2003-06-15

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The Observer | Magazine | The happy campers

Yet while Jonathan Harvey - the playwright who wrote the smash hit gay movie Beautiful Thing and created the sitcom Gimme, Gimme, Gimme - agrees that television has helped change straight men's perceptions of gay men, he believes another element was equally, if not more, influential in narrowing the gap. Ecstasy. 'In the 90s straight and gay people came together in mixed clubs for the first time because that was where people took E. It would have been the first time some straight guys had met anyone gay and when you're on Ecstasy everyone in the world becomes beautiful and gorgeous. The knock-on effect of the love it evoked had an impact.'