Brighton Out Of The Closet. a BBC doc series from 2001 about being queer in this UK seaside Town

Brighton is a seaside town on England’s South Coast that was put on the map by the rather grand Royal Pavilion built in 1787 by the Prince of Wales as a summer retreat.  However, it wasn’t this connection that made the town a desirable residence for gay men as they had been arriving there when there were enormous numbers of soldiers garrisoned in the town during the Napoleonic Wars in the late 1890’s. Then in the Second World War, Brighton was once again filled with soldiers. Women and men in the forces who were away from home meeting other lesbians and gay people for the first time in their lives also heard about Brighton and its special pleasures and helped turn it into a gay destination in the post-war years.  Its proximity to London made it a commuter town that attracted even more gay men and women and by the latter part of the 20th Century it was being hailed by some  (but NOT Queerguru) as the ‘Gay Capital of the UK”.

In 2001 the BBC filmed a series of documentaries with the questionable title of BRIGHTON OUT OF THE CLOSET which plays out like an unscripted soap opera. It’s hard to fathom the thinking of why they captured this slice of gay life like this, although one can get an inkling as the narration is spoken by a very precise middle-aged women ….. maybe somebody’s posh mother. 

The camera followed an assortment of gay men and women as they went about their daily lives. What immediately strikes you is how the vast majority of men’s lives used to completely revolve around gay bars and clubs.  We say gay, as at that time in Brighton there were 25 men’s bars and no lesbian ones at all. 

The filmmakers chose an intriguing mixed bunch of people to focus on : a young kid barely 18 who had runaway from home: a married father who had swapped his family to get as many notches on his headboard as a newly outed gay man; a 30-plus unemployed man with HIV who landed a job that he lost in one day and his boyfriend very soon after that; two lesbians of retirement age who had just met 3 years ago so were starting from scratch; and an elderly drag queen with the worse taste in clothes ever etc etc etc

Thacher had been gone for at least 10 years at this point, but she had left behind a particularly pernicious piece of legislation called Section 28 that banned anything slightly gay in schools.  This eventually raised its head in the doc too.

By today’s standards, the pace of the piece was far too slow, and whilst most of the storylines were quite interesting, they were hardly compelling. One thing was clear, however, in or out of the closet, gay or straight, boy we all seemed to be chain smokers in those days!  

Nearly every episode of Brighton Out of the Closet

can be viewed FREE on You Tube