Category Archives: television

In Defence of Jerry Lewis

Martin and Lewis were the hottest male comedy double-act of all time — who make today’s ‘bromance’ look like bromide. By Mark Simpson (Originally appeared in Out, May 2009 — but has fallen off their website) Forget hair whorls, genomes, amniotic fluid, older brothers, domineering mothers or disco. I can reveal with absolute, religio-scientific certainty

Jedward: The Most Talented Act To Ever Appear on X Factor

Lewis and Martin’s 50’s Love Makes Today’s Bromance Look Like Bromide

This month’s Outfeatures a column by yours truly, called ‘In Defense of Jerry Lewis’, explaining how my childhood love for early Lewis made me the man I am today — and why his anarchic comedy partnership with Dean Martin in the ‘repressed’ 1950s was a kind of queer punk rock before even rock and roll

Little Britain Touches Up Uncle Sam

By Mark Simpson (Guardian, 20 October, 2008) ‘What other culture could have produced someone like Ernest Hemingway,’ waspish bisexual American exile Gore Vidal once asked of America’s favourite so-butch-he’s-camp writer, ‘and not seen the joke?’. The answer, was, of course, that only a culture that couldn’t see the joke could produce a Hemingway. I don’t