CHARLIE CONDOU - No.802

FAMILY FORTUNES REVISITED

djy12345: Just watching @Charliecondou on Family Fortunes. Hmm. No mention of his poor sense of direction in the summing up...

Charliecondou: @djy12345 I hate you

djy12345: @Charliecondou But you're brilliant at FF... You just can't find your way around...

djy12345: @Charliecondou loving Baterang

djy12345: @Charliecondou omg this is the best thing I've ever watched!

Charliecondou: @djy12345 oh god. it's going to be hell at Bella's on Saturday isn't it? IT WAS FOR CHARITY!!!

djy12345: @Charliecondou I do love it! I'M NOT JOKING

djy12345: @Charliecondou particularly the bit with you in headphones doing we are the world

Charliecondou: @djy12345 "something in your mouth beginning with T". Toffee. Nice one mother

djy12345: @Charliecondou Aww! I cried at the end. Particularly because Vern made you look like a hobbit

Charliecondou: @djy12345 Vernon Kaye is about 9ft tall FACT. I myself am just shy of 6"

djy12345: @Charliecondou *eyebrows raised in quizzical manner.*

linc52: @Charliecondou @djy12345 charlie i thought your family were great.lovely charity aswell

WONDER NO MORE

marcooth: By the way, just in case you were wondering, I did actually see @Charliecondou in Islington on Sunday.

Charliecondou: @marcooth no you didn't. I've never been to islington

Yeloop: @Charliecondou @marcooth Maybe it was the other one (Cotton) - was he instagram-ing his dinner?

THIS MONTH'S OUT IN THE CITY MAGAZINE

ChrisJepson: here's 2 / 4 pages of my lovely @stonewalluk #EqualMarriage portraits in this month's @OutInTheCityMag @Charliecondou @mustbejp


SAME SEX FEMALE PARENTS WANTED

Charliecondou: RT @MaiaDunphy: Any same sex female parents want to talk to me on camera about how easy or difficult gay parenting is? Come on! Come on! Get in touch early and often!

HER FIRST CELEB 

SPhillips9210: Just seen @Charliecondou at Euston, would've asked for a photo but his @NandosUK would've gone cold. #CoronationStreet #marcus

Charliecondou: @SPhillips9210 @NandosUK haha I was running for a train but they got me my chicken double quick!! X

SPhillips9210: @Charliecondou @NandosUK - legend! First celebrity ive ever spotted in london.

JamesDevlinUK: @Charliecondou spotted in @NandosUK  by Euston! Spill what spice did you get! You look like a chicken so i am guessing #mango&lime ;)

Charliecondou: @JamesDevlinUK @NandosUK medium ill have you know. AND macho peas #rockhard

JamesDevlinUK: @Charliecondou @NandosUK you crazy #scorcio :)

1983cpp: Totally just ran away from @Charliecondou when my friend asked for a pic. #starstruck #dumpmaria #getwithtodd

TELL HIM HE'S DREAMIN'

guy_interruptd: It's because I slept with @Charliecondou AGAIN, isn't it?

Charliecondou: @guy_interruptd oh god, you didn't drug me AGAIN did you??

guy_interruptd: @Charliecondou three times. And that's just today. As always, you were fabulous, darling

guy_interruptd: @Charliecondou although a little more effort on your part wouldn't go amiss. I practically had to winch it from your pants. #selfish

Charliecondou: @guy_interruptd I often use a winch myself. It's just too heavy!

guy_interruptd: @Charliecondou I know. Who knew asses could get so fat?

HANGIN'

Charliecondou: @ChadLDN I'm early! Ill be hanging around reception in about 10 mins if you can be bothered to get over there

HE'S 37

IN GAY YEARS THAT'S 56!

CarruthersJamie: @Charliecondou hi Charlie my b day today any chance of a happy birthday message? x

Charliecondou: @CarruthersJamie happy happy birthday!!

CarruthersJamie: @Charliecondou thank you !! :-) x

STEPHEN FRY'S OPEN LETTER

RE BOYCOTT OF SOCHI GAMES

stephenfry: My Open Letter to @Number10gov @sebcoe & @IOCMedia. Can we let the new fascist Russia host an Olympiad? #BoycottSochi

An Open Letter to David Cameron and the IOC

By Stephen Fry
August 7th, 2013

Dear Prime Minister, M Rogge, Lord Coe and Members of the International Olympic Committee,

I write in the earnest hope that all those with a love of sport and the Olympic spirit will consider the stain on the Five Rings that occurred when the 1936 Berlin Olympics proceeded under the exultant aegis of a tyrant who had passed into law, two years earlier, an act which singled out for special persecution a minority whose only crime was the accident of their birth. In his case he banned Jews from academic tenure or public office, he made sure that the police turned a blind eye to any beatings, thefts or humiliations afflicted on them, he burned and banned books written by them. He claimed they “polluted” the purity and tradition of what it was to be German, that they were a threat to the state, to the children and the future of the Reich. He blamed them simultaneously for the mutually exclusive crimes of Communism and for the controlling of international capital and banks. He blamed them for ruining the culture with their liberalism and difference. The Olympic movement at that time paid precisely no attention to this evil and proceeded with the notorious Berlin Olympiad, which provided a stage for a gleeful Führer and only increased his status at home and abroad. It gave him confidence. All historians are agreed on that. What he did with that confidence we all know.

Putin is eerily repeating this insane crime, only this time against LGBT Russians. Beatings, murders and humiliations are ignored by the police. Any defence or sane discussion of homosexuality is against the law. Any statement, for example, that Tchaikovsky was gay and that his art and life reflects this sexuality and are an inspiration to other gay artists would be punishable by imprisonment. It is simply not enough to say that gay Olympians may or may not be safe in their village. The IOC absolutely must take a firm stance on behalf of the shared humanity it is supposed to represent against the barbaric, fascist law that Putin has pushed through the Duma. Let us not forget that Olympic events used not only to be athletic, they used to include cultural competitions. Let us realise that in fact, sport is cultural. It does not exist in a bubble outside society or politics. The idea that sport and politics don’t connect is worse than disingenuous, worse than stupid. It is wickedly, wilfully wrong. Everyone knows politics interconnects with everything for “politics” is simply the Greek for “to do with the people”.

An absolute ban on the Russian Winter Olympics of 2014 on Sochi is simply essential. Stage them elsewhere in Utah, Lillyhammer, anywhere you like. At all costs Putin cannot be seen to have the approval of the civilised world.

He is making scapegoats of gay people, just as Hitler did Jews. He cannot be allowed to get away with it. I know whereof I speak. I have visited Russia, stood up to the political deputy who introduced the first of these laws, in his city of St Petersburg. I looked into the face of the man and, on camera, tried to reason with him, counter him, make him understand what he was doing. All I saw reflected back at me was what Hannah Arendt called, so memorably, “the banality of evil.” A stupid man, but like so many tyrants, one with an instinct of how to exploit a disaffected people by finding scapegoats. Putin may not be quite as oafish and stupid as Deputy Milanov but his instincts are the same. He may claim that the “values” of Russia are not the “values” of the West, but this is absolutely in opposition to Peter the Great’s philosophy, and against the hopes of millions of Russians, those not in the grip of that toxic mix of shaven headed thuggery and bigoted religion, those who are agonised by the rolling back of democracy and the formation of a new autocracy in the motherland that has suffered so much (and whose music, literature and drama, incidentally I love so passionately).

I am gay. I am a Jew. My mother lost over a dozen of her family to Hitler’s anti-Semitism. Every time in Russia (and it is constantly) a gay teenager is forced into suicide, a lesbian “correctively” raped, gay men and women beaten to death by neo-Nazi thugs while the Russian police stand idly by, the world is diminished and I for one, weep anew at seeing history repeat itself.
“All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing,” so wrote Edmund Burke. Are you, the men and women of the IOC going to be those “good” who allow evil to triumph?

The Summer Olympics of 2012 were one of the most glorious moments of my life and the life of my country. For there to be a Russian Winter Olympics would stain the movement forever and wipe away any of that glory. The Five Rings would finally be forever smeared, besmirched and ruined in the eyes of the civilised world.

I am begging you to resist the pressures of pragmatism, of money, of the oily cowardice of diplomats and to stand up resolutely and proudly for humanity the world over, as your movement is pledged to do. Wave your Olympic flag with pride as we gay men and women wave our Rainbow flag with pride. Be brave enough to live up to the oaths and protocols of your movement, which I remind you of verbatim below.

Rule 4 Cooperate with the competent public or private organisations and authorities in the endeavour to place sport at the service of humanity and thereby to promote peace

Rule 6: Act against any form of discrimination affecting the Olympic Movement

Rule 15 Encourage and support initiatives blending sport with culture and education

I especially appeal to you, Prime Minister, a man for whom I have the utmost respect. As the leader of a party I have for almost all of my life opposed and instinctively disliked, you showed a determined, passionate and clearly honest commitment to LGBT rights and helped push gay marriage through both houses of our parliament in the teeth of vehement opposition from so many of your own side. For that I will always admire you, whatever other differences may lie between us. In the end I believe you know when a thing is wrong or right. Please act on that instinct now.

Yours in desperate hope for humanity

Stephen Fry

Charliecondou: RT @stephenfry: My Open Letter to @Number10gov @sebcoe &@iocmedia. Can we let the new fascist Russia host an Olympiad?  http://www.stephenfry.com/2013/08/07/an-open-letter-to-david-cameron-and-the-ioc/

FROM SOMEWHERE

OVER THE RAINBOW

- IN OZ -

TOM'S LATE NIGHT CHAT YESTERDAY WITH OZ LITERARY AND TV LEGEND NANCY CATO RE THE RUSSIANS

SirThomasWynne: @nancycato1 Blog update re Russian inhamnity xx http://charlie-corrie-condou.blogspot.com/2013/08/charlie-condou-no800.html

nancycato1: @SirThomasWynne : As I read this, my non-Russian blood is rushin' to my brain with a strangled scream.

SirThomasWynne: @nancycato1 sorry for sending the link late at night hope you are not upset.

nancycato1: @SirThomasWynne : Not upset, Tom... just trying to work out how & why such ignorance & cruelty still exist in this day & age.

SirThomasWynne: @nancycato1 it's beyond my capacity to understand this cruelty. I just keep thinking this is like the treatment Jews were dealt in WW2. Horrid!

nancycato1: @SirThomasWynne : Fear is underlying culprit I suspect. The dark-force weapon that victim mankind then picks up & uses for itself.

SirThomasWynne: @nancycato1 yes fear-mongering supreme.

MR FRY'S OPEN LETTER

nancycato1: @SirThomasWynne :This is a letter to behold, Tom... one full of courage, passion and reason... one to learn from and admire. My heart aches.

SirThomasWynne: @nancycato1 Mr Fry is held in high esteem around the globe. He has made so many salient points that I hope that reason & sense will prevail.

nancycato: @SirThomasWynne : I'm not sure they'll have the backbone to do as he suggests... but one can live in hope.

JUDGE FOR YOURSELVES

marcsamps: Just going through Twitter in my garden, and the smell of Mary Jane Tobacco is so strong. My neighbour is a judge, I am not kidding. #inhale

ChasCondouBlog: @marcsamps *high* court?

PROTECT YOURSELF

SirThomasWynne: MEN PROTECT YOURSELF
(VIDEO GOES 60 SECONDS)