marksimpson.com

Email inter­view with Mark Simp­son by Sarah Wal­ters of Man­ches­ter Evening News (unedited ver­sion) pegged to his appear­ance as the bad fairy at this year’s Queer Up North Festival

SW: Sex­u­al­ity has been part and par­cel of your life and writ­ings — how has reac­tion changed to the topic of sex­u­al­ity since you started writ­ing? Is there a cul­ture of open­ness now, or still prudishness?

MS: Things have cer­tainly changed. I doubt that the MEN of 20 years ago, would have inter­viewed me. If any­thing, it would have organ­ised a cam­paign against my visit. Frankly, I wouldn’t have blamed them.

To some extent, homo­sex­u­al­ity was dirty and snig­ger­some back then because sex was. Homo­sex is, sym­bol­i­cally speak­ing, sex for sex’s sake — not for Mothercare’s or the Pope’s. This of course is why the pop music kids lis­tened to in the 80s was full of queer­ness: Soft Cell, Frankie Goes to Hol­ly­wood, and that band called The Smiths.

Nowa­days, every­thing has gone pop — espe­cially Man­ches­ter — and sex is every­where. Except per­haps in sex itself. I some­times won­der whether, in a world full of broad­band porn — and that’s just the TV sched­ules — whether there’s any point in actu­ally hav­ing sex any more. Unless you’re doing it in front of a web­cam or in the Big Brother House.

Queer­ness ain’t so queer any more. Maybe that’s why some of today’s favourite TV queers such as Gra­ham Nor­ton, tend to be reas­sur­ingly penis-less crea­tures from the 1970s.

But then, penised homo­sex­u­al­ity can be very scary. And I should know.

Young peo­ple seem increas­ingly more open-minded about dis­cov­er­ing and chal­leng­ing their sex­u­al­ity. Is being bi-/metro-sexual the new black?

It cer­tainly looks like the future is ‘bi-curious’ and ‘open-minded’. Or at least that’s what it says on its online profile.

I mean, what is ‘straight’ nowa­days? Sex out­side mar­riage and Biblically-sanctified ori­fices has become almost compulsory.

For QUN, you’re tak­ing part in the big Debate on May 10, which is always a huge draw — last year was a sell out. What are the hot top­ics in queer pol­i­tics you’re expect­ing to field?

I’m afraid I’ve no idea what the hot top­ics in queer pol­i­tics are. Hope­fully I’ll be asked to com­ment on the new Glad­i­a­tors’ abs and David Beckham’s Armani-wrapped lunch-box.

I under­stand that you’ll be tak­ing a devil’s advo­cate line on the point/necessity of fes­ti­vals like Queer Up North and speak­ing out ‘against’ them on May 24. Anti-gay debate (in par­tic­u­lar against gay stereo­types) is some­thing you’ve writ­ten about pre­vi­ously — what’s your beef with QUN?

Well, I don’t really have that much of a beef with QUN, espe­cially since they’re putting me up in a bou­tique hotel for the week­end. And full marks to them for address­ing this sub­ject at all.

My argu­ment is that with the queer­ing of the main­stream, there really isn’t such a thing as ‘queer cul­ture’ any more. Once upon a time, young queers would have to run away from Dar­ling­ton to the queer metropoli of Man­ches­ter or Lon­don if they wanted some ‘queer cul­ture’ — or just to be able to come out with­out los­ing their front teeth. This is clearly no longer nec­es­sar­ily the case. Many can come out at home with­out being made home­less, watch soaps with gay sto­ry­lines — like Shame­less — and log-on to look for love or sex. Or go to ‘gay night’ at the local nitespot. Queer cul­ture was largely a prod­uct of queer com­mu­ni­ties. Queer assim­i­la­tion and crossover means that those com­mu­ni­ties are increas­ingly obsolete.

Has Man­ches­ter as a city played a par­tic­u­lar role in pro­mot­ing (or, per­haps dis­tort­ing) gay cul­ture and lib­er­al­is­ing opin­ions about sexuality?

I don’t think there’s a city any­where that’s done more to queer the world than Man­ches­ter. Home of Coro­na­tion Street, Take That, Queer As Folk, Man U’s met­ro­sex­ual ‘Spice Boys’, Shame­less and The Smiths. Thanks to Man­ches­ter, it’s not just queer up north anymore.

Man­ches­ter itself seems to have been trans­formed from the des­o­late post-industrial land­scape I knew in 1983 when I lived here briefly, to a city fit for hair­dressers. And today’s footballers.