Author Archives: Mark Simpson

Buzz Bissinger’s Metrosexy Addiction

There’s nothing quite so deafening as the sound of liberal America tutting. Mostly, in this instance, they’re deafening themselves. To the sound of their own hypocrisy. The 58-year-old Pulitzer prize winning sports journalist and best-selling author Buzz Bissinger caused a minor tsunami of scandale, disgust and derision a week or so ago with a bravely …

April 9, 2013 – 3:49 pm | By Mark Simpson | Posted in commentary | Tagged , , | Comments (4)

The Dame Edna Experience Goes West

The intoxicatingly talented DEE, alias Jonathan Paul Hellyer, is performing his last ever Sunday show at London’s Royal Vauxhall Tavern this Easter weekend. Fame has finally found him, possums, and he’s moving to America. To salute him, his new life and the end of an era for London’s gay scene, I thought I’d post this …

March 27, 2013 – 12:45 am | By Mark Simpson | Posted in music | Tagged , , , , | Comments (2)

Use Our Straight Acting Cosmetics — Or Everyone Will Know You’re a Drag Queen

A well-executed, very funny Brazilian ad from Ogilvy & Mather for Dove Men + Care shampoo that is bound to go viral (translated here). And ads that send up the absurdity of other ads often are very funny. But when an ad does, the absurdity that it’s usually frantically trying to distract you from its own. …

March 21, 2013 – 1:16 pm | By Mark Simpson | Posted in advertising, metrosexual, retrosexual | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (4)

Diet Cock: Coca Cola’s Porno Promo

As an avid voyeur of the media’s marketing of the male body I meant to write about this new Diet Coke advert ‘Gardener’ when it first strutted its stuff a a month or so back, but it completely slipped my mind — like a chilled, beading soft drink can in a lubed hand. Apologies. Obviously …

March 19, 2013 – 9:17 pm | By Mark Simpson | Posted in advertising | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (1)

Fill My Man Cave With Your Manly Man Meat

(No, this is not an Onion spoof. This is very serious indeed. Masculinity and selling shit is about as serious as you can get in America.) Tip: DAKrolak

March 19, 2013 – 4:00 pm | By Mark Simpson | Posted in advertising | Tagged , , , , | Comments (4)

David Bowie’s Bisensuality

The DNA test results are in. And I can exclusively reveal that the real the metrosexual’s real daddy is… David Robert Jones. Whatever the truth of Bowie’s own sexuality, his early 70s intrusion into the living rooms of suburban England was the most powerful and provocative sexual liberation parade ever seen in the UK. He was later to …

March 11, 2013 – 6:21 pm | By Mark Simpson | Posted in 70s, commentary, journalism, metrosexual | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

See Greek Statues Dance! (& Lip-Sync Very Badly)

Tip: DAKrolak  

March 6, 2013 – 11:16 am | By Mark Simpson | Posted in commentary | Tagged , | Comments (4)

The Anti-Christ Has All The Best Tunes

The P2P revolution is like Gutenberg plus Protestantism plus Punk all rolled into one highly compressed file, by Mark Simpson  (Independent on Sunday, August 2001) Perhaps the best thing about digital music is that it doesn’t only make listening to music more convenient and less irksome: it actually does part of the tiresome job of …

February 24, 2013 – 1:20 pm | By Mark Simpson | Posted in journalism, music, review | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (2)

Becks’ Bum: Satisfaction or Disappointment?

I don’t have much to say about the much-discussed latest Beckham ad for his H&M pants, directed by fellow LA-loving Brit Guy Ritchie, in which he runs through Beverly Hills in his white slippers as the props and scenery conspire to remove his clothes, Cupid Stunt–like. Except: Those slippers must be really, really snug to stay on. And: …

February 10, 2013 – 9:07 pm | By Mark Simpson | Posted in advertising, commentary, metrosexual, metrosexy | Tagged , , , , | Comments (2)

How to Spot a Sodomite

Mark Simpson reviews some famous Victorian bum holes in Neil McKenna’s Fanny & Stella (the Independent) “I had never seen anything like it before… I do not in my practise ever remember to have seen such an appearance of the anus, as those of the prisoners presented.” So testified Dr Paul in shocked tones at the trial of …

February 9, 2013 – 10:13 am | By Mark Simpson | Posted in gay, review | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)