PeterRS

Apologies! An honest mistake due to a misunderstanding.

I may also have been less than 100% correct but all reports I have seen state that the first production roll out was on June 2. https://apnews.com/article/thailand-coronavirus-vaccine-coronavirus-pandemic-business-health-2bf0cf9f527908b214d32db3092edf89 Other reports indicate the number of doses was below the contracted amount. Yet another report states that 50,000 doses of the AZ vaccine arrived from overseas in February. Another 150,000 doses from overseas were due to arrive in March and April. https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/2054799/astrazeneca-vaccine-approved-50-000-doses-due-in-february Then AZ itself said on its website on 28 April that the first batches would be ready for delivery "in June this year." https://www.astrazeneca.com/country-sites/thailand/press-release/thai20210428.html I have no idea how long it takes to produce a vaccine. The key issue for me is when it was rolled out as a finished product.

In the last sentence of the first link - immediately following what I wrote. https://london.thaiembassy.org/en/content/thailand-and-uk-signed-a-landmark-agreement-for-co?cate=5d6636c215e39c3bd0006cb5

For years Thailand has mandated a transmission delay of around 5 minutes for news programmes on CNN, BBC World News and presumably other channels. This is to give the censors time to blank screens whenever any issue about Thailand embarrassing to the government is aired. Today, though, the BBC News at 08:00 and 09:00 carried a reasonably long piece on the Bangkok protests yesterday which saw the police use of water canons, rubber bullets and tear gas. The demonstration was to protest the government's disastrous covid19 response and to seek the resignation of the Prime Minister. The rally was held despite the ban on assemblies of more than 5 people in Bangkok. https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/politics/2150783/police-fire-water-cannon-rubber-bullets-tear-gas-at-protesters I can't imagine that anyone seeing these scenes will be considering returning for visits to Thailand any time soon.

Damn it! I knew his name began with 'B'

When the deal with Astra Zeneca was first announced by the Thai Embassy in London, the Embassy's official report states, "It is expected that the manufacturing process in Thailand can start within the first quarter in 2021." This did not happen. https://london.thaiembassy.org/en/content/thailand-and-uk-signed-a-landmark-agreement-for-co?cate=5d6636c215e39c3bd0006cb5 A month later the Prime Minister reported that the contract was for the purchase of 26 million doses largely for over 60s. Given that Thailand still had not started its second small wave and had only had 3,961 confirmed cases, being fair this must have seemed a not unreasonable supply at that time. https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/2026547/thailand-signs-deal-with-astrazeneca-for-covid-vaccine Then in March this year, before the massive third wave and a time when the country had still recorded a total on only 26,500 infections, the Health Ministry announced a delay because there had been reports of blood clots in some European countries. https://thethaiger.com/coronavirus/suspension-of-astrazeneca-jab-delays-thailands-planned-vaccination-drive As a result the Prime Minister and his cabinet delayed getting their vaccinations but quickly did so with doses from overseas. Since then, the entire situation has been a disaster. The PM went against all medical advice by allowing Songkran to go ahead with millions travelling around the country. By early June (at the latest) it was announced that the number of doses had been upped to 61 million. Then the local manufacturer of AZ announced production delays. Then just a few days ago it was finally announced that up to 60% of those 61 million doses are earmarked for other countries. The whole process is a disaster, clouded in the usual Thai secrecy and made worse by the ownership of the company which is the local AZ manufacturer - an issue the law does not allow us to discuss in this forum.

And that is surely a big, big problem for Thailand, especially with the local Astra Zeneca manufacturer having once again reduced the supply it was contracted to provide. Instead of 61 million doses by the end of this year, the company needs another 5 months until May before it fulfils its contractual commitment. But even at 61 million doses, that still only vaccinates 30.5 million people - less than half the country. Now the government is panicking and buying up as much Sinovac as it can while a charity is buying Sinopharm. Yet we know from the last few days that some people having had two Sinovac vaccinations now have tested positive for the virus again, including one medical professional who has died. With calls for those given Sinovac to be given a booster shot, the government is yet again in total disarray. Private hospitals are also waiting for approval for the numbers of Moderna vaccine they can purchase with planned commencement of vaccinations in October. i wish that everyone could be vaccinated by the end of the year. With less than 5% presently having been given the required two doses, my gut tells me getting anywhere near 50% by year end will be a massive exercise. Will the gates open in time for the main tourist season in the first six months of next year? My guess is as good as anyone's.

I am sure that is correct. And your overview is excellent. However, whilst there will always be gay men and the apps (and whatever succeeds them) will be there perhaps even in more abundance, I can not agree that change will not happen. It always does. Cities constantly change. But whereas the cities of the world know what made them successful in the past and will want to revert to something like that model, it absolutely does not follow that the commercial gay scene will remain as it was. The foreigner commercial gay scene is just a minuscule speck in the overall economy of Thailand. It's disappearance - or reappearance in an even more reduced form - will do virtually nothing for the overall economy. We know from other posters in this new Gay Guides forum that the commercial gay scenes in some European cities like Prague, Amsterdam and London are nothing like what they used to be some years ago. We know that here in Thailand Chiang Mai was once a gay haven. It certainly was in the mid-1980s and 1990s. But it has been dying for years with more than 50 gay venues of all kinds closed. I remember when Phuket was fun for gay men with lots of great times with the boys from Young Sharks, My Way and other gogo and beer bars. Now Phuket's gay scene is on life support. I remember having good times at gay saunas in Ubon Ratchanthani and Khon Kaen in the early 2000s. Are they still there? Even if they are, how many gay tourists primarily seeking sex venture out that far? As we know from past posts in other threads, there is an entire world of gay bars and places of gay entertainment for Thai gays of which western expats and tourists know nothing. And even if we did know about it, we would not be permitted to enter. So as far as gays not suddenly becoming non-gays, @readeris certainly correct. But this thread is primarily about western tourists. That is a very different kettle of tom yum goong! The fact is that almost all gay tourists will continue to seek happiness in Bangkok and Pattaya. So many of the gay venues have closed over the years and there are fewer and fewer in Bangkok's central tourist area. As mentioned in other threads, land in Bangkok's central area is becoming too expensive. In both cities many bars have closed. Some will hope to reopen eventually, perhaps a new one or two may appear, but others will be closed for good. In my thinking, the essential question that needs to be addressed is less how many will reopen and much more will a flood of new western visitors anxious to visit gay gogo bars, saunas, discos etc. arrive in time to make those who do actually reopen commercially viable? The gay tourist trade will certainly not return overnight. It may take some years before it returns even to 2019 levels. Can it ever return to 2000 levels? No! We know that the supply of western gay tourists has been drying up over the last dozen and more years. We know that the new breed of Asian gay tourist has more or less different ideas of fun compared to the westerners of old (many of whom are indeed now older) for whom gogo bars were vital to enjoyment. I know I will continue to be called a glass half empty type of guy. But I have witnessed the gay scene for four decades. In that time I have seen its steady and continuing decline. The decline is not merely limited to Thailand. Something is happening to change the commercial gay scene in other cities. Quite probably it is due to the rise in the popularity of the apps. In Tokyo we know that the area for gay bars in the Shinjuku-ni-chome area has been significantly reduced and something like a quarter of the bars (mostly those only for Japanese customers) have died. Bars in the next most popular district of Ueno are for Japanese only and so I have no information on that. Within Asia the one gay market that continues to expand is Taipei. Again, though, this is fed almost exclusively by locals and other Asians because westerners rarely consider Taiwan a vacation destination. When @readersays "Count on it", I believe he is correct in one respect. The commercial straight scene with the girlie bars, ping pong shows (do they still have these?) and nearly nude young ladies will still be around and is unlikely to change much. Sadly the commercial gay scene as we all used to know it will continue to decline. What remains will be geared very much to local Thais and Asian tourists.

In the video in my second post there is a short clip from a longer documentary about Visconti's year-long search for the perfect Tadzio. When informed Andrésen is 15 he comments something like "a bit old". In fact he had 'auditioned' Andrésen quite early in the search but decided to wait until he had visited several other countries and seen many hundreds of other boys as possible for the part. This is the Italian Television documentary In Search of Tadzio (subtitles in English) which also includes narration of parts of the text of Mann's novella. There is another long two-part documentary on youtube on the life of Dirk Bogarde who played Aschenbach in the movie. In itself this is also fascinating for it reveals a lot about this very private actor and the 40-year relationship with his "manager", Tony Forwood. Bogarde describes going with Visconti to Los Angeles to show the completed movie to some of its financial backers. At the end of the screening there was nothing but silence. Clearly there was more than a degree of shock at the subject matter (these being the start of the 19070s). To break the silence, one of the finance guys asked Visconti who had composed the music. When told Gustav Mahler, this innocent said, "He's great. Let's sign him up for more movies!"

No! But he was comparing the natural in-built anti-gay feeling amongst the vast majority of Thais – that feeling that renders it extremely difficult for the tens of millions of professional young men and women to come out for fear of discrimination at work and reduced promotion prospects, as just one example - with a similar anti-homophobia amongst the Nazis which quickly resulted in the closure of Berlin's gay venues. The Thai elite want rid of the "sex capital of Asia" sub-text for its country. They usually get what they want! Those of us who just visit Thailand see one small sliver of the country on visits to Bangkok and Pattaya. Of course there are many gay guys in both cities as in the rest of the country. We see just the very few that participate in the commercial gay sex business and are happy doing so. Some have noticed that the gay sex business has changed quite considerably over the years - with an increasing 'few' being replaced quite significantly by those from neighbouring countries. I do not think it is going to cease altogether. But when a gay writer who has lived in the country for close on a quarter of a century, a writer with a vast knowledge of the country and most elements of Thai society considers that the commercial sex industry's days are numbered, I'll take his word for it rather than those of any short time visitor or even expat living here.

Any examples? Is there anything in the book about the gay scene in Bangkok, even fictional?

The claims adjusters clearly got their sums woefully wrong, no doubt lulled into a false sense of security that they could make big profits because when these policies were marketed the numbers of covid cases in Thailand was so low. Perhaps this company did not even bother placing all or part of the risk with the re-insurance giants. Who knows? Forcing it to pay out on legitimate policies is the obvious course of action. But what if a large number of payouts puts it into bankruptcy? Then many policy holders are well and truly f**ked, and no doubt not just those covered against covid. It makes one wonder what might happen with the government insisting on medical insurance from Thai insurance companies for certain retirees. How solid are these companies? Before I took out my Thai policy some years ago I checked with the issuer that they used one of the major international re-insurance companies. That made me feel a lot better about the policy.

The photograph certainly doesn’t tell us much. An old man, his soulful eyes staring forward, wrapped up against the cold walking on the rocks by the sea, his beard and full head of very long white hair draped over his shoulders. He could be anyone in his mid-60s. Could he really have been a movie star, one of the most talked about on the planet? Copyright: MantarayFIlm2021 For those who were not born by about 1960 and so know little of his history, they soon will. For decades this elderly man despised the title “most beautiful boy in the world.” Yet he is happy with a new film and its identical title that will hit the screens at the end of the month. For its subject, that description is now no longer a heavy millstone around his neck. As he tells us in a fascinating article in yesterday’s Guardian newspaper, back in 1992 he finally got rid of all his demons - his mother’s suicide, the death of a daughter which almost ruined his marriage, the grandmother who brought him up and dispatched him to all manner of auditions single-mindedly determined that her grandson would become a star. A recap. Out of the early morning darkness a steamer slowly emerges from the mist, its single chimney belching out black smoke. On the soundtrack we hear the start of the hauntingly beautiful Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. In a long opening shot, the camera follows the steamer as the sky gently lightens. Eventually the film cuts to a fifty-ish figure sitting wrapped up on deck seemingly unsure of what the he is doing and what the future will bring. Soon we realise he is sailing into the fabled city of Venice. This successful, widowed and disciplined composer whose life has been a constant search for the expression of beauty in music, has lost his muse. He has come to the Lido in Venice to re-find both himself and rediscover that beauty. As the film unfolds, he does indeed find both, but in such an unexpected manner it will so change and unbalance his life that reason abandons him. On a lonely beach in front of his hotel on Venice’s Lido, hideously made-up to appear more youthful, he eases into a deckchair, before him the vision that embodies the beauty he has discovered. He tries to reach forward, but his heart gives out and he slumps on his side. He dies alone in the shimmering heat, dressed in his three-piece white suit, his lips painted red, black hair dye streaking down his cheek as the strains of the lovely Adagietto come to an end. By now, many will have recognised the film as the 1970 adaptation of Thomas Mann’s novella, Death in Venice, by the great Italian director Luchino Visconti. The lead role of the composer, Gustav von Aschenbach, is played by British actor, Dirk Bogarde. The vision he has seen, that essence of beauty, is in the form of a tall, slim mid-teens beautiful boy with flowing golden hair named Tadzio. When the film was released, many gays had gasped at the sight of the 15-year old Swedish actor, Björn Andrésen. Was it any wonder that Aschenbach was smitten by him? Who wouldn’t be? Copyright: Warner Bros Death in Venice was soon being screened around the world. In Japan, Andrésen was sought after for television commercials and was mobbed almost as the Beatles had been mobbed just a few years earlier. It is claimed that he was one reason why many anime artists changed their depictions of effeminate young men Most assumed Andrésen had to be gay. After all, for years it had been known that Visconti was gay. Within the business, the rumours were that the unmarried Dirk Bogarde was gay (after his death it was revealed he was indeed gay and had a life partner). Most of the crew working on the movie were gay. During the year’s search to find the right actor to play the role, surely Visconti would lean towards a young gay man. In the Thomas Mann original, Tadzio represents merely a Platonic ideal of beauty. Visconti changes that in his movie. He makes Tadzio such a beautiful boy it is as though he has just walked out of a Botticelli painting. Aschenbach clearly looks at Tadzio with an increasingly intense, if initially misunderstood, passion. The camera lingers as he first sees Tadzio join his aristocratic Polish family in the hotel dining room. Eventually, Tadzio looks back at him, the look extending a little too long. Several times during the film Tadzio has a habit of placing one hand on a hip that has just a hint of camp about it. The hints seem just a little too obvious. Eventually Achenbach cannot avoid close contact with the boy when they walk towards each other in the hotel corridor. As they pass, Tadzio turns to the older man. Here and in other scenes there is the faint glimpse of a “come hither” look. After deciding not to leave Venice in the face of a growing cholera epidemic, Aschenbach returns to the hotel. He meets Tadzio again on the beach when the boy is swinging between the poles of an awning. Yet again Visconti has Tadzio pause and look directly, almost knowingly, at Achenbach who in turn cannot draw himself away. But this most beautiful boy was confused when making the movie, for Andrésen was not and never has been gay. He often said that Death in Venice destroyed his film career, so identified had be become as a homosexual youth. He talked of his discomfort at the looks he got from older men when Visconti took him and the film crew to a gay bar. “The waiters at the club made me feel very uncomfortable. They looked at me uncompromisingly as if I was a nice meaty dish.” What would he say if he was to meet Visconti today? He is uncompromising. “Fuck off!” Being immortalised as a beautiful boy was not a blessing, but a curse. "I felt like an exotic animal in a cage," he says. And because it happened so early in his life, it distorted all his experience for years afterwards. After Death in Venice his career as a young actor declined, partly through mismanagement by his agent and perhaps through bad choices. His desire had always been to become a musician. Classically trained when younger he could play a piano concerto when required but rock music was his love. For decades he struggled in a rock band and playing occasional parts on stage. He lived in Stockholm with his wife and daughter, but tragedy dogged him. He lost a child to illness. As a result his happy marriage broke up. Eventually he was reunited with his wife and daughter. In 2003, though, he was particularly incensed when the feminist author Germaine Greer published a book titled The Beautiful Boy with his photo on the front without first obtaining his permission. She had, however, obtained approval from the photographer who owned the copyright. It was as though he was doomed forever to remain “the beautiful boy”. Perhaps surprisingly, Andrésen allowed the directors of the new documentary film to follow him around for six years. As they say in The Guardian interview, “After being a public figure for so long, I think it was nice for him to take back the story of his life. We didn’t want Visconti experts or other talking heads discussing him. I think Björn also liked that we wanted to do a cinematic film, and to do it beautifully, like Death in Venice.” The Most Beautiful Boy in the World opens in UK cinemas on 30 July. Part of the above post includes excerpts from The Guardian article – https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/jul/15/death-in-venice-screwed-my-life-tragic-visconti-beautiful-boy-bjorn-andresen

That's excellent news as it is a very good book and seemed to get lost only being available mostly in Thailand. I understand Penguin is also printing editions in several European languages. I wonder what the new edition says about gay Bangkok. The first edition compared the development of Bangkok's gay scene to that in Berlin during the Weimar Republic, suggesting it would not last much longer - and he gave reasons.

This is utter madness!

I can understand that view. On the other hand, I think it is important not to think of activism as being related only to one country and one period of time. After he came out I believe he did lose what would have been his first major film role in a Hollywood movie being written by Harold Pinter who had specifically asked for him. The offer was rescinded when he came out. Hollywood still did not like openly gay activists in leading roles! 30 years later he finally received an apology! The fact is he has been an activist for nearly three and a half decades. I believe activists at any time are worthy of praise, rather like Lord John Browne even though he did not come out until he was 60. McKellen has been especially idolised as a gay icon here in Asia, a continent where activism only started much later than in the west. I have never met McKellen, but we had a close mutual friend in New York. Around 1990 Charlie founded an organisation to persuade the world's top artists and musicians to take part in events to raise money for AIDS charities in the USA. Charlie had headed a major artists' agency and so he had a direct line to many of those he requested to help. Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS gave Charlie an office and singlehandedly he raised many, many millions for local AIDS charities all over the USA. Much of the fund raising was persuading the rich and famous in each city to host $1,000 a head dinners in their homes at which artists like Renee Fleming, James Galway and ian McKellen would take part and donate their services. Charlie said McKellen could not have been kinder or more willing to help when he was in the USA. But let's not quibble. He may have been blind to what he might have achieved had he come out earlier. But I believe he has rather made up for it since then.

Let me just add that in no way did my reply intend to be against gay activism. Far from it. I admire @msclelovrfor hi activism in the 1970s. Unquestionably that made it a lot easier for me and vast numbers of others eventually to come out. I just believe everyone then had a choice. McKellen made his and I can certainly understand why.

Thank you for correcting my spelling. You are correct. He did not come out until he was 49. But then, if my memory is correct, there were not many who came out in the 1970s/early 1980s. In the acting business. it was known that some people like Sir Laurence Olivier were bisexual and others like Sir John Gielgud were gay. But being found to be gay in England was a criminal offence until 1967. Gielgud had suffered considerably after he was found in a public toilet ("cottage") in the early 1950s and arrested. He was then also 49. Although one of Britain's finest actors and a major 'star', the negative publicity affected both his career and his health as he was to suffer a nervous breakdown soon after. I think this public humiliation of such a great actor inevitably affected the profession as a whole for many years even after the repeal of the homosexuality law. Another well known gay actor is Sir Derek Jacobi. The same age as McKellen, he also remained in the closet as far as the public was concerned only coming out, I believe, after McKellen. Actors were paid peanuts in those days. Many, including McKellen, undertook extensive touring around major British cities to make ends meet, usually staying in theatrical 'digs' as hardly any could afford even a proper guest house. I believe it was also true that for many in the profession, although perhaps not for McKellen and some others, that you were only as good as your last performance. There remained in the country a general fear among local theatre managers and landladies about the local media finding out that a gay man was in a touring production. It seems ridiculous today, but then times have changed massively. With the greatest respect, I do not think anyone could be blamed for being gay and remaining in the closet in those days. That was very much the course of my life until i came out in my early 30s. It would be particularly true of pubic figures. Offhand I cannot think of any actors who did, although playwrights like Joe Orton were openly (and some would say outrageously) gay while others like the stage designer/director Derek Jarman were not only out but activists as well. Were they not few and far between? By the time McKellen came out, he was a very big name in theatre but had not yet made his name in film. He came out to the public in 1988. The reason he came out was not a result of being 'outed'. It was over a bill Prime Minster Thatcher was trying to ram through parliament prohibiting local authorities from promoting homosexuality especially in schools. McKellen spoke out against this on a radio programme and announced he was gay at the same time. So you could say he became an activist as he came out. I think I wrote in another forum that McKellen has done a great deal since then to promote gay activism. He has spoken, often by video link or a taped interview, all around Asia. He even gave an interview to a gay magazine printed for some years in Chiang Mai! The story I like best is when he was performing King Lear in Singapore 14 years ago. Doing an early morning interview on one of the city state's radio stations, he was asked what he would like to see in Singapore. "I'd love it if someone could show me the way to a nice gay bar," was the reply. The producer had a fit and pulled the plug on the rest of the interview. https://www.smh.com.au/world/ian-mckellen-urges-singapore-to-recognise-gay-rights-20070717-o84.html

I believe it was CNN who fired her. She had shown a severed head of Donald Trump on air and that was felt to be one joke too far for the channel. This was one of Anderson Cooper's classic interludes.

Your memory is spot on. I had a problem there a long time ago and never stayed again. I remember also when the Tawana Hotel on Suriwong was a Holiday inn. Every evening it had a table by the lifts manned with a member of staff and a list of guests. After a certain time, you would not be allowed into the lifts until you had shown your key card and proved that your guest had been properly registered. If not, you were charged for the second guest. I once had a chat with an old friend who happened to be the Executive Assistant Manager at the Oriental before it became the Mandarin Oriental. We were having a drink and a chat in the lobby when a youngish guy (30 or thereabouts) walked in with quite obviously a bar girl (obvious from the way she was dressed - or undressed in tight skimpy T-shirt, mini pants and flip-flops!). My friend noticed them, waved to the concierge who promptly went up to the young man, had some words with him whereafter they both left. I asked my friend what the criteria were for joiners at what was then probably the best hotel in the city. He told me they were not permitted and that this was clearly listed on the regulations on the back of each bedroom door. Hotels have a legal requirement to notify the authorities of the names of all guests staying overnight. So those who bring anonymous joiners would mean the hotel was breaking the law. He admitted, though, that it was not always possible to tell. So the hotel's policy, he explained, was that if anyone came in with someone who looked very obviously like a bar boy or girl, they would not be permitted to enter the lifts. If they believed someone's companion might be a joiner, the concierge or each floor manager (yes, the hotel had a staff member on each floor) was instructed to approach the guest, politely ask for their room number and then run a quick unobtrusive check. On the other hand, if the guest and the joiner were dressed in accordance with the hotel's dress code, there was nothing they could do. Moral of that story is: in many of the top hotels, make sure your guest looks like a guest and not your boy du jour - or nuit. As for the question raised in the OP, I'm sorry I don't know. I suspect if you are staying in somewhere like the luxury Dhara Devi (formerly the Mandarin Oriental) or the Shangri La you night consider the point I have just made. If it's somewhere like the Dust Princess or the Mercure, I 'm sure you will have no trouble.

Another in the occasional series of articles from a website I occasionally wrote for a few years ago. The others in the series are Plus ça change . . . Thoughts on the March of Time in this forum and Experiences of Asia (Gay-Related) to While Away These Difficult Times under Gay Asia. This one was sparked by an interview I saw on CNN. I always wonder: who will be next? CNN anchors coming out, I mean. Anderson Cooper had been the subject of rumours for years. Even then, it took some time before he came out on air. Now we know – too well, because it is far too often mentioned that he is a father, even though he is no longer partnered with the man with whom he had the baby. Don Lemon’s engagement to his fiancé is talked about quite a lot in the little dialogues – bromances – he has each time his weekday show abuts that of the non-gay Chris Cuomo. Then there is the channel’s travel/business guru, the goofy Richard Quest, a refugee from the more staid world of the BBC seemingly decades ago, and no doubt surprising to some a barrister who was called to the English bar (the legal one) in 1983. Quest’s coming out followed an interview he had with Lord John Browne, then the CEO of the oil giant BP. Browne, in the closet for 50 years, had been forced to come out after his much younger boyfriend spilled the beans. Browne then wrote a book about his secret life titled The Glass Closet. This tells the story of Browne’s brief double life and his 3-year relationship with a Brazilian he had met on an escort site, his first and only gay affair, even though he had known he was gay since leaving his boarding school. Threatened with exposure by a tabloid newspaper, he tried to get the story quashed. It did not work. Six months short of his 60th birthday he came out as a publicly gay man and has since become a gay activist. The evening following their interview, Quest admitted he had felt guilty discussing homosexuality with Browne. He then told the world that was because he himself is gay. Did anyone really think he could not be? A man who takes his teddy bear with him on all his overnight freebie flights around the world for his Travel Show? Quest had also been a naughty boy. In 2008 he was stopped going through Central Park after closing time. He was found with a stash of crystal meth, a rope around his neck tied to his genitals and a sex toy in the trunk of his car. The media had a field day but CNN supported him even though he has never explained why he was there and what he was doing. After six months they even gave him a new show. I mention all this because I think one of CNN’s great assets is now being underused. Christiane Amanpour is an excellent journalist and interviewer. She has been with the channel for over 25 years. She did leave for a short time in 2010 to join ABC News. This was not a marriage made in heaven. Her programme tanked big time and after little more than a year she left ABC and returned to CNN’s embrace. Her interviews are usually deep and interesting, bringing out a lot about the interviewee. I still recall an interview with actor Andrew Garfield about his appearance as the lead in the Broadway revival of the 2017 London National Theatre’s production of Tony Kushner’s stunning 1993 Pulitzer Prize-winning play about the AIDS crisis Angels in America.Kushner also took part in that interview. The point of this post is more about the importance of friendships no matter what’s one’s partnership state. Which brings me back to Ms. Amanpour. Only occasionally I feel she does go a bit overboard and gush too enthusiastically. Back in 2013 she interviewed two celebrated actor knights, Sir Ian McKellan and Sir Patrick Stewart. Both were in London to appear in Harold Pinter’s play “No Man’s Land” receiving stellar reviews. Four years earlier they had appeared on stage together in Berthold Brecht’s Waiting for Godot. It had taken those four years for them each to be free to appear together on stage again. Which is perhaps a little surprising given that these two acting greats are the best and closest of friends. Yet one is gay and proudly out. The other is totally heterosexual having married his third wife in 2013. The actors first met back in the 1970s when working at England’s Royal Shakespeare Company. McKellan by then was well known as one of the UK’s finest up-and-coming actors, almost certainly known to Stewart but not to the public as being gay. Stewart was little more than a jobbing actor with a wife and two young children. Before then it so happened I had seen McKellan during my student years. On a visit to Scotland, I was fortunate to catch a couple of plays being performed at the celebrated Edinburgh Festival, Shakespeare's Richard II and Marlowe's Edward II – the one where Edward is gay and ends his days with a red hot poker up his bum. Playing the title role in each was a young English actor about whom there was a considerable buzz in theatrical circles. The friend who accompanied me was then at drama school and madly in love with him. Unfortunately, he told me, the actor already had a boyfriend. That was the first time I knew Ian McKellan was gay. For both actors Hollywood eventually beckoned, first for Stewart when he was cast in the hugely successful “Star Trek: The Next Generation” television Series in 1987. McKellan continued mostly as a superb stage actor until he found himself in Hollywood in 1998 cast as the ageing real-life gay movie director James Whale, a role that won him a nomination for Best Actor at the 1999 Oscars. By then McKellan had come out as gay and was increasingly in demand in the movie world. It was when he was cast in the first of the “X-Men” series in 2000 that he renewed his friendship with Stewart, also cast in the film. As Stewart said in an interview with The Mirror online – “On movies like that you spend more time sitting in your trailer waiting to work as opposed to being in front of the camera, I’d known Ian back in the 70s but never well - and to be honest I was always a little intimidated by him. But we hung out a lot and found out that we had huge amounts of things in common.” That friendship was to grow into what the tabloids have called the most famous “bromance” in Hollywood. For Stewart’s latest marriage in 2013, McKellan became an ordained minister in some obscure Church, flew to America and officiated at the ceremony. And when McKellan’s movie “Holmes” opened in London in 2015 the pair even enjoyed a lips-on-lips kiss. Watching the interview was fascinating. Seeing these two great actors in the twilights of their lives and careers, they reminded me how important are the bonds of close friendship. In the gay world, it’s all too easy to lose ourselves in the affections of our partner or the latest boyfriend whilst giving less attention to friendships, especially those developed over decades. As I have grown older, I have realised that close non-gay friendships are very important in my life. Gay men do not need to live in their own gay ghetto or to mix mostly with their gay friends. We live in a diverse world, as McKellan and Stewart know well. You can watch their fascinating short interview here (unfortunately you have to copy and paste the link and then it takes a little time to load). https://edition.cnn.com/videos/tv/2016/10/17/intv-amanpour-ian-mckellen-patrick-stewart.cnn PS: It was only while revising this article that I learned Christiane Amanpour had announced three weeks ago that she had been diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer. She underwent a successful operation and is now undergoing several months of chemotherapy. Hopefully her cancer was discovered early and I wish her a full recovery.

Although not in Malaysia, my brother's granddaughter in the UK was found to be positive 3 weeks ago and hospitalised for several days. She is 11 years old. No other member of the family tested positive.

And perhaps no human race?

"People must be held responsible and there should be an independent committee to gather facts and study the situation to prevent the same mistakes in the future," said the report. But will it? Action on past independent committee reports indicate that is unlikely. But this time so many people in the country are effected and the country itself impacted in such a major way as a result of calamitous decisions at the highest level that I think it might just be effective. I keep my fingers crossed that it will come up not only with solutions that will prevent future errors, but also point the finger of blame for the disasters since January 2020 at those who deserve it and mete out some form of meaningful punishment. That is no doubt less likely to happen, but one lives in hope.