OUTCAST WORLD

As Reform UK surges, the Green Party continues to grow and Labour struggles to hold its coalition together, the episode explores why more young gay men appear to be drifting towards right wing politics online — and what that says about masculinity, social media, identity and the modern culture war.

Topics include Nigel Farage, Reform UK, Green politics, Labour’s decline, queer identity, dating culture, internet discourse, TikTok radicalisation, cancellation, reality TV fame, LGBTQ+ politics and the growing ideological divide inside queer communities.

Featuring discussion around I Kissed A Boy, I Kissed A Girl, queer representation in British media and what it means to be publicly queer in an increasingly polarised online world.

The BBC made history with I Kissed A Boy and I Kissed A Girl.

Then they cancelled them.

In this episode of Outcast World, Graeme Smith is joined by Gareth Valentino and Amy Spalding, two of the standout names from those shows, now launching their own podcast It Started With A Kiss.

What starts as a conversation about queer TV quickly turns into something else.

We get into what it actually felt like to come out on national television, the reality of sudden visibility, and why those shows mattered more than the BBC seems willing to admit.

Then it shifts.

Gay men being brutal to each other.

Lesbian solidarity.

Open relationships, when they work and when they really don’t.

Chemsex culture.

Internalised homophobia.

And a story about a relationship that went very wrong, involving secrecy, betrayal, and HIV disclosure, that says more about queer dating than most people are willing to say out loud.

This is part one of a two-part conversation.

In part two, we go further into the politics, Trump, trans rights, the UK, and why queer culture feels like it’s moving forward and backwards at the same time.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Why I Kissed A Boy and I Kissed A Girl mattered

02:30 What it felt like to come out on TV

06:00 The reality of sudden queer visibility

10:00 Gay men vs gay men

13:00 Lesbian solidarity vs male toxicity

16:00 Open relationships, reality vs fantasy

20:00 When non-monogamy goes wrong

24:00 Dating, sex, and honesty in queer culture

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ABOUT OUTCAST WORLD

Outcast World is queer politics, sex and culture.

Smart, funny, occasionally filthy.

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This week Topher is back on, and on the last episode we found out about "felchgate". The perfect Valentines Day treat where a regular hookup was given a treat from a donor. If you know you now. The DL bad boys can be the kinkiest sometimes.

This time it's news on one of his all time faves, fresh from a decade in prison taking Topher on a cute date in Soho.

And we're talking about The Baftas Incident. Did we need to pitch people with disabilities and people of colour against each other? After a week to digest it we're talking it through.

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Graeme and Topher meant to record a serious episode but then got side tracked on a half hour series of glorious tangents. The best of which is right at the start:

Valentines day has been and gone....What did you do?

Topher had a date pop round and he had a very specific request ... (googles F3LCHING....)

It's one of those episodes. Enjoy.

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This helps us become easier to discover. Please take time to rate the show and if you're enjoying the podcast then take time to comment about it wherever you listen.

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You may already know Carl Cashman as the Liberal Democrat politician who keeps making headlines for being ridiculously in shape and unapologetically shirtless on Instagram. The “world’s hottest politician” label follows him everywhere.

But what happens when the internet crush turns out to be smart, likeable, politically ambitious — and fully aware that the gays love him?

Recorded live in front of an audience at the BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! Gallery in Fitzrovia, London, Graeme sits down with the 34-year-old leader of Liverpool City Council’s Liberal Democrats to talk trust after the coalition years, immigration rhetoric, trans rights, a possible hung parliament, and what the UK does in a world shaped by Farage, Le Pen and Trump.

In a political era dominated by culture-war strongmen, is a pro-EU, openly progressive politician who actually enjoys queer support… such a bad thing?

This is the political half of a longer live conversation. To hear the full interview, head to the BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! Podcast.

Everything you do online is tracked, fix it in two minutes, get up to 75% off NordVPN on outcastworld.net

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This helps us become easier to discover. Please take time to rate the show and if you're enjoying the podcast then take time to comment about it wherever you listen.

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Drag has never been more visible, but for many performers it has never felt more complicated.

In this episode of Outcast World, Graeme Smith speaks to Crystal about what it’s really like to be a drag artist in 2026. They talk about the idea of “quiet quitting drag”, the rising pressure on LGBTQ performers, and why staying visible now comes with real personal and professional risks.

Crystal joins the show while still involved in an ongoing legal dispute with Laurence Fox that is due back in court this summer. She tells us whether or not she would say it all again... after 6 years of legal battles.

Everything you do online is tracked, fix it in two minutes, get up to 75% off NordVPN on outcastworld.net

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This helps us become easier to discover. Please take time to rate the show and if you're enjoying the podcast then take time to comment about it wherever you listen.

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We’re joined by Kevin Guyan — one of the UK’s most compelling thinkers on queer life, power and systems. Kevin is a leading academic at the University of Edinburgh and the author of Queer Data and The Rainbow Trap, two books that have become essential reading on how LGBTQ+ lives are shaped, sorted and managed by institutions.

It’s about data. Not as numbers, but as power.

Kevin asks the question most of us never think to ask until it’s too late: what actually happens when queer people are counted? Because being counted doesn’t automatically mean being protected. Sometimes it means being exposed.

We unpack the seductive promise of visibility — the idea that if the state knows we exist, we’ll be safer. Kevin explains why data is never neutral. Every statistic hides decisions about who felt safe enough to answer, who stayed silent, who was answered for, and who disappeared entirely. Once those numbers exist, they travel — into headlines, policy, algorithms and systems far beyond our control.

Using the UK census as a starting point, Kevin shows how queer communities globally are trapped in a brutal bind: counted badly, our numbers are weaponised; not counted at all, our existence can be denied. Either way, data doesn’t just describe us — it acts on us.

The conversation darkens as we look at history and the future. Data collected in one political moment doesn’t vanish when politics change. It waits.

We also explore the algorithmic systems already deciding who you are without asking — sexuality inferred from clicks, gender guessed from behaviour, profiles built silently while you scroll.

What happens when the system knows who you are — and you can’t take it back?

Everything you do online is tracked, fix it in two minutes, get up to 75% off NordVPN on outcastworld.net

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This helps us become easier to discover. Please take time to rate the show and if you're enjoying the podcast then take time to comment about it wherever you listen.

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Since around 2020, a lot of queer people were finally let in.

Into institutions that had ignored us, sidelined us, or treated us as a liability for decades. Suddenly we were wanted. Asked to advise. Asked to represent. Asked to sit on panels, lead staff networks, front Pride content, help “shape culture”. It felt like progress. It felt overdue.

And then something shifted.

The tone cooled. The questions stopped being curious and started being cautious. Budgets disappeared. Projects were quietly killed. People who had been welcomed for their visibility were suddenly treated as awkward, political, or risky. The same doors that had opened so loudly were slammed shut — and we were left standing on the outside, marked as “other” again.

In Part 1 of a two-part interview, we’re joined by Kevin Guyan — one of the UK’s most respected thinkers on LGBTQ+ inclusion, power and systems. Kevin is the author of Queer Data and The Rainbow Trap, books that don’t flatter institutions or offer easy fixes. They ask harder questions about what inclusion actually costs the people being “included”.

We talk about what it really feels like to work inside organisations that love queer visibility but fear queer demands. The exhaustion of unpaid emotional labour. The pressure to be grateful just for having a seat at the table. The quiet expectation that you’ll soften yourself, simplify yourself, make yourself legible to straight managers who decide — consciously or not — which versions of queerness they’re comfortable digesting.

We ask the questions that don’t usually make it into DEI strategy documents.

Do queer people have to perform a role to survive at work?

What happens if you don’t “read” gay?

If you’re trans but don’t fit the image people expect?

If you’re a lesbian who doesn’t behave the way they think lesbians should?

If your identity is complicated, political, messy — or just inconvenient?

Kevin talks about the trap of being invited in on someone else’s terms. About “gratitude politics” — the idea that we should be thankful just to be tolerated. About how quickly inclusion turns into extraction, and how easily queer people become window dressing for institutions unwilling to change anything structural.

This isn’t a conversation about rejecting opportunity. Most of us can’t afford to. It’s about learning how to move through powerful institutions without losing your spine. How to recognise the red flags early. How to tell the difference between real support and rainbow garnish. And how to protect yourself when the political winds inevitably change.

Part 2 takes this further — into how inclusion becomes classification, and how data and bureaucracy are now being used to formalise who belongs, who’s manageable, and who gets erased.

But this first part is about the emotional reality. The whiplash. The silence. The moment you realise the door that opened so confidently can close just as fast.

And what you do next.

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This week on Outcast World, Graeme and Topher accidentally kick a hornet’s nest on TikTok and Instagram and get absolutely swarmed. Bots, right-wing bedwetters, and people arguing with total confidence that red is actually blue. A proper deluge. Where do they all come from, and why do they all sound the same?

There is one bright spot: Green Party deputy leader Zack Polanski shares the post on TikTok, which helps restore some faith in humanity. But like everyone else, we’re still drawn to the worst comments — so we read them. All of them. Then we start replying.

What follows is a scorched-earth comments policy. Bots get called out. Bad arguments get dismantled. Unhinged profiles get gently (and sometimes not so gently) mocked. We end up trolling the trolls so efficiently it becomes a full-time job — and, weirdly, a great day out.

Along the way we get into why Topher will always hire and promote sex workers, and why on earth a certain Mr Yaxley-Lennon publicly complained about being served gay Grindr ads by the algorithm… then chose to post about it. The highlights are here. The comments are unhinged. And yes — we replied to pretty much all of them.

Everything you do online is tracked, fix it in two minutes, get up to 75% off NordVPN on outcastworld.net

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This helps us become easier to discover. Please take time to rate the show and if you're enjoying the podcast then take time to comment about it wherever you listen.

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