Paul Lewis: Weir camps up for cameras

What most of us know about figure skating can be written on an ant's fingernail. But, if you've been watching the Winter Olympics at all, it's a fair bet you've seen Johnny Weir, the US figure skater and, er, man of indeterminate sexuality at the centre of a homophobia storm.

Two TV commentators for French-Canadian station RDS have been soundly smacked about for joking about Weir, including a crack that he should be gender tested; that he should be competing in the women's event; and slamming him as "a bad example" - the latter presumably a reference to those trying to "man up" men's figure skating.

The digs at Weir had gay and lesbian groups up in arms and forced an apology from RDS.

Australian TV commentator Eddie McGuire also came in for some criticism for responding to the remark of his co-commentator that "these guys don't leave anything in the locker room, do they?" McGuire's comeback was: "They don't leave anything in the closet either."

Which, I have to say, I thought was funny. Not everybody did and the thunderclaps of political correctness have boomed out ever since. Gay rights activists in Australia are howling for McGuire's blood.

Weir, who has never disclosed his sexuality, has been commendably temperate since the storm broke - declining to seek an apology but asking that such commentators think before they speak.

"I want them to think about not only the person they're talking about, but also other people like that person," he said.

"What people as a majority need to do is think, and think about who they're affecting. I don't want, 50 years from now, more boys and girls to go through this same thing."

So here's the thing - Johnny Weir is a very clever man, regardless of his sexuality.

The commentators fell into the same trap I did when I saw Weir on screen for the first time. "Look at this guy," I said in wonderment.

Weir was wearing a costume of dramatic proportions; something a K Road drag queen might view as inappropriate; make-up; a pursed-lips look on his face and - the clincher - an enormous crown of blood-red roses.

He looked like the gayest of gay poodles living in Gay Street in Gaysville in Gay Mardi Gras Week.

And it's all for show. The commentators (and I) fell for it. Johnny Weir isn't necessarily proclaiming his gayness, regardless of whether he is gay or not - he's assuring his future.

His skating career is closer to the end than the start and is moving out of the realm of sport and into celebrity and entertainment. He has a new TV show, called Be Good, Johnny Weir, which aired during the Olympics - great scheduling, huh? He also had a previous show, Pop Star On Ice, which ran from 2006 to 2008.

He finished sixth in the Olympics but it has been one of the most hotly-contested sixths in any Olympics, winter or summer. His fans - and they are legion - contend that he was robbed because of homophobic judges.

In fact, he finished sixth because figure skating has re-vamped its judging to give more weight to technical moves rather than just form - and Weir admitted he pulled out of some of his more difficult moves to ensure he didn't fall.

That judging change is important in a sport where the costumes sometimes seem as important as the performance; where make-up is applied with a trowel; and fixed smiles are to be re-set using two hands applied warmly to both cheeks.

From which you may gather than I am not much of a figure skating fan - at least not since the days of Torvill and Dean and him slinging her like a cape on the ice to the tune of Bolero.

Beautiful? Yes. Clever? Yes. Athletic? Oh, yes. But the sport has always suffered - where the blokes are concerned, anyway - from being seen as sequinned mannequins.

All right, no-one would turn up unshaven, talking in deep voices, in a Fred Flintstone costume with transparent undies but surely some of the men's costumes could do more than cast aspersions on their wearers' sexual identity.

It rather detracted from axels and death spirals, haircutters and camels - although I always thought the latter was a foul-smelling, spitting beast with a tendency to break wind and the subject of an off-colour joke about why they are called ships of the desert.

Even in Torvill and Dean's day, those who watched their mesmerising partnership were full of the stuff that interests we ordinary humans every day. Was he gay? Had they slept together? Would they marry?

Johnny Weir, you see, has simply taken advantage of that. His bent, if you will, has been to strike this pose and to profit from it - and good luck to him. His career seems set not to end when he hangs up his skates and, ahem, his rose crown.

He joins a long list of entertainers who have made a fortune based on being something they are not.

Let's see - David Bowie, remember all that androgynous AC-DC stuff? Load of cobblers. Or Alice Cooper? A hairy man in a dress who actually likes golf. Or Lady Gaga - by night a seemingly anorexic androgyne who's forgotten to put her clothes on and has a huge gay following. She likes girls, allegedly, but told a magazine recently: "I believe in certain institutions: cooking, serving dinner, taking care of my family."

The thing is, Johnny Weir deliberately goes out there looking like that; demanding a reaction.

One US journalist said in a recent column: "Over the last four years, he has been the gayest thing in sport. He was in the Heatherette [fashion] show and Black Book [magazine] wearing high heels. In Pop Star On Ice, he's in a bubble bath with his best friend Paris [Childers, a bloke, not Hilton] and he lies on the couch with a Hello Kitty doll. When ESPN asked for an interview, he took the reporter for a mani-pedi.

"When I interviewed him and asked how many sequins were too many, he replied: 'What kind of question is that? There are never too many."'

So, if you dress gay, act gay and look gay, chances are someone, somewhere will think you are gay - and even call you gay. Weir seems to cope with it well, encourages it, even.

But all those outraged on his behalf, please, have a humour cocktail and reflect on the fact that marketing is a weird and wonderful science.