Louise Jameson saved my life

Suicide is the number one exit strategy for troubled gay teens. It was nearly mine. Looking back, I know what - and who - saved my life.

EARLIER THIS year, I saw a play called Gutted. Twice. And were it not for the burdensome intrusion of work, I'd have seen it a third time. Maybe more. This awesomely hypnotic piece of theatre (about four London Irish brothers facing up to the abuse wrought on them by their now deceased father) starred Louise Jameson, who in 1977 happened to play Leela in Doctor Who. A series of unlikely coincidences - about which I won't bore you - opened up the possibility of meeting Ms. Jameson in the flesh, which led me to think about what I'd actually say to this accomplished actress, for whom Doctor Who was just one small part of her career. Perhaps, "Ms Jameson, I'd just like you to know - it's not a big deal or anything - but you saved my life..."

Perth, Western Australia.

In 1977 I hadn't yet been born, but in 1990 I was a sensitive kid still in single digits, who suddenly found himself transposed from troubled Northern Ireland - with its bombs and barbed wire and rubber bullets - to the wonderful land of Oz. Sounds like a good swap, right? Well, not quite. It was Oz (sort of): somewhere on the bottom flank of planet Earth, arid Western Australia, seething with rabid Aussie nationalism and xenophobia, where the kids my age knew only of surfing, and heavy metal music. To white Australia - and it was white, relentlessly - I was the second most dirtiest thing imaginable: an immigrant. We grew here, you flew here, they said. An IRA terrorist had infiltrated the blond and blonde Aussies; it's a shame I was too naive to understand the significance of the invisible Aborigine, white Australia's most loathsome charge, or the meaning of the words "genocide" and "invasion".

The sense of desolation was crippling. The bullying - and it was bad, me against a whole country - was one thing, but having everything familiar, everything I loved ripped away was something else entirely. Suddenly, the town I grew up in, the family and friends I knew, the food I ate, and TV I watched, were gone, blotted out forever. Oz wasn't a yellow brick road and Munchkins, it was an unforgiving alien landscape under a baking hot sun, blighted by swarms of flies, punctuated by a creepy national anthem. It was like Nazi Germany and the Hitler Youth. Advance Australia fair! Foreigners out! Floundering in the unforgiving Aussie surf, this sensitive queer kid was about to go under.

ABC ident 1991.

Then, one day in the winter of 1990, Doctor Who popped up on the television. Doctor Who - on Australian TV! A miracle! Back home in the dying days of the '80s, I had been an avid fan of Doctor Who (it had also been, as I later learned, the dying days of Doctor Who). I had been gripped by adventures of cheetah people, of legendary knights in the present day, and homicidal clowns, where the estates of the National Trust were stalked by Cybermen, a benighted planet of women where you had to be happy or die, and a tower block in the future called Paradise Towers patrolled by murderous cleaning machines... It fired my imagination, and I loved it to bits, even though no one at school did. Doctor Who, at that time, was deeply out of fashion, and brainless American fare like The A Team was in.

Doctor Who in this barren wasteland of suburban Australia was the least likely thing on earth, but suddenly here it was on the ABC (the Australian Broadcasting Corporation) at 5.30 p.m., Monday to Thursday, a window to home, if not a way back. It was 1990, before streaming, before set-top boxes, before DVD. There was only VHS, which even then was expensive (for a 10-year-old, at any rate). The first serial was 1977's Image of the Fendahl. This time capsule of  a story had me transfixed. It was, I'd later learn, also one of Louise Jameson's earliest shows.

The ABC screened several key seasons of late 1970s Doctor Who, and later most of the 1980s in a graveyard 4.30 a.m. slot. Yeah, I woke up early for those. But right at the beginning, it was Louise Jameson and Tom Baker who were there, when I was most lost, when I really had nothing and no one. Jameson's Leela - the outsider, the alien abroad - came along at exactly the right time. She was everything to that lost queer kid.

Looking back, I can see that those repeats saved me. You might say, "It's just a T.V. show", but it was a drowning man's life raft. When faced with extreme trauma, some of us adapt and conform (my brothers and sister did), and some of us find a temporary escape. Some of us seek out the ultimate exit strategy. Doctor Who was my escape, without it I'd have gone under, just one more gay kid for whom suicide was the only way out. Instead, I found a wonderful fantasy world I could retreat into, and right there on T.V., a character I could truly relate to, Louise Jameson's powerful outsider Leela.

Some twenty-five years later, I found myself watching this wonderful actress on stage in London, a world away from the horrors of Oz, in a play written and directed by the friend of the wonderful friend who finally rescued me from Oz (that's another story). I didn't have the nerve to say anything afterwards; I'm still damaged, still dented by all those ugly years in White Australia. "You haven't changed. Still finding menace in your own shadow," as the second Doctor says in The Five Doctors.

So, Louise Jameson, in the unlikely event you ever read this, I'd like to say thank you for being amazing, in 1977, in 1990, and again in 2013. When you were Leela, you saved this queer kid's life.

Get off the cross, honey. Somebody else needs the wood

Who said nothing good came out of Australia?

Australian painter Ross Watson has crucified (on canvas, anyway) living work of art François Sagat.

Says Watson, "I was motivated by the Vatican's position on homosexuality, and its ban on condom use, to create a painting which references Caravaggio's 'Crucifiction of St Peter'. Francois Sagat continues to play a valuable role in the area of HIV/AIDS prevention and education. I wanted to acknowledge that in the painting, whilst tying it to the Vatican. In contrast, the Vatican uses its status in the UN General Assembly to obstruct the promotion of condoms as protection against HIV/AIDS, and sexuality education in school curricular. Some will regard the painting as provocative, but I don't believe it is in contrast to the Vatican's position on these issues. The Pope's 2nd in charge recently claimed homosexuality and pedophilia are linked. That enraged me. It seems just and deserving to depict Francois Sagat as a contemporary saint, given he is helping to save lives, rather than contributing to causing illness and deaths for millions. The great majority of Caravaggio's patrons were from the Catholic church, and his paintings were sometimes rejected as they were viewed as inappropriate for a religious theme. I'm reminded here of my freedom as an artist. Imagine what Caravaggio might paint if he were alive today?"

IT'S INVASION DAY TODAY!

SO TODAY'S Australia Day. That annual event when, wherever you are in the world, Aussie patriotism spills onto the streets in a blur of green and yellow.

It's a celebration of the arrival, in 1788, of the First Fleet -and white colonisation. It's a celebration of Australian values - respect for the freedom and dignity of the individual, a spirit of egalitarianism that embraces mutual respect, tolerance, fair play, compassion for those in need and pursuit of the public good. Oh, and equal opportunity for individuals, regardless of their race, religion or ethnic background.

The trouble is, none of that really rings true. Click Australia on the labels menu, What's Inside? and you'll see that I'm no fan of Oz. From the age of 11, I spent eleven years there, and those eleven years were the most miserable in my life. The problem isn't so much Australia itself, of course. It's Australians. Not all of them. Some of them can be quite pleasant - civilised, even. But the majority are rabidly xenophobic, and brandish a huge chip on their collective shoulder. They hate the British, yet the Queen is still their head of state, and they continue to flock back to the motherland like salmon swimming upstream to spawn. My experience of Australians in London - of whom, frustratingly, there are many - is even worse. Today, they prowled the capital in packs, often accompanied by their equally unpleasant white South African mates (I can see the attraction), waving their flags, tanking up on beer and behaving exactly like football hooligans whose team's just lost. And that's just the women.

In sharp contrast, February 1st marks the Chinese New Year celebrations, which will be colourful, exciting and inclusive. Crowds will gather both to watch and to participate. For the rest of us, the only participation on Australia day is trying to avoid stepping in pools of Aussie vomit in the street.

Why do Australians and (white) South Africans seek each other out like long lost relations when they're overseas? It doesn't take a genius to figure out - they're both lacking in culture and history, and what history they do have is ugly, the keynotes being macho redneck posturing, genocide and racism. The difference is, South Africa made a big PR booboo with apartheid. Australia successfully marketed itself - and its own population through careful indoctrination from kindergarten level - as the land of freedom, tolerance and fair play, with a big, fake, painted smile. Maybe it aspires to those values, maybe some people really do believe it. But I never felt it. I couldn't breathe. I was stifled, psychologically and emotionally. My individuality suffocated, robbed of oxygen by the barren urban wasteland, the crippling heat, and people who treated you like an alien as soon as you opened your mouth and spoke with an accent different to theirs. Thank God I wasn't a different colour too - just look where that got the Indigenous Australians. They're not entirely in favour of Australia Day, the Indigenous population of Australia. Not surprising really, given the appalling poverty many endure - as well as the legacy of genocide, enforced separation from their children, and other atrocities. At the time of white settlement, there were thought to be between 300,000-750,000 Indigenous Australians. In 2001, that figure stood at 458,520 (or 2.4% of Australia's total population). Most "Aussies" never even see any Indigenous Australians. So today's Australia Day. It's nothing to celebrate. It's something to mourn. Just ask the few Aboriginals who are left - if you can find them.

Elsewhere: White Australia, Anti-Chinese Racism And Climate Genocide

Elsewhere: White Britain in Pacific: Apartheid in Australia again!

Elsewhere: Is Australia A Racist Nation Against Minorities? Twenty Percent Decline In South Asian Students Studying In Australia Due To Racism & Violence!!!

This article was originally published on 25th January 2009.

if there's one thing I hate...

...it's the Feds.

They just really rub me up the wrong way. I don't want to, I strive not to follow the crowd, but everything I've taken down in evidence can be used against them.

Like growing up in Northern Ireland and watching my father (a Catholic) being carted off by the police (inevitably, as instruments of the British state, Protestants).

When I was a sixteen or seventeen, and an exile in Australia, I was stopped and searched a few times. On one occasion, the officer looked in my wallet, where I happened to have the picture of a (male, of course) crush. The officer looked at the picture, and looked at me, and I felt about an inch tall. Violated? It's not quite on a par with rape by truncheon, but it's still an invasion of privacy. When I was eighteen, a gang of Aboriginal youths mugged me and a Vietnamese date (George, the second boy I ever kissed), threatening us with a syringe of blood on our way to Perth's only gay bar. There was a police station across the street and a couple of officers saw what happened. They were laughing and joking. Heard the one about the Abos robbing the fags?

In London, the police took away my best friend. He was innocent, but not blameless. They tasted blood and hounded him until his life was utterly destroyed. Was it just coincidence that he's young, black and successful? It isn't cliché after all. It happens.

So I don't like the police. Not very original, I know. But it's based on personal experience, not media hype and peer pressure. The funny thing is, NYPD Blue, Law & Order, The Shield, The Wire and old school episodes of The Bill are amongst my favourite TV shows.

There's a thin blue line between love and hate...

(Pictured: Henry Simmons in NYPD Blue, and Aml Ameen in The Bill.)

if there's one thing I hate... DOORS!
if there's one thing I hate... CAPTCHA!

The Combination

YES, I THOUGHT IT was a gay porn movie too. It isn't a Jean Daniel Cadinot flick, however, but The Combination, a "powerful and deeply affecting story of a contemporary Lebanese family in urban Australia". It was also withdrawn from cinemas shortly after its release when fighting broke out amongst the audience - although it's now been reinstated. Those same tensions between white Australians and those of Middle Eastern extraction saw race riots in 2005. It's a positive step to see Australia facing up to its deeply bred in racism, but it seems to me that this issue is a distraction from the real issue - the horrific conditions faced by Australian Aborigines. Make sure to visit the official site and check out the trailer. Previously - Australia (All Articles) Elsewhere - The Combination (Official) Elsewhere - The Combination pulled as audience starts fight

Scissors Cut Paper, Paper Wraps Stone, Stone Blunts Scissors

So-cute-you-could-eat-her Irene Monroe, a woman who knows what she's talking about, is a key voice in the Proposition 8 debate - particularly on the subject of its descent into racial blame-mongering. "The same-sex marriage debate [has been] hijacked by a white upper class queer universality that not only renders these marginalized queer communities invisible, but - as it is presently framed - also renders them speechless," she says in her latest article. I largely agree with that; there's a yawning chasm between them and us. But just who is us and them? Even enlightened souls like Ms Monroe insist on casually using the term "white" to generalise Caucasians. Well - newsflash! - not all white people are the same. I assume Ms. Monroe is referring to financially comfortable WASPS (the Bad Guys) and not "minority" Caucasians (Irish, Poles et cetera). Minority, or ethnic, Caucasians have historically been victimised by WASPS just as much as other ethnic minorities. In fact, my own immediate family suffered violence and discrimination at the hands of WASPS in Northern Ireland over the last several decades; I personally suffered the indignity of racial abuse as an immigrant in Australia. So it's particularly galling to hear "white this, white that" as if the suffering of Afro-Caribbean’s is so unique and acute that license is granted to lump all Caucasians together and denigrate them wholesale. Two wrongs make a right in the world these people inhabit. Now don't get me wrong, I don't count Ms. Monroe as one of those people; the woman needs to be heard by us all. I'm just calling her on the use of the term white. (As an aside, it's definitely worth looking at the devastatingly beautiful Qaadir Howard's incisive, razor sharp argument, below, against the use of the term black in reference to people of Afro-Caribbean descent).

Ultimately, the gay community is dominated and controlled by exactly the same people as the mainstream: monied, White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. The difference is, in our community, they're gay. But let's allow Ms Monroe the last word - she's smarter than me and much, much cuter: "[It's] not surprising because the larger queer movement has distorted, if not erased, its own history when it come to the Stonewall Riot of June 27-29, 1969 in Greenwich Village, New York City, which started on the backs of working-class African-American and Latino transgender patrons of the bar. Those brown and black queer people are not only absent from the photos of that historic night, but they are also bleached from the annals of queer history and gay pride events."

PIGS

This article has been updated and moved.

You can find it here.

Boys Over There

Apparently, there's a bunch of people somewhere on the island of China (it's part of the Russian Federation - honestly, didn't any of you pay attention in geography?) running around and throwing things, and some are even jumping headlong into artificial bodies of water. Who knows what it's all about, but I can't see it catching on.

In any case, here at theka-osblog, we're not as shallow as the rest of you, and realise that there's sports other than sex. Moreover, these sports professionals happen to look jolly good, so that even those of you averse to running around and jumping into sandpits will have something to consider.

My favourite games haven't started yet - you know, the running - but we've had some jolly fit lads contorting their bodies in the name of something called gymnastics today. Most lovely of all is Japan's Kyosuke Tomita, who can do some jolly clever things with a vaulting horse (no giggling at the back, please):

Gosh, just imagine... Yang Wei of China also makes a pretty picture, and may have won a nice prize for his exertions:

Then there's Matthew Mitcham, who's Australian (but that isn't his fault, he was probably just born that way). He's also a Homosexualite, which is nice. This is what he looks like:

Here's a photo of two nice Colombian boys, Victor Ortega and Juan Guillermo Uran, falling into water:

Colombians in speedos -what more could you ask for, really? The running and stuff starts at 0200hrs London time, and I foresee an all-you-can-eat buffet of pecs, calves and deltoids.

Sport's great!

That's When Good Neighbours... Are Always White

Television is failing to adequately depict ethnic minorities and cultural diversity, according to a report by the chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Trevor Phillips. Australian soap Neighbours was specifically criticised for being all white. In fact, in more than twenty years, the soap has never had any non-caucasian faces in its regular cast. Funny that, given Australia is supposedly a multicultural country. The show's executive producer has hit back, pointing out that, "Our core cast are from diverse ethnic backgrounds including French, Italian, [white] South African, [white] Maltese, Danish, [white] Portuguese and Swedish." No Australian Aborigines, then? Any Asians, maybe? You know, that lot from all of the nations surrounding the stolen continent? How about some Afro-Carribeans? Nah. Not in Aussieland. On the lack of diversity, Phillips had this to say: "Most ethnic minority participants felt the media had a responsibility to reflect Britain’s diversity across all genres and was failing to do so in three main ways: by relying on tokenistic and stereotyped representation of characters; by representing extreme and exaggerated characters; and by failing to reflect the realities of contemporary ethnic minority culture. All these shortcomings were attributed to some extent to the perceived lack of a representative power base within UK media."

Australian wants Afro-Caribbeans To Quit London

"Let them go if they don't like it here," says Australian James McGrath. Mayor Boris Johnson's aide was responding to the concerns put to him by respected black activist Marc Wadsworth that people from the Caribbean would leave London if right-wing Conservative Boris Johnson became Mayor.

Anyone surprised? I've already written about Boris Johnson's racist views, and knew it was only a matter of time before his administration's true colours became apparent. Last week Boris forced Rise, the anti-racism music festival, to drop its anti-racism message.

Former Mayor Ken Livingstone isn't surprised either, saying: "In the context of Boris Johnson's well known past comments, abandoning the central message of Rise as Europe's biggest anti-racist festival, and now this enforced resignation of his Deputy Chief of Staff, the real culture of the Johnson administration is becoming clear - one totally at odds with the needs of London as the most diverse city in the world."

Johnson has already set about dismantling Livingstone's diverse team at City Hall, steadily replacing women and ethnic minority appointees with a parade of white (and almost certainly straight) men. In several cases, Australian white men from a country where, was Wadsworth writes in his article, "Black people are the ‘Aboriginal’ indigenous nation who are stereotyped by the white colonisers as social security scrounging drunks."

It's a sorry day for London, but with Johnson and his redneck cronies at the helm, I predict many more to come. Watch this space.

The Worst White People In The World

Australia and South Africa. Oh dear. What a pair they are. Specifically, white Australia and white South Africa. They just make white people look bad. Really.

The Australian government has decided to apologise for the "historic mistreatment" of Aborigines. You know, the people the white invaders/opressors stole the land from, proceeded to subject to genocide, before rubbing the native's noses in it by establishing a counterfeit national identity, soaked in bogus patriotism, and served up with a side of xenophobia. The apology might make some loud, proud Aussies feel better about themselves (even more so than before, if that's possible) but what difference will it make to the Aboriginal people?

Their average lifespan is around twenty years shorter than the average white Australian, illiteracy among Aboriginal children is around 80%, and 1 in 71 is the ratio of Western Australian Aboriginal people held in prison or juvenile detention (vs 1 in 1140 for non-Aboriginal people). Boy Uninterrupted has written a swell article about it all here.

Australians might be an obnoxious bunch, but at least they make some effort to gloss over their ugly "inner-facist" with a lots of smiling and happy chatter (just don't mention the natives). White South Africans, on the other hand, must surely rank as the Worst White People On The Planet. They're like that embarrassing, backward relative; mankind's very own wild boars. White South Africans have made an art form out of brusque self-importance, with a dash of nastiness and a twist of sheer repugnance. And they revel in it.

My loathing of the Boer's - er, I mean, white South Africans - goes back to the Eighties, when my uncle left Northern Ireland to work in the mining industry there. He didn't last long, since he was unceremoniously slung out of South Africa for socialising with his black colleagues. Yes, socialising.

The latest horror story from the Rainbow Nation comes from black Belgian tourist Aridi Amipi, the latest black man to be refused entry to gay bar Bronx. Apparently, only regulars are allowed in, but being a white is a free pass too. Amipi said, "My white friend from England was admitted, but I wasn't. The doorman wouldn't tell me why. I showed my ID, but still I wasn't let in." And his friend Lee had this to say: "When I take my black friends they get told only regulars are allowed. This is nonsense because my white friends who haven't been there before are allowed in."

Nice, innit? Let me know if you have any horror stories from the occupied territories...

The Enemy Within

Straight people in gay clubs? It's wrong. Uh uh. Not on my watch.

In May last year, I could barely contain my joy when news broke that a pub in Australia (of all places) had won the right to bar heterosexuals from its premises. The management of the Peel Hotel in Melbourne felt that heterosexuals were creating a poisonous atmosphere, you see, as heterosexuals are wont to do.

Last night I was belatedly catching up on the rather good blog of Christian St. Croíx, whose myspace url I'd insert here if I could see it, but I can't because he has one of those nice-to-look-at-but-totally-user-unfriendly flash pages. So I can't.

In any case, Christian penned an entry last month entitled "The Truth (According To Me) About Straight Guys & Gay Clubs," which raised my hackles with its revelations of straight guys in gay bars and their wrong-doings.

I'm a separtist when it comes to sexuality. The few straight friends I have aren't my own - I know them through my boyfriend or through work, which doesn't really count. Christian's tale brought to mind the thoughts of one of those straight friends. She's a white French girl, and he's African-American. I like them both.

He once said over dinner that he was brought up to believe that white people are guilty until proven innocent, a philosphy I don't disagree with, and which I also felt was applicable to the issue of sexuality. It's war out there - race, sexuality, class - and we need to recognise our enemies. For those of you who insist on bringing your straight friends into gay venues, ponder on this for a monent: what do you think your straight friends say and do when you're not around? When he and she are alone; when the straight boys are bonding together? Who is the joke, the figure of fun, the pantomine, the circus freak?

You are.

Straights rolling up to the local gay bar to laugh at the freaks? It's not my idea of friendship.

Mapping

Here's a picture of the new Tube map, due to be introduced later this month, and seen here thanks to it being leaked by someone at TfL who Mayor Ken has probably now had shackled in the Tower of London for a week as punishment.

If you ask me, it's all got a bit complicated, what with the addition of the London Overground line, the imminently closing East London line and the new Heathrow T5 station sticking out of the lefthand corner, making the Heathrow loop look like a flacid penis. Or is that just me?

Meanwhile, the Hammersmith & City line gains a new station, Wood Lane, which isn't the Wood Lane station which closed in 1947 but a brand new one for the Big Shopping Centre which Shepherd's Bush needs like a hole in the head (at least it'll give the Australians something to do other than drink beer and roll around in their own vomit in the gutter).

Keeping Australia White

The Australian government has accused Africans of failing to integrate into Australian society. It also complains of groups of young African men drinking alcohol in parks at night.

This follows on from the revelation that the Australian government has cut the number of Africans in its refugee intake from 70 per cent four years ago, to 30 per cent.

Now, who said the White Australia policy was dead and buried?

The government blames Africans for not integrating, but having had the misfortune to live in Australia, I'd put money on the real problem being Australians (most of whom are white) not accepting the immigrants. After all, they've successfully persecuted the native Aborginals for the last two hundred years or so. G'day mate, who's up for a bit of genocide?

It's almost impossible to imagine what African refugees have endured in a country that must be one of the most hostile towards non-caucasians, second only to its spiritual sibling, white South Africa. And the complaint of young African men drinking in parks is a sick joke - ever seen how Australians behave when let loose around the globe, let alone at home? Parts of London are awash with Aussie vomit most nights of the week - and that's just the women.

Learn about the ugly face of modern Australia here.

The Gays Can't Be Racist? Can they?

Last month we heard how former Savage Garden front man, the Australian who married a woman then decided to come clean and tell everybody he's actually gay, was arrested following an alleged racist attack on a waiter in a restaurant in London. The Australian was subsequently given a caution by police, which I'm sure his victim feels is sufficient punishment.

What's really funny about the whole episode, apart from the strenuous denials from the Hayes camp of any wrongdoing, are the cries of, "He's gay, how could he be racist?" You see, heterosexuals can't quite grasp the fact that gays, white and black, can be just as racist and xenophobic as they are. In fact, mainstream gay culture is founded upon the notion that white is right, and anyone who doesn't look like a manicured Viking is inferior, which dovetails perfectly with Australian racism and xenophobia - so call me cynical for not being surprised to hear of a gay Australian launching a tirade of racist abuse.

So let's all take a positive from this little episode - straight people now realise that gay people can be racist too. Aww, ain't the world a lovely place?

Savage Garden Singer Arrested For Alleged Racist Attack

Darren Hayes, formerly that warbler out of Savage Garden (he's the camp one who had the sham marriage with some poor cow) has been arrested following an alleged racist attack on a waiter in a restaurant in London.

An Australian uttering racist slurs? Surely not!

Of course the cheerful fair-go Aussie (they're such a sunny people, so they keep telling everyone) denies the charge, but I'm with the police and the Australian's victim on this one - no smoke without fire, eh?

Back to the colony with him, I say, where racism is the national sport.

White Australia: We Grew Here, You Flew Here

Controversy has erupted over an incident on the Australian version of Big Brother, in which contestants threw goo-filled bags at the Mexican flag. The Mexican government complained that the use of the Mexican flag was offensive and complained to Australia’s media regulator.

As anyone who knows me well can attest, I don’t like Australia. My hostility towards that Godforsaken sandpit, a dry, crusty scab on the ass of planet Earth, knows no bounds. Or, more accurately, my intense dislike for the occupiers of Her Majesty’s colony of Australia - let’s not forget that only around 1% of the continent’s population (yes, one percent) are native Aboriginal. The European invaders successfully wiped out most of the aboriginal populace, and the “White Australia Policy” restricted non-European immigration - and successfully persecuted the remaining black inhabitants (including forcibly removing newborn babies from black mothers, who weren’t considered fit to care for them) - until it’s abolition in 1975. Yes, that’s right, racism was officially sanctioned in Australia until 1975.

I had the misfortune to live in Australia from 1990, when I was ten years old, until 2002, and my experiences in that country were largely negative. Australians have successfully marketed themselves as happy-go-lucky, honest, fair-minded, non-discriminatory folk, but in truth are exactly the opposite of that. Xenophobia and racism, dressed up in an obsessive national patriotism that’s drummed into school children Nazi-style, is the order of the day. As an immigrant child I suffered racist bullying - taunted about my accent, my nationality (oh, the jokes about stupid Irish people and the IRA had me rolling in the aisles), and even my skin colour (I’m Irish, so too white for the perfectly tanned Aussies). Teachers were too busy singing the national anthem, or waving the Aussie flag to notice, and the truth is that in Australia, anyone who doesn’t look or sound “true blue Aussie” is ripe for victimisation. When I was seventeen, I started dating boys; my first boyfriend was Aboriginal, and simply being at his side I was given the dubious honour of seeing how our true blue Aussies view the black population - with suspicion, fear and disgust. The racism that Sean endured was, in turns, blatant and subtle, but always present.

I recall one occasion when a group of drunk Aussie Blokes threw a drunk Aboriginal woman off the last train of the night in Perth, whilst various authority figures turned a blind eye. On another occasion, an Asian woman with a toddler, having the gall to speak in her own language, provoked a fellow (Aussie) traveller, who was seething with anger, to remark spitefully as he left the train that she should “use English, [she] doesn’t know what country she’s in.” The woman didn’t bat an eyelid, suggesting that incidents of this kind were frequent enough.

Since I’ve lived in London, I haven’t managed to escape the Aussie curse. They’re everywhere. Despite proclaiming at every opportunity that Australia is the best country in the world, they can’t seem to spend enough time elsewhere. London’s a particular draw for the Aussie pest - in parts of West London you’re more likely to hear an Australian accent than any other - that, or be forced to step over an inebriated Aussie backpacker vomiting into the gutter. They even have their own pubs in the capital, where all the Aussies who flock to London congregate with other Aussies, or white South Africans (another subject in itself). Despite insisting that immigrants assimilate and take on the Aussie way of life in their own country, they stick to their own kind when overseas.

On 11th December 2005, the racial tensions bubbling away under the carefully crafted façade of tolerance in Australia, finally erupted into race riots. White Australian men attacked and assaulted two Middle Eastern men in separate incidents. At least three far-right organisations were involved, with slogans like “We Grew Here, You Flew Here", "Wog Free Zone", "Aussie Pride", and "Ethnic Clensing Unit". Towards the end of the year, drive-by shootings were occurring and a church next to an Islamic centre was set on fire.

As an aside, one only has to look to popular culture for proof of Australia’s dislike of the unlike. Despite Australia claiming to be a racial melting pot, the nation’s two long-running national soaps, Neighbours and Home And Away, both of which have been on since the mid-1980s, have never had a non-white face as a series regular. That’s right, in twenty years the country’s telenovellas haven’t notched up one single Aboriginal or Asian face. From my own experience, non-white faces on Australian television were rare. But it isn’t all doom and gloom, with broadcaster SBS devoted to “the multicultural voice of Australia” - and a good job it does too. I discovered the work of Tsai Ming Liang through the network, a sitcom from Singapore and Glenroe, a telenovella from Ireland, and films from every corner of the globe. But no one in Australia watches SBS - viewing figures are so low they often can‘t be measured.

I never could find a job in Australia. I guess my face, or voice, appearance didn’t fit. I never had a friend or lover who was Australian. Chinese? Tick. Malaysian? Tick. Korean? Tick. Visiting African-Americans? Tick (a marine and someone touring with Mariah Carey, for the record).

The Australian Big Brother incident might have been blown out of proportion, but it’s absolutely indicative of Australia: it’s an ugly place. I’m glad I managed to get out.

Australian Pub Bars Heterosexuals

Who's tired of going out to a supposedly gay venue, only to find it full of heterosexual women - and heterosexual men sniffing around them? Who's suddenly felt self-concisous in their favourite gay venue because there's a giggling straight couple staring? Ever felt like an animal in a zoo?

The clientele of a gay bar in Melbourne, Australia clearly do: the bar won the right to ban heterosexuals from its premises. The Victorian state civil and administrative tribunal ruled the Peel Hotel could ban patrons based on their sexual orientation, and the legislation - the first of its kind in Australia - has been supported by civil liberties groups, who say that gays should be able to relax without fear of bullying and intimidation. Managers of the bar complained raucous hen nights and stag parties created a poisonous atmosphere for its gay clientele.

It's no secret that straight women find homosexual men entertaining - particularly effeminate men - but the tribunal found this attention to be dehumanising. No doubt heterosexuals will cry foul over the decision - "how would they like it if gays were banned" - but I'm not aware of any shortage of heterosexual bars and pubs: they have no place in a gay environment.

Part of the problem is the number of gay men encouraging their straight friends to frequent gay venues - not just fag hags but increasingly their supposedly open-minded straight male friends. But the majority of gay men are against the straight invasion. Are you?