AK Soufflé: Just awards

Brighton and Hove, we’re awards crazy, barely a week goes by without some event of celebration taking place. I’m not complaining, it’s great that we have so much to celebrate surely, although there are perhaps rather too many in certain sectors.

A week ago I was invited to attend and present a couple of awards at the Golden Handbag Awards ceremony, held once again at the Hilton Metropole. It was a massive affair with hundreds of representatives of our beautiful LGBT+ community, many of them nominees, many supporters and by no means all of us gay. The evening was hosted by the irrepressible Lola Lasagne and few could have controlled the over excited attendees better, firm but fair in my view and very funny too. There was cabaret too with the leg end that is Maisie Trollete heading rapidly to his 85th birthday and still able to belt out a tune and hold the audience. Equally impressive was Kara Van Park, full throttle chanteuse and confident performer on all levels. I wasn’t enamoured of Myra Dubois who seemed flustered in the delivery of what was good material and let down by poor vocals but hey, he was late arriving and no doubt thrown by that.

Hundreds of representatives of our beautiful LGBT+ community

I was sat on the Mayor’s table and right next to our new Mayor Cllr Mo Marsh, a tiny bundle of exuberant fun. She was paired up in presenting with the force that is Dave Lynn, poor Mo, she stood very little chance of getting a word in. I was luckier in presenting with Kemp Town’s new Labour MP, hooray, Lloyd Russell-Moyle who got a rousing round of applause as did Sophie Cook when I pointed out her tremendous achievement in East Worthing and Shoreham-by-Sea.

But the highlight for me was at the end of the evening when local hero, editor of Gscene and creator of the awards James Ledward, made his special award to a lady that I hold in the highest esteem. Finola Brophy is chair of the Rainbow Chorus a tireless figure for that organisation alone. But her tireless approach to what she does is far more far-reaching than just that and James made it fully clear just how hard this lady works and for so many causes and organisations.

It was a fun evening enjoyed by all, although the kitchen might need to reconsider the sandwiches that we were served, not a good indication of what one might expect from a prestige hotel. It is great to see how the community gets behind these wide-ranging awards and hats off once again to James Ledward and his team for once again making this happen.