Gaytime TV was a late-night gay

Gay

Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....

-themed comedy

Comedy

Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...

 and lifestyle magazine programme broadcast on BBC 2 in the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

. It was the first regular BBC television programme to directly address the gay and lesbian

Lesbian

Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...

 community, and won praise from the Daily Mail

Daily Mail

The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...

for its "lightness of touch that other minority interest magazines would do well to emulate".

The series was first hosted by Rhona Cameron

Rhona Cameron

Rhona Cameron is a Scottish comedian. She rose to prominence via the stand-up comedy circuit, and became a regular on British TV in the 1990s.-Television career:...

, and Bert Tyler-Moore, with Richard Fairbrass

Richard Fairbrass

Richard Peter John Fairbrass is an English singer and television presenter.-Biography:Fairbrass was born on September 22, 1953 in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, in England, and raised in East Grinstead, West Sussex. He is the lead vocalist of the band Right Said Fred which he formed with his...

 later replacing Tyler-Moore . The first programme was broadcast on June 29, 1995, and was last broadcast on 27 July 1999. It was a Planet 24

Planet 24

Planet 24 was a television production company. It produced The Big Breakfast and The Word had an animation division Impossible TV. Bob Geldof and Tony Boland founded Planet Pictures which merged with 24 Hour Productions headed by Charlie Parsons and Waheed, later Lord Alli...

 production. Segments included a weekly workout with porn star Mark Anthony

Mark Anthony (porn star)

Mark Anthony is a former pornographic actor appearing in gay pornography, and also Mr Gay UK heat winner of Club X Cardiff 1993...

, and one of the programme's traditions was to conclude with a torch song

Torch song

A torch song is a sentimental love song, typically one in which the singer laments an unrequited or lost love, either where one party is oblivious to the existence of the other, where one party has moved on, or where a romantic affair has affected the relationship...

.

External links

• Reprint of Gay Times article
• Gay TV: as in lively, bright, playful, merry - The Independent