Yeah.

And I said, "How old is your son?" And she said, "Eight." And I said, "Well, it's quite early," but she said, "Would you talk to him?" And I went, "Yeah, sure, okay.

Find a way of having that conversation." So we met, and I said to him, "Oh, hello Freddy." He said, "Hello." I said, "What are you interested in?" He said, "Well, mostly, uh, neo-Gothic Victorian church architecture." [laughs]

[laughs]

This won't surprise you.

And my bedroom overlooked the garden, and Mr. Watum and his boy Davey were in the garden.

And I stood in the window and I put on a record of, I think it was Gidon Kremer playing the Chaconne in D Minor from the Bach D Minor Violin Partita.

And then I stood in the window miming to it-

That's his way of showing his love for you in amongst the chaos of everything else that was going on at home.

Yeah, I mean, because he was an alcoholic and that's what killed him.

And of course, anyone who's ever lived with an addict knows just how, when that's at its kind of worst, it is very, very, very difficult.

But nonetheless, all the time all that was going on, the roses were blooming, the wisteria was happening, the sweet peas and the herb gardens.

And after he died, it just kept on giving.

And it was like being given a sort of bouquet every day from David from beyond the grave.

It was lovely.

But when and how have those worlds collided in ways that have been revelatory, unexpected, beautiful?

but it was where ev- all the cruise liners go in.

I remember going to an amazing restaurant.

This woman, old woman who lived there, and she had this little restaurant, and you went down a lane into this sort of foresty bit, and she cooked just local stuff.

It was great.

But then she would come out, and she'd sing gospel songs in a very high-pitched voice.

[laughs]

An integrated luggage system.

That's what I tell Dicky, because he's fed up with me buying new bags.

[laughs]

And so when I was eight, my granddad took me to a bookshop.

Quite, no surprise there.

And it w- it was a proper bookshop.

And he said, "Right, I'm gonna put a book in your hand, and I want you to promise me that you'll read it." And I said, "Okay." I'd only really had picture books.

You know, I liked what other kids liked.

I loved dinosaurs, I liked books about people who had exciting jobs, like driving fire engines or trains or space men or things.And he put into my hands the complete Sherlock Holmes short stories.

Yeah.

No, no, no, I.

We had lots of fun.

It was good fun.

But did it move the political dial? I doubt it.

Not really.

I think where it really was effective was in being part of a really significant change in attitudes towards gay people.

So we were at the forefront of that.

Oh.

As the Communards' Richard Coles says, "It's complicated."

Well, I loved it, you see.

Nothing I like more than going around the world in comfort and staying in swanky hotels and eating in posh restaurants, um, because I'd kind of grown up in a world where that wasn't unknown.

Not so for Jimmy.

That wasn't his world at all, and I think he found it difficult.

I think he, he wasn't at home in it.

Jimmy's someone who's always lived very closely to his circle of friends, really.

Were you aware enough to keep out of each other's way at points?

What kind of cachet did London Records have compared to an EMI or an Island or other majors?

Well, there were two things really that, so, that made London an attractive and a natural kind of ally.

Firstly, that it was, behaved like an independent, but it had the resources of a major.

So that was always a big selling point.

And especially, I think, you know, Tracey had a good pair of ears.

He was always, he was really good at detecting new talent.

But Colin Bell in particular, who was responsible for marketing, Colin had been Tom Robinson's manager.

Soon the Communards were flying, so to speak, and dreams were coming true.

[laughs] It's good, isn't it?

People gambling on very imprecise product.

There's a lot of money and a lot of attention and a lot of very talented people working very hard to try to turn something mysterious into a success.

And when it happens, the rewards are enormous, which is why they do it and it suits people who are hungry for risk and adventure and it can be, uh, a bumpy ride and I miss that sort of wheel of fortune feeling about it.

So i- am I right in thinking that you helped musically in Bronski Beat before Bronski Beat expanded as such?

I don't think I would claim that exactly.

Jimmy's first excursion into singing, um, performing, was actually on a, on a video documentary which he and I were involved with, which was made by Channel 4, well, for Channel 4.

Uh, it was called Framed Youth: Revenge of the Teenage Perverts, and it was a documentary which we made, a video documentary we made about ourselves trying to explain who we were and what we were doing at the behest of a very brilliant commissioning editor at Channel 4 called Alan Fountain.

Down the road.

And, um, and I met David there.

David was in the congregation.

He heard me preach.

So he, um, he came to see me after the service and he said, uh, "Oh, I'm interested in exploring my vocation.

Can I come and see you?" And I went, "Yeah, okay," innocently thinking, "Fine." So he came to see me, and we just talked all afternoon.

And then the bell went for evensong.

What? Go on.

we move

forwards towards a more just settlement, in my view.

But it's a very complicated process.

And as I say, we do contain within our... ranks, people who disagree fundamentally about all sorts of things.

It's not the first time it's happened, it's not the last time it'll happen.

But that debate is particularly lively, particularly grueling at the moment, especially as through the proper means to settle disputes, we thought we'd agreed a very tentative step forward on an experimental basis, but that has been kicked back to the bishops due to resistance from kind of powerful constituency within the church.

And the bishops have kicked that not so much into the long grass as over the long grass and into the never, never.

If the church is agonised, is that really attractive to people looking for clarity and direction?