It Started With A Kiss…

hirty years ago, come 30th January, Southern Television (the 1970’s equivalent of today’s ITV Meridian) broadcast a half-hour documentary about people in . Sadly, the pleasure Tand triumph that must have been felt by activists featured in the programme turned sour the next day, when one of them got sacked from his job. Protesters from all over the country converged on British Home Stores’ Oxford Street branch and local campaigners left the general public of Brighton and Worthing in no doubt as to their feelings. Tony Whitehead later became a founding father of the Terrence Higgins Trust. Our Survey Said….

his year’s Brighton Pride was, undoubtedly, one of the best ever for Ourstory. Set free from the experienced by three generations of confining shackles of the market area we were able to stretch our legs, and our new exhibition - and gay men in Brighton and . Head down TMeet Our Ancestors - into a roomy tent, complete with working gramophone. Our larger space to the rather swish Joogleberry Playhouse just also meant many more people had the chance to browse our display, have a mooch and chat. As off St James St on Sat 11th Feb at 4pm (with the well as this, many of you took the time to fill in a special questionnaire designed to see if our long bar open from 3.15pm). Tickets £5/3.50 term plans - to have a permanent home for the archive - were what you wanted as well. available in advance.

Happily, our survey revealed that this was an We’ve also been delighted to help and advise aim you agreed with. Of 93 respondents 92% Brighton & Hove Council’s LGBT Workers’ thought it very important to have an LGB Forum with their Winter Pride event History Centre in Brighton and would visit it. celebrating the Arts Balls, which took Two thirds of respondents were local, with a place in the years following World War II. In third from outside Sussex, while 54 women those days, prizes were awarded for the best took part, as compared to 37 men with one fancy dress costume. Grant, an Ourstory person m2f. contributor and regular at the balls, recalls “a unless otherwise stated. Registered charity no. 1106242. certain number of queens used to spend the whole of the summer sitting on the Men’s Above: The protest outside the Brighton branch of BHS in Xavier Mayne Beach, sewing sequins on the gowns”. 1976 by members of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality In September, Tom - one of the group’s andTimes University of Sussex Gay Soc. founders - gave an entertaining talk to the Of course, we couldn’t sign out without Right: How Gay News covered the story. Friends of Ourstory on one of the people mentioning the sad loss of entertainer Phil Left: A review of the upcoming programme in the Sunday highlighted in Meet Our Ancestors - Edward Above: Val winds up the gramaphone in the Ourstory Starr in October. We have fond memories of ’ TV pages. Prime Stevenson. This globetrotting American tent at this year’s Pride. this kind and unpretentious man giving an opera queen from the turn of the century (who exquisite benefit performance in our Lavender also took the rather exotic name of Xavier add them to the collection. Thanks go to the Lounge Bar show in 1999. Read more about New in the archive Mayne) was author of many a groundbreaking archivists and conservator who’ve been Phil on page 3 gay book. guiding us through the rigours of caring for our collections to a professional standard, to Until 2006... We’re delighted that so many A Youth of Fourteen by (Julie Burchill's story of Archive catalogue training has been going the Ourstory volunteers who’ve worked so of you keep an eye out for Aubrey Fowkes and Finistere young love, filmed in apace and we’ve just completed the listing of hard during the training and to Global Grants things to give to the Ourstory by Fritz Peters. Nina has Brighton). Nina, Sally, Ben the Brighton Campaign for Homosexual for the money to do it. Many more collections to archive. Over the last few given us some more recent and Graeme have all Equality/Brighton Gay Community be catalogued during 2006. Death of months, LAGNA (Lesbian lesbian fiction, including donated contemporary press Organisation collection. We have lots of files, and Gay Newsmedia Archive) Sarah Waters' Tipping the cuttings, posters, flyers and newsletters, scripts for gay play readings and Winter Pride have sent us copies of their Velvet and Jackie Kay's magazines, while Veronica ongoing campaigns. Some correspondence a legend. press cutting collection for Trumpet. These will all grace has sent us a selection of needs to be kept confidential but otherwise the Winter Pride and LGBT History Month are East Sussex from the 1950s to the shelves alongside our lesbian and gay magazines files are now available - if you’d like to come turning into regular fixtures in the calendar - the present. Two lots of books existing library of about 300 from the 1970s-90s. Jean's and take a look, either for research or general and with a more cultural feel than summer’s We pay have come our way - Francis titles of interest to lesbian and photograph taken in Alciston interest, give us a call on Brighton 206655. hedonistic pleasures we feel we fit right in. brought in ten gay men's gay browsers. Graeme churchyard has inspired a bit This year we’re putting on Really Living, an tribute on books written in the 1950s persuaded a relative to make of delving and perhaps a If anyone out there has other official files for Ourstory production not seen for fifteen years. and '60s, including Song of us a DVD of the television piece for the next newsletter. these organisations that they would like to It's a moving performance with film and music the Loon by Richard Amory, drama series, Sugar Rush Thank-you all! pass on to us for safe keeping, we’d be glad to that evokes the challenges and delights page 3.

Brighton Ourstory, PO Box 2861, Brighton BN1 1UN Tel: 01273 206655 Email: [email protected] Online: www.brightonourstory.co.uk Issue 18 • Winter 2005 Designed by Benedict Brook and Joyce Chester • Printed by Beaumont Schubert 01273 749947 • Text Copyright © 2005 Brighton Ourstory A Tribute to James Arthur Fuller Rookie to Raunchy (aka Phil Starr) his is the story of how Bubbles (Iris) Ashdown joined the Army and of bread and marg and Too obvious started her fifty year love affair with the Brighton gay scene. Taken jam and put them in Tfrom an interview conducted a few months before her death in 1993. my steel helmet. And “There weren’t many clubs at that f you’ve been living in Brighton these last few months you can’t then one day a new time, the Marine Hotel was the have failed to notice the impact the death of Phil Starr has had on “My date of birth was 25th June started asking questions, you see. officer came, a Miss main scene. Pigott’s was a pub in Ithe community. A female impersonator from the old school, his 1925 but according to the Army I So I thought the only answer was Peach, she was a St James’s Street. There’d be a career and life ended, not with a whimper, but while he was still was born 25th June 1923. I had to that May and I would join the second lieutenant. woman called Dolly that used to going strong. He had just taken over Starr’s Bar and Hotel on the add two years to join the Army. I Army so we both went up and In those days play the piano and it was queer, it New Steine, he was lined up as the lead in drag panto Babes in the had my first affair with a girl at volunteered at Waterloo Place. you weren’t was a queer pub, so I felt right Bushes and there was even talk of a BBC sitcom. twelve. Her name was May - I met Unfortunatley, May had been in under military there. her at school, she was a bit older the Territorials - she was ex- law so she fist drag act at Legends 14 years than me. My Grandfather put me service and it was my first time in, was called You used to get soldiers coming in previously, and now he bowed to quite a nice private school but so she never went to the same ‘Miss’ and and they used to start a fight with out with a rendition of Vera his seventies, he finally sold up in 1941 I decided there was no place as me. I went to Norton she was the queer boys. I remember some Lynn’s We’ll Meet Again. Sadly, and moved to the coast. But his future for me in Brighton because Barracks in Worcestershire and what was of the soldiers would come in we were not to meet Phil again. diary remained full not only by I was born illegitimate, which was then to Donnington on the Welsh called quite friendly, you know and of the sea, up in London and even very unfortunate, and everyone Borders. PAD course there was always a good Born in Croydon in 1932 Phil as far afield as Thailand. officer, sing-song night there. There was began his career in the RAF, which a girl called Laurie and Laurie stationed in Singapore. Upon his Recently his Arsenic and Old was was a big butch lesbian. She return a life on the stage Lace persona saw him team up would sing Nature Boy. She’d got beckoned and he began with David Raven (aka Maisie Passive Air a good voice. And the soldiers performing in Call Us Mister - Trollete), while Brain Ralfe and Defence. And she rode this didn’t mind her singing, although the last ever touring drag show. Lee Tracey persuaded him to bloody bicycle and she called out, she was very butch, all collar and Above: Phil’s final performance at After the chorus line finished take part in the infamous and “Gas!”, which meant we had to do Coming to tie, you know, the works. And Legends Bar on Brighton’s seafront, Phil kept performing -mostly in popular drag pantos. the drill: swing your gas mask Brighton was like a new world - then there was this very camp just a few days before his death. East End bars. He also managed round, put your gas mask on - of Brighton was different. I queen, and he was so camp that Photos courtesy G Scene magazine. the Two Brewers pub in His funeral, attended by course, I had a jam sandwich in remember the Marine Hotel, which one day a soldier took a poke at Clapham, South London, turning hundreds, was testament to his it, didn’t I? Up on a charge, not many do. It was on the him - ‘cause he was too obvious: What stirred most people, it from unsuccessful straight popularity in this town and ‘Stealing Army Rations’. I lost seafront. Bill Lloyd - of course a ‘Dahling’ and all that. I used to however, was that his death pub to widely popular gay bar. beyond. Phil Starr was a one off two days’ pay and I was woman - used to run the intervene, very nicely, ‘cause I came just days after he brought and much loved Brighton figure. confined to barracks. But to me downstairs. I found it because I was quite diplomatic in those the curtain down on Legends bar It wasn’t long before he was a We wish him well on the next it was all exciting, I was only got friendly with a girl - I didn’t days. I wasn’t in uniform but I as it closed for an extended regular on the Brighton scene stage he steps across. sixteen, it was thrilling, you see. know if she was queer but turned would talk the Army jargon. I got refurbishment. He had been the and five years ago, just short of out afterwards she was. We went friendly with the queer boys walking one night, saw this couple because they were illegal and I Bill Lloyd of butch types and we followed was illegal. I was twenty-five Hold Very Tight, Please War Stories Wanted “I knew I liked women but it them and they went down this years in the Army.” wasn’t an important issue. I basement at this Marine Hotel. didn't analyse it, I didn’t think, And it was fabulous - remember n cold windy nights when esearcher at the University of ‘Oh dear, I'm a lesbian - Oh it's been wartime and every- Hove-bound Ourstorians have Lancaster, Emma Vickers, is Dear God, help me’ - you thing’s been rather austere - and Marine Hotel on the corner of Marine Oto wait a very long time for a Rlooking for lesbians and gay know. It was just one of those there’s this beautiful velvet and Parade and Broad Street in 1947. bus home, their hearts are now men who were in the armed forces things. It was part of life. I chandeliers. I couldn’t believe it. It sometimes warmed by the arrival during World War Two. She’s was just a person. But in the was full of lesbians - charming, of Brighton’s latest diesel dyke, Dr doing a PhD and would love to Army I was illegal, so I kept well-dressed women, some in bow- Helen Boyle, masquerading as a accompanied by a series of female interview people about their my nose clean. About 1943 or ties and some feminine. And they number 49 bus. A recent arrival at companions. To find out more experiences. She can be contacted ‘42, I did have a little affair fawned over me! I was very the depot, Dr Boyle spent fifty about this talented, determined at [email protected] or at with an assistant adjutant at young, having joined the Army at years of her life helping sick and compassionate woman, visit the History Department, a women’s camp. If we’d fifteen and war ended in 1945. For women and children in Brighton, www.womenofbrighton.co.uk and University of Lancaster, been caught, it would have me it was a new thing. It was to find out even more, take a look Lancaster LA1 4YG. If you have been very, very nasty. fantastic! at issue no 12 of this newsletter, already recorded your memories Bubbles soon after she’d joined up in “I had my first charge in the available at with us and would be happy for her ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service) Army, then. We used to march “Soon after the war I got stationed www.brightonourstory.co.uk. us to allow Emma access to those uniform, possibly on Ditchling Road, two miles to work at the depot and in Brighton - Tower House on Thanks go to Val Brown for tape recordings, please give us a where she lived we had no refreshments so I used Preston Road, which was rather nominating Dr Boyle to Brighton call on 01273 206655. to take myself a couple of big bits lovely, with a transport company. continued on next page & Hove Bus Company.