VIDEO: BORIS’ PRIDE SPEECH 2009

Here’s the full video of Boris’ speech that he made at his Pride Reception at City Hall last night.

Yet again – Boris was a great speaker – there were plenty of laughs and some great one-liners, but like last year, we came away feeling ever-more disappointed.

The fact that some of Britain’s leading gay activists were prevented from attending the event, while Boris got away with making a half-hearted attempt at a speech – punctuated with broken Latin and Greek quotes that no-one in the room had a clue what it meant – is a warning sign to all of us.

A dishevelled suit, Worzel Gummidge hair, boozed-up, rambling and (often) mis-quoted quotes do make Boris the great entertainer. But, in a year when homophobic attacks in London have been rising and when hate-crimes are getting increasingly ferocious in their character (COME BACK SOON FOR A MORE INFO), a bumbling speech by a clown-like politician is not what we, as a gay community, need right now.

Standing there, drinking white wine, watching people belly laugh at his bumbling speech, swapping business cards and scoffing at the finger buffets, could only re-inforce to me that as a gay community we really need to wake up to the la la right now.