Joe Lycett on Gay Pride, Sexuality, and Gender

Now, guys, I want to tell you about this project I've been working on for the last year. And there's no nice way of saying this, there's no easy way of saying this. I’m just gonna have to rip the plaster off. For the last year, just under a year, I have been trying to destroy the career of Tom Daley. There's no easy way of saying it. [audience laughs] I said it. It's done- It's out there now. I said it. I said it. I should caveat all of this by saying I think Tom Daley is amazing in lots of ways. He's an Olympic diver, I'm sure you’re aware of Tom Daley. He's gay. I think he was pushed into coming out as gay before he was necessarily ready. There was a lot of fuss about it from the gay press. And he's been a brilliant gay rights advocate in lots of ways. You might have seen that him and his husband, Lance Black, announced a few months ago that  they're having a baby together. Shouldn’t be a brave thing to do in this day and age. But it was, he got a lot of nastiness. And he's been serene throughout the whole thing. So I do think he's brilliant. However, I now want to slag him off. [audience laughs] So, Tom Daley irked me last summer for two reasons. Two Instagram posts, and I'll show them to you now. This is the first one. This is him at gay pride. Love the way that he's extending his arm out there to show the parade march. Love the look of the smile on his face. Beautiful framing there! Before I go into too much detail about this, what's going on with the hand?! Where is the other finger? I've looked at it loads. [audience laughs] I don’t know if it's a lighting thing, whether it was edited out? I can't- I don't know how that happens. [audience laughs] I've got no issue with any of that really, apart from the weird finger. I've got no issue with this other post. Beautifully framed again. His skin looks radiant in that little triangle. Marvelous! Brave to wear a tank top, but he seems to manage it. I think it's wonderful. It's lovely. I've got no issues with any of this. It's all brilliant. I've got no issue with any of this as well, "Happy Pride Everyone! It's been so awesome to take part in my first ever pride," he'd not been  before, "but let's not forget why we have this day and how much more we have to fight for in many other social justice movements around the world!" No issue with any of that. Brilliant that he went to Pride. I think we all should at some point in our lives. It's good fun, if nothing else. My issue with both of these posts is not what's in them. It's what's underneath them. And that is this: “@barclaysuk #Ad” That means Tom Daley was sponsored by Barclays to go to Pride. And I don't have a problem with Tom Daley being sponsored to do lots of things. I understand. When you're athlete, you gotta make your money while you can. You're not monetizable forever. You might break your leg. I totally get being sponsored. But being sponsored to go to Pride, which is a political event. It made me uncomfortable. It's sort of like going "Black Lives Matter – with Tesco!" It made me uncomfortable. [audience laughs] And I didn't want to make a big deal of this. I thought, it's an error in judgment in some ways. I didn't want to make a big fuss about it. All I thought I'd do is a bit of light trolling of Tom Daley. That’s all I thought I'd do. So what I did is I went onto this very post and I commented on it with hashtags of rival banks. That's all I did. [audience laughs] “#NatWest #Santander #HSBC” [audience cheers] And for some reason, dozens of other people started doing it as well! [audience laughs] “#NorthernRock”, a nice nostalgic one. “#vietcombank”, an international one. Dozens of people did this. And I know celebrities get paid loads for this. Barclays would've had a PR team all over it. I should mention, that I trolled Tom Daley in a lot lighter way about three years ago. He posted to his Twitter a little post basically saying, "Just take the image below, personalize it." He just wanted you to customize the image in your own way. That's all he wanted you to do. Of course, I put him in a smack den. Who wouldn't, in my position? [audience laughs] Open bloody goal, Tom. So that was it, really, as far as I was concerned. I've done my post. Other people have commented. Point made. I felt an error in judgment, that was it. Next day, I get a phone call. It's from a friend of mine who's a photographer. He's photographed the Olympic diving team, on a few occasions, and he's also photographed me. And he said, "Joe, you need to go on Ross Haslam’s Instagram." Now, I didn’t know who Ross Haslam was at the time. He’s another British diver who went to Budapest the day after Pride with Tom Daley for a competition. And he posted a video. The video, you don't necessarily need to see, I will show it to you. It's a panoramic of Budapest. It's done weirdly. It's a portrait thing but he's done it on landscape, which I don't understand. Also, the sound in the background is not great. So I will play it for you twice. But you can hear, in the background, Tom Daley's voice and I just want you to listen out for it. Have a listen to this clearly now. "...the whole, uh, the Lycett situation..." Now, he might be saying "the lighting situation." But I think Tom Daley says "the Lycett situation." [audience laughs] Have another listen just to double check. "...the whole, uh,  the Lycett situation..." Does that sound like "Lycett" to you? I’m a situation! [audience laughs] Not sure who he's talking to in that clip. Presumably, the assassin he's got to take me out! [audience laughs] I like "the Lycett situation!" I'm gonna write a book "The Lycett Situation." There's the cover. [audience laughs] I thought, this has gotten of hand. I'm a situation all of a sudden. I didn't want to be a situation.  It was just a bit of light trolling and suddenly I'm a situation. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought, actually, in this regard, I do want to be a situation because I care about this shit. And I'll explain why.  Pride is an LGBTQ+ event. There's a lot of letters there. And often Pride and its sponsors only focus on the ‘G’, often gay men with six packs. But there's a lot of other letters there that deserve our attention. For example, ‘T’ for trans. I've got a lot of trans friends at the minute who feel really attacked. They feel really unsafe. They feel really attacked by the right-wing press. They feel more attacked by my mum's friend, Linda. [audience laughs] She's the sort of person who says, "a woman's place is in the home", and then spends 90 percent of her time in All Bar One. [audience laughs]  She's a basic bitch. [audience laughs]  She said to me once, she said, "trans people are unnatural!", whilst eating a punnet of seedless grapes  – the irony of which did not pass me by!  She had a go at me for painting my nails. I paint my nails now. I do it for two reasons. One, I like the color. Also, I bite my fingernails, because they're delicious. And when I paint them it stops me from biting them. It's the only thing that seems to have worked. And she said, "you shouldn't do that. You shouldn’t paint your nails." And I said, "why's that, Linda?" She said, "it's an essential part of being a woman, isn't it? Wearing makeup?" I'm sorry, do you think your husband, Kevin, is going to see this, get confused, and try and fuck me? Is that the issue? [audience laughs] Extraordinary, a little change like that and the amount of comments you got. Of course, I expected some, but not as many as I got. I also wear this coat in the winter months. Oh! I want to fuck myself right now! [audience cheers] Thank you, yes, it's um- It's a faux fur. It's a faux fur. I'm aware it's a ridiculous thing to put on. But I didn't expect the amount of comments, I expected some. My favorite was in Liverpool. I had just done a gig at the Slaughterhouse Comedy Club. Which is a brilliant comedy club in Liverpool. I was walking back to the hotel and a group of lads walked past me and one of them went, "Hey mate, Pat Bucher called, she wants her coat back!" [audience laughs] And I'm a comedian, I deal with hecklers all of the time. So I went back with a really witty response, I went, "sh- sh- shut up, stupid prick!" [audience laughs] I was so pleased with this. So smart. So in-the-moment. Well done, Joe. I think, what Linda, and what a lot of people get confused about with trans people is the difference between sex and gender. Sex is your XX, XY chromosomes. That’s what you’re born with, not lots you can do about it. Gender is what's put on top by society and culture. All of the things we take for granted. Things like, "women wear skirts" and "men ride horses and punch dogs." All of the things we take for granted. [audience laughs] And I understand that women get the thick end of this wedge. The narrow criteria in which women are expected to dress and behave is very restrictive. This is made clear to me in a WhatsApp group of lads that I'm in. In which, this was posted recently. This is “build a babe.” You have to construct a woman out of these four categories. [in a patronizing tone] The face! The boobs! The bum! The legs! [in a mocking tone] No "the personality" or "how much she reminds you of mother." None of that! [audience laughs]  This was debated more than most wars. They went with the girl second in, I think.  The two girls on the far right for the boobs and bum and then the girl second in on the legs. I did a bit of photoshopping. Yeah, she's pretty fit! I mean, not my type. I'd change one thing and I'd be happy. But each to their own. Each to their own. [audience cheers] It's quite daunting, that size. So, it's LGBTQ+, if you're interested. That’s lesbian, gay, bi, trans, queer. And then the plus is for all of the other letters. And there can be as many letters as there are people in the world. Some of the more popular ones are asexual, genderfluid – that’s where you don't see your gender as a fixed thing. It can be different things at different times. I was explaining that to Peter  on one occasion and he was like, "Yeah, I know what genderfluid is. But the name 'genderfluid', I can imagine what it smells like!” [audience laughs] Fair enough. "Gosh, I had a heavy night.  Covered in genderfluid in the morning, I was!" [audience laughs] There's 'I' for intersex. That doesn’t mean “oh yeah I'm into sex.” I don't know what that is. [audience laughs] That's my intersex leg. Um, there's 'P' for pansexual. Which is how I now define myself. It doesn't mean that I fuck things in the kitchen. As Linda amusingly observed. [audience laughs] "Non-stick surface?! Not when I'm around, Linda!" [audience laughs] Pan means different things to different people. To me, it's a form of bisexuality. I acknowledge gender plays a role in why I'm attracted to people. But not necessarily the essential role. There's all sorts of common threads in our sexualities that we wouldn't otherwise acknowledge. You might only be attracted to blonde people. But you wouldn't say you're a "blondesexual", but that would be a common thread. I think the common thread in my sexuality is everyone that I'm attracted to is not attracted to me. That seems to be the common thread. [audience laughs] Sometimes it's not really about how they look or their gender or anything. It's just sorta more to do with how they hold themselves or how they take control of a situation. I explained this to Linda in a very hamfisted way. I was in Moseley Post Office, in Birmingham. If you know Birmingham, there's two tills. There's one here and there's one here. On this till, was a very young, very loud, very attractive, young, effervescent girl. She was wearing a Cath Kidston coat. She was going off like a human baraka. She was annoying. Sort of girl who has “live, laugh, love” written in her living room but has also been done for GBH. Just an annoying person. [audience laughs] And then here was a really elderly, sort of octogenarian, crunched-over, old woman. Quite poor-looking, sort of Mary Berry if she didn't have money. Just sort of crunched-over like that. And she's going, "I'm sorry I can't hear you." She kept saying, "I'm sorry I can't hear you." And in the end she went, "I can't hear you…  BECAUSE YOU'RE SHRIEKING!" And I said to Linda, "I don't know what it was, but in that moment, the way she took control of that situation. The way that extinguished all of this woman's joy. The way that everyone was looking at her." I thought she was so attractive, so beautiful. Obviously, I wouldn't do anything about it. And Linda was like, "Oh what, are you ageist?" No, I wouldn't do anything about it because she's poor! But the point is, [audience laughs] there's all sorts of new identities flying around at the minute. New ways to describe yourself. And I think that's wonderful! But you've got two options when you  encounter someone with an identity that you're not familiar with. You can be fearful of them, frightened, take the piss out of them, or be fascinated. Ask them loads of questions. Be curious. Kinda like when I first saw a platypus. I think they're amazing. [audience laughs] They're mammals, they lay eggs. What the fuck are they? [audience laughs] The first platypus that scientists found, they found a dead one. They did some scientific tests, their conclusion: "It's a fake!" They thought that someone had sewn together a duck and an otter. Begs the question, who did they think was doing this? "Oh that's Martin, he loves doing that, Martin. Other day he brought this in. He said it was a porpoise, obviously a dolphin and a bellend!" "Classic, Martin..." [audience laughs] So by Pride only sponsoring one of the letters and ignoring the other letters, I felt like they had done a disservice to the community. So I wrote them a letter. "Dear Barclays, You probably know why I'm writing, you bitch!" [audience laughs and cheers] "You sponsored Tom Daley to go to Pride. Daft bastard!" [audience laughs] "Actually, it's great that you're sponsoring Pride. Pride is an LGBTQ+ event. It's about celebrating all of those letters. And all of the different types of identity that they represent. It's about people who are into kinky stuff. It's about some stuff that a lot of the people who work in your bank would find really weird. It's not just about a particularly attractive gay diver who you can use to improve the perception of your brand. So I'm writing to ask if you'll sponsor me. Not to go to Pride, but to one of the less airbrushed events. I want you to sponsor me to and my friend, Paul Chuckle, to go to the Folsom Fetish Festival in Berlin." [audience laughs] "It's festival for people who are into leather, and being tied up, and wearing costumes. I went a couple of years ago and nearly got wanked off by a unicorn." [audience laughs] "I've mocked up a sample Instagram post. Naturally, the real thing will look much worse. Bob's your uncle, Joe Lycett." [audience cheers] That pasty photo came in handy. As you can see, very useful there. Have not had a reply from Barclays. I did send them another thing. I sent them a painting I did of Tom Daley. I'm not thrilled with it 'cause I don’t think it looks like Tom Daley. But I fucking nailed that hand, didn’t I? [audience laughs] Just out of curiosity, you don't have to cheer if you don't want to, but give me a cheer if you consider yourself part of the LGBTQ+ community. [audience cheers] Oh, oh! Welcome! The rest of you, should leave. [audience laughs] No, bless you. Thanks for coming.

Channel: roge

Views: 1,507,124

Keywords: Joe Lycett, LGBTQ+, LGBT, Gay, Pride, Bisexual, Trans, Transgender, Barclay's, Barclays, Pansexual, Lesbian, Tom Daley, HSBC, I'm About to Lose Control and I think Joe Lycett, Queer, Hugo Boss, Lycett, Puff, Poof, Lad, Parking fines, Genderfluid, Asexual, Intersex, Birmingham

Id: cOE4LkRTqxA

Length: 13min 20sec (800 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 30 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/mmitchh]

I love this video. Being at Pride every year and seeing more and more giant corporations controlling it makes me so angry. Pride should never have been allowed to become so apolitical and watered down.