‘Hate feels like the easier option’: Danny Beard on group mentality, Pride flags and the hijacking of patriotism
The performer appears alongside straight engineer and ally Luke Mallinder in Attitude and Channel 4's 'Tip Toe or Ta-Da' series, based on Russell T Davies' suburban thriller 'Tip Toe'
By Dale Fox
Danny Beard once told a man in a sunbed shop that his enviable quad muscles were down to a pair of heels. The man recoiled, said “All right, yeah. Nice one,” and completely shut off.
Beard tells the story in the third and final film of Attitude and Channel 4’s digital series Tip Toe or Ta-Da, filmed in the Canal Street bar that serves as the real-world setting for Russell T Davies’ suburban thriller Tip Toe. The five-part series stars Alan Cumming as a gay bar owner whose simmering tensions with his next-door neighbour Clive, played by David Morrissey, eventually turn violent.
Sitting across from Beard is Luke Mallinder, a straight mechanical engineer from Birkenhead who wears bright pink shorts to Thai boxing deliberately and has watched homophobic language become casual shorthand on construction sites. “Even a behaviour you can do is considered ‘gay’ – it’s supposed to be an insult. Why? Is it just because you’re uncomfortable and you’re trying to fit in?”
For Beard, the word masculinity has become difficult to separate from its worst associations. “I can’t hear it without my brain putting ‘toxic’ in front of it. And that’s not right either. To me, masculinity is a massive comfortability in yourself, being open, trying new things, just not being shut off all the time. You miss so many opportunities being closed-minded.”
“This right-wing agenda has hijacked the Union Jack”
The pair discuss flags, with Beard talking about a video of a man climbing up to rip a Pride flag down, saying he didn’t want his kids seeing it. “But there are going to be kids that grow up to be me. I knew I was gay when I was about 12 or 13. People know they’re different from an early age.”
“This right-wing agenda has hijacked the Union Jack,” Beard adds. “It’s almost become a bit of an intimidation thing. It’s a very strawman argument to say, ‘Well, it’s just a flag, why are you offended?'” Mallinder adds: “The real irony is they’re the only people that have made it a symbol of hatred, because there are no Pride marches tearing up Union Jack flags or going around trying to terrorise people. You’ve only yourselves to blame.”
Commenting on Mallinder’s allyship towards the LGBTQ+ community, Beard says: “We need more people like you, more people who are just open, more people that are willing to actually understand the subject before they just jump on a bandwagon of hate. Everyone’s lives right now in the world – life’s more expensive, it’s hard for so many people – hate feels like the much easier option.”
Watch their full, unscripted discussion on Attitude’s YouTube channel, as well as episodes one and two of Tip Toe or Ta-Da, featuring pairs Charley Marlowe and Jaxon Feeley, and Jason Patel and retired AIDS nurse Dottie Shufflebottom. Stream Tip Toe on Channel 4 now.