The Naked Civil Servant

Archive transfer - originally posted September 22nd 2005

Quentin Crisp was - and in many ways still is - an enigma to me, certainly before I watched this DVD. I knew who he was, what he was known for, but next to nothing about how and why he became famous.
So when I watched his life story, made by ITV in 1975 and starring John Hurt in the title role, it was a real revelation. Before seeing it I assumed Crisp was just an eccentric homosexual who came to prominence for being overtly gay in the 60s, and thought little of why.
Now I know he was one of the earliest "victims" of reality TV, taking part in a ghoulish profile in World in Action which led to him being spotlighted, quizzed, cross-examined and generally hailed as Britain's latest weirdo.
Crisp was very eccentric, strange even. But he is arguably one of the greatest social heroes the UK has ever produced, and his legacy is a powerful and unattributed one. The fact he stood up to prejudice in his younger years and went about a one-man campaign to raise the profile of homosexuality was a very brave and pioneering thing to do.
Unashamed of his sexuality, he paraded himself before his peers and enemies as a proud, gay man - by sacrificing his own privacy and dignity, he made a stand for the pink cause and became one of our modern heroes.
The violence and ridicule he endured in the name of justice is astounding. He was a martyr to his cause, to the cause of all gay men in Britain, and his life was sacrificed to it, albeit through choice. By raising the physical awareness of homosexuals he made people face up to and reason with their prejudices, and inevitably enabled people to develop their own thoughts and opinions about homosexuality without having a homophobic standard foisted upon them.
Of course, many may argue that Crisp was the wrong person to do this. His overt effeminacy and sexual escapades (as documented in TNCS) probably did more to turn people against homosexuality than in favour of it, but I argue that if you're going to make somebody face up to homosexuality, you may as well do it properly. How can anyone form a proper opinion about how they feel about homosexuality if they are faced with the straightest acting poof this side of 'Frisco? Straight acting gay men (of which I am one) blend in too well (which is, I'd have thought, a good thing), but campness and effeminacy bring homosexuality to the surface. And if you can accept that, or are willing to accept that, then you're near as dammit a "convert". For convert, read "non-bigoted open-minded liberal".
The scene in TNCS in which Crisp is up before the judge for allegedly approaching men for sex is my favourite in the film. Hurt is stunning, and the script is written beautifully. I don't know whether this was a fictionalised episode of his life, but it was certainly done well.
I ended this film believing Quentin Crisp, the original Englishman in New York, to be one of the 20th century's greatest heroes. He was a martyr, and in return for all of the prejudice and violence he endured in the name of Being Himself, I hold him up as one of my own personal heroes, someone with courage, conviction and vision who did so much groundwork for the campaigners that came after him.
Quentin Crisp, I salute you.

The Naked Civil Servant, originally transmitted December 17th 1975
Written by Philip Mackie from the Quentin Crisp autobiography; directed by Jack Gold.