Travel – Visit Valencia by Gordon Hopps

I had been to Spain on vacation many times but until recently I had never been to Valencia. There can be few cities that have moved with the times so impressively and yet maintained a fierce hold on their historic legacy. Here can be found ancient city walls and gateways nestling alongside some of the [...]

Claws For Thought by Gordon Hopps.

Back in 1981, when I received the CATS cast album as a present, I was quite excited. I’d loved the other musicals that Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice had written and was looking forward to listening to their latest epic. Alas, Tim was not involved in this production and the lyrics, based on T.S [...]

Gay Marriage By Gordon Hopps

  Well, I don’t know about you but those two words don’t scare me at all. Alas, for some people it marks the beginning of Armageddon, the arrival of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and the end of the Mayan calendar (?)   Actually, this was also said when Civil Partnerships were introduced to [...]

Trespass at your peril by Gordon Hopps

 Adam Mitchell Lambert is a bit of a phenomenon. For those here in the UK who plugged into what could possibly be the finest debut album, For Your Entertainment, we already know what this man is capable of doing. A vocal range that is simply stunning, an attitude (the man is gay and makes sure [...]

Encountering Julian Briefly By Gordon Hopps

We love Julian. We love him for being Julian. We love the way he can insinuate and double entre and outrage… while not shouting at his audience or giving a lecture. We love him for the way his live shows include us all to be intimate (though don’t get too close, one needs ones space) [...]

The voice of an Angelo

  By Gordon Hopps Angelo represents a new direction for pop music. Taking lyrical inspiration from ancient mythology and transforming it into irresistible modern pop-dance anthems, Angelo proves that he’s not just a pretty face. His latest single ‘Narcissus Drowned’ represents the brains behind pop; articulate, attractive and undeniably addictive. Bent caught up with this [...]

Stuart Andrew: An MP… who happens to be gay.

By Gordon Hopps There are definitely more and more high profile gay MPs in Parliament these days. One of the new brand, and newly elected members of Parliament, is Conservative Stuart Andrew representing Pudsey, West Yorkshire who won the Labour held seat back in May 2010. He won it with the public knowing he was [...]

The Great Campaigner

Peter Tatchell The New Year brings with it a rather important anniversary for gay rights. Peter Tatchell, a man who for 45 years has campaigned ceaselessly on yours and my behalf, reaches the grand old age of 60. Peter, or Saint Peter as I like to call him, has put himself, literally, in the firing [...]

Editor’s Words: June 2011

‘FIRST MAN CURED OF HIV’ – such a headline of course caught my eye as I perused the various websites the other day. This was not a vaccine breakthrough but a stem-cell treatment that has had surprisingly good results. Of course this doesn’t mean that we can all start shagging around irresponsibly but it perhaps [...]

Editor’s Words: May 2011

Death. Death isn’t something most people want to dwell upon but when it strikes close to home suddenly all manner of thoughts run through your mind. Questions are asked for which there are no answers. Recriminations suddenly rear their head where there aren’t any and you search your own memory banks to see if there [...]

Editors Words: April 2011

With the world in disarray; what with earthquakes, tsunamis, people uprising against autonomous self-serving oligarchs and the continued tension throughout the UK as prices hit an all-time high, the jobless figures are through the roof and there appears to be no future for the country’s youth, why am I, a middle aged, comfortably well off, [...]

Editors Words: March 2011

My partner and I have just celebrated our 34th anniversary together and we’ve been ‘married’ for five years. The news about the length of time we’ve been co-habiting has garnered such responses as “Thirty-four years… that’s like 100 straight years isn’t it?” “Ugggh, how can you stand only one person for so long?” “Bloody hell… [...]

February 2011: Editor’s Words

Now that we are well into 2011 many of us will be turning our thoughts to the warmer weather and anticipating a holiday in the coming months. The fact that the recent court case concerning whether a ‘Christian’ couple, who owned a bed and breakfast, had the right to deny a same sex couple a [...]

May – Editor’s words

I know I should be angry with the Pope’s right hand ‘hench’man Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, claiming that the Catholic Church’s paedophilia problem is down to us gays… but I’m not. What do you expect from an organization which has turned a blind eye to these criminal going-on for centuries? Whereas before, the church’s word was [...]

Editor’s Words – April

With a General Election called for next month… will readers of Bent be bothered to vote? According to the two main parties the choice is clear – us or them! Both Labour and Conservative hate the fact that an election should be more than a two horse race, just listen to them talking down the [...]

Editor’s words – March

Would you kill your partner if you thought you were being merciful? With the recent news that Ray Gosling, the veteran BBC presenter who admitted killing a former lover who was dying of AIDS, had been arrested… what do Bent readers feel about mercy killings? Mr Gosling, 70, made the confession on a BBC programme [...]

Editor’s Words Equality: the state of being equal

Equality seems a strange concept for an awful lot of people to comprehend yet the precept is very simple – We are all Equal. Of course in George Orwell’s literary classic ‘Animal Farm’ we know that once some achieve power the adage that ‘we are all equal… just some are more equal than others’ comes [...]