Showing posts with label England. Show all posts
Showing posts with label England. Show all posts

Evan Ovenell: The gay-subtext guy of "Heartstopper" and "Harry Potter," MMA fighter, barrister. With some dicks and Hagrid's butt.


The Heartstopper Forever podcast interviews each of LGBT couples of the series.

Charlie and Nick (Joe Locke and Kit Connor)

Darcy and Tara (Corinna Brown, Kizzie Edgell)

Elle and Tao (Yasmin Finney, William Gao, left).  (Elle is a trans girl)

But what about Christian and Sai (Evan Ovenell, Ashwin Vishwanath)?






They are members of Nick's rugby team and inseparable companions.  Christian takes awhile to realize that Nick and Charlie are boyfriends, not "good mates," which Sai finds annoying.  They stand by during the homophobic bullying incident, but later apologize.

I see the way you're gazing at him, buddy.





Just kiss him.  You know you want to.

I get it, with a gay power couple and two LGBT side couples, there's no room in the scripts for a fourth, so their romance has to stay subtext.  But it's enough to suggest a profile.







There isn't much about Ashwin available.  The IMDB says that he has another acting credit besides Heartstopper, playing Chef Rao in We Are Vegans (2016), but that's probably another Ashwin Vishwanath.  There are several out there, including a theoretical physicist and a Bollywood actor.

And whoever belongs to this cock.

But Evan has a resume and an Instagram account.  In addition to Heartstopper, he has done voice work in the full-cast audiobooks of the Harry Potter series (2025-26), 

 Not the movie cast, of course.  Harry is voiced by Frankie Treadaway and Jaxon Knopf (left, on his way to prom in a car full of boys. 'Nuff said).

Dumbledore (Headmaster of Hogwarts) by Hugh Laurie

Mean teacher Severus Snape, who was in love with Harry's mum, by Riz Ahmed




And Hagrid, the Half-Giant who becomes Harry's pal, by Mark Addy (far left , showing his stuff in The Full Monty).

More after the break






Oliver Arnold plays a gay Irish lad, Gatsby, and a lot of cowboys. Or at least models them. With his chest, two backsides, and two co-star cocks

   

I was researching the upcoming movie Last House (August 2026), looking for actors who had played gay characters or were gay in real life, when Oliver Henry Arnold,  drew my attention.  This photo seems to depict two Irish immigrants of the early 20th century in a chummy pose.  Could they be boyfriends?  But what movie or tv show features a gay romance in steerage en route to Ellis Island?


Oliver's instagram posts consist mostly of beefcake poses accompanied by little inspirational quotations: 

"Pleasures, when they go beyond a certain limit, are but punishment." - Marcus Aurelius

“Don’t waste your time looking back. You’re not going that way.” - Ragnar Lothbrok, a Viking hero of the 9th century.









“Two are better than one because they have a more satisfying return for their labor; for if either of them falls, the one will lift up his companion." -- the Book of Ecclesiastes

“A mind troubled by doubt cannot focus on the course of victory” -- not attributed

Oliver also posts scenes from his roles playing a Jazz Age Gatsby type, the Irish lad in steerage, and cowboys -- a lot of cowboys.  He must star in a lot of Westerns.  But according to his resume, he graduated from Eastbourne College, Oxford (a secondary school) in 2018.  That doesn't give him much time for costume dramas.  

And his resume lists only one starring role, a short entitled The Two Gambits (2024):  Walter (Herbert Forthuber) tells his therapist that many years ago, his wife left him to live with her boyfriend, taking her five year old daughter, Ava. He told his young son Isaac (Oliver) that they died.  

Isaac grew up angry and resentful, and finally left home, telling him "Do not try to find me."  Years later, he returns, looks up his long-lost sister, and asks her to pose as a therapist to determine why "Dad killed our mother."

Isaac never expresses any heterosexual interest, so I'm going to list him as gay by default.


The IMDB lists three upcoming roles: 

The Caged (in post-production) is based on "true events" at The Cage in St. Osyth, Essex. In the 1580s, it was a holding cell for women accused of witchcraft; then it became the town lockup (for drunks and petty criminals); and in the 1980s it became a private home.  Residents complained of slammed doors, footsteps, strange objects appearing, disembodied voices, and a face with "an evil grin." 

 Edmund Kingsley, son of the suddenly-straight Sir Ben Kingsley, stars in the movie.  Oliver's character is near the bottom of the cast list. 


Wind of Change
(completed): During the Cold War, Klaus Meine of the a German rock band called The Scorpions (Ludwig Trepte, left) wrote the titular song for his imprisoned friend Andrej (David Kross, below)  It became a symbol of hope during the Fall of the Berlin Wall. 

I follow the Moskva
Down to Gorky Park
Listening to the wind of change
An August summer night
Soldiers passing by
Listening to the wind of change




Sounds like there will be a gay subtext.  

Oliver plays Soldier #2.

More after the break

Stranded on the Isle of Dogs, and Other Hassles, Horrors, and Hookups of My First Visit to England

 

Sorry if you love London, or call it home.  I'm not a big fan, in spite of the architectural marvels and fascinating history.  I always get lost.  It's cold.  The streets are all dirty.  Everyone is rude all the time;  I've never seen anyone in London ever smile.  And the food's not great.

In 1993, my partner Lane was a delegate to the World Congress of GLBT Jews, to be held in London.  He invited me along as his guest.

This isn't him.  I have lots of pictures, but no nudes.  But he was (and still is) a husky, hairy bear with nice arms, like this guy.

I had been to France, Spain, Germany, and the Netherlands, and Lane spent a year in Israel, but for some reason neither of us had ever been to Britain.  So we planned lots of sightseeing: The Tower of London, the Sherlock Holmes Museum, Stonehenge, The Rude Man of Cerne Abbas, Canterbury Cathedral.  Not to mention the Gay Village of Soho.


Customs


The problems started the moment I arrived.  At customs I was questioned extensively about my reasons for coming to Britain, who I was staying with, did I know anyone here, and again, why did I come here????  He wouldn't believe that I was a tourist.  No one ever came to Britain as a tourist.  It was a tiny, backwater country with absolutely no sites of historical or artistic interest!  I must be planning something criminal.

I still wonder why he was so suspicious.  Do I have the same name as a terrorist?  Was it my leather jacket?  

The Isle of Dogs

If you were planning a World Congress with delegates from all over the world, most of whom have never been to Britain before, wouldn't you pick a hotel that was centrally located?

Nope: The Royal Britannia Hotel was on the Isle of Dogs, an industrial sleugh on the East End of London, surrounded by the Thames on three sides.  No pubs, no shops, nothing but block after block of dark industrial buildings.  

And no subway.  You could catch a bus into town -- about six miles to the Tower of London -- but it stopped at different places, depending on the whim of the driver, anywhere between six and twelve blocks from the hotel.

So you were standing at a bus stop, and it would drive past you and stop two blocks away.

On Thursday and Friday, while Lane was busy with meetings, I chased after a bus getting into town, visited the Tower, the British Museum, the Sherlock Holmes Museum -- and Clapham Common, because I took the wrong metro and ended up in the far south.  


Saturday was Shabbat, so no meetings were scheduled.  Lane and I returned to London to visit Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, a science fiction bookstore, and  a gay sauna (for a gay conference, there was very little hooking up).  

We missed the last bus, so we had to take a taxi back to the hotel.

On Sunday the buses didn't run, so another taxi into London, where we found almost everything closed, and a taxi back (straining our resources).  




The Gay Jewish Conference


I didn't realize that by signing on as a guest, not a delegate, I was forbidden to go to any of the meetings, or any of the dinners.  

On Thursday night, there was an evening boat tour of the Thames, with box dinner provided.  Except for guests.  I stole one to avoid starving to death.

On Saturday night, they held a dance for conference delegates -- no one else, not even the partners.  I spent the night watching television -- the "Crazy Americans" hour, with four episodes of a tv sitcom that I never heard of (and don't recall the title of; it takes place in an office, but in one episode they're on a life boat for some reason).


On Sunday night they had a dinner -- for delegates only.  I'd have to make do with the hotel restaurant.  Whoops, it was closed on Sundays.  I would have starved to death again, but someone with a car drove into town and brought me (and the other guests) some fish and chips.

Is this any way to run a gay Jewish conference?

At least Lane brought a hookup back from the dance, so I got a little cock action.

It gets better after the break.  Sort of.

"The Seven Dials Mystery": Murder on an English country estate in 1925, with a gay couple, a gay bar, Bluemel's butt, and Bilbo's dick

 

Note: I revised this review based on Episodes 2 and 3.

I've been trying to get into reading mysteries lately, including classic Agatha Christie: Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, and The Seven Dials Mystery (1929): one of her earlier works, while she's still fumbling around to create an ongoing amateur sleuth.  A tv adaption has dropped on Netflix, starring Corey Mylchreest, who is straight but likes to pretend to be gay.  So maybe he'll be pretending here, too.

Prologue: An elderly man walks through Ronda, an Andalusian village about an hour from Malaga., with beautiful establishing shots.  He enters the empty Plaza de Toros and checks his watch, and finds a note (a picture of a clock).  Suddenly a bull rushes out and gores him to death!

Scene 1: Chimneys, a stately country house in Gloucester, 1925.  A party, with everyone wearing masks and being decadent.  Lady Caterham (Helena Bonham Carter) and her daughter Bundle hate the ghastly masks, but they had no choice; it was the idea of Lord and Lady Coote, to whom they are indebted.  Lord Coote wants to meet George Lomax, so they can form a relationship: "His Foreign Office, my steel factories." 

Lol, I can't hear the name Coote without thinking of Cornelius Coot, who founded the city of Duckburg in Disney comics.


Bundle, apparently the focus character, continues to mingle.  She approaches Ronny (gay actor Nabhaan Rizwan, right) and his Boyfriend (Hughie O'Donnell), who explain that their mate Gerry hasn't gotten up before noon all week, so they're going to prank him with seven alarm clocks hidden in various places in his room.




Next, she talks to Gerry (Corey Mylchreest, top photo, butt left).  He gawks with Girl of My Dreams hetero-horniness, and tells Bundle how incredibly gorgeous she is.  Ok, so he won't be pretending to be gay in this one.  She counters that he is incredibly gorgeous as well.  They gaze at each other for about five minutes, then he asks her to dinner, and implies that he's going to propose.  The gazing continues.  I'm fast-forwarding past it.









Scene 2:
Cut to the boyfriends giggling as they hide alarm clocks in various places in Gerry's room.  Then to a card game, with Bundle and Boy of Her Dreams Gerry continuing to gaze at each other while the others chitchat. Jimmy (Edward Bluemel, butt left) joins them.

 Then raucous Jazz Age dancing and more gazing.  

The boyfriends are not dancing.  They are engrossed with each other.  I think they're a canonical couple.

Bundle drops Gerry to mingle, then goes out into the garden. 







Scene 3:
Morning.  Establishing shot of the country house surrounded by marshland.  Ronny and his Boyfriend complain of being hungover, and fill their plates.  The others arrive, equally hungover.

At 11:15, the alarm clocks go off in Gerry's room.  He's not turning them off, so they send the Butler to wake him.  Then Bundle goes.  She finds that Gerry is...dead!

Cut to the doctor (Tristan Gemmill, left), who finds a sleeping draft next to the bed.  Gerry must have taken a draft to help him sleep, and since he was drunk, the combination was lethal.  

"Impossible!" Bundle exclaims.  "He never used sleeping drafts!"  And she knows what he did before bed because....

"Then maybe it was deliberate?" the doctor suggests.

The Boyfriend: "Well, he was stressed at work.  His boss, George Lomax, was always riding him."

"No way!  Impossible!  He was planning to propose to me."

Next up: a bumbling detective, on his first case, ineptly examines the crime scene while making jokes.  Bundle thinks that it was a murder.  Otherwise be lousy story.

"Wait -- there are seven clocks on the mantle.  I thought you guys hid them?"  The Boyfriends glance at each other in shock.

More after the break

Alfie Williams: A missing penis, a youthful scoundrel, a zombie fighter. Is he or his character gay? Or both? With Chi dick update


I was checking my Instagram yesterday, when it recommended that I follow someone named Alfie Williams.  Never heard of him.  This is the first time Instagram has recommended someone other than a fitness trainer or bodybuilder.  I figured it must be either because he plays a gay character or he is gay in real life.















In the small photo on my cell phone, Alfie looked like a guy in his 20s, but when I checked his Instagram on my laptop, he turned out to be a young teenager.  14 in 2025.

So, an out-and-proud 14 year old, or playing an out-and-proud 14 year old?

Turns out that research wasn't at all difficult; there are a lot of interviews and articles about Alfie.

He was born in 2011 in Gateshead, across the river from shipping and partying center Newcastle-upon-Tyne in northern England.  His father is Alfie Dobson, an actor and bodybuilder with nine credits listed on the IMDB.

Alfie Jr. broke into acting with the short film Phallacy (2021): a 12-year old boy wakes up to find his penis missing. Doctors say there is nothing they can do (transmen get a working penis from their vaginal tissue, but the boy doesn't have anything to work with). Don't worry, when you grow up, you'll find a lot of things to do in the bedroom that don’t require one .

  Sounds like a lot of LGBTQ symbolism and hegemonic masculinity going on.  An inclusive start to your career, Alf.


Next came Ghost Theo, a resident of the Land of the Dead in Episode 3.5 of the dark fantasy His Dark Materials (2022).  He only has one line.

An unspecified character in BBC Radio 4's adaption of the soap opera Our Friends in the North, about four Newcastle blokes whose lives intersect from 1964 to 2022.

Young John Henry Sayers in A New Breed of Criminal (2023).  The adult John Henry Sayers (played by Alfie's Dad) and his brother Stephen (Steve Wraith) were real-life gangsters who ran the city of Newcastle in the 1990s. 

But it is Alfie's starring role in 28 Years Later (2025) that prompted the flood of interviews and articles.


I saw the original 28 Days Later (2002), where bicycle courier Jim (Cillian Murphy) gets into an auto accident, and wakes up from a coma "28 days later" to discover that he's a survivor of a zombie apocalypse.  He meets two other survivors, Mark and Selena, but one is immediately killed.  The other announces that just because they're the last two people left on Earth, they're not going to f*ck; but they do.  They fall in love, adopt a survivor girl, and escape to an idyllic rural future together.  

Guess which is killed, and which falls in love.  

Right.  Offensively blatant erasure of gay potential in order to promote the myth of universal heterosexual desire and practice for the 10 millionth time. 


In 28 Years Later, 12-year old Spike (Alfie) is living with his parents in a survivor community on Lindisfarne, a tidal island that was home to a famous Medieval monastery and the Lindisfarne Gospels. Dad (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) takes him to the mainland for a coming-of-age ritual, and they are separated for some reason.

Left: Aaron Taylor-Johnson's d*ck.


Later he takes his sick Mum to the mainland to see a doctor (Ralph Fiennes, right), who says that she is dying of brain cancer and must be euthanized. We see it happening.  That settles it: I'm not watching this movie.  F*ck the Sadness.

More after the break