a magazine cover for the ‘Christmas in Soho’ charity single in aid of HIV awareness organisation STATUS

‘CHRISTMAS IN SOHO’ – Christmas single written by Ben Block from Boisounds feat. The Very Miss Dusty O, in aid of the non for profit organisation STATUS – encouraging people to get tested for HIV.

Featuring a plethora of Soho entertainers, singers, drag artists, and faces about town this project is truly a Soho based community one.
The track was recorded in the studio of Kinks star Ray Davies and features Dusty O, beehive queen Miss Mari Wilson, Linda Lewis, Jennie from the Belle Stars, JeyJon from Dead or Alive, Zee Asha from Chicago and Culture Club/Boy George fame, Nathan James, Holestar, David Hoyle, Marc Massive, Lorenza Johnson, Trannyshack Gurlz – Vanilla Lush and Vicki Vivacious, Gozra Lozano, Bambi Fantastic, Marc Abe and many more. All of whom donated their time and expertise free of charge.

Much of the funding for this project came from bars and clubs in SOHO itself. TRANNYSHACK at Madame JoJo’s held a big bring and buy sale, raising over £1,000 and bars including THE YARD, THE EDGE, KU BAR, and CIRCA all donated money to enable this project to get off the ground.

see the video HERE
and buy it on iTunes HERE

when photographing this team at a top West End PR agency, one of the ideas I shot was reminiscent of an old school photograph

David Paisley (born 2 February 1979) is a Scottish actor, especially well known for roles as midwife Ben Saunders in Holby City, Ryan Taylor in Tinsel Town and most recently Rory Murdoch in River City.

He began acting as a teenager with 7:84 theatre company in Glasgow, openly gay himself, some of his characters have been controversial due to their sexual orientation. He starred in the short film Sweat, screened at the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival 2008, and selected for screening at NewFest in New York, June 2008. Sweat is available on the successful short film compilation series Boys on Film distributed by Peccadillo Pictures.

He has been voted ‘Britain’s sexiest man’ by readers of Gay Times magazine. Has just completed filming on his regular role as Rory Murdoch on BBC Scotland’s River City, the straight son of gangster Lenny Murdoch. He departed the show in 2009 leaving the door open for him to return in the future.

David recently starred as Gary in the play The Back Room by Adrian Pagan at The Cock Tavern Theatre in Kilburn, London. David also starred in the successful stage production of Mumah at the HighTide Festival in early 2009. October 2009 has seen him take to the stage again in the UK Tour of Over The rainbow – The Eva Cassidy story, in which he plays the part of “Danny Cassidy”.

In 2010 David made his directorial debut with the play ‘The Lasses, O’ at the Edinburgh Festival.

text from Wikipedia

Launched to recognise and celebrate the efforts of individuals, organisations, employers and the media in improving the lives of the diverse communities of people that live in Europe, the European Diversity Awards took place at The Savoy hotel in London on the evening of Thursday 22 September. The black-tie evening was organised by Square Peg Media – publishers of Out In The City and g3 magazines, with the main sponsor for the awards being internet giant Google. The event was hosted by BBC newsreader Jane Hill, and tickets for all tables sold in advance, with nominees and supporters turning out en masse to find out if they’d won. There was also a celebrity charity auction, hosted by the BBC’s Jonty Hearnden.

Nominees were chosen following an open call for submissions, and these were whittled down by a panel of leading diversity professionals from across Europe, chaired by Mark Palmer-Edgecumbe, Google EMEA Head of Diversity.

“For the first-ever awards, it was extremely well received. We had guests from prestigious companies attending such as Abercrombie and Fitch, Google, L’Oreal and RBS and well-known faces such as celebrities from The Only Way is Essex, Michelle Collins, Ben Bradshaw MP, Lynn Featherstone and Michael Cashman, who all had an amazing time,” said Sarah Garrett, managing director of Square Peg Media. “It’s so important that companies and individuals are recognised for the hard work they put in to make sure that our diverse society is integrated and I’m extremely proud to be hosting the first industry awards that commend those who pay particular attention to all strands of diversity.”

W W W . O U T M A G . C O . U K

Alexis Houston, self-proclaimed ‘half sister’ of Whitney performing at Super Love at Soho’s Lo Profile club.

more about Alexis:
alexishouston.com
facebook.com
huffingtonpost.com
nypost.com

]]> http://www.chrisjepson.com/2011/09/alexis-houston-live-in-london/feed/ 0 http://www.chrisjepson.com/2011/09/henry-hate-portrait/ http://www.chrisjepson.com/2011/09/henry-hate-portrait/#comments Wed, 07 Sep 2011 13:28:42 +0000 Chris Jepson http://www.chrisjepson.com/?p=922

Henry Hate, (born July 16, 1968) as Henry Martinez Jr in Orange, California, is a Mexican/American expatriate tattoo artist, artist and former musician living In London England. Henry is known for some of his high profile clients whom have been the subject of tabloid cover stories, such as Amy Winehouse[1] and fashion designer Alexander McQueen. A former employee to The Tom of Finland Foundation he started his early career intending to be a fashion illustrator and erotic artist. Hate’s fine art work has been showcased along with Jamie Reid, Sexton Ming and James Cauty.

more about Henry Hate:
Wikipedia biog
HenryHate.com
MySpace.com/HenryHate

Leona Louise Lewis (born 3 April 1985) is a British singer-songwriter. Lewis was a contestant in third series of the British television series The X Factor, which she won. A multi-platinum selling artist and three time Grammy Award nominee, her most successful single, “Bleeding Love”, reached number one in over thirty countries around the world. She was proclaimed ‘Top New Artist’ by Billboard magazine in 2008. Lewis has released two albums to date, Spirit and Echo, in 2007 and 2009 respectively. Spirit became the fastest-selling debut album and the biggest seller of 2007 in both the United Kingdom and Ireland, and made Lewis the first British solo artist to top the Billboard 200 with a debut album. It has sold 7 million copies worldwide. Lewis has currently sold over 9 million albums worldwide. In November 2008 she set a record in the UK for the fastest selling download-only release with her cover version of the Snow Patrol song “Run” which sold 69,244 copies in two days.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

With gay boys ruling the top slots in the album charts at the moment, I was very excited to pop along to G-A-Y last Friday for the first act of their X Factor Winners Weekend, Joe McElderry. Since winning the 6th series in 2009, he has had a number 1 single, was crowned the winner of ‘Popstar to Operastar’ this year and his 2^nd album ‘Classic’ is currently at number 2 in the charts… not bad for a 20 year old raised in a small flat on Tyneside! But back to Friday, and his set was fantastic and included old tracks, new tracks and covers. Glee theme tune ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ had the audience eating out of his hand while the power in his ‘Nessun Dorma’ was unbelievable, and all of the 8 numbers were received rapturously by the capacity crowd. Added to that he was a cute, chirpy chappy backstage with no sign of a diva tantrum who couldn’t wait to get onstage to sing and dance. Fan-bloody-tastic.

On the eve of Brian Paddick being announced as the Lib Dem candidate in the 2012 London mayor race, here’s an image from a shoot we did during his 2008 bid for the same office.

Until his retirement in May 2007, Paddick was a Deputy Assistant Commissioner in London’s Metropolitan Police Service and the United Kingdom’s most senior openly gay police officer and intends to capitalise on his expertise on law and order and policing identifying reform of the Metropolitan police as a key battleground.

Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem leader and deputy prime minister, has described Paddick as a “credible alternative” to Boris Johnson, the incumbent mayor and his predecessor Ken Livingstone, and when laying out his battle plan at a press conference, Paddick said: “We are quite clear about what our strategy is going to be in the London elections. There is so much that we can be proud of as Lib Dems that we have achieved as a result of being part of the government, whether it’s raising the threshold on income tax, whether it’s linking state pensions to earnings, or prices – whichever is the greater – or the pupil premium, for example. But there are areas where Liberal Democrat policy differs from the programme that the coalition government is putting forward, and I and my colleagues are distinctly Liberal Democrats.”