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  • Cover charge lifted at Soho’s Manbar

    Today, the City of Westminster Council has lifted the mandatory minimum admission fee that Manbar inherited when it took over the premises licence.

    Manbar is now open until late every day and is FREE entry on the door. This free admission includes weekends.

    London’s gay scene and visitors now have a Central London gay bar with extended hours they can go to without ever having to pay an entry fee.

    Gay owned and run, Manbar offers the gay scene a mature gay bar where customers can socialise and drink until the early hours of the morning. Aside from no cover charge, Manbar continues to offer customers a free coat-check room and free wifi internet usage.

    Owner Charles Hill had this to say: “From when we took over the licence, we decided Soho needed a bar where the gay scene can catch up with mates, make new friends, listen to good music and not be ripped off paying for extras. It is excellent news the City of Westminster Council has lifted the cover charge requirement we inherited when we took over the venue. Now all our customers can come in for free until 2am during the week and 3am on weekends.”

    Since opening its doors on the 1st November 2012, thousands have enjoyed Manbar. Already the bar is famous for it’s sexy wall murals which includes the now famous portrait of Prince Harry as featured in Time Out, Evening Standard, Boyz, Qx and Grazia to name a few publications.

    Please note Manbar is not associated with the Man Bar once opened in Borough a few years back nor is it owned by the former site licensee 79CXR.

    Opening hours for Manbar are Monday to Wednesday from 4pm until 2am; Thursday and Friday from 4pm until 3am; Saturdays from 2pm until 3am and Sundays from 2pm until 11pm. Free Entry always.

  • Manbar goes live with DJs every night except Sundays

    Due to popularity of Manbar’s DJ led nights every Thursday, Friday and Saturday, Manbar is now going live with DJs every night of the week except Sunday and some holidays.

    Open late every day, London’s hottest new gay dance bar will now serve up London’s finest DJs every night from 9pm.

    London’s finest gay scene DJs will be scheduled this includes crowd favourites Alessandro Londra, Nick Evans, Pier Morocoo, Minx, Rich B, Serverino, Fabio Luigi, Gonzalo, Elliott J Brown, Nick and Slamma. Note: photos of some of our DJs attached.

    Opening hours for Manbar are Monday to Wednesday from 4pm until 2am; Thursday and Friday from 4pm until 3am; Saturdays from 2pm until 3am and Sundays from 2pm until 11pm.

    A full line-up of our DJ stars from now until the end of January follows.

    DECEMBER 2012

     

    WEDNESDAYS

    19th December: DJ Rich B all night

     

    THURSDAYS

    20th December: DJ Minx 9pm to midnight, Rich B midnight to 3am

    27th December: DJ Minx 9pm to midnight, Rich B midnight to 3am

     

    FRIDAYS

    21st December: DJ Alessandro Londra 9pm to midnight, DJ Nick Evans midnight to 3am

    28th December: DJ Nick Evans 9pm to midnight, DJ Alessandro Londra midnight to 3am

     

    SATURDAYS

    22nd December: DJ Pier Morocco 9pm to midnight, DJ Alessandro Londra midnight to 3am

    29th December: DJ Alessandro Londra 9pm to midnight, DJ Serverino midnight to 3am

     

    NYE

    31st December: DJ Alessandro Londra 9pm to midnight, DJ Rich B midnight to 3am

     

    JANUARY 2013

     

    MONDAYS

     

    7th January: DJ Nick

     

    14th January: DJ Slamma

     

    21st January: DJ Nick

     

    28th January: DJ Slamma

     

    TUESDAYS

     

    8th January: DJ Slamma

     

    15th January: DJ Nick

     

    22nd January: DJ Slamma

     

    29th January: DJ Nick

     

    WEDNESDAYS

     

    2nd January: DJ Fabio Luigi

     

    9th January: DJ Brent Nicholls

     

    16th January: DJ Fabio Luigi

     

    23rd January: DJ Brent Nicholls

     

    30th January: DJ Brent Nicholls

     

    THURSDAYS

     

    3rd January: DJ Rich 10pm to 3am

     

    10th January: DJ Rich B 9pm to midnight, DJ Brent Nicholls midnight to 3am

     

    17th January: DJ Minx 9pm to midnight, DJ Rich midnight to 3am

     

    24th January: DJ Rich B 9pm to midnight, DJ Minx midnight to 3am

     

    31st January: DJ Minx 9pm to midnight, DJ Rich midnight to 3am

     

    FRIDAYS

     

    4th January: DJ Alessandro Londra 9pm to midnight, Gonzalo midnight to 3am

     

    11th January: DJ Fabio Luigi 9pm to midnight, DJ Alessandro Londra midnight to 3am

     

    18th January: DJ Gonzalo 9pm to midnight, DJ Severino midnight to 3am

     

    25th January: DJ Pier Morocco 9pm to midnight, DJ Alessandro Londra midnight to 3am

     

    SATURDAYS

     

    5th January: DJ Alessandro Londra 9pm to midnight, DJ Elliott J Brown midnight to 3am

     

    12th January: DJ Alessandro Londra 9pm to midnight, DJ Brent Nicholls midnight to 3am

     

    19th January: DJ Severino 9pm to midnight, DJ Gonzalo midnight to 3am

     

    26th January: DJ Brent Nicholls 9pm to midnight, DJ Pier Morocco midnight to 3am

  • THEATRE REVIEW | My Fair Lady

    ★★★★★ | My Fair Lady

    Sheffield Theatres have managed to further cement their stellar reputation for staging top quality shows with this fresh and highly polished version of “My Fair Lady”. You probably already know the story and can hum a few of the tunes. You’ve maybe watched the 1964 film adaptation. Nothing, however, compares to this dazzling production.

    Covent Garden flower seller Eliza Doolittle is taken under the wing of linguistics Professor, Henry Higgins when, as a wager, he decides to teach her to speak ‘proper’ in order to pass her off as an aristocrat amongst high society. BAFTA winner Dominic West (The Wire, The Hour and Appropriate Adult) portrays the nuances of Higgins’ characters with aplomb and in spite of his belligerent facade, manages to win the audience over. He manfully struts round the stage looking dashing in tweed and belting out songs with skilful intonation. The beautiful Carly Bawden is utterly captivating and is a force to be reckoned with as she applies her considerable vocal and acting talent to the role of Eliza. There can’t be a much harder act to follow than the original stars of the show, Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison, but West and Bawden easily accomplish this.

    The sets are elaborate and breathtaking, the choreography is stylish and rousing with more Cockneys tapping away than you could shake Dick Van Dyke’s bamboo stick at and the costumes are luscious. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen an audience quite so enchanted by a production. The minute the show ended they were on their feet offering up a very noisy and rapturous standing ovation. Quite rightly too: this is a highly accomplished production, worthy of gracing any West End stage. I’m just not sure that an Edwardian gentlemen like ‘Enry ‘Iggins would approve of such jubilations. I think he’d have favoured a more gentle hand clap and a polite nod.

    If you need a little pick me up to get you through the winter months then take my advice and book now (tickets are selling out fast) and get yourself over to ‘loverly’ Sheffield. You won’t be disappointed.

    “My Fair Lady” is running at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield until 26th January 2013

  • OPINION | Why I’m anti-anti Christmas

    Whether you like it or not folks Christmas is upon us once more and I seem to find two types of people at this time of year. Firstly there are the upbeat ‘Tis the season to be jolly, fa la la la laaaa, la la la la’ type of folk and then there are the ‘If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with “Merry Christmas” on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.’

    It’s the latter I wish to speak of today.

    The people who go out their way to look particularly glum at this time of year. The folk who implode into their own sense of woe that life has treated them so badly by stringing up a few twinkling lights on the lamp posts outside their houses. How dare the children be running around with the excited anticipation of a visit from the jolly fat man in the green suit (As a traditionalist Santa will be referred to in his little green number from now on, and besides it’s a much nicer colour than red!) and whoever dreamt up the idea of turning much loved TV classics into hour long festive specials? 30 minutes of Del Boy selling tat from a van, brilliant, yet put him on for an hour where he travels to Spain to buy diamonds and sits at a sunny bar surrounded by tits and tinsel, pathetic! ‘May the Yuletide log slip from your fire and burn your house down’.

    Yes, these people are among us. Scary isn’t it.

    You see, I get so excited about Christmas. Always have done ever since I was young. My birthday is on the 4th December and as a kid all I ever wanted for my birthday was for my dad to go into the loft to get the decorations down. Of course, this never happened and usually resulted in floods of tears and a ‘fine, forget Christmas then’. (I didn’t have many tantrums!) I would feel this deep heart ache as to why we couldn’t have decorations up after all it was now December. Begrudgingly they would come out of the loft about a week before Christmas, then put up in an uncomfortable air of tension as if you’d asked for a Pyramid to be built in your name, and would be down and back up in the loft as soon as the sound of 12 drummer drumming could be heard on the horizon. Done. It came and very quickly went.

    It was a very emotional time for me. The mixture of excitement, disappointment and E-numbers, that made me hyperactive, all coming together to make one very Christmassy mess of a boy! Maybe it was this anti-Christmas childhood I had that made me so determined to grasp Christmas with both hands each year as an adult. It’s very hard being Pro-Christmas these days, especially as a lot of folk seem to be lost in the commercial nonsense of it all. I don’t have a lot of money to buy folk expensive gifts but that doesn’t matter for me, as Christmas is an atmosphere that should be carried with each of us, uplifting us and each other from the stresses of life. A little like how the Olympics created a London buzz, I feel Christmas can offer the same if people are willing to trust in it.

    So for all those anti-Christmas people out there, I have only one thing to say. I’m anti-anti-Christmas. So if you must spend the happiest time of year tutting, swearing and bad mouthing all things festive, then please do it from the comfort of your own homes and watch out for three visitations when the clock strikes 12!

    May you all have a Merry Christmas and spend some time with someone who cares about you. x

     

    Opinions expressed in this article may not reflect those of THEGAYUK, its management or editorial teams. If you’d like to comment or write a comment, opinion or blog piece, please click here.

     

  • GROOMING REVIEW | Bluebeards Revenge

    You may have heard that Christmas is upon us once again and with a week to go before the big event I draw upon last years disappointments from the other half as he opened a natural sunrise alarm clock. In my head it was the perfect gift for someone who has problems with getting up in the mornings, in his eyes it was a symbol of old age and plastic sheets!

    Determined not to make the same mistake as last year I was very pleased to receive the wonderful Bluebeards Revenge shaving gift set in the post to try out. It has everything in it the real man requires for shaving, including the doubloon brush, shaving cream, post shave balm and aftershave. As a new connoisseur of wet shaving since my Movember expedition it was nice to find a product that not only smelt great and felt smooth on the skin but one that would look good on the bathroom shelf as well.

    The Bluebeards Revenge aftershave cologne is a wonderful daytime fragrance with very fresh and clean scents. Long lasting for your hard days work it’s bound to raise a few heads. A whole range of kits are available from £20 – £110 and make perfect gifts for the bearded one in your relationship. I’m very hopeful on this one being a hit this year, plus I get a smooth faced boyfriend for Christmas, so it’s really a gift for myself!

    Pick up your kits from www.bluebeards-revenge.co.uk

  • INTERVIEW | Uli Bilke

    INTERVIEW | Uli Bilke

    We caught up with the Chief of Staff, Uli Bilke, at the famed Yelp company to talk about what’s hot for the Holidays 2012

    Uli BilkeThere must be tons of just fabulous places that we can go this Christmas and New Year… What are your top tips and destinations…?

    One of my personal London favourites is Friendly Society in Soho, which is a really great bar to start off at on any night out, while The New Bloomsbury Set is a beautiful cosy hideaway popular with London Yelp users. Yelpers in Manchester – that is, people who use Yelp and post reviews, not people who work for Yelp – recommend Via Fossa on Canal Street, with its gorgeous Gothic decor, as it’s a lovely bar and restaurant by day, and a club with a great mix of music by night. Up in Edinburgh, GHQ is very popular with some great nights planned for Christmas in the city’s “pink triangle”, and Brighton’s Marine Tavern comes out on top with Brighton’s Yelpers as a bit of a hidden gem.

    We’re still wondering what to do for NYE! What do you suggest?

    My advice is don’t go out! I always enjoy New Year’s more when I’m with my friends and we’re staying local, either heading out to support our local pub or seeing the New Year in at a friend’s house. This year I’m heading to a friend’s place, who has a flat with a great view, right across Hampstead Heath so we can take in the fireworks.

    For a similar experience, there are some great bars in London with fantastic panoramic views. As well as the famous OXO Tower, the Paramount at Centre Point, Soho, has absolutely stunning views of the city no matter where you sit and the cocktails are amazing! The vista at the Trafalgar Hotel offers great views of the city, as does Altitude 360.

    Tell us a little bit about Yelp and how it’s relevant for a young man about town…

    Yelp connects people to great local businesses. Whether you are looking for the latest best-kept-secret bar or need to find a good mechanic nearby, the reviews on Yelp are written by locals for locals, so you can get a trustworthy, unbiased opinion on where to go. You can access Yelp both online and via free smartphone apps, so it’s great for when you are on the move.

    For me, Yelp is all about discovering incredible places you never knew existed, and being able to share them with people you know will love them too. I’ve been living in London for over four years now and am still always discovering new places. I used to live in San Francisco, where Yelp is huge, so I always had great bars, restaurants and cool places to visit at my finger tips via the Yelp app on my phone. But then I moved to London, where no one had really heard of it and it was only then that I realised how much of a lifesaver it is when you’re trying to decide where to go. I didn’t realise what we had in the US until I suddenly didn’t have it anymore! The good news is that Yelp is now very active in London and there’s loads of local tips and tricks available to everyone. Even better still, you too can become a Yelper and start sharing your old favourites and new discoveries with the world as well.

    How does Yelp get to know about all the upcoming and under the radar events?

    We have a swat team of community managers and it is their job to keep their fingers firmly on the pulse. They have great relationships with local businesses who keep them informed of events and the latest openings. If one of our community managers finds a cool bar, restaurant or venue they think people will love, they’ll host a party and get people down there – some months they could be hosting these parties on a weekly basis!

    However, the best thing about Yelp is that anyone can post an event they know of in their area. So if a Yelper sees something cool on their travels that they are interested in, they can share it straight away to inform their local community.

    We also run our own events to connect the public to great up-and-coming local businesses. We run Elite events at least once a month where we throw a night out for the Yelp Elite Squad. Our Elites are experienced urban adventurers, who go to plenty of parties and gatherings and use social networking to find the best things to do in town. They then regularly share their honest, unbiased opinions with the Yelp community by posting regular reviews, to keep people in the know.

     What will you be doing this Christmas Day?

    In Germany, Christmas Eve is the big day for celebration; that’s when we get together with family and loved ones, have a big meal and exchange presents. On Christmas Day itself, we’d keep it low key and go hiking or walk the dog.

    This year, I’m going to Germany before Christmas to see the family, then I’m off to Keswick, in the Lake District, for Christmas Day itself. My partner and I are renting a cottage there with our Dalmatian, Momo. It’ll be all open fires and watching Christmassy films like The Holiday.
    What’s your most memorable night out?

    Well, last year’s Yelp Christmas party was pretty spectacular! We started with a Japanese cookery class atThe Grocery in Shoreditch. There were only 8 of us in the UK office at the time, so it was a very special night out. We had a fantastic moment when a few of us had a group hug, as we knew it would never be the same again as the company’s expansion plans were about to go into full swing. A year on, there’s now around 50 of us.

    Is the reviewing of these places rigorous and involving lots of wine tasting? You must have the best job in the world!

    Yes, it’s fantastic working for Yelp, but it’s actually not part of my job to do reviews – the reviews on Yelp are written by Yelp users who just want to share their experiences of great places they’ve discovered. Having said that, I do very much enjoy going out and finding these great places outside of work, and it’s one of my hobbies to review the places I go out to. It’s actually something I did before working for Yelp – I think I must have done at least 300 reviews by now!
    • So how does the UK’s Christmas compare with Germany’s?

    Christmas certainly starts a lot earlier in the UK than it does in Germany. In Germany, it starts at the first advent, whereas here it’s more like mid-October!

    I have to say, I absolutely love going to Winter Wonderland in London’s Hyde Park, as it reminds me of Christmas at home. A lot of the traders are German so it’s the real deal. Just walking through and smelling the sausages and Glühwein, or mulled wine in English, brings back the memories.

  • Petition launches to legal recognise Westboro Baptist Church as a hate group

    Petition launches to legal recognise Westboro Baptist Church as a hate group

    A petition has gone live on the Whitehouse’s website, asking the Obama Administration to legally recognise the infamous Westboro Bapist Church as a hate group.

    Westboro Baptist Church
    CREDIT: Westboro Baptist Church

    The Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) is a small, independent fundamentalist group based in Topeka, Kan, known for its extreme ideologies especially those against homosexuals, the military and Jewish people – and hosts a number of websites such as, godhatesfags.com,godhatesislam.com and priestsrapeboys.com.

    The group has recently come under fire after MargiePhelps a memeber of the WBC announced on twitter that members would picket the funerals of the 26 murdered teachers and children of the Newtown massacre which happened last Friday in Connecticut, USA. Most of the children killed by the twenty year old gunman were between the ages of six and seven.

    WBC has outraged many people by blaming the massacre in Sandy Hook on the state’s equal marriage policy.

    The petition, which can be found on the Whitehouse.gov website has already gained over 175,000 signatories, since its creation on the 14th December..

    It reads:

    Legally recognize Westboro Baptist Church as a hate group.

    This group has been recognized as a hate group by organizations, such as The Southern Poverty Law Center, and has repeatedly displayed the actions typical of hate groups.

    Their actions have been directed at many groups, including homosexuals, military, Jewish people and even other Christians. They pose a threat to the welfare and treatment of others and will not improve without some form of imposed regulation.

  • FILM REVIEW | Life Of Pi

    ★★★★★ | Life Of Pi

    An Indian boy (Suraj Sharma), the son of a zoo keeper, with the improbable name of Pi, short for the even more improbable Piscine (I’ll let you find out for yourself how he came by that name) is shipwrecked and finds himself adrift in the Pacific Ocean, with a zebra, a hyena, an orang-utan and a Bengal tiger, called Richard Parker.

    Sounds improbable? Well that’s kind of the point. This is David Magee’s adaptation of Yann Martel’s novel The Life of Pi, which, I should point out, I have never read, so I have no idea if it is a good adaptation or not. What I am quite sure of is that it is one of the best movies Ang Lee (director of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Brokeback Mountain) has ever given us.

    The first thing to say is that, visually, this is a very beautiful film, and often a stunning one. The 3D effects and CGI are amazing, but the movie is so much more. Often these days, one feels that a movie is all about effects, but in Life of Pi, the effects are used to enhance what is already a compelling narrative. Lee’s use of 3G is almost poetic, immeasurably helped here by Claudio Miranda’s wonderful (in its true sense of full of wonder) cinematography.

    Suraj Sharma gives an incredible performance, growing in stature as the movie progresses and Pi learns more about life and survival, all the more remarkable when you consider that for the most part he had to react to a beast that wasn’t actually there (Richard Parker, the tiger, is mostly depicted through the magic of CGI). His performance is matched by that of Irrfan Khan, who plays the older Pi, telling his story to a Canadian writer (Rafe Spall). Like the writer, we are drawn in by Khan’s magical storytelling, the pain behind his eyes hiding a truth that is never fully explained. Like Pi, Ang Lee knows how to tell a story, how to draw his audience in. He did it in Brokeback Mountain, and, in a completely different way, he does it here. His direction is never less than masterful, more than that, poetic, inspiring.

    At the end of the movie, Pi tells us that when he was finally rescued, the story of how he survived was not believed by the authorities investigating the shipwreck, so he came up with another one, more prosaic, but even more brutal. Is the first story an allegory of the second? We are left to make our own minds up, but I know which one I choose. Definitely one of my movies of the year.

    Available to buy / view on: Amazon | Amazon Prime | iTunes

  • ADVICE | Do condoms protect you from every sexual disease?

    ADVICE | Do condoms protect you from every sexual disease?

    This week our specialists Jake Jenkins and Jenna Thomas from 56 Dean Street talk about condoms.

    do condoms protect you from every STIs
    Bigstock

    Dear TGUK & 56DS
    Everyone says that If you want a safer sex, you have to use condom. But can it prevent all diseases?
    Best Jimmie

    Dear Jimmie

    Having safer sex means having sex which has less risk of catching or passing on an STI.

    Using a condom is the best way to do this, however it doesn’t completely prevent you from catching an STI. Lots of things can affect how likely you are to catch an STI such as a condom slipping or breaking during sex and contact during foreplay such as rubbing, masturbating each other and oral sex. A few things that can help are ensuring a condom is used from start to finish during penetration, using latex condom friendly lubricant (such as water or silicone based) and regular screening for STIs.

    Do not use Vaseline or oil based lubricants. You can walk in for a HIV test and Hepatitis B vaccines any time at 56 Dean Street and can make an appointment for a full screen. However if you are under the age of 20 you can walk in to the clinic at any time for a full screen. There is also a dedicated service for young people which runs Monday, Wednesday and Friday evening, details of this an be found on the website (http://www.chelwest.nhs.uk/services/hiv-sexual-health/clinics/56-dean-street/young-persons-services).

    Even if you do everything right accidents can happen so it’s good to know about PEP, this is a course of medication you may be able to take if you have been at high risk of HIV. You can also walk in to the clinic to discuss PEP with a member of staff.

     

    OTHER QUESTIONS: HIV | WILLY WONDERS | HOLES | DOING IT | STIs | LUMPS & BUMPS | BACK TO SEX CLINIC HOME PAGE

     

    Got a problem you’d like advice on?

  • MUSIC REVIEW: This Christmas

    Set aside the cringey music video for the album’s lead single ‘I Think You Might Like It’ and you’ll find one of the best holiday albums released in a while, filled with classic, classy and expertly produced Christmas favourites including ‘Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas’ (with Cliff Richard), ‘I’ll Be Home For Christmas’ (with Barbra Streisand) and a beautiful rendition of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ to boot. (more…)

  • INTERVIEW | Ben Cohen

    Known for his charity work as much as his rugby skills, World Champion Ben Cohen talks to Domenico Sansalone about how he turned his father’s untimely death into an exciting charity cause, why he fights to make bullying a thing of the past and what is really going through his head during his sexy photoshoots. (more…)

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