A fascinating look at the mainstreaming of UK gayness which has taken place within living memory. Flynn’s own experiences provide a loose framework, but while the ‘personal journey’ normally gets my back up, he’s been well-placed enough that he’s allowed: his first piece for Attitude was a report on the filming of the first episode of Queer as Folk; he attended Elton John's civil partnership; he heard about gay marriage passing from Sir Ian McKellen at the filming of Vicious. And he has the contacts this suggests, meaning we get interviews with everyone from Chris Smith, Stephen Gately’s PR and an ex-boyfriend of Terrence Higgins to Kylie, Paul Gambaccini and Will Young (who, charmingly, is mildly put out that his dick pics on Grindr haven’t attracted more media attention). It’s told thematically, with chapters on AIDS, TV, politics and so forth, and beginning with eighties pop, which was always going to be a good hook for me. The story of 'Starman' on Top of the Pops as the Dawn of Gay is now familiar to the point of cliche; Flynn, from a later generation, pins that epochal moment instead to the near-simultaneous arrival of 'Relax' and 'Smalltown Boy', and mingles the more socially conscious material with plenty of scurrilous anecdotes from both acts. And then it's on to the first openly gay couple on mainstream TV, via the perfect segue of the actor who played Barry on EastEnders getting a picture with Jimmy Somerville years later. The former dressed as an Imperial Stormtrooper at the time, because why wouldn't he be?

And Flynn is very good at this, getting the curious marginal detail which is amusing in itself but also reflects new facets of the standard story. We all know the significance of Queer as Folk in general and the rimming scene in particular, but here RTD also defends his baby against the charge of being responsible for the henpartification of Canal Street, pointing out that the phenomenon must predate the show given it’s mentioned therein. More painfully, he accepts that he is responsible for the poor kid who was inspired by the show to come out, and then got so badly beaten at school that the thugs broke his cheekbones, a story I'd never encountered before. And yet, that atrocity in its turn leads to an ahead-of-its-time campaign against homophobic bullying…unintended consequence after unintended consequence, rippling out in exactly the way too many pop culture histories miss or gloss over.

Even material which in and of itself interests me far less – reality TV, sportsball – is treated from angles which make it come alive; she always seemed a decent enough type, especially since Dead Set, but I’d never have suspected Davina McCall would be such a fascinating interviewee. The snapshots of the publishing politics behind Attitude are equally fascinating, especially as regards the lucrative but internally controversial covershoots with sexy but straight male stars – though, as Flynn points out, the mere fact these men were willing to countenance those articles was itself a massive sign of progress.

And yet, early on I very nearly abandoned Good As You. One of its problems was one you encounter far too often nowadays; the book just didn’t seem to have been properly copy-edited. Curiously, this was especially noticeable in the first chapters, whereas in my experience it normally gets worse as you near the end of a book, presumably due to deadlines. There were just a few too many words used where they don't quite mean what the author thinks they mean (including, amusingly given the topic, an awful lot of homophones). Some are common errors - 'quantum leap' as a big change, rather than the smallest change possible - while others are more novel; "Gudinski and [Kylie] Minogue are still close friends, fellow Australians who threw a stick in the spokes of the indigenous male rock machine". Yeah, it's not capitalised, but I would probably still have avoided that exact term if I were talking about Midnight Oil and INXS. It’s such a shame, because it makes the book come across as slipshod when it’s very much not, and a little more effort by the publishers could have made that obvious. At his best, Flynn writes beautifully, poignant and funny by turns: “We tend to think of our first boyfriends as defining figures, but your first gay friend is the man you want to remember, not the one you want to forget." And even at his worst he does always write better than the one gay footballer prepared to talk (no, of course not someone from the British Premier League – don’t be silly), the opening of whose coming out statement does little to challenge my prejudices regarding the brainpower of sporting professionals: “For the past 25 years I have been afraid, afraid to show whom I really was because of fear.”

The other, more specific issue I had was far too much bisexual erasure, and I don’t mean in the good sense of my mates’ forthcoming covers band. For ages the B word only appears as something Bowie pretended to be - we're told matter-of-factly that there was "nothing gay" about him, as also Portillo, despite the latter's "dalliances"; that Pete Burns should have had a wife is implicitly absurd, despite the last great Pete Burns song being 'Jack and Jill Party', about the thrill of going to a party with one of each. You really won’t find yourself trapped in logical conundrums half so often if you think a little less binary and a little more bi. Yes, the book only ever claimed to be a history of gay men, not of the whole queer smorgasbord. But there comes a point where you're trying to write a history of the beach without mentioning the sea. Mercifully, bisexuality is finally glimpsed as a real thing in the context of Big Brother, although given by that point we’ve already encountered ‘stray’ (which I confess I’d quite forgotten), it does feel ridiculously late.

Still, these quibbles aside there was just too much good stuff here for me to storm off in either a pedantic or an invisible huff. It’s a fine history, getting behind the blithe headlines of a generational shift in attitudes, at once a record and a celebration of how far we’ve come. And sure, there’s still some mopping up to do, not just in attitudes but in law - equality of pension rights for spouses was the subject of a court case while I was reading this, in which justice thankfully triumphed. But the very fact that I was reading a book with two guys kissing on the back, and didn’t notice a whisper of a reaction in parks or on public transport, confirms the book’s own account of the progress made.

(I got this as a Netgalley ARC, but then ended up reading it in a library copy, because it was there, and because I still prefer paper books for most things, and because I want to encourage a library in a fairly conservative area to keep getting stock like this)

Paul Flynn's gallop through thirty years of gay (male) life in Britain is hugely entertaining. It's a largely personal account of social and cultural changes , beginning with his experiences growing up in 80s Manchester and ranging through various aspects of the subsequent decades of increasing, if still far from total, acceptance. Jimmy Somerville, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Clause 28, Chris Smith MP, Terrence Higgins, Colin and Barry on Eastenders, Peter Tatchell, Out on Tuesday, Kylie, Brian Dowling on Big Brother, Attitude magazine, Justin Fashanu, Robbie Rogers, Elton John and David Furnish... all this and much more. Like Paul, I was an 80s kid in the Manchester area (though I'm a couple of years older) and there was a lot here I could relate to and some things I'd completely forgotten....

The book's subtitled "30 years of gay Britain"' but really it should be 30 years of gay men in Britain, because women are few and far between in these pages (Kylie notwithstanding) and lesbians are even fewer. For instance we get a fair bit on Eastenders' Colin and Barry but nothing at all on Brookside's equally significant Beth/Margaret kiss. That's understandable - the author is a gay man and writing about his own perspective and experiences. But the cover could make it clearer that the book is very much about the gay male experience rather than any other letters in the LGBTQIA alphabet soup.

I did enjoy Paul Flynn's style of writing, though there are a few odd turns of phrase and word choices. ("Having exempted himself from the admonishment of the closet...."). Then again - he's a successful journalist and I'm not.

All in all I found this a great read packed with observations, interviews and touching/thought-provoking anecdotes, which brought back many memories and provides further compelling evidence, should it be needed, that "gay" is indeed as "Good As You".

Paul Flynn is a journalist and has watched Britain evolve from largely homophobic to largely accepting, passing through the terrible AIDS years. During the thirty years he charts, the country has also been accepting of other minorities such as colour and religion – but not in every case. Things are so much improved, however, and this book follows our progress as a people. I’d like to think it brought more understanding to a wider audience.

I have to say that, as an ancient, straight woman, this book could be considered to hold no interest for me but that’s not true. I read it in a short time, and was totally fascinated with the story it told. The book works forward through the years but not in any strict way. It’s told through the words of many people and contains funny and heart-breaking stories, as well as much common sense and observational detail. I found myself constantly checking on Google as I’m no follower of popular culture but I suspect many people will know the celebrities involved or have followed the television shows. The style is conversational, easy to follow, and it’s like having a chat with a very knowledgeable and well-connected friend. I heartily recommend this book to everyone.

It is an interesting read but not what I thought it was going to be. It is very much one person's view of LGBT history in the UK through Social and Cultural events. I for some reason was wanting a more detailed history . It is still interesting read but at times too personal and should be more objective.

Good As You is a powerful, sometimes funny, and emotional account of British gay culture from the hits of the 80s and the identification of HIV to the legalisation of same sex marriage. Flynn organises this into thematic sections—music, television shows, football, reality stars, politics—with personal anecdotes to introduce each part. There are interviews with various important figures, well-known and less so, and a wealth of detail, both factual and anecdotal, which makes the book a vivid account of the good and bad of gay men and popular culture across the last thirty years.

The format means that the book could be easily dipped in and out of, and it is a light and sometimes humourous read. The different chapters will have varying appeal depending on the reader—for instance, my personal interest leans more towards music and politics—but overall every section is interesting, highlighting things like the ongoing lack of acceptance in football and the connection of reality TV and gay culture in the 2000s. Of course, the spectres of AIDS, homophobia, and mental health loom large, and Flynn on the most part does not avoid them to make a nicer portrait of an upward struggle.

The book touches on most aspects of British culture, showing how ‘Gay Britain’ has evolved and changed over the past thirty years. Due to space constraints and readability, Flynn focuses on specific examples of important moments and figures (which may leave some people disappointed that their greatest influences aren’t included), creating a book that feels a bit like a documentary series, engaging and varied. Good As You is a book that needs to exist, part-personal memoir and mostly a look at the personal and larger effects of British gay culture until the present day.