Rylan Clark and Nick Grimshaw to help Channel 4 celebrate 50 years of UK Pride with TV specials and documentaries
Rylan Clark at the helm.The radio DJ and TV presenter will star in a Pride anniversary episode of Celebrity Gogglebox alongside other British LGBTQ+ personalities.Two documentaries commissioned to reflect on the last 50 years for the LGBTQ+ community will also air around the anniversary of the first UK Pride rally in London on July 1, 1972.One film, with the working title of 50 Years Of Pride, will explore the history of the movement in the UK through first-person testimonies and archive footage.Made in collaboration with Oscar-nominated filmmaker Stephen Daldry and playwright Joe Robertson, it will hear from those who faced hostility and discrimination in the early years of the movement.The documentary will also feature people from the younger generations who have always had Pride celebrations as part of their life and identity.Another programme, provisionally titled April Ashley, will focus on one of the UK’s most prominent transgender women.Ashley, who died last year at the age of 86, was a model and dancer who received an MBE for services to equality and was involved in the landmark divorce trial Corbett v Corbett.The film will ‘take the audience inside the intimate reality of the transgender experience’ and explore how Ashley ‘paved the way for future generations of transgender people’, Channel 4 said.Another two-part documentary scheduled for later in the year will explore how pop star George Michael risked his career by speaking openly about his sexuality after being outed as gay.The piece, with a working title of Outed: George Michael And The Fight For Freedom, will feature other public figures whose sexuality was revealed by the media.Nick and his niece Liv, Rylan and his mother Linda, and comedian Paul Sinha.
