Perkins: 'Gay roles on TV must be real'

TV presenter and comedienne Sue Perkins has called on broadcasters to give more realistic portrayals of gay and lesbian people with fewer of the obvious clichés.

Perkins - who was publically outed as a lesbian in 2002 by her ex-girlfriend and fellow comedienne Rhona Cameron during Cameron's appearance on ITV's I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here! - said that soap operas hold the key to changing perceptions of gay lifestyles.

Last week, the BBC published a lengthy report on how audiences feel gay, lesbian and bisexual (LGB) people are portrayed on television.

Writing in a comment piece in The Guardian, Perkins noted that the BBC and Channel 4 fared well in the report, with largely positive views on their portrayals.

However, the report also indicated that there was more work to be done as the majority of LGB people wanted TV shows to give more authentic depictions of their lifestyles.

Perkins suggested that soap operas are the programmes that can really change perceptions because they are "watched by millions of middle Englanders week after week".

"In 1987, EastEnders' Barry and Colin shared a chaste mouth-graze. In 1994, Brookside's Beth and Margaret locked lips. Coronation Street discovered lesbians this year," she said.

"If gay history had evolved as slowly and timidly as television portrayed it, then the first drag queen would be tiptoeing out of the primordial ooze around about now."

Echoing the findings of the report, Perkins called for an end to the predominance of gay stereotypes on TV, such as "butch-femme" lesbians or "camp" gay men.

She said gay-centric dramas such as Sugar Rush and Queer as Folk have compensated for the stereotype-heavy portrayals, while BBC Three's upcoming Lip Service shows promise.

However, Perkins claimed that ground will only be truly be broken if a "middle way" can be found that depicts the real lives of gay people on mainstream television.

"[Its] something between the tepid sexlessness of the soaps' queer couplings and the separatist universe of the US show The L Word, in which the characters are like something out of the Barbie Lesbian Range: the tennis pro with detachable miniskirt, the hairdresser with blow-drier," she said.

"For me the solution is less 'L' word than 'I' word. Issues. Gay characters are a gift because they can deliver the shock value that soap operas are hardwired to. But surely, by normalising rather than pathologising gay culture you please not only gay respondents, but the 19% of heterosexual viewers that the report reveals are still squeamish about our presence on their screens.

"When gay characters stop cat-hoarding, scatter-cushion throwing and compulsively shagging - when we're just sitting around paying bills like Average Jos - then middle England, and the Queer Nation, will be happy."