Definitely. That would be one quite real aspect of some gay guys

i defintely agree

I remember another member on here, young gay man who wasn't out to his parents, who said he watched the Todd storyline with his parents and found it very helpful to hear them talk about it.

I think Corrie have done well with Sean, although I would like to see him have a proper boyfriend, or at least another gay friend. Easties is ludicrous, having no gay male characters at all - they introduced Derek only to completely lose interest in him.

I agree with what you said previously about lesbian characters - non existent apart from Zoe who has in any case lost credibility. However I have heard that

Zoe's stil the first lesbian though as I said!!

RK, great post, I totally agree with everything you have said

I think Corrie have done well with their gay characters- in the past year, they've had three major gay characters who have all represented something completely different. There's Sean (the camp gay guy), Todd (the young teenage gay guy struggling with his sexuality), and Karl (the confident openly gay straight acting guy).

I've got many gay friends and they've all been able to relate to at least one of the above, particularly Todd, as most of them have been in his situation (the whole coming to terms with their sexuality thing), but not necessarily with the fiancee and kids!

What would be great now is to see a long term gay couple on the Street although, unfortunately, I don't think this will happen just yet. Maybe in a couple of years or so but not now

Laura xx

Not all gay men's lives revolve around the scene. Some gay men actually have lives! The scene can be a terribly shallow place full of terribly shallow people. Most of the gay people I know integrate within society - rather than restricting their lives to the 'gay ghetto'. Don't presume that every gay person's take on life is shallow!

Sean in Corrie is accused of being a stereotype - I've met plenty of gay men like Sean - that's not stereotyping, that's representation. It seems that some gay men are showing their own internalised homophobia by not wanting to accept that people like Sean do exist.

You should all watch Jo on The Bill - she is a fantastic lesbian character, in the fact that her sexuality is about 1% of her whole character. It is very refreshing

EE started strong with Colin and Barry but Tony and whatshisname was pretty awful and the lesbian hairdressers were jumping on the bandwagon.

Brookie did it well in the early 80s - with Gordon and even though the Beth storyline was good, it was quite sensational. They then bought in Mickey Poppins' character who was the start of the camp crusade.

Corrie's Todd and Karl was okay and Sean is great - spitting image of my friend. But it is odd that an out gay man has no gay friends and rarely ventures outside Coro St...

Family Affairs managed the balance and it is just a shame that Max & Sami will drift off into TV oblivion.

That is so very true.The gay scene is a very shallow place,full of unneccessary bitchiness and back-stabbing.I speak from experience and I for one do not want to be part of that thank you very much.

Same here! I'm glad I realised this - there is life out there!!!

I agree with both of you. The gay scene is full of bitchy, back stabbing queens. It's basically a meat market. Everyone shagging everyone else and then gossiping about it. Dispite all this though, I still go on the gay scene. I absolutely hate it and feel like crap when I leave (most of the time), but as a young gay guy where else are you meant to go if you want to meet someone. I go out with the hope of finding a possible boyfriend, but all you get there is sex. However, if I don't go mingle with the other gays surely I'll just lead a sad life on my own?

Im bi and never went on the scene and my friend does and he tells me all about it, he still keeps going out on the scene even though it has caused trouble between me and him as i listened to a guy of the scene and what he had to say about the guy i knew and did go out with.

so if you are bi, how do you choose between the 2 sexes then? I would imagine it would be hard, youd always be wanting a bit of the other...

I had a feeling that might be the case.

Wasn't the actress who played Susie pregnant in real life ? I'm sure I remember reading that the pregnancy was a difficult one and it hadn't helped standing behind the bar all the time, inorder for her bump to be hidden. Maybe this is the reason she never returned..

I have a group of friends now... about 10 of us who all know each other off the scene... and we've started having parties and stuff instead of going out on the scene as often... and most of the people we now know are through doing this, and they're a lot better people than most of the queens out in Liverpool...

You took the words right out of my mouth. Well said...

I'm afraid I LOATHED the po-faced Colin in EE; he was so right-on and PC and had absoutely nothing to do with my experience of gay life in the late 80s. Corrie's Karl I found to be a very realistic portrait of a modern urban professional gay man; and I think it's very brave of Corrie to present a stereotypical (on the surface) camp gay guy in the character of Sean. After all, let's face it, we've all met a Sean; and throw a stick down Canal Street or Old Compton Street and you'll hit 20 of him.

And how come the gay press loved Antony Cotton in QAF but are now giving him grief (for what is, essentially the same performance) in Corrie?

We had that kind of portrayal of gay lads. It was called Queer as Folk. What we need is better dramas than soaps are capable of being that treat gay life in a totally matter of fact way, as just incidental. Todd and Karl on Corrie was an old-fashioned love story and contained a rather old-fashioned "coming out" story. It was far superior to the soap stuff that had gone before, but it was Chris Finch's portrayal of Karl that was actually supremely edgy. He was a scene queen. Exactly the type of guy that the original starter of this thread appears to want. However, he was totally non-stereotypical (while stereotypes are what the original poster appears to want). He liked guys, had had short, sharp, sweet relationships, and some one-night stands, but he was basically a relationships guy. He just had not fallen in love until he met Todd.

Chris Finch sugar-coated the edginess of the character by making him cheeky. This was extremely clever. It made him fully-rounded. Yet Corrie failed to renew his contract after six months. The best gay character there has been on British TV. Chris appeared to realise that scene queens are non stereotypes and are real people, who are not always shallow. And Karl will be a great model for gays in the future on soaps/dramas.

Kevvo

I agree; to date, I've found Karl Foster to be the best (most satisfying... ?) gay character in a British soap.

Well no surprises there. Like the press in general the gay press is essentially interested in good copy. End of . . . And some of the gay press is quite against the "community" that it actually serves. Anthony Cotton is doing a superb job and he is alowly grinding down a lot of the prejudices that were obviously still there and which actually made T and K so brave. I think he is probably leading the way for more gay characters to be accepted on the show.

Of course the loss of Bruno Langley ws a setback for them, but it may have been too early to have had a straight-acting long-term gay guy. I speak to older people that I meet and if I ever mention T and K it is somehow embarrassing to them. Very subversive. Turning a lovely straight boy like Bruno/Todd into a gay.

But I think now they are going to be able to break things down more gently. Anthony/Sean is doing an ace job.

Kev

Yup, but with masses of unfulfilled potential. I just do not think the Corrie scriptwriters quite realised what it was that they had!!!! Or they were frightened of what they had created. It was meant to be all about Bruno. All the fanfare was about Bruno. Chris Finch was little noticed by comparison. But the more I think about this the more I think that accidentally they created a cracking character (as so often happens of course). And when the history of gays in soaps is written he has to be there at the top. It was not Bruno (though he was good). It was Chris/Karl!!

Kevvo

There are a lot of misconceptions about being bi-sexual and one of them you have mentioned above. All I can say is being bisexual is just as diverse as being gay or straight Personally I can't stand labels but other views may differ

It does seem to fit in with her behaviour, but then again it could just be dodgy writing, no way of telling with Easties

Too true!

I hope that if they do take her character in that direction, they make her confident, even feisty - maybe give her a relationship (or show her as not wanting one). I've have had enough of angst-ridden gay characters - it's too much of a cliché these days.

Yes me too. I do hope we're not heading into melodrama again. She doesn't seem to be that confident if she hasn't told her friends although