News - I'm often grateful for gay rights activist Peter Tatchell. He certainly has a voice that is heard, and worth listening to...and then you get this-

Speaking to The Stage Tatchell criticised UK broadcasters for presenting audiences "camp, cliched stereotypes" with comics such as Alan Carr and Graham Norton, and has called for a wider variety of homosexual comedians on television.

The campaigner said Norton and Carr pander to "very tired archetypes of gay men", which he said helped reinforce prejudice. According to Tatchell, Nortons BBC1 talk show and Alan Carr: Chatty Man on Channel 4 encourage "cheap and easy laughs at the expense of gay people".

Tatchell wants to see more gay comedians take mainstream slots:

"Gay comedians like Graham Norton and Alan Carr are great, but terribly cliched and stereotypical. They pander to very tired archetypes of gay men and are just a continuation of John Inman and Larry Grayson."

"It shows little imagination and can reinforce prejudices. The problem is not that they are camp comedians, but that they are the only kind of gay comedian that have major TV programmes. Why hasn't any intelligent, non-stereotypical comedian like Scott Capurro got a prime-time slot?"

He added: "Heterosexual audiences like laughing at gay men and so people like Alan Carr and Graham Norton fit that bill, whereas Scott Capurro is much too challenging. He makes straight people the butts of his jokes."

The problem with Tatchell's reasoning, for me, is that he is not comparing like with like - and I watch a lot of live comedy and talk shows. He suggests Carr and Capurro should, presumably because they're both gay, be put side by side when deciding who should host a primetime show. If, like me, you think sexuality is a rather bizarre way to categorise entertainers, then you might compare Capurro to another acerbic and frequently offensive comedian, like the 2007 If.Comedy award winner Brendan Burns. Now I love Brendan, but he never could hold down a job on TV (I think he managed 3 days of the I'm A Celebrity spin off before he went crazy on air and quit - genius by the way!)

So my point is that while Tatchell may have something about the current state of prime time talk show hosts, that doesn't detract from the efforts that both Carr and Norton put in to get where they are, both very successful in smaller tv shows predating their prime time status. After all, do you really want to see Evan Davis (gay presenter of Dragon's Den and other economics show) interview Katie Price? Maybe Peter should just change the channel? Of course if anyone want to offer me a job...

I also feel this points to a worrying trend for gay on gay prejudice - where it is desirable to be hyper-masculine, over any other personal choice of who you want to be. What happened to the desire for equality? Aren't we all just queer? What's this emergence of 'no camp guys', or 'no queens' on dating sites all about? Do we really need further segregation? Oh, but that's a whole other kettle of fish, and I'll leave it for another article - or else your comments below.