Bad Gays

Happy pride! Gather around, we've got a story to tell! For Stonewall weekend, a special treat: writer, critic, and journalist Cameron Cook joins Ben to talk about the one and only Liza through the stories of the bad (and good) gays in her life, from her father Vincente Minnelli to her first husband Peter Allen to her diabolical fourth husband David Gest. Liza learned on her (and our) mother Judy Garland's knee how to survive by appealing to gay guys. Gay guys used Judy, then Liza to self-fashion. None of it is particularly healthy, and yet we love it so. Our main source for this episode was Liza's new memoir, Kids, Wait Til You Hear This!, and Cameron's newsletter Cooked, with monthly essays and regular music playlists for pop culture obsessives, can be found here.

Support our work by subscribing to Extra Bad Gays on Patreon or Apple, and get an extra monthly episode!

The final episode of our saga: Mandelson's fall from grace in the aftermath of Keir Starmer's election first as leader of the Labour Party and then as one of Britain's most rapidly unpopular Prime Ministers.

Can't get enough Mandelson? Subscribe now to Extra Bad Gays to hear our subscriber-only followup discussion with James Butler of the LRB and Juliet Jacques of Suite 212.

Mandelson knows too much, understands too much, to be left out of the equation. It’s because he’s sly and underhanded and deceitful that people need him, because it’s a political system that works on those qualities. This is court politics; it’s what Mandelson is a master of, it’s what Epstein was a master of, it’s what Trump is a master of: the informal power of relationships.

----more----

SOURCES:

Mandelson and the making of New Labour, Donald Macintyre

Mandy: The Unauthorised Biography of Peter Mandelson, Paul Routledge

Outrageous! The Story of Section 28 and Britain's Battle for LGBT Education, Paul Baker

Tory Pride and Prejudice: The Conservative Party and homosexual law reform, Michael McManus

The Rivals : the intimate story of a political marriage, James Naughtie

Bloody Nasty People, Daniel Trilling

Clampdown: Pop-Cultural wars on class and Gender, Rhian E. Jones

1997: The Future That Never Happened, Richard Power Sayeed

Authentocrats: Culture, Politics and the New Seriousness, Joe Kennedy

https://www.parliament.uk/business/lords/house-of-lords-podcast/lord-mandelson-lord-speakers-corner/

https://newhistories.sites.sheffield.ac.uk/volumes/2011-12/volume-3/issue-7-open-theme/the-long-road-to-repeal-the-labour-party-and-section-28

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jan/25/mandelson.labour6

https://ntouk.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/wilsons-white-heat-of-technology-speech.pdf

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/media-the-dirty-world-of-mr-punch-1187016.html#:~:text=Last%20week%20an%20internationally%20famous,then%2Downers%2C%20United%20Newspapers.

https://jennifrazer.com/mandelson-judaism-lord-levy-jc-dad/

https://johnmajorarchive.org.uk/1993/10/08/mr-majors-speech-to-1993-conservative-party-conference-8-october-1993/

https://www.parliament.uk/business/lords/house-of-lords-podcast/lord-mandelson-lord-speakers-corner/

https://newhistories.sites.sheffield.ac.uk/volumes/2011-12/volume-3/issue-7-open-theme/the-long-road-to-repeal-the-labour-party-and-section-28

https://www.newsweek.com/one-bonk-and-youre-out-181768

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jan/25/mandelson.labour6

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/oct/03/mandelson.labour2

https://www.thepinknews.com/2020/12/23/peter-mandelson-boris-johnson-bum-boys-about-homophobic-attack/

https://petertatchell.net/lgbt_rights/outing/catalyst/

https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/public-attitudes-section-28

https://www.gryklaw.com/https-www-gryklaw-com-lgbt-history-month-coming-of-age-same-sex-relationship-immigration-rights/

https://www.theguardian.com/century/1990-1999/Story/0,,112756,00.html

https://www.private-eye.co.uk/pictures/special_reports/justice-lost-in-the-post.pdf

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/see-epsteins-full-birthday-book-with-alleged-personal-messages-from-trump-clinton-and-others

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdr6yjzkvx6o

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/630399.stm

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/nov/17/northernireland.guardianleaders

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68079300

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/peter-mandelson-why-its-taken-me-27-years-to-marry-the-love-of-my-life-3gx8cfgs5

https://www.stonewall.org.uk/resources/lgbtq-hubs/trans-hub/gender-recognition-act-2004

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2007/05/10/the-great-performer-leaves-the-stage

https://www.tuc.org.uk/sites/default/files/extras/lgbt09.pdf

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/oct/13/mandelson-lords

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/oct/13/mandelson-gayrights

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2008/oct/25/corfu-rothschild-russia-osborne-travel

https://www.politico.eu/article/mandelson-backed-by-commission/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/22/former-trump-campaign-chief-paul-manafort-offered-help-putin-russia

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article384041.ece

https://www.scotsman.com/news/italian-shoe-magnate-steps-forward-to-sponsor-spruce-up-for-colosseum-1693900

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/oct/05/over-330000-excess-deaths-in-great-britain-linked-to-austerity-finds-study

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2007/nov/29/politicalcolumnists.gordonbrown

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/benefits-dwp-cuts-conservatives-austerity-cap-b2956620.html

https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/labour/peter-mandelson-firm-lobbies-tiktok-shell-water-labour-3409771

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2012/03/labour-party-within-progress

https://labourlist.org/2013/06/falkirk-clp-placed-in-special-measures-over-selection-allegations/

https://labourlist.org/2017/02/mandelson-i-am-working-every-day-to-bring-down-corbyn/

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/apr/27/mandelson-and-mcsweeney-a-partnership-forged-on-winning-and-crushing-the-labour-left

https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/keir-starmer-labour-leadership-election-abolish-tuition-fees-nationalisation-396843

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/keir-starmers-not-driving-the-train-confessions-of-his-inner-circle-mq2kbg39x

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/may/14/who-is-josh-simons-labour-mp-andy-burnham

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/06/labour-thinktank-close-to-morgan-mcsweeney-allegedly-paid-firm-to-investigate-journalists

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/apr/27/mandelson-and-mcsweeney-a-partnership-forged-on-winning-and-crushing-the-labour-left

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/20/labour-minister-falsely-linked-journalists-to-pro-kremlin-network-in-emails-to-gchq

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/28/keir-starmer-leadership-labour-leader-left

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/dec/20/appointment-peter-mandelson-new-uk-ambassador-to-us-divides-labour-mps

https://archive.progressivebritain.org/2013/06/27/no-more-falkirks/

peterchrome-extension://oemmndcbldboiebfnladdacbdfmadadm/https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69b13135cdd628b29e3495f8/V1_FINAL.pdf

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26086390-jeffey-epstein-50th-birthday-book/

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/apr/16/revealed-mandelson-failed-vetting-but-foreign-office-overruled-decision

https://www.ft.com/content/fdf7afe9-9ad3-4325-8843-f590dcdd7e57?syn-25a6b1a6=1

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/world/europe/ties-peter-mandelson-jeffrey-epstein.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn82elvzpz7o

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd9el4dw0z3o

https://archive.ph/uWXFn

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crrjd2kxw2lo

https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA00764113.pdf

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/peter-mandelson-epstein-swear-ambassador-trump-b2693376.html

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/04/starmer-confirms-he-knew-mandelson-kept-epstein-ties-after-prison-term

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jan/11/peter-mandelson-declines-to-apologise-for-association-with-jeffrey-epstein

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/jeffrey-epstein-peter-mandelson-emails-b2914283.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/world/europe/ties-peter-mandelson-jeffrey-epstein.html

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/04/starmer-confirms-he-knew-mandelson-kept-epstein-ties-after-prison-term

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/05/how-epstein-scandal-shaken-british-government-peter-mandelson

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/06/peter-mandelson-election-labour-insiders

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/apr/20/peter-mandelson-a-timeline-of-his-appointment-as-uk-ambassadorto-the-us

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czx26yz7kxzo

https://www.ft.com/content/fdf7afe9-9ad3-4325-8843-f590dcdd7e57?syn-25a6b1a6=1

Today we are reaching the next to last chapter––for now!––of the Mandelson story.

Listen to the sixth and final episode now by subscribing to Extra Bad Gays on Patreon.

As we are recording this, on 18th May 2026, the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, is facing a potential leadership challenge and a collapse in legitimacy following two major crises, both of these the responsibility of Peter Mandelson; one, directly, the other a consequence of the changes of which Mandelson has been the driving force of for almost 40 years. The first crisis is Starmer’s appointment of Mandelson as Ambassador to the United States, despite his having failed a Foreign Office vetting procedure, and the fallout of that once Mandelson was outed as a close long-term friend of the child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, to whom it’s alleged he passed sensitive government and financial information while in power. The other is the complete decimation of Labour in the recent local elections, and in elections for the Welsh and Scottish devolved assemblies, which saw the party lose close to 1500 local council seats and, in Wales, lose a century-long winning streak as the country’s largest party. In today’s episode we’ll talk about Mandelson’s journey from MP to peer to Ambassador, and we’ll also discuss how his enormous influence over that time, usually behind the scenes, has led to a Labour Party and indeed the two party system itself on the edge of total collapse.

Peter Mandelson has been the definitive comeback kid of British politics, and it’s impossible to ever rule out his return.

Listen to Episode Five right now and get Extra Bad Gays every month by subscribing on Patreon!

Today, we will learn why he got that reputation as we look at Mandelson in power. The Millennium Dome, a Y2K fever dream! His public outing! A wider cultural shift in attitudes towards gay men, one which contributed to the idea that poofs were everywhere at the top of society! Resignations, and returns!

This week, on Mandelson: A Homosexual History, we cover the 1992 UK election and the birth of New Labour.

Subscribe on Patreon to support our work and stay a week ahead on this miniseries!

If Huw's Margaret Thatcher wasn't enough to turn your stomach, try his John Major on for size. Neil Kinnock loses the 1992 election. John Smith becomes leader of the Labour Party, flanked by two feuding up-and-coming reformers named Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. Peter Mandelson buys a lovely home in Notting Hill with questionable financing, and sets himself to defeating Clause IV once and for all. The exciting but fundamentally reactionary Cool Britannia cultural moment helps us understand how tentative New Labour were about rocking the cultural boat. Their victory in 1997 was more about stasis than change.

Subscribe on Patreon to hear Episode Three now, get our monthly Extra Bad Gays episodes, and stay a week ahead on the miniseries.

Last week we looked at Mandelson’s early years, and his move from a flirtation with Marxism to being firmly on the right of the Labour Party. We also discussed the left-right split in the Labour Party, and how, in the 1980s, that became a full blown civil war. This week, it's time for the 1987 General Election, and for the paranoid homophobia of late-Eighties Britain: section 28, sleaze, AIDS panic, and tabloid hell.

Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays on Apple Podcasts or Patreon to hear Episode Two of Mandelson: A Homosexual History now, and to stay a week ahead as the miniseries continues.

They call him the Prince of Darkness. Peter Mandelson's decades-long political career is a skeleton key to everything that's gone wrong in Western politics in the last forty years. He's a spin doctor, a sometime minister, and a networker whose downfall through the Epstein files now threatens the survival of the British government. This miniseries examines his gay life and times, tracing the collapse of mass politics, the emergence of neoliberalism, and the political history of homosexuality in the UK, from decriminalisation to Section 28, from Sleaze to Gay Marriage. A Faustian story, Mandelson: A Homosexual History plays out on a world-historical scale, but at its heart is driven by the failures and compromises of greed and lust. In Episode One, we trace the emergence of Mandleson’s career in the Labour Party, and the formation of the networks of power that would help hollow out British social democracy in the years of Thatcher and Blair. 

THIS IS A TRAILER! SUBSCRIBE ON APPLE OR PATREON TO HEAR THE FULL EPISODE 

We have heard your pleas. The news has made them even more urgent. We're going to do a whole main feed Peter Mandelson episode in Season 10: but for now, here's a taste of our legally-bounded musings on his arrest and what it says about UK political culture. We also talk about a Wired article about a supposed gay mafia in the tech world that doesn't deliver on its promises, and take Gaggony Guncles questions from an enby worried about their relationships with their cis family and a cis woman wondering what to call her enby coparent. Plus, we descend into madness imagining Liza Minnelli hosting a floor mop infomercial.

Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays on Apple Podcasts or Patreon to support our work, get monthly bonus episodes, and join our community of listeners!

Live from Helsinki, we close out our season with Tom of Finland, the man who advertised the concept of gay masculinity to gays becoming men. Originally his illustrations were controversial because of his graphic depictions of gay sex, of sodomy and cocksucking and fisting in a pre-liberation, pre-internet age. Today, things have changed so much you can buy Tom branded products in department stores like Selfridges, and books of his drawings in Barnes and Noble. But at the same time, his representations of Black men and of Nazi aesthetics have drawn new criticisms, even while the fisting and piss and cock-sucking have become perfect home decorations. And the influence of his work on gay male sex cultures, on ideals of queer masculinities, and especially on leather scenes, remains enormous and contested.

----more----

SOURCES:

F. Valentine Hooven III, Tom Of Finland: His Life And Times (St. Martin's, 1992)

Arnie Kantrowitz, Swastika Toys, in Leatherfolk, edited by Mark Thompson, pp. 193–209.

Carta Monir, "Morally Erect," Lux Magazine, https://lux-magazine.com/article/tom-of-finland/

https://worldcrunch.com/in-the-news/tom-of-finland-double-life-of-the-gay-icon-who-changed-a-nation/ 

https://www.myhelsinki.fi/visit/lgbtqia-in-helsinki/tom-of-finlands-helsinki/

https://kunstkritikk.com/the-cult-of-iconified-homosexuality/

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.