OUTCAST WORLD

When Liam Rondi watched a GB News panel discuss the murder of a baby and heard a guest claim that gay men are more likely to abuse the children they adopt, he was sitting in his flat in the south of France, a country he had moved to two years earlier partly to get away from the direction Britain was heading in. He picked up his phone, recorded a rebuttal and told people how to complain to Ofcom. Within a week there were 1,300 complaints, and by the time Caroline Farrow had appeared on Alex Armstrong Tonight to link Pride with paedophilia, and Bimini had built a complaints generator, the total had passed 15,000 and Ofcom had opened two investigations into the channel. In this episode he talks about the trope that is older than he is, why an apology broadcast two weeks after the fact reaches almost nobody who saw the original, what it is like to fight your own country's battle from abroad with no newsroom, no organisation and no lawyer behind you, and why, for all the invitations he expects never to receive, he would point blank refuse to go on GB News. Ofcom's investigations into both broadcasts are ongoing. GB News says it complies fully with the Broadcasting Code and will robustly defend them.

What happens when the places that helped us become ourselves disappear? A Brummie drag and The Voice UK legend has the answer... Drag artist and musician Fatt Butcher joins Graeme Smith to talk about the dance floors that changed their life—and why losing a gay bar means losing far more than somewhere to drink. Growing up in a small village during Section 28, Fatt watched Queer as Folk with the volume barely on, wondering where a queer life might be possible. Finding Birmingham’s gay village opened up a world of first kisses, new identities and possibilities that had once felt out of reach. Now, Fatt is turning that experience into Congregational: a drag funeral for the gay village that attempts to resurrect it, complete with a queer choir, mirror balls, dance music and a decidedly unconventional approach to worship. But this isn’t straightforward nostalgia. Graeme and Fatt get into the contradictions of spaces that can save lives while relying on selling us another drink, the loneliness of performing five nights a week, and reclaiming the joy of singing together after a complicated religious upbringing. Plus: smoking-area friendships, poppers and dubstep, turning hate into a badge of honour—and what it actually takes to build a community beyond the dance floor.

During the 1980s, half the patients on some of London’s AIDS wards were Irish. It is a staggering fact—and part of an almost-forgotten chapter of queer history. Homosexuality remained illegal in Ireland until 1993. Many queer Irish people crossed the Irish Sea in search of freedom, safety and the chance to live authentically. They created homes, friendships and chosen families in Britain. But as AIDS devastated the community, many also found themselves on London’s wards, far from home. At the centre of this episode is Fr Bernárd Lynch, the openly gay Irish Catholic priest who founded New York City’s first AIDS ministry in 1982. He cared for people as they died, challenged the Church over safer sex and gay rights, and later continued that work in London, including at the London Lighthouse. Bernárd’s testimony—alongside the experiences of others who lived through the crisis—is at the heart of Mammy’s House, a new black comedy now running at Upstairs at the Gatehouse in Highgate until 13 September. Graeme speaks to Bernárd and the play’s co-creator and star Derek Murphy, whose screen credits include RTÉ’s We Watch, You Watch and hit sitcom Killinaskully. Derek explains why he was determined to bring this uniquely Irish story to life, combining humour and humanity while doing justice to people whose experiences were in danger of disappearing. Bernárd has now seen Mammy’s House twice. He considers it one of the most profound and authentic depictions of the era he has encountered—and believes it gives this extraordinary community the recognition and dignity it deserves.

It's the last weekend of this year's Edinburgh Fringe and in our time in Edinburgh we've spoken to some of the most interesting new and established artists from around the world. OUTCAST WORLD is live from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe — the biggest arts festival on the planet — meeting some of the queer and queer-adjacent performers bringing their stories to Edinburgh this summer. In this episode, Graeme meets New York performer and musician Joey Jennings, creator of Little Pink Dress — a deeply personal one-man musical about growing up gay, chasing the Hollywood dream, family, addiction, recovery and finding your way back to the person you were before the world started telling you who to be. At the heart of the show is a real little pink dress Joey wore as a six-year-old — sleeping in it, dancing around his room in it and living out an uninhibited childhood love of performance, pop music and dressing up. Years later, it was Joey’s mother who suggested that if he was going to tell his story, the dress had to be part of it. Joey talks about spending more than a decade pursuing the “serious actor” life in Los Angeles — and how an industry obsessed with image, masculinity and youth gradually left him feeling increasingly disconnected from himself. He describes auditioning for straight roles, trying to inhabit a more hyper-masculine version of himself and eventually realising that the dream he had chased since childhood was damaging the very part of him that had wanted to perform in the first place. There’s also a frank conversation about drinking, getting sober in 2023, therapy, moving from LA to New York and beginning to rebuild his creative life. And then there’s his mum. Little Pink Dress is, ultimately, a love letter to the single mother who encouraged the artistic kid she was raising, introduced him to the country and folk music that now runs through the show, and whose voice Joey says has remained in his head telling him to keep going. The result is an unusual collision of country rock, musical theatre, queer identity, childhood memory and autobiography — including a cowboy version of Joey who represents the masculine mask he once believed he needed to wear. They also talk about why Joey stayed away from social media for years, the strange vulnerability of finally releasing songs he had kept private for so long, and what happens when you hand the most personal parts of your life over to an audience. Recorded as part of OUTCAST WORLD’s Edinburgh Fringe 2026 coverage. Joey Jennings: Little Pink Dress.

The Fringe changes pace once the last week arrives, the flyering gets a little more frantic, the queues at the good venues get a little longer, and the shows that have built word of mouth over three weeks are the ones worth fighting for a ticket to. Outcast World has been across the city all month checking out the best Edinburgh has to offer. Gareth Waugh: Is Pepsi OK? There is a version of this show that plays as a straightforward hour about a bad gig or a worse manager, and then there is the version Gareth Waugh actually built, which unfolds more like a true crime podcast than a stand-up set, except the person telling it is also the one who got taken. Waugh, an Edinburgh local who has supported Kevin Bridges and John Bishop and taken every strange booking going from cruise ships to the PDC World Darts Championship, was scammed out of money on a podcast job that appeared to be connected to Coca-Cola. The man behind it was someone Waugh considered a friend. What follows on stage is the unravelling, told through a PowerPoint of receipts: email threads, video calls, bank statements, text messages, all projected as evidence while the story gets steadily harder to believe. Outcast World has a stake in this one that goes beyond a recommendation. The same man behind the scam in Gareth's story is one we crossed paths with too, and there are names in that show that have been changed or redacted for reasons that will make sense the moment the lights go up. Go and see it, and see if you can spot who's who. Gareth Waugh: Is Pepsi OK? runs at Monkey Barrel 2 until 30 August. Science Stories for Grown-Ups A gentler close to the evening, and a genuinely lovely one that's queer coded. Giulia and Richard are two scientists turned performers who spend an hour giving the back catalogue of science a personality, atoms with grudges, chemical reactions with feelings, thermodynamics rewritten as something closer to a bedtime story than a lecture. Fire, water, and the Twin Paradox all get the treatment, and there is a book of the stories on sale afterwards for anyone who wants to take the wonder home with them. It is the kind of show built for the people whose science teacher, as the pair put it themselves, crushed the curiosity out of them the first time round. This one gets it back.