X Factor star, Craig Colton
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Former Apprentice star Sanjay
Actor Matt Dallas
Geordie Shore’s Nathan Henry
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Award winning screen writer, Dustin Lance-Black
YouTuber, Joey Graceffa
Singer and TV Presenter Lance Bass
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Well take a moment, breath and relax. Here we have ten top tips to keep you looking tip-top this party season.
It might not be the most obvious thing in the world, but a pocket square in the breast pocket of your blazer signifies a confident, sartorially inclined man. If you thought a pocket square was just a white hanky in your pocket think again. Luxury men’s outfitters Rampley & Co have pocket squares to suit the simplest to the most extravagant of tastes.
The Christmas party can come in a number of guises, so work out what kind of outfit you’ll need to plan for. Is it black tie? Suit? Or is it smart casual? For most Christmas parties or social gatherings this winter a smart casual look will fit in perfectly. You can keep your jeans casual as long as you team them with a great tan brogue. Build on the look with a fresh, crisp simply patterned shirt, and finish off with a blazer with the aforementioned pocket square and you’ll be the talk of the party. For those colder nights, you could slip on a block-colour cashmere v neck jumper under the blazer. Don’t be afraid to try bold colours.
Sorry hipsters, that beard has got to go. There’s only one man allowed to have a bushy face on the 25th and he arrives with reindeers. Go fresh-faced and watch the admiring glances from across the room.
Feel and look your best by investing in a good exfoliant. You can refresh tired looking skin and reveal a youthful glow under all the dead skin cells that collect on the surface of your face. Don’t let winter take its toll on your visage! Take a look at our top exfoliating product list.
A visit to a barber is a definite must to complete the man about Christmas town. Investing in a good haircut is key to feeling great about how good and how polished you look. A good barber will offer a variety of different services from hot towels to manicures. Why not treat yourself to 211 years of grooming experience at Truefitt & Hill, London’s oldest barber shop and the world leader in men’s grooming
Well, one does want a hint of colour. Even if your party requires an uber smart Black Tie look you can be totally subverting with your choice of sock. Check out these shocking pink Langham dress socks (£12.00) by Rampley & Co. No one will know unless you give them a peak of your ankle… Victorian is the new Millennium.
Aftershave is utterly important for a Winterfest party. Have you ever had a man tell you how amazing you smell? It’s wonderful. The gay community has in the past favoured a few fragrances like Jean Paul Gaultier Le Male and Davidoff’s Cool Water, but Rihanna’s Rogue (from £26.82) is surprisingly seductive and Hugo Boss Unlimited (from £46.90) is sniffing up a storm here at TGUK HQ.
Don’t clutter up the lines of your outfit with your phone, wallet or keys. Keep them all in a bag. In that bag, you should also pack, lip balm to protect your lips in the cold, icy winds, your aftershave, and a comb or hairbrush. The winter weather can play havoc with your skin so make sure you pack a good moisturiser with SDF, to make sure you’re protected from those winter sun rays.
Pearly whites never go out of fashion. Check out our review of teeth whitening and dazzle your prince charming with the perfect smile.
Don’t be a wallflower. Work out a story, a joke or subject that you feel confident talking about. Read up on the news and get a sense of what’s going on in the world. That way you can talk with authority about something and be a conversation leader rather than a follower. However, best to stay clear of divisive topics such as religious, politics or M&Ms Vs Skittles.
It’s been over a decade since a Beckham charted in the UK singles charts (Victoria’s last hit was “This Groove” / “Let Your Head Go” in 2003) but now it seems her son, Cruz is eyeing a Christmas number one and is vying for the top spot in the race for this Christmas number 1 and he’s doing it for charity… ahhh!
The bookies are suggesting that David and Victoria’s third son, 11-year-old Cruz, could be in line for a Christmas hit after bookies slashed the odds of Cruz beating the X Factor winner’s single.
William Hill spokesman Joe Crilly said,
“We thought when we put Cruz in our Christmas betting at 25/1 that he would be a popular selection and so it has proved and we have had to slash his odds of bagging the Christmas number one after just a couple of hours”.
Favourite to win this year tho is the Parliamentary Choir / Friends of Jo Cox who are releasing a single in memory of the slain MP. The X Factor winner, whoever that ends up being is third down the list.
UK Christmas number one single: 1/1 Parliamentary choir; 3/1 UK X Factor winner; 4/1 London Hospices choir; 10/1 Clean Bandit; 10/1 Cruz Beckham; 12/1 Inspiral Carpets; 14/1 BAR
Fancy buying it? Download from iTunes
Like ever. Especially if you don’t want to get ill.
Want to turn off that welcome screen with that “relaxation” musak when you enter your room for the first time? You might want to get an anti-bac hand wipe before you touch that remote. Think about it. Hundreds of people have probably touched that remote – after they’ve been to the toilet, post sex – eek. Just disgusting. Given the fact that most housekeepers are given a ridiculously small amount of time per room to clean, the remote is often over-looked. Time and time again bacterial tests on hotel TV remotes have shown that there are often faecal residues left over. Yuck.
What’s better than a post-bonk midnight feast – apart from falling asleep. Chances are if you’re feeling peckish after a midnight booty call – yes, you’ve guessed it, people call Room Service, using that bedside phone. And they’re using fingers that have just been inserted somewhere very clammy and damp. Phones are teeming with bacteria, often blasting the acceptable limits of bacteria.
Just imagine the number of people who have sat naked, had sex on it or put their luggage on that decorative blanket at the end of the bed. Apparently, it’s one of the least washed items in your room. So don’t touch. Just don’t. A report from CNN suggested that bedspreads don’t get ‘thrown in with the sheets for a daily wash.”
Feeling hot? That thermostat on the wall is most probably overlooked during the daily clean of a hotel room. Big-name hotel chains usually give their rooms a deep clean every quarter. So in between those deep cleans think about the number of fingers that have touched that dial. There are up to 66 days in a quarter. If the hotel is operating at near full occupancy and there are two people staying in a room there could be well over 100 people touching that dial.
If you’ve sat on the sofa naked or even had sex on it then you can bet your life that scores of other people have to – and a sofa just isn’t that easy to clean, regularly anyway. Tests have shown that stains that aren’t visible to the naked eye are all over those hotel sofas and chairs. Those stains include: blood, semen and even faeces. Just. Why. Would. You.
In a sober moment, I decided that with some of the scrap at work I was going to ‘create’ something for the garden. I already have a VW Beetle deck lid as a planter and a bonnet hanging up from the fence. The neighbours think I am a little strange in a good way.
I’ve been single for so long now. I don’t want sympathy, that you can keep. The trouble is finding a man who both likes the garden, cars and a bit of DIY. Like Paula Cole sang, “I’ve not found my Marlboro man either. So I set about making a little man for the garden. I called him Oliver. It sort of stands for ‘left OVER parts’ that would have otherwise ended up in the recycling heap.
So what makes Oliver? He has a Citroën face, a Peugeot left arm and a Fiat right arm all attached to a Toyota Hilux body. His legs are fast and jazzy made from Porsche shocks and Honda disc feet. To top it all off he has hair by Fiat and wears a flower made by Volkswagen.
All this does sound like I have lost the plot. Well, to add to the enjoyment I had forgotten one vital important detail. I need to weld him together. I like power tools. I’ve made all sorts of things in the past for the home, garage and camper van. I have the ideas but there is a problem. That problem being I have never really welded before. It’s easier than you think yet difficult.
OK, I lied a little there. I tried welding back in 1996 when I tried to repair my Citroën Visa. I made it worse. Much worse. So I filled the hole with filler.
The trouble with Oliver is that he has thick grade steel and really thin stuff that just melted. His head fell off on the first attempt. Sorry Oliver. Tack welding is difficult to do. Seam welding just as difficult. I need more practice and that for sure I will do. I own old cars, I want to be able to weld. I need to be able to weld.
So more on this later in the year to come when Oliver gets a dog. In the meantime, if you want to have a go at something, just do it. Give it a go, you never know where it might end up.
1.Oris Men’s Big Crown Propilot Altimeter Watch – WatchShop.com £2,550.00
If you liked these then check out the rest of the Christmas Gift Guide including: Body | Drinks | Home | Luxury | Stocking Fillers | Tech
Apparently, Adam Lambert could be joining Saara Aalto on stage this coming weekend for the now famous “duets” part of the final. Adam is just returning from a very successful stint as a judge on the Austrailian version of X Factor. However, producers for the UK version of the show are remaining tight-lipped about the rumours.
Saara Aalto has become firm favourite to win the competition despite an incredibly rocky start to the competition. She was a wildcard entry for her mentor, Sharon Osborne, and for the first few weeks was forced to sing for her position in the competition after failing to get the voting public behind her. However, it’s all change as she’s become one of the most talked about singers this season – especially with the news that she’s now engaged to be married to her girlfriend, Meri.
If Adam Lambert joins the finalists this Saturday he would join a handful of stars who have graced the X Factor stage for the usually very successful duets part of the final. Past megastars who have joined contestants include Rihanna who sang with Matt Cardle and Beyoncé who sang with Alexandra Burke, both finalists became the winners of the competition.
Adam Lambert rose to fame during the 2009 series of American Idol, where he placed runner-up. He’s gone on to release three albums and sold millions of records around the globe. Earlier this year he celebrated his success on Spotify after clocking up over 100,000,000 streams of his music.
If you liked these then check out the rest of the Christmas Gift Guide including: Body | Drinks | Home | Luxury | Stocking Fillers | Tech
Two footballer players end up scoring with each other in Ben A. Williams feature film debut The Pass, which was recently featured at London’s BFI Film Festival.
The Pass take place in a ten-year time span which tracks the relationship between two Premiership football players. There’s always been some kind of chemistry and attraction between James (an electric and very good Russell Tovey) and Ade (Arinzé Kene – Hollyoaks – also very good). We meet both of them while they’re sharing a hotel room in 2006 in Bulgaria right before one of their first big matches. They’re both very young, and they’re also both very fit, masculine and extremely sexy, and they spend the first third of the movie in their tight white underwear.
James and Ade are talking lads stuff, having a laugh about other players, and watching a video that was taken of another player having sex. The sex talk continues, and the banter goes something like ‘getting as hard as your sister sitting on my face.’ They’re playing around with each other; it’s hot, it’s erotic, it gets brutal and homophobic, plus, we find out later, it leads to more than just talk.
The Pass takes us beyond the hotel room to tell us the story of the relationship between these two men, but especially about the relationship James has with himself. He’s all man, a star footballer, with all the trappings of stardom; money, women, celebrity, and eventually a wife with two kids. But he’s also battling with his sexuality, and even though he buys whatever, and whomever, he wants when he wants it, the thing he wants most is out of his reach. And when he’s questioned about his sexuality by a woman who has been paid to videotape having sex with him, he wants to go through with it, just to prove to the world (and obviously to himself) that he’s not gay. He’s a man who is not able to accept who he is and who he really wants to be with.
The Pass is 88 minutes of purely charged up adrenaline. It’s a movie that’s full of dialogue, dialogue that goes from playful banter to sexually-charged hi-jinks, up to and including the final third scene of the movie, which involves a hotel bellboy that’s a bit over the top. But it’s not to take away from a movie that brings up a real issue – that there is not one out gay football player in the game now.
Let’s hope this film opens up the dialogue that it’s fine for a player to come out of the closet. Originally produced for the Royal Court Theatre in 2014, The Pass makes an excellent transition to the big screen. Kene brings a real toughness kindled with a bit of softness to his role, but it’s Tovey who owns the movie. He’s never been better; his James is battling with his sexuality while at the same time trying to uphold his image. Tovey is electrifying and is at the top of his game. This is one pass that you have to catch.
The Pass is out in cinemas this Friday.
Our fascination with murder shows no sign of waning. Crime fiction, newspaper headlines and ‘true life’ series like Making a Murderer and Serial present tales that are still as grimly compelling to us as the story of Oedipus murdering his father was to the ancient Greeks. ‘Thebes Land’ promises us the story of Martin, a young man who has committed a particularly grisly act of patricide. Not only is documentary maker ‘T’ going to tell us about the story of how he met Martin in order to write this play but he’s also going to present the real Martin on stage. The audience are safe, though. Martin is contained in a 3-metre high wire cage, as per Home Office regulations. Or is he up on the balcony under armed guard? Or is he watching us watching him via video-link?
Daniel Goldman’s cleverly adapted version of this South American piece is a wily beast of a play. It beguiles, tricks and twists until the audience aren’t quite sure what to believe at any point. It starts innocuously enough and promises to be a slightly dry but nonetheless intriguing academic discourse on the nature of theatre-making and storytelling. That’s the first trick of many. It’s a whole lot more than that. What evolves is multifaceted with reflections on multiple issues including the father/son relationship, truth and ego.
It’s a lot more than that too. It’s a grisly crime story, it’s titillating (whilst making you feel perturbed that it’s titillating) and it has a disturbing undertone of sexual tension that crops up between the two men. Hell, it even has a weird little segment where there’s a Whitney Houston number. There’s so much contained here that it leaves you reeling at points and not sure what to think about next.
There is the odd discordant moment where the self-mocking misses the mark but these are few and far between and the two actors are entirely credible. There’s something impish, attractive and likeable about Trevor White’s ‘T’ and Alex Austin gives good vulnerable but terrifying disaffected youth. If you like to be toyed with and want an unconventional night at the theatre then head down to The Arcola and take a cage-side seat. You won’t regret it.
Thebes Land plays at the Arcola Theatre until 23rd December
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