Monday 26 May 2008

TV

Today’s Gulf News is an unexpectedly racy read. Not only are Dubai Police warning transvestites, with top cop and sometime poet Dahi Khalfan Tamim pondering the fact that mixed education is to blame for the rise in transvestism in the UAE, but there’s been an outbreak of lesbianism, too! Two women have apparently been jailed for a month each for ‘cuddling and kissing and behaving like a married couple’ on a public beach, according to the multi-kilo wodge of daily paper. One can only assume that they had a row because one of them had forgotten the sun-tan lotion.

But it’s the transvestites story that has that lovely touch of pottiness to it. There’s something quite delicious about a five-day crackdown on cross-dressers: “transvestites have been seen of late in public places, including shopping malls” we are told. I can't wait for it: ladies with suspiciously large hands and adams apples had better watch out, no?

It’s all rather reminiscent of early 1960s Britain, to be honest – the ebb and flow of a society struggling to preserve its values in the face of the pressures of the modern age. Touches like blaming a rise in transvestism on mixed education really give it that whiff of Ealing comedy, though.

A sort of Middle Eastern version of Passport to Pimlico is what’s needed, methinks...

A footnote: I wonder if Scottish people in Dubai dare wear their kilts over the coming week? Now that arrest would make a marvellous news story...

8 comments:

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i*maginate said...

David is a tranny

Keef said...

Alex, I think you might want to bin 'David's' posts

Seabee said...

I loved the fact of the publicised warning that for five days (why five?) there was going to be a crackdown on transvestites. So it's frocks kept in the wardrobe until Sunday, then it's safe to wear them again?

And then the charge that the ladies were: "sleeping on each other like a married couple'

No no no, this is another wind up. Another Monty Python script.

Alexander said...

Deleted 'em, but so resent the time spent (even 5 secs is too long). Will resist moderation etc as long as poss, but this stuff IS annoying, in't it?

Seabee: if not Ealing, I'll settle for Python. Either is appropriate to the time and spirit of this sort of stuff...

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