World's Worst Place To Be Gay

review

The World's Worst
Place To Be Gay

Last summer, Channel 4 screened Africa's Last Taboo, a documentary by award-winning filmmaker Sorious Samura, investigating homophobia on the continent. It was thoughtful, thought-provoking, and insightful.

Last week, the BBC - Britain's national broadcaster - screened The World's Worst Place To Be Gay, presented by openly gay radio DJ Scott Mills.

Samura's film did what it said on the tin: it was about the plight our brothers and sisters face in Africa. Mills' documentary had a little bit of that, but mostly it was about him.

We hear about all the famous celebrities he's had on his show. We see his fabulous gay life in Soho, queer capital of Britain. And we learn how he's never, ever had any problems from the benign heterosexuals of Great Britain! Never, not once. Homophobia is a scourge that's been banished from the United Kingdom.

That's one of the surprising facts I gleaned from The World's Worst Place To Be Gay (Iran, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Jamaica must be seething with jealousy - how very dare Uganda steal their glory!)

Mills' documentary is excrement, little better than the stuff that so appalled him in the slums where the gays lived in Kampala. We are witnessing a vodka-slurping queen straight outta Soho whining about how awful it was for the gays in Uganda, before going back to slurping some more vodka with other shallow queens and hangers-on and talking about more important things like Lady Gaga and stylists. A feather in the cap for a lightweight talk jockey, but what do the GBLT Ugandans get out of it?

What they get is their faces - and the names of the few gay bars and clubs they can frequent - signposted for all the world to see, including murderous homophobes in Uganda. Cheers, Scotty!

He visits the safe-house where lesbian Stoosh is staying, having been driven out of her own home. Stoosh shows him her bare bedroom. "Looking round her bare room, it seemed that Stoosh, rather than her attackers, was being punished for what had happened." Peering out of the window, agonished, Mills struggles to make a tenuous link. "It's like a prison, you see, with the gate, and the glass, and the walls. It's pretty grim."

A house with glass and walls in it. Blimey, this is pretty grim! Maybe he'd have been happier if she'd been living in a mud hut?

This unmitigated piece of shit, which was all about SCOTT MILLS, garnered acres of column inches online and in the press, because SCOTT MILLS is a Very Important Person. Channel 4's excellent Dispatches film, Africa's Last Taboo, had approximately 0.1% of the coverage, but it was longer, had more talking, and didn't have some inane queen wringing his hands about how awful it all was, and offering nothing remotely insightful.

And when we weren't hearing how SCOTT MILLS was going to be attacked by angry mobs in Kampala for being gay, this tragic scene queen manufactured some inane story about David Bahati (the MP behind the anti-gay bill) hunting him down. Like, OMG! What a story for the orange mincers back in Soho!

Sorry Scotty, but the Ugandan government isn't remotely interested in pursuing famous, rich, white foreigners who also happen to be gay. They're not going to lock them up and throw away the key, because that would be a monumental public relations cock-up. And, of course, the British government would intervene if it's somebody famous. Mills' sickening drama queen antics served merely to cheapen the genuine misery facing gay Ugandans, and drove home the point that this was The World's Worst Place To Be Gay not for gay Ugandans, but for SCOTT MILLS.

Now, did you see Lady Gaga coming out of that egg? OMG!