The soul diva has been eliminated from X Factor after a sing-off against Che Chesterman in last night’s show on ITV.
The star, who recently backed a campaign to allow gay men to give blood, thanked Cheryl and Rita for their support as well as his mentor Simon Cowell.
As he bowed out Anton joked that you would see him again… because he made the X FACTOR tour.
Serves 4 | Prep 5 mins | No Cook
Quick & Easy / Minimal Ingredients / Vegan / Anti-Oxidant Rich / Digestion Helper
Creamy, garlicky, and nutty, bound together with olive oil and lemon, this pesto makes a lovely change from the usual basil pine nut combo. This pesto also doesn’t have any cheese in it so is suitable for Vegans. You can whip this up in 5 minutes, you could have it “raw” and spread on toast, or use as a stir through sauce for pasta. I use it to stuff cod fillet’s in the Posh Cod & Chips recipe.
ARTICHOKES- A long standing digestive aid, first discovered by the Egyptians, used to also combat acid reflux, stomach discomfort, bloating, and mild diarrhoea. (SOURCE: http://www.livestrong.com/article/471274-what-are-the-health-benefits-of-artichoke-hearts/ ). Artichokes are also a good source of anti-oxidants; silymarin, caffeic acid, and ferulic acid.
PISTACHIOS – Rich in mono-unsaturated fats like oleic acid make the pistachio nut another good source of anti-oxidants. Pistachio nuts also contain carotenes, vitamin E, and polyphenolic anti-oxidant compounds which help remove free-radicals from the body. They are also rich in the essentials for boosting our immune system; copper, manganese, iron, zinc and selenium. (SOURCE: http://www.nutrition-and-you.com/pistachio.html ) Pistachios also contain potassium which can aid healthy digestion.
Ingredients.
1 400g can artichoke hearts, drained
30g shelled pistachio nuts
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 garlic clove
Small bunch fresh parsley leaves
Method.
Have you ever loved a poy, gaping wound that never heals? Welcome to the pure disease of radical thinking, the open-heart artistry of David Hoyle. A precision provocateur, he’s a beautiful leper puking on the bland smirk of consensus dissent. Never afraid to offend, he’ll stare, point-blank, at dead-eyed conformity, and test-drive blanket idiocy to total destruction.
So, tonight –in character as a no-limits, libertarian headmistress for tonight’s show, ‘The Prime of Ms David Hoyle’ – he’s in his element. And, as always – perhaps acknowledging some fractured, kindred mind-set – his intentionally smeared make-up is a cosmetic-Cubist’s spin on Liza Minelli. It’s pithy, visual ventriloquism, an instant, persona transplant of Liza’s unshakeable self-belief, an immediate, autocratic departure point for Ms. Hoyle.
How could he not? David’s seductive power of surreal persuasion totally rewrites any opposed punter’s world-view with a stunningly queer lexicon. Fittingly, David queers our global pitch from its first, bedrock principle – education – and, as always, asks gloriously awkward questions.
‘Does education make us conform’ David ominously inquires, ‘by hacking off our beautiful eccentricities?’ Oh yes; British state and public schools give a kiss of Guantanomo Bay brutality for arty queens enduring term-time torment. But not tonight, as, quite gorgeously, our devil’s advocate headmistress unleashes three recent graduates of his maverick regime.
First, there’s Bambi Sexsmith, self-styled, queer conversion therapist, with her projectile-diction sermon on avoiding ‘Straight Complex’. In an assured blizzard of quips, she diagnoses, treats and cures any obstacles to thoroughly liberated, thoroughly queer existence. And, remarkably, that’s just for starters; each fabulously unpredictable prodigy from the Hoyle class of honour ramps the anti-hetero stakes stunningly higher.
Take Ray, a flawless, drag-king Fred Astaire clone. Tap-dancing like a frenzied needle probing an addict’s veins, she strips to a startling androgyny, all duct-taped, flattened breasts and stencilled six-pack. A take-no-prisoners attack on the mediocre, mundane and pointlessly mean, David’s graduates conclude with the starkest, cautionary warning yet; enter, ‘Cis White Male’.
Naked, mute and nervous, his name scrawled on his belly, ‘Cis’ is a shocking indictment of state education crushing social and sexual dissent. Is there an antidote? For sure -Ms Hoyle’s fearless call to self-expression at any cost. It’s a fantastically liberating lesson that, ideally, should be taught and memorised from birth, the ferociously humane heart of David’s stunning rejection of global despair. Live free, live fierce, live now; there’s no finer riposte to mindless fascism.
David’s next show is December 9th at Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club.
◼︎ 16 suspects connected to the Paris terror attacks arrested by Belgian police.
◼︎ Salah Abdeslam who was spotted in gay bars in Brussels is still at large.
◼︎ Gay bars in Brussels are working with the police to ensure the safety of customers.
◼︎ Abdeslam is the subject of Europe’s biggest manhunt with around 2000 officers searching for him.
Salah Abdeslam is still on the run from authorities after police conducted 22 raids yesterday (Sunday) arresting 16 suspects connected to the terror attacks in Paris on the 13th November leaving 130 dead and 350 injured.
Brussels remains on high alert, the Government keeping the terror threat level at its highest level. The Belgian capital is in lockdown as the manhunt for Abdeslam continues.
It was reported that Abdeslam was spotted in gay bars in Brussels’ Saint Jacques quarter. A bartender at one of the bars told the Sunday Times (sub) that they had him down as a rent boy. He was always hanging out with that kind of crowd.”
Brussels has been in lockdown after the Belgian Government raised the Terror threat level to the highest level; “very serious” indicating that a terrorist attack is serious and imminent.
The entire Brussels metro network was closed on the 21st and 22nd and many events, such as football matches had been cancelled.
Last week the British Government issued guidance on how to survive a terrorist attack.
Some of Brussels’ gay bars have remained open during the lockdown but have issued statements saying that they are working with the police to ensure the safety of customers.
One of Brussels’ busiest gay bars, Le Boys Boudoir, issued a statement that it was keeping normal hours, but asked patrons not to bring bags into the bar.
The Chez Maman issued a statement that on the advice from police “not to run no risk and exceptionally close its doors”.
Does it support, or viciously distort, perceptions of clearly gay pop? Both, actually. For every Bowie, Boy George and Marc Almond, there are others encouraged to view public disclosure as career suicide. It’s not surprising. If undeniably high-profile, pop’s also a hugely juvenile art-form, subsisting on one novelty sugar-rush after another. At best, it’s trashy, and, at worst, wholly undignified, a screeching, ridiculous hag reminiscent of Bette Davis’s classic, cinematic nightmare Baby Jane.
Ah, but there are far more dignified arenas for expressions of gay, artistic presence, jazz music for one.
Elegantly bypassing pop’s embarrassingly public temper tantrams, jazz, more subtly, encodes the intuitive leaps of gay logic in seductively complex rhythm sections. Put simply, that just means jazz – unlike pop – mimics the mercurial flow of queer creativity
It’s not surprising. Historically, jazz swarms with majorly influential outsider figures, all injecting a distinctly queer, unpredictable sensibility into the music itself. There’s Billy Tipton, the acclaimed, secretly female bandleader who lived her life as a man, complete with bound breasts and a padded crotch. More famous still, there’s Josephine Baker, the infamously banana-skirted toast of 1920s Paris, and finally, effortlessly heading any list of queer artistry, Billie Holiday.
All three women, quite aptly, embraced gay affairs, and Holiday, additionally – as a smack-binging black woman – had triple outsider status. So, in a world increasingly celebrating bland excess, it’s beautifully liberating to have Cassandra Wilson – arguably the finest singer in modern jazz – channel Billie’s brilliance.
Never heard of Ms. Wilson? You will. In brief, her voice is gorgeous, post-coital, smoked honey, a swooning, breathy rapture drowned in the instrumental love-making of her backing musicians. And, quite simply, her artistry soars unreachable heights beyond pop’s brain-dead, battery-farm divas pumping out clueless cover-versions night and day. Rather, her newest album– Coming Forth By Day – reworks key, Holiday songs as sultry tone-poems of loss and redemption.
So cultural expectations, perhaps, ran unrealistically high for her centrepiece appearance last weekend at London’s annual jazz festival. But in the shocking wake of the Paris atrocities, any appearance by Ms.Wilson seemed improbable, due to fraught, security fears.
Only minutes before show-time, a muddled announcement seemingly cancelled the gig, but Ms.Wilson, admirably, refused to be intimidated by philistine fanaticism. And in a stunning gesture of triumphant, queer solidarity, she unleashed the full force of her talent as standard-bearer for Billy’s sublime, queer misfit mystique.
Yes, she was unavoidably late, but heartfelt music’s always been thrillingly life-affirming, and Wilson’s short, if haunting set, spoke moody volumes.
‘Hush now, don’t explain’, she sang, bringing wrenching depths of situational sub-text to one of Holiday’s greatest songs. Weaving a spellbinding, definitive refusal to oppression onstage with just her voice and band, Wilson’s serene dignity was a master-class in queer resistance.
Someday, perhaps, the most diligent pop-divas might distantly approach Wilson’s unruffled panache, but don’t hold your breath waiting. Pure art – like integrity – never settles for second-best. Frankly, for artists, as exalted as Cassandra Wilson, the Simon Cowells of planet earth merely serve as closed prison cells, not express highways to intoxicating art. It’s their loss – and ours.
Last week the British Government issued guidance on how to survive a terrorist attack.
One of Brussels’ busiest gay bars, Le Boys Boudoir, a popular bar in Brussels issued a statement that it was keeping normal hours, but asked patrons not to bring bags into the bar.
The Chez Maman issued a statement that on the advice from police “not to run no risk and exceptionally close its doors”.
According to reports one of the Paris Terror Attacks’ suspects, Salah Abdeslam, 26, was seen by regulars in gay bars in Belgium’s capital city Brussels. He has been on the run ever since the atrocities in Paris that left 130 dead. Sources are claiming that Brussels-born, Abdeslam was part of the terror cell that prowled through the streets of Paris killing innocent people indiscriminately. It is believed that he rented and drove the car containing the attackers to Paris.
A bartender at one of the bars told the Sunday Times (sub) that they had him down as a rent boy.
“He was always hanging out with that kind of crowd.”
It also emerged that regulars had seen him smoking, drinking and flirting with men in the bars of Brussels’ Saint Jacques quarter, according to the report. It is not known if he actually had relations with anyone from the bars.
The bar owner, who wished to remain anonymous after going through hours of security footage from his premises.
An international manhunt for Abdeslam has so far failed; causing concern for authorities around Europe. Around 2000 police officers are involved with the search.
Brussels has been in lockdown after the Belgian Government raised the Terror threat level to the highest level; “very serious” indicated that a terrorist attack is serious and imminent. The entire Brussels metro network was closed on the 21st and 22nd and many events, such as football matches have been cancelled.
Last week the British Government issued guidance on how to survive a terrorist attack.
Meanwhile gay bars in Brussels are remaining open, but are working closely with the police. Le Boys Boudoir, a popular bar in Brussels issued a statement that it was keeping normal hours, but asked patrons not to bring bags into the bar.
The forthcoming Zoolander movie due to open in theatres next year, has been blasted by activists as “offensive” with one petition calling for a boycott of the Paramount film starring Ben Stiller and Benedict Cumberbatch.
The petition has so far garnered just over 7,700 signatures.
The film has been slammed for the androgynous fashion model character played by Cumberbatch who is asked by Ben Stiller’s character Zoolander, if he is a ‘‘male or female model’ and whether he has a hot dog or a bun’.
Sarah Rose, the petition’s creator also claims that,
“Cumberbatch’s character is clearly portrayed as an over-the-top, cartoonish mockery of androgyne/trans/non-binary individuals.”
She then went on to compare the character to “blackface”, saying,
“This is the modern equivalent of using blackface to represent a minority.”
Roland Emmerich’s film Stonewall faced harsh criticism earlier this year and had a terrible reception at the box office after activists claimed that the film was “whitewashing” history, because the film lacked credible trans or black characters.