Latest Bill: A visionary community
Sophie Cook, Head of Latest LGBT+ TV
A Muslim, a Jew, a transgender woman and a Scot walked into a bar. And the punchline is… this is not a joke, this is Latest TV and the way it should be. We don’t talk diversity here, we are diversity. We started an LGBT+ TV channel this year and last year Sophie Cook on Latest TV became the first transgender newscaster in Europe.
I’m writing this having just watched Sophie on The Premier League Football Show with Gabby Logan and it’s great to see at last the big institutions (the BBC and the Premier League) beginning to cover what we in Brighton have covered… and I’m tempted to put forever! And let’s have a word of praise for the fans at Whitehawk who sing Homophobia We Say No at every game – and very tunefully too – and players like Brighton’s Liam Rosenior and Whitehawk’s Danny Mills who have spoken out on Latest TV about welcoming gay players to the dressing room. And of course there are out players in the Women’s game. But I think it does need to be said that there are still no “out” players in the Premier League.
Let’s have a word of praise for the fans at Whitehawk who sing Homophobia We Say No
I say we’ve been covering this forever because in the 1980s we had a gay weekly column in The Punter, the forerunner of The Latest and since the early 1990s in Brighton we’ve had Gscene, James Ledward’s so readable magazine. I love it even though I’m “the only straight in the village”. I’d love arches at the bottom of St James’ Street welcoming you to our home like Chinatown in London. Can we have some money spent on our side of the Pier please as again it seems like we’ve been asking this for 50 years!
Summer is coming, the clocks go forward now and so come on down. We’ve got a great new restaurant Mat Gillian’s Pike and Pine at Redroaster, we’ve got the legendary Catalyst Club with the Gogglebox stars Andrew and Pascal and “teen idol” Louis Michael this week at Latest Musicbar. I love Marmalade cafe, the Hand in Hand: the pub for jazz and conversation and obviously Kemptown has the best gay clubs and bars in the UK. It’s a great place to live! I live there! And Paul Bonnet can find you a flat or a house. And please catch As We Are, Deborah Espect’s riveting story of our diverse communities, set in Kemptown, on Latest TV or on YouTube at bit.ly/2iheUAV.
I look forward to the big institutions catching up with visionary and free Kemptown!
