The build up to this years Gay Pride in Brighton was dominated by rumours that the Police were going to perform random drug testing with their new 'swab' machine. Dr Gilberto Spong and myself decided to investigate, after a large breakfast of Kippers, eggs Florentine, and very strong tea, we stepped out into the sunshine to firstly watch the parade.

The parade was heralded by five Police outriders on huge motorbikes followed by the Rainbow Police (Brighton's Gay Police Force) and the Chief inspector. Smiles all round and applause from the huge crowd that lined the route.  They were followed by the usual colourful floats, dancers, and comedy that plays such a big part on this day. That’s what I like mostly about Gay Pride, it's happy, sexually naughty in a 'Carry On' movie sort of way and the Gay and Lesbian celebrating their liberation, with a tongue in cheek smile

Spong, who was wearing a full arctic camouflage outfit was getting a little hot so we decided to walk with the Parade for a while. It wasn't long before we came across a demonstration by a small crowd of Christians who were standing with their backs to the parade as a protest. This looked most bizarre and almost sexually provocative as turning ones bottom towards a huge throng of Gay men seemed a little ironic. I asked one what the protest was all about, 'MEN SHOULDN'T LAY DOWN WITH OTHER MEN!' he protested, 'ITS IN THE BIBLE! DON'T YOU KNOW YOUR BIBLE?!' 'Not from cover to cover, must have missed that bit, er why shouldn't they?' 'BECAUSE IT IS WRITTEN BY GOD, IT’S A SIN'. 'Do you believe in an all loving God?' I asked, 'Of course' he replied, 'Well how can anything be a sin?'. He got quite irate when I said that perhaps they ought to take their little fascist protest to the Vatican. 'At least these people are consenting' I ended. At the risk of being beaten about the head with his rosary I made a cowardly hasty retreat into the crowd.

We finally got to the entrance of Preston Park where the parade stops and the merriment begins. Wow it was buzzing, the park is huge, fun fairs, performance tents, banging trance, house, hip hop tents, and my favourite the Wild Fruit tent. There must have been a thousand people in this one at it was cookin. the P.A. was shifting some air and re-arranging my internal organs, I could only manage about half and left soaked in sweat, ears a ringing. One of my favourite moments was in the Revenge marquee watching a drag artist named Miss Jason singing 'You'll never walk alone', about another thousand people sang the chorus with him, great moment.

Spong reminded me that we had not done any research at all about the Police swab testing so we walked back to the entrance of the park to find one of our boys in blue to question. On our way I got many whiffs of strong skunk, walked past loads of people sitting in the sun drinking lager and 'loved up' groups of Ecstasy heads.

I went to one of the many Police tents and asked for someone who could tell me a bit about the drug testing. Most of them were there in a non operational role doing a bit of community P.R. but I eventually found a copper who was willing to talk. 'There's been a lot of talk about your random drug testing at this festival, is there any truth in this rumour?'. 'Well we've got our usual presence of plain clothes men and sniffer dogs at hand but we are not overtly making it a priority to catch people out. Its very low key, if someone is making a nuisance of themselves who looks a bit out of it then yes we will test them, if we see someone dealing then they will be a target. Look its no secret, follow me'. He took me into a small park building and showed me the device. 'Here it is, it allows us to test someone by rubbing a swab on their palm and then we feed it in to the machine, on the screen we can see what, if anything they've been taking and on that information can perform a search. I think just having it here is a deterrent………..' Bleep! 'Could gate officers go to the main entrance'. 'Got to go Sir'. I followed him to the main entrance and the group of so called Christians had positioned themselves so that anyone entering the festival had to walk past them. 'MEN SHOULD NOT LAY DOWN WITH MEN' they shouted, they even had a placard now with their slogan. They all looked a bit out of it and were being a nuisance but the Police politely moved them on and didn't test them.  

That was the only bit of aggravation I saw during my eight hours at the event and I would say that I observed a high spirited, non judgmental, community at play. That’s what Brighton is good at. Dr Spong and I retreated to his leafy suburb garret for tea, Battenburg cake and a good dose of Franky Goes To Hollywood. A perfect end to a perfect day and as the evening sunshine invaded the room we nodded off into a world of pink cotton wool dreams.