#73 Your Internet Boyfriends Go Deep... on Tip Toe Part 1

0:00You survived the Miami weekend, nailed the speech, and maxed out your credit card in the name of friendship. Now you've got one hangover, four pastel dresses, and zero reasons to wear them again. Sell them on Depop. Just snap a few photos and we'll take care of the rest. And you at least get some of your dignity, money, back. Someone on Depop wants what you've got. Start selling now. Depop. Where taste recognizes taste. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks.

0:45Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+. In 2026, a jovial, jolly, farcical neighbour dispute ends up with a man being murdered. Tiptoe is a five-part drama written by Russell T Davies, exploring the resurgence of homophobia in the UK. Set in Manchester, it stars Alan Cumming and David Morrissey as Leo and Clive, who've lived next door to one another for 14 years before the show starts. Leo, who's gay, lives on his own and runs a gay bar on Canal Street. Meanwhile, Clive, who's straight, is struggling financially and feels his masculinity is being questioned, lives with his wife Marie and their two kids, Saul and George, who all seem to hate him.

1:33At the beginning of the series, we see that Leo has been hung up from a lamppost outside his house. The rest of the series then takes place over the 10 days leading up to that event. It all starts when Leo gets locked out of his house after chasing a hookup away and seeks help from Clive. Welcome, everybody. So, there's new listeners. There is? There's new listeners, so if you haven't seen us before, we're called your internet boyfriends. My name is Mark T. Cox, I'm homosexual. I'm Dennis Lennon and I'm a straight. Straight as a nail. Right down the middle. There's a regular guy. There's a regular guy.

2:07And we have a lovely podcast here every week where we talk about nonsense usually. But this is episode one of our special series called Go Deep. where we're going to be talking about in-depth reviews of life and shows. And cultural moments. Cultural moments. And this series is all about the hit show, Channel 4 series called Tiptoe. We have a special guest in the room. Do you want to tell us about him? He's sitting right over there now.

2:37Denis:He's friend and journalist. Yes. Alistair James. Why is Alistair here? We were at a lovely shoot in Boys Boys Boys Boys Boys Boys Boys Gallery. And we're doing a shoot for Gabriel Clark, who was in the show Tiptoe. And Declan brought me along as his beautiful assistant. And I came across some amazing people working there. And one of those people was Alistair James. And they were talking about Tiptoe and a lot of the issues surrounding the show. We decided then that maybe we should get this man on board and do something similar and talk about these things that are important. because I think we both watched the show and I'm shook yeah wasn't wasn't well after it fell underwater for about seven days I think I've seen so many things over the last couple of years but this has floored me and I think it's important to to chat about it we do a lot of stuff on this podcast which is like very light and airy and we do touch on some serious conversations but we felt that this one impacted us so much and people we were talking to they were like this deserves to be teased out a little bit more and treated probably in a different tone and that's something to say to people that are probably listening to my voice right now and going he's going to come in with a good joke here yeah but i'm probably not during these series yeah so we probably are going to treat this in a different way and i do think for people as well listening who might be i don't know just going about their morning commute we are going to get into some serious issues in this that you know maybe you want to listen to it at a time when you're feeling a little bit more comfortable or wrapped up in bed or something, because we are going to get into it.

4:11Denis:Can you outline? I'm going to assume people have watched it. There might be some people who haven't watched it, but just for the summary of the show. Yeah. So it stars Alan Cumming and David Morrissey. Yeah. Alan Cumming plays a gay cis man. And then it's David Morrissey, who is his incredibly straight English underlined neighbor. At the start of the show, it's kind of maybe being portrayed as a little bit of a funny meeting of worlds because they live right next door to each other. Yeah. So Alan Cumming gets locked outside with, you know, no pants on and his person who's with the night before kind of runs off with his laptop.

4:50Denis:So it's a little bit of like funny kind of cat and mouse games and the straight neighbour catches him, right? So it's almost like harking back to some sort of old, I don't know, like British sitcom. A farce. Right. So you're kind of lured into a false sense of security. And then as things progress we start seeing that the neighbor played by David Morrissey starts encroaching on Alan Cumming on Leo's life and then things start getting progressively worse and then you start feeling a little bit of heat on your shoulders as you realize that something bad is going to happen really bad but we're given a premonition of that right at the start of the show which is Alan Cumming basically being hanged off a lamppost outside his house so those first like hijinks that I mentioned, it's still weird because you still watch the hijinks going in some sort of comforting way going, oh, maybe they'll work it out.

5:36Yeah, they'll make friends. Maybe this won't happen.

5:39Denis:But you've already been told it's going to happen, which is strange, right? Because we're being told right now, you know, this in some form or direct form will happen. I'm kind of thinking, oh, well, it will work out. It'll be fine. Even though I've been told, you know, and still in the end, we get the end we were told. It's coming. It's coming and it happens. And we've been, we've been kind of shouting about it for five or six years. And it's still shocking. People still don't want to realise, or they don't want to hear it, until it gets that bad. And you can't really work out how it could get to that or what are the steps or the scenes that are going to lead to his death.

6:17But then all the little moments throughout the series are building and building and building, and it's where you have hatred that's then just been poked by different moments that bring us to that.

6:32Denis:Why do you think Russell T Davies wrote this? Because I think he's furious. I think we're all furious that this is so around the corner and we keep getting told, and it's Pride Month now, Pride Month is exhausting. You have so many people waving flags and telling us to be proud and be happy and go and party and go to see a brunch. And it feels so pointless because the reality is people are getting abused on the street and getting their identities reversed and everything. So I think he's like, I need to smack the public in the face. Do you think you're less inclined to celebrate Pride this year?

7:12Yeah, I think Pride is a bit more like about education and like protest and fighting. And it's not necessarily the big party that it was 10 years ago. My first Pride was, like, it was just like, let's dress up, let's wave our flags. We're free. Hallelujah. The dark days are over. And that song was playing, Florence and the Machine. The dark days are over.

7:38Denis:All these big corporations, they're not celebrating Pride now. Oh, yeah. We've been dumped. You know, dumped out. But back in the day, it was like such a big thing, you know, all Pride, Pride, Pride. And people were saying that. We've had this conversation podcast before. Yeah. Where you're like going, well, it's no harm that they were or whatever. You know, at least they were giving money to things. Yeah. You know, like they're going to give money elsewhere. But it is, it's hilarious. And also, just, they don't even care. They're just like, yeah, we're just not doing it anymore. Yeah. And they don't have to come out and say anything.

8:05There's a lovely line about, maybe it's the first episode about like, we were fighting and fighting and fighting to be accepted and to be seen and to be visible and to just be liked and tolerated. And now they see us and maybe they don't like what they see. There are lots of homophobic people in the world. they're never going to like us it's always been the case and we don't really need them to like us get on with your life it's okay but that's kind of been the the case for the last 10 or 20 years homophobia is fine i said it no quote that i was going to write that down there's always homophobic people who hate us and transphobic people and racist people but what's happened now is the confidence to start expressing that very boldly and not being worried about the repercussions and not being worried about getting in trouble or it's gone beyond like worrying about getting cancelled it's people are actually just not concerned about the law or what's appropriate

9:07Denis:and then it's turning into physical abuse and physical violence you know one thing that actually upset me it's the first thing that that's not the first thing it's the first thing that really hit home doing this podcast yes i felt terrible after it was yesterday one of the things that you said was that you don't feel comfortable on the tube uh you saw some men and you thought oh they hate me and yeah deck our producer he also said yeah i felt the same way when i was on the tube and i just thought that is the worst thing i've heard and you know like as in that's it completely hitting home i just wanted to kind of know like when did you start feeling that oh always and but if you don't want me to say and i don't want to put thoughts in your head but it felt like you were more bringing it home recently like as in that it it felt like it had changed for you yeah for sure like in the last couple of weeks but the last like since covid basically the last five years people have lost their concern of being inappropriate or their their worry of being cancelled or saying the wrong thing and you'll often see it and i'm i'm trying to not group people too much here but you'll get

10:26it's not always gangs of lads you might get a couple from anywhere slightly outside of London maybe have come into the city for their Saturday night to go see a West End show and he has too much to drink and they're on the tube and all of his little views start to come out and she might be either joining in or holding him back and you just know this could go either way they're they're just spouting off something like it happened the other day I was on the train and there was a family from, I don't know where they were from, like, I don't know, maybe like Italian or Spanish or something. And one of the kids left a bottle on the train.

11:12And this guy, kind of big, kind of football hooligan, kind of a man, was kicking off and kind of shouting at the family and saying, you know, pick up after yourselves. But the undertone of it was, I don't want you here. Yeah, yeah. And he didn't have to say anything directly racist, but he just felt very confident. And then once they got off, they were like rolling their eyes and saying, oh, you know, they're all the same, all of this. That happens all the time. And then if I'm traveling around, it depends. I'm a big, tall, handsome, cis white man. You are. Like boohoo. You know, I'm grand. But if I'm around with a gang of other queer people or like if I'm with or depends what I'm wearing.

11:56I had very funny hair for a while. Twice a week, maybe some bit of a comment. like just walking down the street or like a man shouting from a van because I had that real like faggoty like little slice and like mohawk and like it was really like graphic and obvious so it kind of shouted like this is a big queer whereas maybe walking around now it's not always Do you think that's like a subconscious choice? No, no, I just don't do it No, I don't care about I haven't actively tried to look less queer but yeah, I'll notice if I'm like on the train sitting beside someone and we're clearly romantic you just see the eyes and it might be just someone rolled their eyes but it could so easily just turn into them spouting off something, doesn't happen that often but you're braced for the worst I think that's the concern at the minute because people don't worry about consequences sadly and that's me so forget about if you're visibly gender non-conforming or a trans person or a heavy person or like any way different.

13:07There's a man somewhere ready to have a laugh. What kind of sets the whole thing off and what leads to this disaster is basically Leo, the gay character, gives his spare key to his neighbour, Clive, the straight man, in case, what? In case the alarm goes off?

13:25Denis:Why does he do that? that's a pretty normal thing to do like just in general we went to the specifics why he did it in a second oh because he got locked out yeah and he was like i should leave a spare key but the different reactions to that i've been listening to loads of like reviews and podcasts about this some people are so shocked by that like that that was a big mistake and you shouldn't be close to your neighbors so what i read in the in the show right all the way through this which led to the end specifically in this case for a gay man living next door to a straight man who's being also i think it's really important to point out as well like his straight neighbor is not a small guy no he's a big imposing yeah quite aggressive would you know like just by looking at him would kick the crap out of you right yeah yeah big guy i think that's really important right yeah so it makes it kind of worse but what i read from all of this stuff is that leo sorry just as a note will we just refer to them as the gay guy and the straight guy do you what i mean yeah sure yeah but we just do that right so um so not to boil them down to their elements i know what you mean but so the gay one the gay one that's what they do to us yeah true the gay neighbor he is trying in every single way even though the criteria for success for winning over his neighbor is getting smaller and smaller to win this guy's trust and do everything he can to protect himself as a gay man right yeah so he's going you can have my key to my house because one, I've nothing to hide in there.

14:50Denis:You can come in there. I'm just normal, air quotes, as everyone else. And he keeps on doing this stuff to please the straight man, which is kind of, I think, a metaphor for everything that gay people do recently anyway. You know, as in like, you know, oh, you're right. I will, you know, like a lesson. I'll bring myself down a bit, you know, like as in I won't be as, again, not saying that everyone is like this, but like I won't be as sexual in front of you. I won't be as, you know, I won't express myself as much. we won't fly pride flags yeah that's what i think is happening so all the way through the series the gay man is kind of at every opportunity trying to sit the straight man down and say like oh well i'll do this for you i'll do that for you i'm sorry if you know i've been like this i'll change i'll change i'll change i'll change i'll change but in the end it's still the same outcome i think that's what russell t davies is trying to say is like we have to stop trying to accommodate yeah because they're not going to listen to us and actually they're just going to take more advantage of us so they've lived beside each other for 14 years clive has obviously never liked him and he doesn't like gay people but he's just kept it to himself because that's how society works and we're supposed to behave but there and be nice to each other there are so many shows that we watch though up until now let's say the straight neighbor now like he helps out let's say the the son or something in some way saves him and then the straight neighbor comes to realize oh my god i was wrong all this time gay people are great exactly but that's not really what happens that's not really what happens now maybe in 2015 that's a nice story or because clive has a gay son and maybe there's a lovely story there that the gay neighbor bonds with the gay son and helps him to realize we've seen loads of those stories beautiful and helps him to come out and then they all skip down the street but now clive who's homophobic is on his phone late at night watching videos of people being murdered as his hobby and he's just become completely desensitized to what is appropriate what's not appropriate um i want to talk other characters stephanie is very interesting because i think this show it's very effective to kind of highlight homophobia i think actually in society the bigger more urgent issue is transphobia I don't know would this show have reached as many people if it was centered around a trans character I think why it's so shocking and like oh my god could this possibly happen is because it's the most tolerated accepted character in the LGBTQ world the cis white gay man who is middle class, working, well integrated and normal, inverted commas, like as assimilated as possibly.

17:47Denis:The most acceptable package. Yeah, and that's why this is so shocking, because I think we're sadly kind of conscious that people of different religions and colours and trans people are always getting the bad end of the stick. So that series wouldn't maybe be so shocking. We have seen endless stories about trans people facing struggles, but this one is so shocking because it's like, yes, that is trickling up along to the cis white man. I felt in the program, though, it felt, though, that you could insert kind of any group into it. oh you could swap this this was used as like the vehicle to get the most people engaged yeah so when i was watching it i was thinking of trans people i was thinking of or you know a family from ukraine or a family from from anywhere that's just facing or has probably politely and pleasantly lived next door to someone and now because racism is rising is getting this hatred that they mightn't have gotten 10 years ago.

19:00But Stephanie's interesting because she has, so she's his best friend. She's the best friend of the gay man. So she's a very common character in the gay world. She's around. She's an ally. She's waving the flag. She's having the glass of wine. She loves the gays. She's going to the clubs. But there's transphobia very clearly in the things that she says. And it's almost excused. It's like, oh, our friends, you know, we can't understand these pronouns and kind of like rolling our eyes. And I think that's one of the criticisms the show has had, that that was glossed over quite quickly and her character was kind of forgiven, although she's...

19:41Denis:I don't think it was glossed over. Do you think? No. I'd say the criticism is that it was glossed over. Obviously different opinions, but the consensus among queer people that I've seen, certainly anecdotally, is that the transphobic elements of the show have sort of been glossed over because she will say something from a gender critical point of view and no one really challenges it in any kind of robust way. But is that not the whole point though? I think as far as Russell T Davies is concerned, it is kind of the point because he said in an interview that he's got friends who are gender critical and it's only online where you end up screaming and shouting and being attacked by them.

20:15In real life, you have a chat and we all kind of sigh and put up with each other. That's how the world works. It's actually how the world is ceasing to work is what he said. So I think that very much reflects his experience. he has gender critical friends and he's received some backlash himself in light of those comments about well maybe you should be distancing yourself from them a lot of the criticism i've seen about the show has been specifically around this character stephanie and how she's sort of dealt with because it's not really that plot point isn't massively explored in any great depth in

20:44Denis:the series because it's focusing on many of us so so for me what i felt was happening was she was having these great points at the start of all of her conversations and then she would say something that was completely backwards yeah and it would leave a stink in the room but her best friend wasn't challenging it but i thought that was the point no like as in well that's probably reality yeah that you know that is what happens and i think this show it doesn't do what's right like everyone in this show says things that are not appropriate because that's what people are saying Yeah, like as in you're meant to feel uncomfortable, right?

21:21Denis:Like as in he is challenging the straight neighbor while being, I thought it was just a kind of a contrast, while being blind to his friends. Yeah, or just tolerating. Transphobia and stuff, right? Yeah, which is extremely common. I have, this happens all the time where you have someone, someone in work or something where they're good people, they're nice people, they generally have the right idea about things and then they'll throw in a light transphobic comment and it just kind of gets accepted and not challenged. and i mean the gay the gay men are sometimes the worst the the eye rolling of the non-binaries about the non-binaries and the gender well yeah there is a few scenes in it with um leo and his younger staff and where he's like is it he him i don't know you know that's very common and that's very um tolerated but that can build even even in the show that point about the pronouns because leo is depicted as not being perfect by russell t davis he doesn't get the pronouns he sort of expressed some frustration with it but that is dealt with slightly more robustly by his younger members of staff than he addresses stephanie's yeah gender critical views but but isn't that the point as well though that he's he's safer within it happens in the bar and it's addressed in the bar right yeah so he's not living in his semi-straight house with his you know friend yeah He can't take her to task there.

22:52Denis:True. But they can have a more open conversation in the bar with everyone else's around to say these things and say, hey, catch yourself on. Because in the flip of that, the younger gang are so joyful and hopeful and that party when Z was choosing her name and the fluidity and the acceptance and the lack of all of that nonsense that you get with younger people just being kind of open and tolerant of each other. I thought it was just I thought it was just good in the show the way that they just showed contradictions everywhere. Yeah. And how they were uncomfortable to deal with. So like in the bar the young people at one point they it was actually maybe it was Gabriel Clark's character you can correct me if I'm wrong but they start sharing the video Yes.

23:44Denis:in the group chat of the son of Clive. Yeah. And it's him on kind of like an OnlyFans site. And they share that around. And then they're kind of brought up on that from like a HR point of view of like, you know, this is a contractor we have in here. You can't be doing that. Yeah. Et cetera, et cetera. And then there's a comment from the person at the desk who's kind of like the manager, like the admin person. Yeah. And she makes a comment basically saying, isn't this the stuff that your lot are always given out about? as in like you know young people are giving out about they were meant to do this by the book yet you're doing this here anyway the overall point in that is that like going back to Stephanie's character and all the rest of them I just thought Russell T Davies just went went full hog on like this whole thing is full of very difficult contradictions can I say now do you know Leo and this is a lesson to a lot of he meant well but you cannot be texting a 16 year old and I think he knew he made a mistake but I can see how that happens a lot where you you want to be this saviour you want to help young people you have there's a line of like appropriateness and I think what was very good we're jumping around but the the rules of behaviour in queer business is very interesting if you work in a gay bar the the the way people interact with each other is outrageous sometimes as colleagues and the things that people say to each other and it can be dancing around a completely inappropriate line sometimes so I think he didn't have that sense of what was appropriate and what was not, even with his staff and he was kind of coming in telling stories about hooking up with people and it's like God that's a dodgy line sometimes to be dancing with your colleagues who were 30 years younger than you that's not justifying killing him but i think that was an interesting little highlight of in the queer world no i i i thought that was very interesting take to have but then that in bars and stuff but again it's it's the contradiction of it right which i think it was just excellent throughout the show was like who else is going to help this young lad yeah who's going to help this kid right so he's at a crossroads of no he handled i i felt like yes like the whatsapp note and all that stuff was heavy-handed and he's also is messaging him on a dating app right so like that's you know that's crossing the line like you should you shouldn't do that yes i don't think but at the same time that's all fine but who's going to help the kid out yeah so then like that's a you know what do you do um now there's probably better ways to handle it but i just like the way it gives you kind of that maybe unanswerable solution it's also a bit racist at the start because she's a social worker or social care work and she talks about migrants coming and pretending to be younger than they are so that they can get access to schools and to girls i'm like is that true but but is that just a story that you're but i but i love i love the way he writes that though because it's again she is speaking from what you think is a source of knowledge right yeah so i think what he's doing there is he's saying that like we can take that source or leo can take that source and take it as verbatim right yeah but the same thing is happening to clive yeah but it's coming from a different source and you're saying oh well that's true but she's probably being fed something somewhere along the lines as well you could fast forward her story does she become very racist or transphobic or because actually at the end she's kind of very comforting to is the flow you know the trans character and maybe this is the moment that they come together?

27:31Because the whole issue in the UK with this kind of women fighting for women's rights and trans people fighting for trans rights, there could be a moment where both of those groups realise we are kind of fighting the same thing here. There was a little glimpse there where those two women kind of were comforting each other. Were they in the doorway or something? Yeah, they were in the doorway

27:56Denis:and their door was being banged up. Is that a glimpse of potentially there's some good here that that all those groups who are all facing so many problems could start to like work together because it's it's patriarchy misogyny and i think it's really interesting that russell t davies leads the audience to believe there's going to be turning points yeah he does even though you've and this is so weird because you've seen how it ends yeah but he leads you to believe that the straight man next door might turn a corner and there's a scene where he's putting the straight guy into a cab. Yes. And he's giving him 20 pounds and he just wants the straight man to say thank you to him.

28:32Denis:Yeah. Because constantly gay men are apologizing or saying thank you. He said, just say thank you to me just this once. And then the straight man says, okay, thank you. And the gay guy screams and goes, fucking yes. And takes a big bow. And takes a big bow. As if, yeah, I'm winning. I'm winning him round. But what was funny with that scene was I knew that the straight guy was not taking that in the same way. He was literally just taking more from him. He was giving him 20 pounds. He was just giving him lip service. But he was going to act the exact same way anyway. What's your favourite scene?

29:05Denis:My favourite scene in the whole series is when Leo, the gay man, is sitting down with Clive, the straight man, in Leo's house at the kitchen table. Yeah. That is the most sweaty... I don't know. It's just like you'd nearly have to pause during it. Because you know he's going to die, but you don't know, is it now? Yeah. Or is it... And it's just that Leo relentlessly is pushing the straight man, and you're just fearing for Leo. Because you're like, this guy is bigger, he's in your house, he has you pretty much cornered. And going by what we've already seen of Clive, right? Because Leo hasn't seen the life we've seen Clive living, or what he's up to.

29:45Denis:Yeah. So you're like, oh no, stop pushing this man. I think the message for me there as well, what I was getting, and it's from my own experience, you're not going to get true to this man. Self-preservation, like self-preservation. Stop pushing this man to change because he's not going to change. He's gone. Like, he's lost here. I think maybe Leo is just a bit invincible or feels like, because he's HIV positive. He's lived through the 80s and the 90s and all these awful things. and do you think he kind of feels like fuck it like what's the worst he's gonna do i'm tough i think that maybe him as a gay man and other people like him gay men like him will think they'll kick the shit out of me yeah which i can accept this way has happened before but they'll never kill me yeah right so so like he'll push me around he might even punch me but he won't kill me yeah and and that's the that's the kind of mental gymnastics i think that leo is doing there where he's like saying, well at least I won't die.

30:47Denis:Yeah. Can I bring a light one? Yeah. Can I? This is a lot. It is a lot. Poor Mary's driving into Donegal Town listening to this. She's pulled over on the hard shoulder. She's going to go off a cliff. I liked the scene that you just talked about where you have the two men having this fight discussion at the kitchen table, but before they start the discussion. Did you see what happened? I can't remember. What was it? So Leo the gay one kind of pauses everything turns off the big light to settle him down and goes around the house turning on every little lamp, every little accent light. There's one under the cupboard there's one little shelf like here little lights on every but that was a very funny like the pride that he has in his house the comfort maybe he doesn't have loads of money but he has a lovely home that he's completely in control of contrasted to Clive who has no space he's everything is it's his family his kids and his wife and he sleeps on the couch and he sleeps on the couch every night he's no comfort he's no nice things in life because his house is so aggressive and he's so hostile.

32:16Denis:I actually think you're touching on a good point that if straight men were forced to turn off the big light and put on little lamps, it might actually bring down homophobia.