Tom Robinson

One of my great heroes - musician, broadcaster and activist, Tom Robinson - was in town this evening to deliver the 4th Annual Allan Horsfall lecture at Liverpool John Moores University. And, of course, I was there to hear him!

Allan Horsfall, who died in 2012, was the founder, back in 1971, of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE) and one of this country’s most important gay activists. And it was fitting indeed that Tom should be asked to give this year’s lecture.

I last met Tom three years ago and I wrote then about how important he is to me www.blipfoto.com/entry/2119868173435013395 so I won’t reiterate all that here. Suffice it to say that I doubt I’d be here now, doing the work I do or involved in the community in any way, had it not been for Tom’s music and his presence in my adolescent life as a role model and source of valuable information and knowledge. So, I was really pleased to have another opportunity to tell him so tonight. And to thank him, wholeheartedly.

In his lecture, which was hugely entertaining as well as very moving, he spoke of having his life changed by hearing David Bowie’s ‘Oh! You Pretty Things’ back in the early ‘70s, and vowing to himself that, if he ever ‘made it’ in the music business himself, he’d also like to be a positive influence in other people’s lives. He succeeded, big time, in my case!

He concluded tonight’s lecture with a rendition of the song which I first heard when I was 12 and which showed me I was not alone, ‘Glad to Be Gay’. So, here he is singing it back in 1979 www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lR3ffBsMTc and here’s a rather more recent version www.youtube.com/watch?v=KggkkKgSrRc

To hear more about Tom’s life and career, do check out both parts of the interview he gave on Scroobius Pip’s Distraction Pieces podcast in 2015 (https://www.acast.com/distractionpieces/tomrobinson-part1-distractionpiecespodcastwithscroobiuspip-64 and https://www.acast.com/distractionpieces/tomrobinson-part2-distractionpiecespodcastwithscroobiuspip-64 )

Before Tom’s excellent lecture, we were treated to a celebration of Allan Horsfall by another hero - the wonderful Peter Tatchell (see the Extra photo). Peter is surely one of the great human rights activists of our times - dedicating his life not only to his work over the years with the Gay Liberation Front (GLF), OutRage and, more recently, the Peter Tatchell Foundation, but to all manner of campaigns for equality, justice and environmental issues across the globe - and he’s been on the receiving end of a great deal of violence for his pains. This is the man who made three separate attempts to make a citizen’s arrest on Robert Mugabe and was savagely beaten as a result, leaving him with brain injuries which still affect him today, and who was also beaten up by ‘the authorities’ when he attended the first ever Pride march in Moscow. It was an honour to get to speak to him this evening and to tell him how much I personally appreciate his single-minded dedication.

If you’re interested in hearing more of the Tatchell story then I recommend the interview he gave to the Homo Sapiens podcast last year http://homosapienspodcast.com/portfolio/episode-05

I’ve had a rather exhausting few weeks, one way and another, but tonight has left me freshly energised and encouraged, just when I needed it!