OUTCAST WORLD

What happens when the places that helped us become ourselves disappear? A Brummie drag and The Voice UK legend has the answer... Drag artist and musician Fatt Butcher joins Graeme Smith to talk about the dance floors that changed their life—and why losing a gay bar means losing far more than somewhere to drink. Growing up in a small village during Section 28, Fatt watched Queer as Folk with the volume barely on, wondering where a queer life might be possible. Finding Birmingham’s gay village opened up a world of first kisses, new identities and possibilities that had once felt out of reach. Now, Fatt is turning that experience into Congregational: a drag funeral for the gay village that attempts to resurrect it, complete with a queer choir, mirror balls, dance music and a decidedly unconventional approach to worship. But this isn’t straightforward nostalgia. Graeme and Fatt get into the contradictions of spaces that can save lives while relying on selling us another drink, the loneliness of performing five nights a week, and reclaiming the joy of singing together after a complicated religious upbringing. Plus: smoking-area friendships, poppers and dubstep, turning hate into a badge of honour—and what it actually takes to build a community beyond the dance floor.

During the 1980s, half the patients on some of London’s AIDS wards were Irish. It is a staggering fact—and part of an almost-forgotten chapter of queer history. Homosexuality remained illegal in Ireland until 1993. Many queer Irish people crossed the Irish Sea in search of freedom, safety and the chance to live authentically. They created homes, friendships and chosen families in Britain. But as AIDS devastated the community, many also found themselves on London’s wards, far from home. At the centre of this episode is Fr Bernárd Lynch, the openly gay Irish Catholic priest who founded New York City’s first AIDS ministry in 1982. He cared for people as they died, challenged the Church over safer sex and gay rights, and later continued that work in London, including at the London Lighthouse. Bernárd’s testimony—alongside the experiences of others who lived through the crisis—is at the heart of Mammy’s House, a new black comedy now running at Upstairs at the Gatehouse in Highgate until 13 September. Graeme speaks to Bernárd and the play’s co-creator and star Derek Murphy, whose screen credits include RTÉ’s We Watch, You Watch and hit sitcom Killinaskully. Derek explains why he was determined to bring this uniquely Irish story to life, combining humour and humanity while doing justice to people whose experiences were in danger of disappearing. Bernárd has now seen Mammy’s House twice. He considers it one of the most profound and authentic depictions of the era he has encountered—and believes it gives this extraordinary community the recognition and dignity it deserves.

It's the last weekend of this year's Edinburgh Fringe and in our time in Edinburgh we've spoken to some of the most interesting new and established artists from around the world. OUTCAST WORLD is live from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe — the biggest arts festival on the planet — meeting some of the queer and queer-adjacent performers bringing their stories to Edinburgh this summer. In this episode, Graeme meets New York performer and musician Joey Jennings, creator of Little Pink Dress — a deeply personal one-man musical about growing up gay, chasing the Hollywood dream, family, addiction, recovery and finding your way back to the person you were before the world started telling you who to be. At the heart of the show is a real little pink dress Joey wore as a six-year-old — sleeping in it, dancing around his room in it and living out an uninhibited childhood love of performance, pop music and dressing up. Years later, it was Joey’s mother who suggested that if he was going to tell his story, the dress had to be part of it. Joey talks about spending more than a decade pursuing the “serious actor” life in Los Angeles — and how an industry obsessed with image, masculinity and youth gradually left him feeling increasingly disconnected from himself. He describes auditioning for straight roles, trying to inhabit a more hyper-masculine version of himself and eventually realising that the dream he had chased since childhood was damaging the very part of him that had wanted to perform in the first place. There’s also a frank conversation about drinking, getting sober in 2023, therapy, moving from LA to New York and beginning to rebuild his creative life. And then there’s his mum. Little Pink Dress is, ultimately, a love letter to the single mother who encouraged the artistic kid she was raising, introduced him to the country and folk music that now runs through the show, and whose voice Joey says has remained in his head telling him to keep going. The result is an unusual collision of country rock, musical theatre, queer identity, childhood memory and autobiography — including a cowboy version of Joey who represents the masculine mask he once believed he needed to wear. They also talk about why Joey stayed away from social media for years, the strange vulnerability of finally releasing songs he had kept private for so long, and what happens when you hand the most personal parts of your life over to an audience. Recorded as part of OUTCAST WORLD’s Edinburgh Fringe 2026 coverage. Joey Jennings: Little Pink Dress.

The Fringe changes pace once the last week arrives, the flyering gets a little more frantic, the queues at the good venues get a little longer, and the shows that have built word of mouth over three weeks are the ones worth fighting for a ticket to. Outcast World has been across the city all month checking out the best Edinburgh has to offer. Gareth Waugh: Is Pepsi OK? There is a version of this show that plays as a straightforward hour about a bad gig or a worse manager, and then there is the version Gareth Waugh actually built, which unfolds more like a true crime podcast than a stand-up set, except the person telling it is also the one who got taken. Waugh, an Edinburgh local who has supported Kevin Bridges and John Bishop and taken every strange booking going from cruise ships to the PDC World Darts Championship, was scammed out of money on a podcast job that appeared to be connected to Coca-Cola. The man behind it was someone Waugh considered a friend. What follows on stage is the unravelling, told through a PowerPoint of receipts: email threads, video calls, bank statements, text messages, all projected as evidence while the story gets steadily harder to believe. Outcast World has a stake in this one that goes beyond a recommendation. The same man behind the scam in Gareth's story is one we crossed paths with too, and there are names in that show that have been changed or redacted for reasons that will make sense the moment the lights go up. Go and see it, and see if you can spot who's who. Gareth Waugh: Is Pepsi OK? runs at Monkey Barrel 2 until 30 August. Science Stories for Grown-Ups A gentler close to the evening, and a genuinely lovely one that's queer coded. Giulia and Richard are two scientists turned performers who spend an hour giving the back catalogue of science a personality, atoms with grudges, chemical reactions with feelings, thermodynamics rewritten as something closer to a bedtime story than a lecture. Fire, water, and the Twin Paradox all get the treatment, and there is a book of the stories on sale afterwards for anyone who wants to take the wonder home with them. It is the kind of show built for the people whose science teacher, as the pair put it themselves, crushed the curiosity out of them the first time round. This one gets it back.

Some Fringe shows you have to see to believe, and Final Queen is very much one of them, so this week I sat down with its creator and star Harrison Sweeney to work out how on earth you build a drag circus horror comedy about a queen road-tripping across the Australian outback to audition for Kylie Minogue, getting hopelessly lost, and ending up in an abandoned farmhouse fighting off chainsaw-wielding bushrangers, ghosts and a rolling cast of slasher villains, each one staged as a different circus act. It is, on paper, one of the maddest pitches of the whole festival, and it opened to four stars on its very first preview, which tells you the madness is the good kind. Harrison came to drag during lockdown and to the stage through circus school in Melbourne, where he trained in aerial rope and hula hoops long before he ever put on a wig, and his co-creator Rachel Carey is a horror specialist with lesbian vampires and demonic parodies already on her CV, so between the two of them Final Queen was probably always going to look exactly like this. Underneath the fake blood, though, there is a real argument, and it is the reason this one belongs on Outcast World. We get into why drag is inherently political, why the final girl who survives the horror film turns out to be such a natural fit for a drag queen, and the shared history of three art forms, slasher cinema, queer performance and circus, that were all once dismissed as too low to count. We also cover the far less glamorous reality of a Fringe run, which for Harrison means scrubbing stage blood out of a white dress by hand in the shower every single night. It is funny, it is warm, and it is a proper conversation about what queer survival actually looks like in 2026. In this episode How a year-long game of "what if" turned into the Fringe's most demented pitch Grace Lightning, the love child of the final girl trope, a queer circus performer and a camp Aussie drag queen Why drag is political whether it means to be or not, and what the tagline "who are the real monsters?" is really asking The shared outsider history of slasher films, queer art and circus What sets Australian drag and its larrikin humour apart from the Drag Race UK aesthetic The unglamorous truth about blood, laundry and twenty-four shows in twenty-six days Networking, faith in the work, and missing your castmates when the show is just you A quickfire finish, one Kylie track to die to, one to kill to, and the one thing Grace could never survive Final Queen runs at Big Belly, Cowgate, at 9.30pm nightly until 30 August, with rest days on the 17th and 24th. If you are anywhere near Edinburgh, go, and tell them Outcast World sent you.

Outcast World is back from its summer break — and we’re in Scotland for the Edinburgh Fringe. From now until the Fringe wraps up, Graeme is getting immersed in the biggest arts festival in the world, taking in the queer and queer-adjacent culture of Edinburgh and meeting some of the best comedians, artists, musicians and performers in town. And yes, Outcast has brought the campervan. We’ll be bringing you new interviews and special episodes from Edinburgh over the next few weeks, alongside some classic conversations from the Outcast Fringe archives. First up, Dan Tiernan. Gay, dyspraxic and ferociously funny, Dan has become one of the most exciting names in British comedy. We head back into the Outcast archives to hear what happened when Graeme caught up with him at the Fringe as his career was taking off. Then we meet Compagnia Bellanda, an independent Italian dance company from Friuli Venezia Giulia in Italy’s far north-east. Founded by creative partners Giovanni and Claudia, the company takes Giovanni’s roots in breakin’ and hip hop culture and pushes them into contemporary performance. They’re in Edinburgh with *Il canto dell’assiolo* — *The Song of the Scops Owl* — a 45-minute duet using the haunting, repetitive call of a tiny Italian bird as a metaphor for intimacy, desire, tenderness, control and relationships that never quite resolve. It’s the first stop as Outcast World gets immersed in Edinburgh Fringe for the next few weeks. Comedy. Art. Music. Performance. Queer culture. Queer-adjacent culture. Old friends and new discoveries. Graeme is in Scotland for Outcast — and there’s a lot more to come.

Gabriel Clark joins Outcast World for a candid conversation recorded live at the BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! Gallery in London and originally featured on The BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! Podcast. Best known for his work on Hollyoaks and as one of the stars of Russell T Davies' highly anticipated new queer TV drama Tip Toe, Gabriel reflects on growing up in Bolton in an artistic family, finding his place as a young queer person, and navigating fame after landing a major TV role during the pandemic. The conversation explores everything from queer visibility in the entertainment industry to the importance of speaking out on issues that matter. Gabriel discusses why he chooses to use his platform to advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, trans rights and Palestine, despite the risks that can come with public activism in the media spotlight. He also opens up about starring in the provocative theatre production Jock Night, which tackles chemsex, shame, addiction and queer identity. Gabriel explains why the play sparked such important conversations within LGBTQ+ communities and how it changed his understanding of Manchester's queer scene and the challenges facing many gay men today. The discussion then turns to The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me, the acclaimed HIV-era play Gabriel recently performed in Manchester. Together, Graeme and Gabriel reflect on the legacy of HIV activism, the progress that has been made since the 1990s, and why many of the themes explored in the play still feel remarkably relevant in 2026. Finally, Gabriel shares what audiences can expect from Tip Toe, Russell T Davies' new five-part drama set around Manchester's Canal Street. Without giving away spoilers, he describes the series as funny, heartbreaking, sexy, political and full of humanity, while offering a glimpse behind the scenes of one of the most talked-about LGBTQ+ television projects of the year. A thoughtful and wide-ranging conversation about queer storytelling, activism, community, HIV history, chemsex, visibility, and the future of LGBTQ+ culture. Subscribe to Outcast World for more conversations exploring queer politics, sex and culture. #GabrielClark #TipToe #RussellTDavies #OutcastWorld #LGBTQ #QueerCulture #CanalStreet #Manchester #Chemsex #HIV #BoysBoysBoys #Channel4 #QueerTV #LGBTQPodcast

Andy Burnham, the King of the North, just won Makerfield in a landslide. He's back in Parliament, he's coming for Keir Starmer's job, and the whole country is asking the same question: is this the moment British politics finally changes? We check the lay of the land right now - do you think things can only get better? Are we doomed to disappointment again? Or has he pulled off an incredible feat - united the left and fractured the right? But what if the problem runs deeper than which leader is standing at the despatch box? Metin Pekin thinks so. His book Breaking Democracy's Chains argues that it doesn't matter who wins, who loses, or who challenges whom for the Labour leadership, because the party system itself is the mechanism that keeps real power out of reach. Not just for working people. For minorities. For queer communities who have spent decades depending on whichever party happens to be sympathetic this week. What replaced the parties when Section 28 was repealed? Who fights for trans rights when there's no whip to call in? Where does organised resistance live when you've dismantled the scaffolding? This is the conversation British politics needs to be having today. Not who leads Labour. But whether the whole game is rigged from the start.

A Fox News regular runs a company that sells paid protesters to the highest bidder. We sat him down and asked about the bodies, the lawsuits, and the crowds he says he can manufacture for anyone willing to pay. Adam Swart is the founder of Crowds on Demand, a Beverly Hills firm that supplies actors and paid demonstrators for protests, hearings and PR stunts. He has spent the past year on Fox News, Newsmax and OANN telling conservative audiences that the protests against Donald Trump are organised, funded and fake. The catch is that manufacturing protest for money is, by his own account, the entire business. This drops the morning after Trump turned his 80th birthday into a cage fight on the White House lawn, while millions took to the streets in a fresh round of No Kings protests. So we dug into the real history of Crowds on Demand: paid actors posing as Hurricane Katrina survivors at a council hearing, a federal racketeering lawsuit settled with a published apology, a recruitment drive for people hired purely to intimidate, and an unverifiable claim that someone once offered Swart millions to fake an anti-Trump crowd. It is not a hit job. He comes with some genuinely interesting anecdotes, including work his company says it did for people who use PrEP, and the conversation finds real common ground before it asks the harder questions his usual bookers never do. Outcast World is an independent, queer, left-leaning interview show. Broadcasting that does not pull its punches. Subscribe and stick around.

In 1998, eight months into Tony Blair's government, seven gay and bisexual working-class men from Bolton were convicted at Crown Court of buggery and gross indecency for having consensual sex together in a private home. No victim. No complaint. Some went to prison. All were placed on the sex offenders register. The laws used against them dated back to 1895, and in one case to 1533. Greater Manchester Police, the same force that prosecuted Alan Turing, pursued this case with a fervour no other police force in the country was matching at the time. Almost nobody knows this happened. Hugh Sheehan is the writer and audio producer behind Criminally Queer: The Bolton 7, the five-part BBC Sounds documentary series that spent years in the making and is referenced in Russell T Davies' Channel 4 drama Tip Toe, starring Alan Cumming as a gay bar owner in Manchester's Gay Village. Davies made Tip Toe because, in his words, the fight is back on. He's right. And the Bolton Seven are a significant part of why. In this episode of Outcast World, Graeme and Hugh cover the full story: the centuries-old laws that remained quietly on the books after partial decriminalisation in 1967, the two-man rule that made consensual group sex a criminal act regardless of what straight people were doing, the class dimension that meant working-class men from Bolton had no legal defences that a wealthier man in a privately owned home might have had, and the Chief Constable whose fundamentalist homophobia had shaped Greater Manchester Police for over a decade before the Bolton Seven were ever arrested. Criminally Queer: The Bolton 7 is available on BBC Sounds, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

As a wave of safeguarding scandals hits the Married At First Sight (MAFS) shows around the world and the former head of Channel 4 and OFCOM says he would never have commissioned a show this potentially hazardous for participants we ask is this a good moment to call time on the controversial reality series. Former MAFS UK star, Liverpudlian Thomas Hartley returns to Outcast World a different man from the one who last sat in our studio. As Married at First Sight UK brings one of the biggest scandals to TV in years, he gives us the rarest thing in the whole story, the view from inside the format. Back in 2022 he was going viral for his antics on the show's 10th season, but now he says he was out of control at the time and was drunk for most of the recording. He is unsparing about ten years of daily addiction and the queer pain underneath it, but generous about the welfare team who looked after him, and unflinching that the format itself is dangerous and should be redrawn by the very people who have lived it. CONTEXT: A BBC Panorama investigation set out allegations from former contributors that two women were raped by their on-screen husbands during filming, and that a third was subjected to a non-consensual sex act. The men deny the allegations, and the Metropolitan Police have asked anyone affected to come forward. Channel 4 has pulled every episode and a major sponsor has walked, and the regulator is reviewing the broadcaster's own welfare report. Thomas is neither an accuser nor one of the accused, and throughout this conversation he is speaking only about his own experience. Other contributors, and the reporting around the show, have described aspects of the production, including alcohol, differently to Thomas. If anything in this episode affects you. For drugs and alcohol, Talk to Frank, 0300 123 6600. For emotional distress, Samaritans, 116 123, free and round the clock. For sexual violence, the Rape and Sexual Abuse Support Line, 0808 500 2222. Outcast World is an award winning platform for queer politics, sex and culture. Subscribe for the full conversations and the weekly drop. Listen everywhere you get your podcasts and read more at outcastworld.net Follow us on TikTok @thisisoutcastworld #ThomasHartley #MarriedAtFirstSight #MAFS #MAFSUK #OutcastWorld #Sobriety #LiverpoolPride #RealityTV #QueerPodcast #DutyOfCare

Russell T Davies is back with Tiptoe and it has left viewers shaken. In this episode of Outcast World, Graeme Smith and Topher Taylor unpack the first two episodes of Channel 4's most talked-about new queer drama and ask why it feels less like fiction and more like a warning. From the brutal opening scene to Melba's now-viral speech about queer life in 2026, the conversation explores whether LGBTQ+ people are witnessing a genuine backlash after decades of progress. Has the optimism of the Queer as Folk era been replaced by fear? Are queer people becoming political targets once again? And what happens when online hate starts spilling into the real world? Graeme and Topher discuss the rise of anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, attacks on queer spaces, social media radicalisation, Reform UK, Donald Trump, trans rights, community resilience and the uncomfortable feeling that many rights once considered secure may no longer be guaranteed. The episode also features the debut of "Topher's Slag Bag" as listeners send in questions about sex, relationships, toys, threesomes and navigating intimacy. A funny, emotional and sometimes unsettling conversation about queer life, community, sex and politics in 2026. In this episode: • Russell T Davies' Tiptoe and its cultural impact • The legacy of Queer as Folk • LGBTQ+ rights and political backlash • Reform UK, Trump and the rise of reactionary politics • Canal Street, queer spaces and community • Social media radicalisation and online hate • HIV, memory and generational trauma • Topher's Slag Bag: sex toys, anal prep and threesomes Outcast World is the global queer group chat — covering LGBTQ+ news, politics, sex and culture from London around the world. Featuring: Graeme Smith and Topher Taylor. #LGBTQ #Tiptoe #RussellTDavies #QueerAsFolk #GayPodcast #OutcastWorld #LGBTQRights #CanalStreet #QueerCulture #DonaldTrump #ReformUK #GayLife #QueerPolitics #Channel4

Her off of Loose Women was there. So was Jane McDonald. And so, four ownership layers up, were the financiers. Graeme is joined by Loud Brown Gays host and Outcast alumnus Nick Charles to talk about the contradiction at the heart of the best weekend of the queer calendar. Mighty Hoopla is owned by Superstruct, owned in turn by the US private equity giant KKR, a firm that backs weapons manufacturers and holds stakes in Israeli corporations tied to the occupation. We waved Free Palestine flags at a festival whose money flows straight up to it. This is not a call to boycott and it is not a pile-on. It's a confession, because we were all there, and an honest look at why our anger lands on the rainbow logo while the people with the actual power stay invisible. Plus: queer club night DILF was deleted from Instagram overnight. Who will be silenced next? #OutcastWorld #MightyHoopla #QueerNightlife #LGBTQ #Palestine

The UK’s new EHRC guidance has triggered outrage, confusion and fear across the LGBTQ+ community, but what does it actually mean in practice? This week, Graeme Smith is joined by journalist Jamie Wareham, founder of QueerAF, for a sharp, urgent conversation about the Supreme Court ruling, the EHRC’s controversial code of practice, and the wider political shift happening across Britain. They discuss why this debate no longer affects only trans people, how gender policing increasingly impacts butch lesbians, feminine gay men and anyone seen as “not masculine enough,” and why many activists believe the UK is sliding backwards on LGBTQ+ rights at an alarming speed. Also explored - Wes Streeting, the Cass Review, media hostility toward trans people, Britain’s collapsing international LGBTQ+ rankings, and why local communities and businesses may now become the frontline of resistance. This is OUTCAST WORLD

Nigel Farage has revived one of the most controversial arguments of his political career: that migrants living with HIV should be denied NHS treatment. It's a position he first promoted during the 2015 election campaign. At the time, HIV charities, clinicians and public health experts condemned the claims, arguing that treating people living with HIV protects public health, reduces transmission and ultimately saves lives. Now, more than a decade later, the same rhetoric is back. The difference is that Farage is no longer a fringe insurgent. He is leading one of Britain's most successful political movements and could conceivably find himself in Downing Street. The question at the heart of this debate is not really about immigration. It's about who deserves healthcare. Who deserves treatment? And who gets left behind when politicians decide some lives are more worthy of care than others? That question sits at the centre of filmmaker Matt Nadel's remarkable documentary Cashing Out. He talked to us in a long form chat for The BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! Podcast Oscars special. Here we listen to an extended cut of the chat about a dark moment in queer history. The film tells the story of an extraordinary industry that emerged during the AIDS crisis in America. Thousands of people living with HIV sold their life insurance policies while they were still alive in order to pay rent, buy medication and survive with dignity. Investors collected the payout when they died. What makes the story even more extraordinary is that Nadel later discovered his own father had been one of those investors. In this conversation, Graeme Smith speaks to Matt Nadel about HIV, political memory, healthcare, capitalism, family secrets, queer history and why the lessons of the AIDS epidemic still matter today. Because history doesn't always repeat itself. But political rhetoric often does. The BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! Podcast is available everywhere now and is out every fornight, hosted by Graeme Smith and it's the home of intelligent queer conversation - the intersection of ART, QUEER, CULTURE. #HIV #NigelFarage #ReformUK #LGBTQ #AIDS #Healthcare #Politics #OutcastWorld #MattNadel #QueerHistory

Labour looks like it’s eating itself alive, Reform councillors are combusting in real time, the manosphere is getting dismantled by Louis Theroux with the energy of a disappointed supply teacher — and somewhere in the middle of the collapse, Leila Navabi joins Outcast World with the genuinely incredible story of how making a baby with her friend as a sperm donor somehow became a full-blown musical. Yes. Really. Graeme opens this week’s episode by wading into the increasingly bizarre state of British politics: Keir Starmer’s apparent slow-motion leadership death spiral, Wes Streeting’s endlessly rehearsed Westminster energy, rumours of Andy Burnham positioning himself as Labour’s northern saviour, and the growing sense that Reform UK’s rise could eventually force Britain into electoral reform whether the establishment likes it or not. There’s also the small matter of Reform councillors dropping like flies under public scrutiny — including allegations surrounding extremist online content and another candidate exposed over explicit gay OnlyFans material involving sex in public places. Different allegations, different levels of seriousness, same recurring problem: a party obsessed with presenting itself as the guardian of “traditional values” repeatedly finding itself consumed by scandal. And then there’s HS Ticky Tocky and the collapsing manosphere ecosystem, following Louis Theroux’s documentary and the increasingly surreal online fallout around Grindr, burner accounts, fake alpha masculinity and influencer culture built almost entirely on performance and contradiction. Then Leila Navabi arrives and the entire show takes a gloriously chaotic turn. The comedian, broadcaster and writer discusses the DIY IVF journey with her friend that inspired her musical, the absurd realities of queer parenting logistics, and one of the funniest theatre reviews imaginable after falling over on stage during a performance — with Time Out delivering a line about it so brutal it’s become legendary in her own personal history. There’s also a very direct message from Leila to gay people supporting Reform UK, alongside a wider conversation about identity, community, culture-war politics and why some queer people appear determined to align themselves with movements that fundamentally do not like them very much. Smart, filthy, political and properly funny. This is Outcast World.

Welsh-Iranian comedian, writer and rising theatre menace Leila Navabi joins Outcast World for one of the funniest and weirdly moving chats we’ve had in ages. You’ll probably know Leila already from writing on Bad Education, Never Mind the Buzzcocks and Deep Fake Neighbour Wars, or from voicing Claire in Don't Hug Me I'm Scared. She’s also become a major name on the UK live comedy circuit, supporting comics including Nish Kumar and Jessica Fostekew while quietly building a reputation as one of the sharpest queer comedy voices working right now. But this episode is really about the project that might push her into another league entirely: turning her real-life queer DIY conception story into a musical. After being told in her twenties that having children might not be possible, Leila and her wife ended up rejecting the expensive, sanitised “acceptable” version of queer parenthood and instead built a family the way queer people often build everything: through friendship, improvisation, emotional honesty and an alarming amount of admin involving sperm. This episode dives into the now-infamous DIY conception setup that inspired her show Relay: spare rooms, a sperm donor who was already one of their closest friends, syringes quietly bought from Boots under the pretence of “having a big dog”, and the deeply surreal ritual of everybody washing their hands and heading out for brunch afterwards while pretending this was a perfectly ordinary Sunday activity. At one point, Leila describes sitting in a café fully aware that her partner is technically “dripping with your best mate’s sperm” while everyone politely orders eggs and coffee. Which honestly tells you almost everything you need to know about the energy of this episode. Underneath all the chaos though, this is really a conversation about modern queer family life, chosen family, emotional honesty and why comedy so often becomes armour for people trying to survive complicated lives in public. There are also cats named after Joan Rivers, emotionally repressed gay people using humour to avoid vulnerability, and a genuinely fascinating discussion about why queer family stories are still treated as niche when they’re often far more emotionally intentional than traditional family structures.

The results are in — and they’re pretty damning. Across England in particular, a right wing populist surge is reshaping British politics in real time. Reform UK is rising fast, Labour looks increasingly fractured, and for the first time in decades, the idea of Nigel Farage entering Number 10 no longer feels impossible. It’s clear Reform is not the natural home of queer politics. So why are so many gay men getting pulled into its narrative online? On this episode, Graeme Smith is joined by two of the breakout stars of the BBC’s I Kissed A Boy and I Kissed A Girl — Gareth and Amy — for a chaotic, funny and surprisingly political conversation about identity, masculinity, cancellation, internet discourse, dating, queer infighting and what it means to be young, queer and online in 2026. The conversation moves seamlessly between reality TV gossip, Green vs Reform politics, TikTok radicalisation, social media algorithms and whether parts of LGBTQ+ culture are drifting towards a genuine ideological split. Outcast World — queer politics, sex & culture.