Mark O'Donovan, comedian and writer

Mark O'Donovan is a comedian, writer and Internet funny person based in Dublin.

We discuss “Before the Parade Passes By" by Barbra Streisand, the Marie Antoinette (2006) soundtrack, and Helen Reddy.

You can read and subscribe to Mark's writing here, and learn more about the AIDS Memorial here. You can (and must) follow Mark on Instagram here.

Tracks of Our Queers is produced, presented and edited by Andy Gott, with the support of Forbes Street Studios, Sydney. A big thank you to Anthony Garvin and Dan Stanley Freeman.

You can listen to our Spotify playlist, Selections from Tracks of Our Queers, and find Aural Fixation in your favourite podcast provider. 

Transcript

Mark – double track
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Andy: [00:00:00] I am so lucky today to have been fit into the incredibly busy schedule of Dublin's queer hot takes of old Hollywood hard hitter. Marco Donovan. You may know him as Wow, the artist formerly known as Dublin, Zoe Trobe. I've just been. learning the pronunciation of, of Zoe Trope.

Where does that word come from again, mark?

Mark: As in the etymology of it, it's a Greek word. You know, it, Zoe means life and I dunno, trope means movement. And I always used to think Zoetrope meant was very, a very fitting analogy for me because it was always moves, never. Because they are those little sort of old-fashioned devices that you know, children in an award in times had in their nurseries that sort of , you know, little illustrations would spin around and around.

But I plagiarized the name of it when I was about 19 the album we're going to discuss today, or the film actually that, that the album is, is from. [00:01:00] And that was American Zo Trope. So I made it Dublin Zo

Trope, and I had that name on social media for years and years and years. And then I finally, You're far too old to be sheltering under a pseudonym.

So I got rid of it, and sort of my engagement skyrocketed down afterwards. So, you know, it's that classic thing of you make your bed, you have to lie in it. So you know, I have no one to blame but myself. But there you go.

Andy: just at dinner earlier I was having a conversation with my mom about do we want to see behind the curtain of glamor and of celebrity, or do we wanna retain the air of mystique? And she said, do you want to see Madonna in her dressing gown? The answer is a resounding no. I don't know with you, maybe the people will enjoy.

The real you. The more open, comfortable in yourself. Or maybe you should just return to a pseudonym.

Mark: Well I can take that one back up because a Russian boss took the name of the account. I was disgusted. So [00:02:00] it'll have to be something else. What ha What happened was I changed it on the 1st of June for Pride Month and I mean, I was Margaret Donovan on Twitter and everything else, and I've gone on podcasts before, as, as myself.

But everyone just thought that that was my name and I couldn't bear that. I just thought of them, you know, pouring holy water over a child named Dublin Zoetrope or, you know, whatever Jews do to Chris and babies. But I. Changed it, and then they give you two weeks if you want to change it back.

And that was fine. I forgot about it. And the, the two weeks came and went. And then I got A notification that Dublin Zoe Trope has started following you. And it was this Russian bot that, well, I don't know who it was, it probably was Glen Close, exacting her revenge, but I assumed it was a bot account.

And so the name is gone now. I have to, I'm like sort of Courtney Cox Arquette. I have to dropping the A cat part now I'm being known as something else.

Andy: Look anyone who follows me, which isn't a huge amount of people, but [00:03:00] that I do have friends, I have friends out there who follow me, will have probably enjoyed Mark's work by proxy. My most recent viral. Repost was of the Princess Diana with the elderly actresses and Diet Coke moment. You know, you already mentioned about Edwardian children playing with a Zoe Trope. Mark, what is it about old actresses for you? 

Mark: I've told this story so many times, but it's using them as the conduit for every dumb thought that come comes into my head. And I suppose thinking of them in a way as people that have been sidelined. Because you know, after all, you know anyone over, I dunno. 35 maybe. I mean, they're washed up and aren't given their their due and aren't given their, I mean, they're so much better when they're older.

I mean, everyone's better when they're older. They, the more experience the, you know, working on your craft in any line of work. And I suppose in entertainment, you're more conscious of that, that people not necessarily have a sale by date. But, you know, you can't tell [00:04:00] that the star begins to dim after a certain.

and I suppose the older ones always fascinated me. When I was a kid, you know, and was homesick from school for the day, it was the biography channel and tcm and that's what fascinated me. And I suppose something about people from the 1940s and fifties that ended up drug addicts and dead prematurely really appealed to me.

I just thought that was a fascinating way to go. When I go, I'll go like Elsie.

Andy: We will continue to joke about it, but I do think there's something very real. In the relationship that queer people, maybe specifically gay men, there's a relationship between them and old glamorous women who have been sidelined by society

fans, the career.

Mark: But it starts, you know, it starts with your grandmother or your aunts or the female teacher that you love in school and you're the only one that loves her. I mean, I remember teachers that were battles and heran and everyone hated [00:05:00] them by me and by the other gay in the year.

And I, you know, we thought they were great. Then in films or in theater or in, you know, anything in politics even, you know the gay men identify with, with awful women. Really, you know, it's not necessarily the, the you know, the Hillary Clintons or whatever, but, you know any of them, they are drawn to them.

I mean, like Ava Perran who was the most awful fascist, but yet spawned this huge kind of worship. Wallace, Simpson, any of them. I suppose from an early age, gay people realize it's better to be a villain than a victim, I think.

Andy: I was just talking to someone the other day who was from the Philippines, 

Mark: Oh, Amelda Marcus with her shoes. 

Andy: What her and her family did to that country was ravage it and strip it of any riches at all. But you know, not only has her son just been put back into power, but even I am guilty of thinking her house full of Marks and Spencer bras and shoes is kind of camp

Mark: I mean, I sent a picture of [00:06:00] Of Dev from Kari and dear Ru Barlo to someone earlier and said, here's Rishi Sunk and Liz Tru. The most awful sort of both of them. I mean terrorists. But it's, it's that kind of, it is the kind of the definition of camp, isn't it?

You can't define it. You are drawn to some sort of quality that. Other that is you know, that is a femur, you can't pin it down and you run with it. And like I do, on Dublin Zoe trope, the former Dublin Zoe trope, it is making them into complete caricatures, but, You think there is a kernel of truth in it, and I suppose that's where the humor comes from.

I mean, you can't imagine that, sort of Glen Close does have this resentment that, you know, Meryl Streep has all these awards. You can imagine that, you know, this one is in a feud with that one, and it is terribly sexist. I'm not saying it's, it's wonderful comedy. I mean, you know, I'd never say that.

you know, Al Pacino and Deni Niro, and the people take great umbridge at that too. You know, when, [00:07:00] when gay men say Merrill and Glen, you know, they should say close and streep, they think that that's a very sexist thing to do. I've, I've seen that picked up on an interviews before.

It's sort of making that personal connection with them that isn't there at all, you know, and not sort of according them, the. the, the respect they're entitled to but I don't know. I mean, I think that's kind of nitpicking in

Andy: I see respect in in what you do and I see respect in this whole culture valuation that queer people have always had for these icons that yes, there is often mocking and Maybe we can sometimes be a bit spiteful, but we want these people to succeed. We don't want them to fail.

You picked a song, you picked an album, and you picked an artiste slash icon. What was the song you picked?

Mark: The song I picked was a Barbara Streisand song because, you know, I It's before the parade passes by from Hello Dolly, because I think it's a little less well known than the one from Funny Girl. I mean, when Barbara got her start, all she did [00:08:00] was sing songs about parades. And this is the lesser known of the two.

And she's supposed to be I mean this character she's playing is usually played on stage by an elderly actress who croaks this song. And Barbara was 26 singing. Old woman's song. Going back to what we were talking about, it, it is that thing of, you know, how can you, how can someone be washed up and passed it at 26?

It just doesn't make sense. But yet she makes it work. And I think that resonated with me growing up as this kind of odd kid. You know, that, that the lyrics of it kind of did. , it did ring true for me, and I don't know why, but it is just something that I think a lot of people relate to that, that idea of, there is a, a timeframe on things and you have to, you know, pull yourself together and say, no, I am going to do this and I am going to go there.

And not even huge great ambitions, but small things that, that that that song kind of speaks [00:09:00] to and. . Yeah, I, I, I just thought it would be a different one. I didn't want to choose sort of over the rainbow or dancing queen or something. So I thought we'll do Barbara in, in some permutation. And that was the one.

And the other thing is Barbara never has sang any of these songs from, from Hello Dolly, ever since. She never incorporated them into her repertoire. Which is a shame because I mean, no one ever sung them better than she did. 

Andy: Quite. I do want to confess that I've actually never seen Hello Dolly. And I've got a vague idea of how the film goes, but listening to the song specifically yeah the sense that I was getting was wow. quite literal. To bang people over the head with the lyrics. The parade passing you by. Well that's obviously life passing you by. Right? And I tapped into it from the sense of being a teenager and, and kind of being a bit impatient knowing that the world is happening out there and being very eager to find that parade, I guess, cause I could feel it passing by elsewhere, [00:10:00] but I didn't think about the passing of time too much or, but now that you've said that it, it is sung by a much older actress.

I can see it taking on that different poignancy.

Mark: y Yeah. Well, it, it it is, I mean, on stage, Bette Midler just played it, who's in her seventies. It's meant to be a middle-aged widow. And as I said, Barbara was 26 and at the time, and it's still today regarded as sort of terrible miscasting, it's not really up there with her sort of first tier work.

Barbara is one of my number one women. This, this was the one that really stood out for me in a way that some, some of them don't. And certainly some of her recent stuff, I mean, let's face it, the voice is shot. And I know she charges sort of $500 to, a bit like Cher, you know, who's been having farewell tours since before Nelson lost his eye.

Barbara . Barbara has gotten a bit like that, you know, with her clone dogs. And that's the thing she'll be known for those clone dogs now, the wonderful career she's had. It'll be cloning her [00:11:00] dogs, you know, and defending Michael Jackson.

Andy: I think I know the answer to this question, but the point of the podcast is to talk about it. Why Barbara? 

Mark: Well, again, an outsider, you know, that somehow made, made her differences work. Now we wouldn't think twice about having a funny nose or having a, an ethnic name. She came from terrible poverty. But the thing is, she didn't change any of that. The only thing she did was drop the A from her first name.

It was, you know, Barbara with two As, and kept her nose and kept her uh, Ethnic Jewish last name. And when you look at her early films and her early specials now, I mean I don't want to say problematic, but now people don't go in for this is a malapropism, self defecating humor.

They, you know, people now don't like somebody making fun of their weight or the way they look and you know, back then it was expected.

I even women comedians in that time, it was the way they looked. It was their [00:12:00] bad fashion sense, whatever. And so I think with Barbara now looking back, I mean, you'd never say that she wasn't a beautiful woman, and that she was this odd looking creature or, I mean, that's what the word, the type of words they would've used then or there.

There is a Yiddish 

Andy: She was absolutely gorgeous. She

Mark: was stunning. She was like nefertiti or somebody from, you know ancient Egypt or cleopat. Well, even though she wasn't meant to look great, cleopat that in breeding. But , that's who they styled her as, you know, and even that we so problematic now.

Imagine, you know, sort of dressing up as an Egyptian and being photographed. I mean, you'd be finished, but that's what they, they did for her to sort of play up the the exotic looks.

Andy: the otherness to play up. The fact that, you know, she's

Mark: fact that gay men invented.

you know, they totally invent. And then she, you know, sharply forgot about that too, not that she didn't credit them, but when people do, like, in any way, when someone does progress or [00:13:00] they move up the ladder, they forget the people that put them there, you know?

And you, you know, she lucky, I mean, she's been a star for 60 years. , she never had to meet them again on the way down. But it was totally gay men in the nightclubs and in the, in the bars of New York in the sixties that, you know, told her how to do her makeup and how to talk and how to speak, and how to move her hands.

And, and these things now, every, you know, bloody singer on TikTok that, you know, gets a karaoke machine at Christmas imitates what Barbara started in, in the sixties. And she's an extraordinary legacy. And, and in some ways, you mean, not that it's unfulfilled, but I don't even think it's scratched the surface of what she could have achieved.

I mean, certainly if you look at her film work, I mean, most of them are unwatchable. The film she did There isn't that many first rate classics amongst them, apart from a few she directed and, and funny girl. 

Andy: meet the fuckers.

Mark: Exactly, which actually is a nice turn. I, I do think it is, a kind of, it's not something to be ashamed of, you know? [00:14:00] No more than the clone dogs that is going to be in the obit in the uh, . . Sort of meet the fuckers star. An infamous dog, Cloer. Barbara Streisand died today in a freak pie eating accident aged. 93, you know, But anyway 

Andy: I feel like we could spend an hour talking about Barbara, but sadly

Mark: I know, and I just, I just drew that, that name out there. I could have picked any number of things, but I thought I would, will give Barbara, I mean, she doesn't get enough notice, Barbara. 

Andy: What was the album that you picked?

Mark: I picked the, again, soundtracks which was the Mary Antoinette soundtrack from 2006. When I was growing up, I mean, I have to say music wasn't my first love by Annie stretch of the imagination when it was books and. Films and maybe later going to the theater a bit. But the only CDs I remember buying were ever like getting for Christmas or my birthday was film [00:15:00] soundtracks.

And you know, I remember you'd go into H M V years ago, and I would ask them to put in whatever soundtrack it was. But the first time I remember really being conscious of of music in a film and how it could create such a mood was in Sophia Coppola's film of Mary Antoinette, which I mean, it, it's would be so commonplace.

To use anachronistic music, but then to use the cure and you know AEX twin in a film about the 18th century and fill it with kind of new age music from the seventies and eighties. I just thought that that was wonderful and so different, and you know, I was listening to it yesterday and I, I've often listened to this album over the years and it's great to, you know, it's great to clean.

you know, and that's always a good sign of a great album if you can clean to it, if you can, wash your windows to it, you know, [00:16:00] it's great to kind of create a mood if you want to have a sort of indie mood because it has all that wonderful you know, the new order and PE people like that on it.

And I don't think it's gratuitous in a way. I mean, even in the context of the film, it works. It's not like, you know, as I said to you the other day, BAS Luk who did Mulan Rouge, I mean, that was another soundtrack I could have chosen because that was for anyone of our age group.

That album, was iconic.

But I don't think the, the, the music in, in this is in any way not gratuitous. It's not it, it works. It's so strange, but it actually, it, it's just so curated. And even when you look at the, the track lists and see, you know, the valdi in there and see people that were be mu Musicians in the Baroque period, like Luli and Glu and whoever next to you know, I want Candy remix.

You know, it's . It's, it's quite strange. [00:17:00] 

Andy: I am so glad you picked this album. I love this film for all of the reasons that you've listed. I, I very clearly remember being really taken aback by the purposeful anachronisms. I remember reading reviews at the time in the paper where people would be disparaging of it, and I'd be thinking,

I don't think this is bad. If anything, I think it's really good. It's a special album for me and maybe very similar to you, that it was a pop culture gateway to so many of the things. So no shame at all from me in admitting that it was Mary Antoinette soundtrack, which actually led me to discover new Order in a way that, of course I knew stuff like Blue Monday and you know, the things that you in, like the pop culture ephemera, but I didn't.

ceremony. I didn't know the song. Age of Consent. And both of those songs are featured so beautifully in the film and they're, you know, probably my two favorite new order songs to [00:18:00] this day. , I love, you know, at the very end of the film when she's off to the guillotine without knowing it, but like the cure is playing.

And as I was walking down the street today listening to this album, I remember, you know, the feeling very clearly. That song to me is like a, like a loss of innocence. It's like turning from child to adult, even though in the film, by that time she's already got kids. It's like, shit's getting real.

Mark: It's so beautiful. Even in the film, the way it ends with the shot of the bedroom trashed in, in Versai. I mean, originally, you know, I read this in one of those kind of retrospectives, but they wanted to just have the sound of the guillotine, but they wisely did away with that because it would've been so chairish to, to end on that. 

And I think as well, I. We came out in watch 2006, and now in, in fiction and in television and films, we, we have these sort of mournful young women that are just miserable all the time and sad and, you know, just jump into bed with people and just awful. You wouldn't want [00:19:00] to spend any time with them, let alone 12 hours on a mini-series.

But I think Mary Anntoinette captures that in a, such a beautiful way with a sense of Joir de Viva as well, and that's reflected in this, in the soundtrack. I mean, it has sort of, you know, standards from the thirties. It has fools rush in, in a lovely a lovely remix on it as well. It, you know, so

Andy: These, the strings intro to Hong Kong Garden 

is Capital letters camp.

Mark: Well that's you know, that is just so beautifully done. I remember buying the album, but before buying it, I bought a write, downloaded it illegally on lime wire, which I'm sure you remember when, or, you know, you download things on YouTube and sort of change the name.

fine for a property theft now, or intellectual property, I didn't realize that on the album until I actually bought the physical album that it had that glorious [00:20:00] Strings intro, you know you know, which is used in the, in the ball scene. So kind of beautifully. And I mean, it does, it does sound like something from the 18th century.

I mean, it's, it's not, it's not like you know, BAS Lu pack sort of mixing what does he, he mixes one of Elvis's songs with Toxic from Britney Spears, I think in the, I can't remember something like that. But it, you know, it's, , it's just put in as a sort of a gimmick. It's not, there's no reason for it to be there.

Whereas those people in the 1970s and eighties, you know, you know, did have that new romantic look. 

Andy: There's two incredibly camp things about Mary Antoinette that have not been mentioned yet. One is Shirley Henderson,

and 

Mark: Mm 

Andy: is Molly Shannon.

Mark: mm.

Andy: Penny for your thoughts.

Mark: They appear at the beginning and then they're totally forgotten about. They just, they come, they come in, they do their lines beautifully, and then they don't even really serve that much of a purpose.

A bit like Judy Davis playing the the, the mistress of the household who, you know, anyway, but I, [00:21:00] it, it such a good idea. And then like having rip torn as, as Louis the 15th, you know, this sort of sat like this cowboy really. And you know, Jason Schwartzman is the king who's playing him like, you know, some stoner, deadbeat surfer kid from Long Beach or wherever he's from, it just kind of works in a way.

Yeah, but that soundtrack, I mean, it has just been a constant in my life since then. I mean, Watson for 16 years or whatever. And as you said, I listened to it yesterday and it does resonate because, I mean, let's say I said you don't know what some of these lyrics are about, like in ceremony.

I mean, they're so vague. It's all purpose. You can fit it to every mood, to every point in your life. I mean, it means something different now than it did when I was, you know, 13 or 14. And yeah, it really weathers the test of time yeah. I think this is quite a, an important 

one. [00:22:00] When I asked you to prepare an icon, I was ready for all manner of things. I was ready for Angela. I was ready for Judy Davis or Garland. I was ready for Liza, You 

No, I think she's great. I mean,

Andy: she is great. 

But you did not pick any of those people. Who did you pick and why?

Mark: Well I picked an antipodean and it was particularly for even though they kind of ran out of Australia and isn't, I don't even think is particularly known there now, in the way that, say Olivia Newton John, who she paved the way for would be, she was really known in America, even in, in Britain and Ireland.

She wasn't particularly known maybe three of her songs, which were, I am Woman, Angie Baby in Delta, Don, [00:23:00] but the person I'm talking about is Helen Reddy uh, Who, it was somebody I suppose I discovered for myself, because, like every gay will do, Judy, every gay will do Liza. Whereas she was somebody who, I dunno how I discovered her albums when I was a teenager, but it kind of became my thing, you know?

And it was maybe a little bit embarrassing to say that now, but when you've discovered something for yourself and they're yours alone, that's very potent in a way, in a way that, you know something everyone on their mother is going for is passe. uh, Helen was somebody, she was known.

She actually died only about a year, a year or two ago. the obituary in the Guardian are in one of the English Uh, Disparagingly referred to her as the Queen of Housewife Rock. And I don't, I don't think there's any kind of a little gay boy anywhere that wouldn't identify with somebody that had a title like, Because it just invites a whole, I mean, disparaging, I mean, it's not at all what she was, [00:24:00] she sang these kind of uh, not unlike kind of some of the Beatles songs, kind of odd songs that when you listen to them, they don't make sense, I mean, they're left open to the listeners' interpretation.

Yeah, I just, and has such an unique sort of voice. It kind of has a real catch in her voice and a real honeyed voice, I suppose maybe more of a musical theater voice we'd call now. Yeah, I might do her. 

Andy: Do you remember how you discovered her?

Mark: I remember seeing her in that Disney Pete's Dragon. Do you re, do you remember that from the seventies? But I honestly think I discovered her again um, in the Sex and the City movie when they're an Abu Dhabi and they sing I Am Woman at a Karaoke. And That's how it all began. 

Andy: See, sex and the city two can impact 

Mark: Positively impact. I'm , not saying they're Citizen Kane or they're masterpieces, but they are [00:25:00] very watchable and I hated, I called it woke gets in your eyes. I hated As and just like that. I thought it was, I mean, such a betrayal of. Of everything that those characters were, it's really like what those sort of anor acts go on about, about Star Wars being ruined by sort of a, so social justice Warriors.

I mean, they certainly would never be singing I Am Woman in a Karaoke bar uh, in just like that. I mean, there was no kind of fun to it, you know? And. Yeah, I think that's, that's the, the trend with all the choices I've tried to pick. I wanted to pick something that had a bit of levity to them.

I don't want to pick anything that it's sort of, you know, I was sitting alone in my bedroom sort of thinking, poor me, you know, this poor little gay uh, discovering this music. Um, You know, you have to have a balance at the end of the day. That's why I chose her, but it's all down to sex in the city too, 

Andy: What is it do you think about Helen Reddy, which speaks to your queer. Other than necessarily just, you know, another [00:26:00] female artist you adore,

Mark: Well, I adored her song. I Am Woman. I just thought it was so empowering, you know, and I'm not in any way sort age or, or whatever, or you know, genist, it's, you know, it just spoke to me in And I remember Gao Plat singing on an episode of Kari Once Too. Who You, you know, which tied into the long line of feminine icons. I've seen interview well before she died, but interviews with, with Helen that she said that people, that women would sort of listen to it when they were going to law school or when they were going wherever as an anthem. And I felt like saying that didn't happen, but.

you like to believe it does. You like to believe that, you know, Hillary Clinton was listening to it every morning when she was going to be the first woman president. It's that thing. again, more than before. The parade passes by. If you [00:27:00] look at some of the lyrics, they. , you know, I mean they certainly are on Shakespeare, but they have those kind of base sentiments that just get you, like, you know, you can bend but never rake me.

It's like, I am what I am or I will survive. Or any of these anthems that you know, that are played in clubs every weekend. And I should have just done say Lavi by be Witched I think for this

episode. 

Andy: you'll come 

back. 

I didn't know too much about Helen before this chat, like you said, however, a couple of years ago, there was a very widely watched TV show based on her life in Australia. So I knew 

of 

her. I of course knew I am woman. But it wasn't until you kind of sent through your selections that I did my own bit of research and. 

I read a line, well, I 

read a line which said at a time when a woman could not get a credit card or a mortgage in her own name, 

REDI emerged to become one of the world's highest paid entertainers.[00:28:00] That's all I need to know, to be honest. But it is also remarkable that she did claw her way out of, I don't know where she came from in Australia to, you know, these massive stages in the us, which back then was the peak, which was as high 

as an 

Mark: Hmm. 

A and no more than any of the great icons, no more than Judy Garland or, I just happened to be reading her biography to, or her Wikipedia page, Tina Turner. They had horrible abusive partners that took them for every penny they were work worth. And yet, you know, they went out and worked and paid that debt off.

And, you know that that's true for so many gay icons that that has happened to them, you know, being. Which is pushed by, by to the wayside by awful husbands posing as business managers. It's such a trope. It's all of them, you know, like Doris Day, they all had these awful men that came along and took their power and made them because what, what must it be like to be Mr. such and such, you know, you [00:29:00] know, to be the second banana when you are the man, when you are. I mean, I don't know from a personal experience, but you know, it must be awful.

I've always been fascinated by concerts, I suppose if you know more than Mary Antoinette, but when that, that cons is, is a man, you know, it just skews the, the, the, the balance entirely. Especially if it's two men, you know? That's another thing.

We had it in Ireland, we had a gay prime minister, and obviously he had a partner. , you know, that was successful in his own right. But when the balance is so different, I mean, what must it be like for the other person? I mean like in Glen's movie that was, you know, called the Wife and was totally about that.

I mean, they're the people I'm interested in. I'm interested in the second, in the number two because I think they're more interesting than the, than. The Puba or the person that's in front and center, I think that really resonates with gay people. You know, they, are, much more interested the, the secondary person, because they are the [00:30:00] secondary people.

I mean, you go through your life being, you know, the black sheep of the family, being the kid in the school. That's the, you know, in. , you know, the outsider being in, in a workplace, in, in anything, you know, uh, so no wonder you identify with 

Andy: Absolutely. So you know, you discovered Helen, ready for yourself from a fantastic motion picture. But is there anyone who you love who you know was gifted to you?

Mark: I wouldn't say an artist in particular, but certainly, maybe a love Stephen was gifted to me by certain people, you who, you know, again, just died uh, left this This huge gap for a lot of people. I mean, he really was uh, the number uh, composer for a lot of people.

And I did Ungenerously think when he died, you know, local gay man, you had to find way to make celebrity death all about him because so many people were putting up these obituaries that you'd swear that, I mean, he, you know, put them through college or something, but I can [00:31:00] understand that.

I mean, I'd be like that, you know. I mean, imagine what it would've, would've been like in 1969 when Judy Garland died and Jamie Lee Curtis threw the first activity at Stonewall. I mean, the outpouring, I mean, do we have an equivalent of that now?

Andy: We've made it to the end of the podcast. You've been amazing. You've mentioned some incredible people. We haven't dwelled too much on the one person who I associate with you and your Instagram art more than anyone else, which is Ms.

Close. Do you have any words that you'd like to share on Glen? Does Glen follow you on Instagram? Have you been in touch?

Mark: I don't think I should get it really, I've said this so many times, but it is the conduit for, I get a thought on a bus or something and I put it into her mouth and it's sort of okay.

Whereas I'd never, in a month of Sundays, Go walk up to somebody and say that. I mean, [00:32:00] even I have a little of, uh, tact and common sense not to do that, but it's okay when it's her. I adore her and I think, you know, it's, it's, it's, I mean, she's like so privileged, so wealthy, so successful.

It's not like she's what I make her out to be, but I make that out, out about everyone. You know, about any kind of, Archetype. We began, I think by you were mentioning Princess Diana. I love Camilla. I think she's great. And uh, you know, I was delighted when, uh, Queenie came out and said that she hopes she'll be um, as a cons, which she should, which she would be anyway under the law.

But I still Uh, You know, a lot of Mel gays and you know, girls as well, but they hate Camilla and they call her a Corzan queen, and I think she's lovely. A bit like Princess Anne. I think she's great, you know, just stoic and sort of has been wearing the, the same outfits since the War War. And I think, you know, but she has though.

uh, you know, the scene and the sound of music where she makes the dress from the curtains. [00:33:00] That was based on Princess Anne and the thing is virtues like that, like say sto stoicism, that should be admired as well. You know, it's not all camp and this, you should admire someone who's stoic, who's hardworking.

Andy: This is by far the lengthiest discourse I've ever had with someone from Ireland on old British royals. Is there a queer charity initiative, social media account you would like to plug other than your own, obviously,

Mark: Well, I'm a great queer Uh, You know, if you wa if you want to you know, send me a few, a few shackles or a few uh, no, I thought I would do an Instagram account. Mind you, it's, you probably follow it, but it's the AIDS memorial. , which is, you uh, stunning. I mean, it's people and not, and not just gay people, I mean straight people.

Anyone who's been touched by, you know, the, the scourge that is hiv , aids, they write in these stories about their relatives, their parents, their whoever, [00:34:00] and it's so touching to read about these people and what they went through and it's so relevant to today, I Um, Yeah, that's one Any of your listeners should follow the AIDS memorial.

Andy: Mark O'Donovan, you are queer, I'm assuming?

Mark: Well, what time of day ? 

Andy: Thank you . you for your tracks.

Mark: Thank you, Andrew. It was lovely.