April 11 – May 18, 2024

Why the controversy around the Netflix drama is not about to subside

“Pedro Lemebel, one of the most important queer writers of twentieth-century Latin America,” writes Gwendolyn Harper, his translator, was “a protean figure: a performance artist, radio host, and newspaper columnist, a tireless activist whose life spanned some of Chile’s most dramatic decades. But above all he was known for his furious, dazzling crónicas—short prose pieces that blend loose reportage with fictional and essayistic mode. … Many of them depict Chile’s AIDS crisis, which in 1984 began to spread through Santiago’s sexual underground, overlapping with the final years of the Pinochet dictatorship.” Over the next few weeks, the Review will be publishing several of these crónicas, newly translated by Harper, as part of a brief series. You can read the first installment, “Anacondas in the Park,” here.

On the edge of the Alameda, practically bumping up against the old Church of Saint Francis, the gay club flashes a fuchsia neon sign that sparks the sinful festivities. An invitation to go down the steps and enter the colorful furnace of music-fever sweating on the dance floor. The fairy parade descends the uneven staircase like goddesses of a Mapuche Olympus. High and mighty, their stride gliding right over the threadbare carpet. Magnificent and exacting as they adjust the safety pins in their freshly ironed pants. Practically queens, if not for the loose red stitches of a quickie fix. Practically stars, except for the fake jeans logo tattooed on one of the asscheeks.

Some are practically teenagers, in bright sportswear and Adidas sneakers, wrapped in springtime’s pastel colors, healthy glow on loan from a blush compact. Practically girls, if not for the creased faces and the frightful bags under their eyes. Giddy from rushing to get there, they show up tittering each night at the dance cathedral inside the basement of an old Santiago cinema, where you can still see the black-and-gold Etruscan friezes and Hellenic columns, where the stench of sweaty seat cushions hits hard once you finally get past the burly bouncer at the door. That’s where spongers circle, hovering around any gay man who might cough up their cover. We’ll figure it out inside, they croon into ears with little dangly earrings. But the gays know that, once inside, the most they’ll get is “… have we met?” because every taxi boy heads straight to the bar, where the grannies flaunt their piggy banks, rattling ice in a glass of imported whisky.

The bar at a gay club is a good place to meet someone—it’s the area with the best light for spotting the witch who never sees the sun, always underground like the roots of an AIDS-ridden philodendron. The same one who cried sapphire tears, forgiving herself for all her dirty tricks, the spitting in drinks, the broken condoms, the falsified positive test results that aided and abetted a few girls’ suicides. Her schemes for infecting half of Santiago because she didn’t want to die alone. It’s that I have so many friends, she said. The same Miss Perverse who’s back again, more alive than ever, laughing luciferously with a drink in hand.

Here’s where they pour the gin and tonics, pisco sours, pisco sores, pisco colas, and loca-colas singing along to “Desesperada” by our darling Marta Sánchez, which always makes the disco babes go crazy. The girls in shorts who come up to the bar breathlessly asking for water with ice, elbowing the office worker who’s still wearing his tie and who keeps eyeing the door in case someone from his work shows up.

Are Martin Parr's images snobbish – or do they just show the real Britain?

March 16 – May 19, 2024

April 13 – May 18, 2024

Tom Hanks, David Cameron, Michael Portillo, Alan Pardew, Prince William, Chris Eubank and David James all feature on this edition of Ramble Reacts! You wouldn’t have thought Aston Villa and Liverpool had just played out a classic end-of-season barn burner, eh?

However, Luke and Marcus are here to try to make sense of that Aston Villa comeback and in particular Jhon Durán’s quite remarkable equaliser. They also take some time to explain why Spurs shouldn’t bother trying to let Man City win and the reasons none of us should be scared of Chris Wilder. Come join us for the ride!

We're back on stage and tickets are out NOW! Join us at London Palladium on Friday September 20th 2024 for 'Football Ramble: Time Tunnel', a journey through football history like no other. Expect loads of laughs, all your Ramble favourites, and absolutely everything on Pete's USB stick. Get your tickets at footballramblelive.com!

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There was a time in my life when I went to many formal dinner parties. Were they parties, exactly? They were dinners orchestrated to celebrate something—a book, or an exhibition—or to raise money. Older and better-off friends often invited us to these events. I was young and newly married to my second husband. We had three and then four children, and pennies slipped through our fingers. For winter I owned a black dress with a keyhole neckline, and for spring a thrift-shop chiffon skirt and an embroidered tunic the color of spilled tea. I imagine our friends thought we would enliven the table.

As I said, we went to many of these dinners, but one evening put a stop to it. It must have been springtime, as I was wearing my skirt and tunic. My husband wore his tuxedo. Before we left the apartment there was the usual brouhaha about his bow tie. In the movie version of Peter Pan, starring Mary Martin, Mr. Darling (Cyril Ritchard, who in an thrill-inducing about-face, also plays Captain Hook) cannot tie his bow tie properly and the scene devolves: he must tie his bow; he must go to this dinner; if he does not, he will lose his job, and the family will be in the poorhouse! He practices by tying it around a bedpost, but, after all, the bedpost can’t go to the party! My children had watched this movie perhaps fifty times, and whenever we went out to these dinner parties they would circle their father as he tried to tie his bow tie, chanting, To the poorhouse, to the poorhouse! As usual, in this grim ambience, we left them to their very tall babysitter, Ann, a Barnard student who looked like an elongated Alice; in the afternoons, she often took them across the park to the Met to see the mummies.

The dinner was at a converted warehouse in Tribeca, a vast high-ceilinged room swathed with gray silk; the effect was a tent of fog. Large vases on each table were covered with moss—from them leapt silver branches entwined with fairy lights. At each place, a tiny silver vase held two or three flustered pink anemones. The party was to celebrate the installation of a huge winged metal sculpture that commemorated—I can’t recall. There were drinks, and hors d’oeuvres on trays. As usual, I hadn’t had time to eat during the day and ate too many of these too fast. I had also turned my ankle on a cobblestone when we arrived, so stood on one foot, regretting my stiletto heels. Stanley Kubrick’s last film, Eyes Wide Shut, had just opened, and the dim room buzzed with conversation: “And what did you think of Mouth Wide Open?” I heard one woman say to another, her diamond bracelets snatching the light.

I found my place card. The seat to my left was empty. It was to remain empty all evening, but the chair, with its ghostly inhabitant did not then fill me with a sense of foreboding, though it meant I would have to talk to the person on my right, exclusively. It transpired that my dinner companion was a man in his mid-eighties. He introduced himself. We established that we were both friends of so-and-so. He was immediately recognizable to me, even then, as a man who had lived his life adjacent to power. His evening wear was immaculate; he wore a forest-green brocade bow tie. He preferred the country to the city, he told me. It was wonderful to muck around in the garden. Recently, a friend had said to me that if she heard the phrase country house one more time she would scream. I thought of that. Which country? I asked. He had a place in Connecticut. His wife—was her name Patsy?—grew roses. Sad she couldn’t be here tonight, laid up with a cold. Prone to them. We agreed something was going around. Here on your own? he asked. I indicated my husband across the table, engaged in animated conversation. It was a large round table for ten people, and I could just make out his voice, as distant as a ship-to-shore radio. We moved on. Did I write, or paint, or what? he asked me. I admitted that I wrote for a magazine. Amazing what girls get up to, he said. His own daughter had gone to law school. How many daughters did he have? It turned out we both had three.

It’s all going down to the final day. Fulham’s kite training didn’t work after all. 

Marcus, Jim, Vish and Andy wave farewell to Burnley and Luton Town, who exited the Premier League more quickly than Casemiro exited his own penalty area. Meanwhile, Marcus and Jim tell everyone about their magical time at Craven Cottage and – suddenly – Crystal Palace are the most exciting team in the league. Blimey! 

There’s also the small matter of the title race and – speaking of the best – it’s high time for a Phil Neville update…

We're back on stage and tickets are out NOW! Join us at London Palladium on Friday September 20th 2024 for 'Football Ramble: Time Tunnel', a journey through football history like no other. Expect loads of laughs, all your Ramble favourites, and absolutely everything on Pete's USB stick. Get your tickets at footballramblelive.com!

Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, and email us here: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Arsenal will need help from their fierce rivals, Tottenham, if they are to win the Premier League title this season.

Tottenham will face Manchester City in the penultimate game of the season at home, and if they can take points off the Citizens, Arsenal will be in a position to clinch the title, provided they win their remaining league games as well.

However, the Lilywhites are also aiming to qualify for the Champions League at the end of this season, which adds a layer of complexity to the situation. They need to win the game against Manchester City.

This puts Tottenham in a dilemma as they must decide whether they want to win and secure Champions League qualification, potentially helping Arsenal win the Premier League, or if they want to play in the Europa League to prevent Arsenal from winning the title.

But Troy Deeney insists that Spurs should want to help Arsenal become champions. He writes in The Sun: