The Kaleidoscope Trust is a new charity that has been set-up to campaign for diversity across the globe. While here in the UK the last few decades have seen massive gains for gay rights, homophobia has far from disappeared in other places around the globe. Indeed, 46 of the 54 Commonwealth countries still criminalise same-sex relations.
Kaleidoscope aims to change this – to stop people from being punished just for being different. Among its many supporters is the broadcasting legend Paul Gambaccini, who notably made the first donation to Kaleidoscope’s cause. I have been invited to his home to chat about the incredible work the charity is doing.
Opening the door to his Southbank apartment, Gambaccini instantly exudes warmth and friendliness. I am quickly welcomed into the bosom of his house – there’s a hug, and I am encouraged to slip off my shoes to join the myriad others that lay scattered by the doorway – just so I feel more at home. We wander along his stripped-wood hall-way, down the stairs into an open-plan kitchen-cum-dining-cum-living space that backs out onto a balcony overlooking the City. Gambaccini immediately leads me outside to look at the view. It is breathtaking.
Back inside, I am seated at the DJ’s dining table, opposite a wall entirely covered in CDs. Clearly, I’d expect nothing else, given that I’m sitting in the Professor of Pop’s very own apartment, but I am thrilled to see the CDs are listed alphabetically – as only a true musicophile’s record collection should be. I spy a plethora of artists: Adele, UB40, Jethro Tull, Lady Gaga, Rufus Wainwright, Status Quo. They’re all here. Even TLC; even Tiffany.
Sadly, I’m not here to talk to Gambaccini about Eighties pop icons – well, not entirely – but about the Kaleidoscope Trust, which really is just the latest charity that the DJ has become actively involved in.
‘All my life, I have been drawn to causes of civil rights,’ offers Gambaccini by way of an explanation. ‘The first time was when I was in junior high. I was in eighth grade so I would’ve been 12 and, in civics class, a girl – whose name was Candy Land – brought in a copy of Martin Luther King comments.
‘I was entranced. I thought, “Well this is a must,” and many people in the class thought similarly. We’d just come through a decade of spectacular gains for integration in the United States: 1954 saw the key Supreme Court decision on the desegregation of public schools; major league sports had been desegregated ever since the late 1940s with the iconic figure of Jackie Robinson. And, of course, rock and roll had integrated popular music to an extent that it had not been before, and the radio stations were playing far more music by black artists.’
At his heart, Gambaccini clearly indentifies himself as a ‘Martin Luther King Boy’; but over time, as history has brought more issues to be interested in, so too have his interests developed. Next up on the agenda was clearly voting rights and legal rights. ‘To this day I still remember the names of so many of the civil rights martyrs who were shot dead in the South’, he explains with a veil of sadness. And then the 1980s brought a focus to South Africa. ‘There a successful change was made peacefully, thanks to the most charismatic person I have ever met: Nelson Mandela,’ he says.
‘And of course for those of us who are gay people, having lived through gay liberation and then HIV/Aids, which was our generation’s equivalent of war – and that’s not a facile comparison, because the percentage of dead is comparable to the war – You know, “just when you think it’s safe to go back into the water” you notice they’re still hanging people in Iran and they’re still raping people in Southern Africa, and you open your eyes, and you think, “Oh my God”.’
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