels of the 1930s and 1940s. Styles is now a rundown guest house, providing a home to a mis-match of paying guests. Its rundown and washed-up feel suits the feeling of the end of a life and a career, Poirot’s. Hastings is also older and somewhat wiser, but he is now a widower and lost without his wife, especially as his daughter is also caught up in this mystery. Written during the Second World War, though not published until the 1970s, at the end of Christie’s life, this book has a darker and more psychological feel to her novels of the 1930s and 1940s. Here the book concentrates on its characters and their personalities rather than on a tightly constructed plot, the plot coming more from the characters than an elaborate method of getting away with murder. It has a much darker and downbeat feel and yet benefits from it. The cast of characters are full of the types of personalities Christie would explore more in her post-war novels. Gone is the old maid, the doctor, the artist and the young lovers. Here she concentrates more on what led her characters to end up in this place, and their characterisation is so much better for it. She does fall back on one of her favourite characters, one that appeared so many times in other novels of hers, the no-nonsense nurse who is very professional in her work, and yet is no mere doctor’s handmaiden. At the heart of this novel, though, is a dying Poirot, and it is such a heart-felt and moving portrayal. Many times, later in her life, Christie expressed her frustration at Poirot’s character, but here she gives him both an affectionate portrayal and a fascinating last case to solve. She also gives him an ending where he cannot be brought back, Poirot dies. I first read this novel as a teenager and I could not believe anyone could have used this method to commit murder. Re-reading it, as an adult, the method of murder seems all to real and all too chilling. A person could take a lot of pleasure from using this method of murder, and Christie shows her understanding of her characters, how easily they can be seduced by their own prejudices, even Captain Hastings. Though a very different novel in tone, this is certainly a classic Christie, showing her understanding of people and their dark desires. It is also a very fine ending for Poirot’s stella career, he ends on a high, not with a sad fadeout. Find it here on Amazon

Thank you. I wanted to show that even though he's now living in a Secure Hospital, this is a much better environment than the home he grow-up in.

I had to write this chapter to cause the events in the next chapter to happen and to allow things to happen in the following chapters. Also, this story is set in a Secure Hospital, and therefore bad things are going to happen around Liam. Roud is looking for a scapegoat and Liam is next on his list. He's tried to pin it on the nurses on duty when Chrissy self-harmed and failed. Now he is trying to pin it on Liam. Fortunately, Aiden is doing his duty as Liam's nurse and stepping in to protect him. Roud is asking all the wrong questions, but that isn't a surprise either. I wanted this chapter to show Liam isn't alone, anymore. Before he came to Nurton Cross, there would only have been his mother there and she'd have thrown him under the bus faster than Roud could. Things have changed.

Mr Roud is based on a real person, the head of security of a hospital where I once worked in. We had a patient who suddenly and unexpectedly died, it was a total mess. His family claimed that rings had disappeared off the dead man's hand. I was interviewed by the head of security over this, and he tried to bully me into saying the man had no rings on his hand, when the truth was I just didn't remember seeing any rings, but rings on his hand were the last thing I was worried about when he collapsed. I found myself confronted by this bully demanding I agree with him, and him trying to belittle me because I didn't. I was an adult and it was difficult to deal with. It was lucky, my manager stepped in and made a stink. Chrissy has self-harmed on the hospital grounds and that will cause a huge scandal. There would be a lot of pressure to find someone to "blame", the person who did something wrong and therefore caused this. Roud is having pressure applied on him to find the person. He's the last person who should be carrying out this investigation, but this can happen when senior managers panic. Don't worry about Aiden, Roud can't even remember his name (Something else I took from real life). Aiden is big enough and a very experienced nurse, Roud doesn't stand a chance against him.

Liam was sat in the Education Centre that Tuesday morning. His concentration levels were slowly returning: he could actually concentrate now to read one of his books. He hadn’t slept well the night before. Again, he dreamed about killing Rhys Clarke. Mid-Sunday morning, Sarah, the nurse, had stopped sitting with him, but regularly a nurse would appear and ask him how he was. It was nice that no one was sitting next to him, but he wasn’t all right - though he didn’t tell the nurses that. Each nig

“Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read or write.” This isn’t a plot-spoiler but the opening line to one of Ruth Rendell’s finest novels. Though she sums up the plot of her novel in one line, there is much more to this book. It is the mid 1970s and the upper middle class Coverdale family have moved to a manor house in the English countryside, but the housework is “too much” for Mrs Coverdale, so Eunice Parchman is hired as housekeeper-come-general-dog’s-body. This will lead to Eunice Parchman killing the whole family, on St Valentine’s Day. As much as Eunice Parchman killed them, the Coverdale family, through their own insensitivity to and patronising of her, pushed Eunice Parchman into her actions. Rendell’s novel capture’s the attitudes and values of the Coverdale family, their believes that their actions are all for the good. But the chilling achievement here is Rendell’s characterisation of Eunice Parchman. Her illiteracy is her deep and shameful secret, that she will do anything to hide. Rendell captures, chillingly realistically, how isolating it is being unable to read, for how much of our modern life reading is essential, how much of our society is closed off to someone who cannot read. This is her secret but it isn’t why she kills, because Eunice Parchman has a disassociated personality disorder. She cannot relate to other people, has no empathy, no understanding or even liking of the people around her, they are as unreadable to her as a book, her sole pleasures in life are television and chocolate. This is why she kills, when she feels she is pushed into a corner, and this is what Rendell captures so well. She understands and gets under the skin of Eunice Parchman, and does it so chillingly well. This novel is set in the classic setting for a British murder mystery, the English country village, but this isn’t a cosy crime story, where the murder is bloodless and order is restored. This is a dark and doom ladened story, Rendell’s prose almost counting down to the murders, of what drove a sociopathic person to murder, and how unthinking people drove them to it. This isn’t a crime novel, but a novel about a crime and, if you are new to Ruth Rendell, it is a great introduction to her writing. Find it here on Amazon

Paul, thank you. Writing is how I process so many different things. My brother's death was so sudden and such a shock that this was the only way I could begin to process it. It also became a way for me to express how much my brother meant to me. I wish there was a "magic syringe" that could take away people's pain. For me, my brother's funeral will be the place where I can start grieving, unfortunately, that isn't until the end of May. But I am able to go to it.

Thank you. I just wish we'd had more time to make more memories.

Thank you

“Life is so cruel,” it was all I could think of to say to my nephew Stuart, who was on the other end of the phone. I was sat on the Brompton Road, the traffic rushing passed me with far too much haste, slight drizzle beginning to fall. I had missed Stuart’s message on Facebook, the day before, I’m not great with social media, so I was returning his call. Stuart wanted me to hear it from someone who knew me, a friendly voice. Dave, my only brother, had died, suddenly, two days ago. But he was healthy, strong, looking forward to the future, looking to finally retire, making plans. It wasn’t fair. I was stunned, as if someone had kicked me in the side of the head. This wasn’t real. But my eyes glazed over with tears. Still sitting there, I called Martin, my husband. I told him what had happened, and as I did it slowly began to feel real, slowly my mind was processing the shock. My tube journey home felt unreal, like I was stuck in a vivid dream. People were behaving as they normally do. Laughing, talking, reading their phones, ignoring the others around them, and pushing onto the tube so they could get the last seat. I wanted to shout at them, “It’s not fair! None of this is right!” But I didn’t. I just sat there, staring at a stupid poster advertising Tinder. When I arrived home to an empty house, I locked the front door behind me and screamed in frustration, my voice bouncing around the empty room. Dave is thirteen years older than me. That might not sound much to an adult, many people have partners thirteen years older or younger than them, but to a child it is an impossibly large gap. Dave left home, to go to university, at eighteen, when I was only five. He didn’t return to living at home, even after he finished his degree, instead embarking off on his own life. He was more like a young uncle to me, than a brother. We simply didn’t have the chance to be close. What also didn’t help us was that my parents saw Dave as the perfect son and, all through my childhood and adolescence, they compared me unfavourably to him. In my parents’ eyes, I could never be as good a son as Dave. It wasn’t his fault, he didn’t even know they were doing it, but it didn’t stop me being resentful. It was only as an adult I discovered that my parents compared all three of their children to each other and always unfavourably. Also, as adults, we lived so far apart. He had settled in Lancashire, I live in London, and I don’t drive. I simply thought we were never meant to be close. Our mother’s death and then our father’s brought us together but only temporarily, our lives soon parted us again. It was another tragedy that finally brought us together. Linda, Dave’s wife of over forty years, died at the height of the Covid lockdown. She didn’t die from Covid, but that wasn’t important, when she died Dave was isolated by the lockdown. He rang me, in a terrible state, to tell me what was happening. I kept ringing him over the following days, reaching out to him. Then, that afternoon, he texted me, Linda had died. I was in the middle of our busy District Nurse office. I went to the next office, which was empty, its staff redeployed, and rang him back. He was in a terrible state, on his own at the hospital. I wanted to just reach out down the phone and comfort him but I couldn’t, I only had words. So I told him how sorry I was. I wasn’t able to attend Linda’s funeral, only a handful of people were allowed to be there. I knew why I couldn’t be there but I still felt I was letting him down. We talked a lot over the phone a lot over the following days, and weeks, and then months. Dave travelled down to London as soon as the lockdown lifted. He was being inducted into the Fellowship of Engineers. We were able to have dinner with him the evening before. He travelled down on his own and spent the afternoon walking around Covent Garden. He revisited the places where he and Linda had visited so often before, together, but that day he was presented with what he’d lost. He was almost swamped with grief. As a nurse, I’ve looked after many people at the end of their lives. I have seen so many relatives drowning in grief. Every time, I wanted to press a syringe to their skin and draw out all of their grief and pain and sadness, freeing them from it. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t do the same for my own brother, but I so wanted to. I told him if was normal what he was feeling and I told him I was sorry. That evening the three of us talked, talked easily and openly. Dave and Martin talked as equals, both as professionals, but from different specialities. Before Martin joined us, Dave and I talked as brothers. We had so many different things in common. When Dave rang me and told me he had met a new partner, all I felt was relief. He wasn’t on his own anymore. Not for a moment did I think he was trying to replace Linda, he had loved her for such a long time, but now he had found companionship. Martin and I met Margaret, Dave’s new partner, on a bright spring Sunday, on London’s South Bank. Both Martin and I were struck by how happy they were together, and it was such a pleasure to see. I could file away that memory of that winter night, the memory of Dave so lost, and not worry about it again. Dave travelled down a lot to see Margaret and was able to see me too, and I looked forward to those visits. Suddenly I found we had so much in common. He knew my parents as well as I did and saw the things that I saw, that I didn’t know if I could have told anyone else. I didn’t have to explain my parents to him, I didn’t have to make excuses or justify what happened, because he already knew them. We could talk about all those things without explanation. When I published my first book, he championed it and that meant so much to me. He’d read it and enjoyed it, he even recognised the inspiration behind some of its stories. As a child I longed to have an older brother. Someone who knew me, was on the same wavelength as me, someone who knew the same things as me. As a middle-aged man, I suddenly found I had the brother I had always wanted. Dave and I were finally getting to know each other. I looked forward to talking with him and seeing him, especially seeing him. His visits to London helped me get through last year, which was a difficult year for me. He was happy again and he was making plans for the future. Martin and I were planning on coming and seeing him this summer, but suddenly it was all taken away. I have lost my brother suddenly and without any warning. I cannot find any meaning or purpose in what has happened. How can something positive come from all this? All I can think is, “Life is so cruel.” Dave Payne 1953 to 2023 (Thank you to my niece Rachel, who first posted the picture of Dave I used here. It so perfectly captures him)

Of course that is true, the statistics show that, but it is also the great homophobic lie, to be gay means to be a pedophile, and this poor, lost soul is believing that lie.

Thank you. This is fiction but I research a lot for my fiction, I really want to get things right because I feel I owe that to my readers. This story was originally a 1,500-word short story (it wasn't very good because it was far too short). I started to rewrite it, expecting it to be about 10,000 words long, but so much kept coming out, I had to explain Liam's story and there was so much to explain. I am probably about two-thirds of the way through the story now. I really need to finish it because I have a very different story I want to write next, here.

Thank you. I miss Lily Savage so much, I loved her humour, her take-no-prisoners attitude in the face of injustice, and her big heart. As I was writing this I found out why Paul O'Grady hung up Lily's handbag and wig, and that was so heartbreaking.

Thank you, I've worked hard at trying to get the environment right. I used to work as a Trainer/Audit Nurse, and I used to visit a Secure Adolescent Hospital. I mainly worked with the staff, I did a lot of clinical assessments and audits there, but the place left a very strong impression on me. I am very fascinated by people's psychology, especially how people react to murder. We often have such stereotyped opinions of murderers. This story came out of that, and an actual murder (though the events of this story are not based on any real-life events).

I can be quite a cruel writer, the way I treat my characters. I couldn't just give Liam a sweet moment for his first kiss. I go and swamp it with a terrible event. I have a plan with this story but I have also set it in a very unusual environment. Liam remembers a lot of things, both good and bad. Thanks for your support.

Last Wednesday morning (29th March), I was woken up by the radio news telling me that Paul O’Grady had suddenly and sadly died (1). It was a shock. Lying there, half asleep, I didn’t believe it, for a moment, but it was true. The tributes poured in for him, praising his work as a television presenter, chat show host and champion for Battersea Cats & Dogs Home (2). But I will always remember him as his alter ego, Lily Savage. When I moved to London, in the mid-eighties, Lily Savage was Queen of the gay scene, and her home was the Royal Vauxhall Tavern. There were a lot of different drag acts on the gay scene, even then, but Lily Savage stood out from the pack. So many drag acts, then, were no more than a man in a wig and a dress. They didn’t try to create a female persona; they didn’t bother to hide that they were a man. Lily Savage had a fully formed character. She was a working-class mother, with a taste for booze and a good night out. But she also had a life off the stage as well. O’Grady had created a whole life for his character. Lily was a home-help, working for the council, and living in a rundown council flat. There was her feckless husband Jack, her frumpy and alcoholic sister Vera, her delinquent daughter Bunty and her uber-twink son Jason. Lily supplemented her poor standard of living with a lot of alternative-shopping (shoplifting). Lily was crude and often confrontational but so much of her humour came out of her working-class and low-quality life, and her very dysfunctional family (This was at a time when “family values” were used as a political weapon, and living in a nuclear family was the only acceptable lifestyle. Here was Lily’s humour, painting her family life as survival of the loudest). But her humour never mocked women, belittling women’s bodies (A friend of mine, during my training, was a very strong feminist but she always loved Lily’s humour. I sat next to her, at a Lily Savage show, as she laughed herself silly). I saw Lily perform, so many times in packed and rather tacky gay clubs, always without the benefit of air conditioning. She would stand on the tiny stage there and dominate the whole club, having the audience in the palm of her hand. I loved Lily’s humour, her sharp social and political commentary, and it was blisteringly funny. She took no prisoners when she saw something wrong, or faced with a drunk heckler. When policed raided the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, all wearing rubber gloves, Lily was on stage, and announced, “Oh good, have you come to do the washing up?” (3) Lily also did a lot of work for HIV, appearing at AIDS benefits and long before it was fashionable. In 1991, Lily was nominated for the Perrier Award (4). Though she didn’t win, this was Lily’s gateway into mainstream media. Suddenly, she was presenting her stage shows and appearing on all different TV shows, she even appeared on a kids’ TV program. The genius of O’Grady was that he tempered Lily’s language for TV but lost none of her edginess. Many people accused O’Grady of “selling out”, as if as a drag performer Lily should only stay on the gay scene, but to me, it was the bigger platform that Lily deserved. It meant I could also enjoy Lily’s performances on my television, and I did. In 2004, O’Grady announced that Lily had retired to “a convent in Brittany” (5). O’Grady moved on to presenting television programs, out of drag. He soon became very successful at it, everyone’s slightly badly behaved and outspoken uncle. But as an openly gay man, he became so established that he presented a tea-time chat show and had a celebrity cameo on Doctor Who. He had become so popular and established that his death was the second item on the 6 o'clock BBC news the next day. I enjoyed his TV presenting but I really missed Lily Savage, her sharp and irreverent humour. She was such a fully formed character, with her own catastrophic life and very jaundice humour. I missed her undeferential attitude to celebrity. (Only in the last few days did I learn why O’Grady retired Lily. In 2004, Brendan Murphy, O’Grady’s partner and manager of 25 years, died after being diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour. O’Grady said the joy of performing as Lily “sort of died with him” (6)) Paul O’Grady 14 June 1955 – 28 March 2023