Party post has gay identities in a dither
Members of Sydney’s greying gay community were in a bit of a dither last week after a member of a Facebook group posted of the nocturnal activities of some of Sydney’s most prominent gay identities during the swinging 70s and 80s, outing them in the process.
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Members of Sydney’s greying gay community were in a bit of a dither last week after a member of a Facebook group posted of the nocturnal activities of some of Sydney’s most prominent gay identities during the swinging 1970s and 1980s, outing them in the process.
While the most famous gay identities named in the post are still living and somewhat closeted — and therefore can’t be named here — one who can is “supermarket cook” and acerbic television variety show judge Bernard King, who rose to fame as the nation’s most in-demand TV chef back when Mike Walsh was the king of daytime television and Graham Kennedy the king of nights.
According to the Facebook poster, he met King in about the late 1970s when he was a youth enrolled in cooking classes at Wollongong County Council.
The author writes that over the following two decades he bumped into King at gay parties at various locations, including, memorably, one dinner party organised by some of the cast of the Network 10’s hit television show Number 96.
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“My every interaction with (Bernard) was pleasant, filthy and wonderful,” he writes tantalisingly.
It was in Kings Cross in the ’80s that his story comes alive though, with the story of King and a very prominent media star regularly hissing at each other across the dinner table to fellow guests’ delight.
“In the very late ’80s or perhaps ’90s I ended up at a pool party,” he continues.
“It was basically the who’s who of Australian TV. ”
“It was so surreal. Graham Kenny (Kennedy, this writer assumes) was there along with Jeannie Little.”
King died in 2002, Kennedy in 2005. Their legend however perhaps never will.
