 of Inside Leather History of Fireside Chat. I'm Doug O'Keefe, the host of the chats along with Mistress Joanne Gatti, executive producer. Inside Leather History of Fireside Chat is a program of the Leather Archives and Museum. And our guest on the chats today is Fraser Lee. Fraser is the president of Leatherman Scotland. Yes. All right. As we were just beginning this, you started talking a little bit about the backdrops. Would you speak a little bit to that, please? Well, the flag I've got behind me, I thought a couple of weeks ago, I thought I need to have something more suitable as a backdrop. So I had to look online and we haven't done many in-person events before all the lockdown happened. So we didn't have things like flags and all that at the time. So I ordered this from Canada and it arrived about three hours ago. Oh my gosh. It is actually supposed to be, well, it is double-sided, but it's supposed to have the other logo, the Gallant version of the logo on the other side. And it doesn't, it has the English one, but it's fine, we will use it. Well, tell us a little bit about where you're from, a little bit about your background and family. I grew up in a kind of 70s, 60s, 70s housing estate on the very edge of the city, outside the city, in a village which had become part of the town of Clydebank. Clydebank was a shipping town that was almost completely destroyed during World War II. Oh. The Luftwaffe missed the shipyards entirely and completely destroyed the town. Oh. It was kind of town life rather than city life because we were kind of on the edge of things and family were close by, they were on the west side of the city, so it was kind of, you had the country on one side and the city on the other. My dad's family originally were from the very far north of Scotland in Caithness. I traced my mail line back to 1560, where I can't go any further because there's two names the same and there's no way to tell the difference between who's who. But yeah, Caithness through and through, they had come to Glasgow and my great-grandfather moved the family down because they had to work, they had to, they were fishing and farming what crofting communities really would call them, but they were also carpenters, joiners and so it came to Glasgow to get work and have been here ever since. You depicted coming from a housing estate sort of on the edge of the countryside there. How? Yeah, it was kind of a traditional, we have a long history in the UK in Scotland of council housing where local authorities would own housing and that's all changed now. It's all going into housing association ownership but this was like one of the large building companies that would have built a private estate and they've dotted all over central Scotland every large town's got them. So it's the kind of place that other places have got similar nicknames but the nickname in Glasgow was Spam Valley because your house was so expensive although by standards now, nothing like it now but because your mortgage was so expensive that you survived on Spam so it was called Spam Valley. I think that nickname still sticks in most areas as well and certainly with other friends I knew later that their estates were confiscating. Oh, that's funny. Wow. How did you come to know anything about homosexuality growing up in that environment? It was very sheltered environment. It was a very, very normal environment. My dad's mum and dad were very well-to-do and very well-spoken and my mum's mum and dad were more down to earth and working class and my mum's dad had become a born-again Christian at some point, although it's something that largely passed me by because it wasn't forced on to us. It was just there in the background and my memories of that were the excitement of going to Candlemas Christmas in New Year just because you got to light a candle and sing. That was my only memories of it really. But yeah, it was a totally normal life. We would go as a family. My dad was a joiner and there was my mum and dad, my older brother and myself and we would go on holiday every year within Scotland because we didn't have fun holidays at those times. And my mum's mum and dad would come with us so it would be two cars and all of us and a dog going on holiday every year for two weeks somewhere in Scotland which was a great childhood. But it was totally normal. I wasn't exposed to any of these things. I have memories of the 70s television where there'd be someone really camp and it would be a figure of hilarity rather than anything else. To an adult, an adult would understand some of the jokes that children wouldn't understand. And I was probably just growing up at the time when things like children's television started, things like that. Television wouldn't be on during the day before that and there were three television channels at the time. So I remember the fourth and the fifth one starting sitting waiting on the fourth television channel to start with a countdown clock. But it was totally normal. I do remember my dad had friends who, one friend was a beat policeman and I overheard a story. They probably just thought I wouldn't understand it anyway so they were having an adult conversation and there was a story about there were gay men dropping contact cards in a park and it was outrageous. And I barely really understood these things at that time but as you get a little bit older you know yourself, you start to question things in yourself before you even know what words to call them. And when I did eventually start going on scene I was 19 and I was at college then and so I had more freedom. So it was handy being close to a city. I could be in the city in about 45 minutes by bus also and you could get the very last bus home just after 11.30. Really? Yeah, early, early. But later on there were night buses and friends and I frequented the night buses very often indeed. But when you, so if you went off to college and that was the first time you were really out doing anything gay how were you even introduced to that? How did you even know about it? When I started a part-time job when I was at college it was working for a coach company and it was like intercity services. And so you got to meet more people and there were gay people. At that time there were drivers, conductors or stewards who would serve tea and coffee and things on coaches and so you would get to know people that you would never have known otherwise people from all walks of life. And you got to see and hear more things and one day I think one lunchtime we went to the pub and it was where they gave us some glasses. And it was a kind of place where after that you had to go yourself. And so it was standing at the bus stop outside pretending you were waiting for a bus until it was all clear and then down the stairs into the bar. But yeah, you know, you get over that fairly quickly and you don't care anymore because you realise that the fear is in your own head really. And other people are just going about their daily business and aren't even noticing. Why did you even know to go to the bar you just mentioned? Well that was just with people at work. There was a couple of them, they were both shirts and one of them later took a job within the office in the centre of Glasgow. And it was like a family, it really was like a family and he was the first person who I was fairly close to that I had all sorts of stories from. And he was also the first person who one day came in and said that he was HIV positive and really very early as I remember and within about six months went from telling us to being in a hospital where we couldn't visit and blind with KS and died shortly afterwards. When I was at that age, we were that generation where we were just at that age and the government had put out this terrifying advert of like a tombstone falling over and don't die of ignorance and leaflets to every house in the country. So we were right in the middle of the fief of that. And when I started going out it was very much the time of the scene and whatever charities and volunteers had set up that they were distributing condoms to every venue. I remember them being freely available just at that time where that started to happen. It was a great time to come out. I didn't come out to my parents. I was out rather awkwardly. I got home one day and my mum had been apparently I'll never know the truth because I won't ask her but apparently she'd been looking for we call it Tipex whiteout correction fluid and apparently she'd been looking for that and she found like a gay newspaper. And I got all the tears and how could you let them talk you into it? I'd never really heard that said before but it's the kind of thing I'm conscious of hearing now and still coming from America where religious communities seem to believe that you're being recruited. So that was a bit of a shock because you've got the trauma of oh my God what am I gonna say to my mum along with how could you let them talk you into it and just all the misconceptions and all these things. That was a difficult time. But you gave her a book. Yeah I did. I can't remember entirely where I got the book because it was before the internet I mean now it would be easy but it was before the internet then. So I think it must have been one of the large book stores in town and it was a book called how to cope if your child is gay. And vaguely remember all sorts of things like religion and I would be a grandparent and all these subjects, sex, what about HIV? All these things were all covered. Obviously I've seen the book since and it's been updated for more modern times but it did very much cover all the things that she really needed to have a different perspective on somewhere else's outside perspective on. And she told me at the time I'm not reading that because it was almost felt like she thought it was giving her some kind of propaganda. But I did notice that there was a bookmark and it was slowly going down the pages so it was being read. And it was never mentioned, it was never talked about but over time there was a better understanding that was surprised that my brother and I are so liberal but then they brought us up to be that way they brought us up to make our own decisions and make our own choices so that's a good thing. I remember my brother was interviewed one evening did you know, why did you not say? He says, nothing to do with me, it's not my thing to tell you which was quite nice but things changed especially as when I started seeing my partner who I'm still together with now and it turned out and discovered completely accidentally that my dad and his dad worked together for years. And so I think that really smoothed over the normality of things and so there's no awkwardness. Let's take a quick step back to the Glasgow scene that you knew when you were first coming out tell us a little bit about that. There was an earlier period with earlier venues which I never knew although I'd have names newer places where. This was a period where there was an older bar called the Waterloo an older style of bar, more traditional and then there were other ones that was like a long, a long thin basement bar because the Glasgow's a very Victorian city and so you tended to have offices and houses and there may be basements and there may be bars and things in basements underneath all perfectly well, not anything particularly secretive but most of the gay bars were concentrated in the sort of South-Eastern quadrant of the city centre which has got the name Merchant City because that's where the city began with the merchants dealing with the West Indies and sugar and all these kind of things but most of the bars were based in that area. One bar I always remember it seems to be too late as being fighting it seemed to be perpetual I don't know I think the stick in my head but yeah there were places frequented by younger people the same as other cities where there is a little bit of choice people seem to move into their own little groups of it and it's good, the same is good in Glasgow it's always been good. How did you learn anything about the leather kink scene? I do remember I must have been 19 I must have been about 19 I remember the first leather man I ever saw was outside one of the nightclubs in Glasgow outside Bennet's still there but it's not called Bennet's anymore and this guy was in full leather and I was just someone come up and close my mouth and that was the first time I'd ever seen anyone and not too long after that a friend and I we went to one of the the nearest big English city that had a large scene was Manchester and it still is because it's got its own kind of village which is like everything's concentrated in one area and we visited there and it was the age of the clones and so people were very recognisable at that time but yeah it was something that I knew was attractive How so? The look just really struck a chord I always had a huge thing for guys with a mustache and a cap and Manchester seemed to be the centre of it When you were drawn to the image of the leather man but how did you begin to explore the entire leather lifestyle? Very early days were certainly things like when eBay came on the scene eBay must be the beginning of so many people finding out what they like I think it was like a harness or something like that for sale or eBay and butter We were going to places that Manchester was more eye-opening because Manchester had and still has a gay store clone zone selling all sorts of gear and leather and postcards so you'd see all the early postcards with the iconic images that we used to see in the early days of the internet and in magazines and things like that so we had never really seen these things before we'd only really seen kind of weekly or fortnightly newspaper style magazine about the scene in the UK and so those things had listings of all the bars and clubs and groups throughout the UK and just before the internet and so you got to know you would read these things cover to cover obviously and you would know every place and you would go to Edinburgh for the day and you would see what places were like and a lot of places have changed now and a lot of places have gone the internet did change things some for the good, some for the bad it's not all bad, not all good I remember a company bar in Manchester I had a good time there The first sort of leather-ish bar I was ever in when I was still 19 I don't know how I got away with it but I went to Amsterdam and I remember going to this I'm almost certain it was called Company as well which is why I remember it then and there was a dark room up the stairs which I did venture into because we don't have these things here there was a new thing entirely so no experience of those kind of things it didn't be a lovely German gentleman but yeah, I was all around all the places in Amsterdam and cafes and having lunch and just hanging out on the scene because you could it was a good time so that was probably the first kind of slightly more leathery place although after that there was an American guy he was from Minnesota or something staying at the same hotel and so we were just talking and then we went to the web one early evening and to my absolute horror I had to be taken outside by him because the wall of poppers that hit me was just like it was just I got an eyeful of the surroundings and then I had to go take too much so that was my real first look at these things but yeah, it was a while before I got to go back to anything like that really Now, how did your interests evolve such as how did you learn your sort of protocols in the community? I first had to see my partner a couple of years after that I really stopped frequenting the scene so much I did go through a patch where with the clear benefit of hindsight I was very depressed overthinking the worry and I phoned the doctors, went to the doctors and I was introduced to the marvel of Prozac and I went from having a negative attitude which was just my whole outlook was negative whereas now I would be planning something so I had things to go to rather than to get out of and it totally changed my outlook I wanted to do things again and that was really what kickstarted the I knew I loved gear a few years before that there was a website called gear fetish there was a modern version of it but it isn't the same one but that was a time when there was everything on there leather, rubber, uniform, everything so I was exposed to all these things and started seeing things that I liked at that time but that didn't really happen well loads of fetishy stuff leather, I've always liked leather also like sports gear, I like shiny gear so shiny black, it wasn't such a huge jump to leather but these things just kind of gradually introduced you and so you saw more things, I wasn't really aware I knew, even going to Manchester I knew there were leather guys but I wasn't really aware of any deeper level of seeing beyond that what fetishes do you enjoy, what activities I would say I am mostly sub not entirely I still have possibilities but yeah, emotionally it's more satisfying my partner and I went to Berlin probably about 2015 I think but just before we went I had been talking to someone online and I asked if I could meet this guy and my partner said he didn't want to go so we had a rough few days trying to talk and then by the night before it was clear we were going and we went to Berlin and had a lovely time and visited all the tourist places and there we went into the gay places really we did all the touristy places and one night we finished dinner and he went to the hotel and I went to meet this lovely German gentleman with full letters and he's been playing who absolutely blew my mind and that was the first time I'd ever met anyone quite like that and then when I came back from that I within a within a very short period talking to someone purely by chance online and he was at home in the midlands of England and I went down to see him and I was visiting him basically every month for two years from then actually I would have caught her for a year as well and it was an amicable and I think as him and his partner were kind of moving away from the scene that was when I needed to be in the scene I needed the friendship I needed the people around me but he actually took me to my first leather social and took me to get measured for leather jeans and a waistcoat was the first that I got I went myself quite fine let's explore Leatherman Scotland tell us how did that begin I knew I would never have got onto the scene without someone taking my hand and taking me I can remember at the hotel we were in in Manchester getting ready he was in full leather he was in the lab the works looked awesome but I remember I needed someone to take me and show me it's okay and meet some people and actually before we went in Manchester they do normally in October they do the Manchester Leather Weekend and I had actually booked for that and paid for it and booked my hotel and asked for in order to force myself that this is done you are going and then I had a thought I'm going to need to know a couple of people realistically before I go so he took me and we met some of the regulars at the social people come and go but there's still a lot of the people who were there at that time still and so at the time I was looking for some kind of community here a couple of the guys at Manchester Leather Men suggested why don't you try a social in Glasgow and so I did April 2019 yeah April 2019 I started a social advertised that as much as I could online, Twitter everywhere word on mouth etc I'm a partner came with me I'm thinking oh my god no one's going to turn up but people didn't there were about 15 people or something and that was even with it was Easter and the big event in Europe then it's Falsum Easter in Berlin and so some of the guys now who are regulars were away so the whole ethos what I wanted it to be was to encourage people to come out and to give them the help to come out and that was even down to no dress code and a venue which was bright and open and accessible instead of the more natural venue now which is a place which is down a dark staircase around the corner around another corner into the darkness and new people young guys a little bit frightened of that so chose one venue which is complete glass front lovely and open bright an outside smoking area an outside front seating area for nice weather and we actually went to Pride that year I grew up on about 20 of us we were right at the front of the Pride march and we were second in the march and it just gradually grew and grew little by little and at the year our last in-person social was March 2020 and at that point we knew we were going into lockdown very soon and we had planned we were going to have an in-person meeting in the April because that was a year and we were going to decide what do we want to do at that time we were actually we were actually just calling it Glasgow leather men or Glasgow leather social really but what we did was we had an online meeting quite a lot of people came quite a lot of the regular people came along because we had a group on Facebook that we've really kind of held everything together and we decided in the April that we wanted to become a club still with the full intention that socials will be open to all and at the time when lockdown did come we just by chance on social media saw information that the Scottish Government had a fund which they were distributing through a charity the Equality Network and their intention was to try and to try and help with social isolation during lockdown in particular and at that time applied for that and got funding for a Zoom licence every month so every month they paid for that so it was supposed to be two or three months and here we are the funding ends on the 31st of this month and they emailed me last week to say if you apply for a one year licence now we will pay for it so they've actually they've actually overall paid for 12 individual months and a year on top of that all sorts of things we've done a cocktail class we've had game shows rip offs of 70s and 80s game shows we've had quizzes bingo all sorts of things, cards against humanity that's our favourite and as well as being helpful for various people it's been helpful for me I would previously have said suffering from depression I would have said I was introverted but there are things that you do because you have to because you're in that position with the social I made a point that no one would be left standing on their own, they would be welcomed and brought into the group and just where the person and social ended and we moved online there were some people who were just about to come to the socials and started coming online and now they know everyone and now they feel part of it in fact one of them is now membership secretary because he's so invested in it and it's allowed people to get to know each other and we are actually now at the stage where we are about to tentatively try to take a step back out into face to face social world we are planning to have an in person social with allocated seating and table service in late June so fingers crossed on that and to show the demand for it and the friendships that are built up then 24 hours 34 people had applied to attend wonderful we extended people's memberships by 3 months if they joined before Christmas so the first memberships because we started in April the first memberships finish in July but currently we are 91 members a couple of those are people who we have subsidized because we very much wanted at the beginning that cost shouldn't be a factor the same as everyone worries at the beginning that their gear isn't good enough that they are not good enough people worry about I can't afford that £15,000 jacket so we don't want that when people were joining or new members were joining we had an option where they could join at £12 a pound a month or they could pay £15 and that extra would go towards subsidizing someone else and the vast majority paid extra in fact some people paid quite a lot extra I may have had various donations and things like that and we have struck up a very close friendship with the other men of Ireland over that we we essentially joined together we go to each other's events and we make sure that we don't clash they held their first birthday party and we all attended one of their members Jon O'Brien who is quite well known I know Jon he regularly held fundraising events for the gay switch boat in Ireland and can't do that just now because of Covid they would do things like second hand gear events and things like that and so there was an online event and there were a hundred of us there two teams from our group other groups from across Ireland and people from all over the UK so there were a hundred of us they all together and one of our teams that I was in came second and we won a hundred euros and they wouldn't let us donate it because we had raised so much money already we gave us a hundred pounds and we donated that to two gay charities one Waverly Care which is hospices and the other one was the Equality Network the group who had overseen the funding for Zoom from the Scottish Government so we wanted to try and give a little bit back to them are you looking to join the ECMC the overall consortium we initially initial thoughts were my last time at Falsum was in 2019 Falsum Europe sorry was in 2019 and I had met various people from ECMC including Daniel Dumont very very nice and very very encouraging huge loss and others from Belgium we started out at the Belgium Museum from Amsterdam and they were very encouraging and we learnt at that stage that NSC Scotland were closing they were winding up and we had thought in order to retain the history perhaps we can merge and move forward but it became impossible and dialogue just wasn't there and so it was hoped at that stage that we could retain the ECMC membership because they were going to give up otherwise but in order to shed what was obviously baggage in the background that we didn't particularly know about we let it go and so at our our first AGM back in April this year one of the propositions at the AGM was that we would like to join ECMC and that was unanimous a unanimous decision and various other members were there who come from Manchester Leatherman, Leatherman Cymru in Ireland Leatherman Cymru in Wales and someone from London Leatherman said out loud we will support you we need the support of two full member clubs so that's we have to support three full member clubs so is there any intention to apply to join at the next AGM of ECMC and then that would make us if accepted that would make us a provisionary member for a year and then we would apply to become a full member that is what we would like to do at the last AGM which was online Leatherman Cymru allowed me to join as an observer so I could see the process and I have seen many of these people at places like Falsum Europe and Manchester Leather Weekend it really brings everyone together even more than a single club does ECMC in particular did a lot of work on raising funds to get people out of Chechnya the Rainbow Railroad raised a lot of money for that so there are things to be done and joining together to do more is a good thing and that is if I have my acronym correct it's the European Consortium of Motorcycle Clubs correct? I did have a motorcycle in my thirties I missed out that was one of my earlier attempts to try and find some kind of scene but it was unsuccessful but I did have a motorcycle for about six or seven years or so and the levels but tell me what is unique about the Scottish Leather King scene? It is a far smaller scene we do have quite a lot of members from Goodwill, from outside of Scotland great, fine we have quite a number of very invasive members from the north of England north east of England and around Manchester in particular I do have a lot of friends there are a lot of friendships but other people have been drawn in and I know of several people who we were just there at the right time for them and they needed something people to grab hold of them and say come in, it's fine and we did that a little in person I talked about how we don't have a dress code at the events it is difficult to walk through a city in full gear the one difference I've done it a number of times places like Berlin, no one backs an island places like Manchester people will go why etc but in Glasgow you get a bit of what we would call banter I've walked through a few times with other people and if you don't have your cap on people don't notice the cap freaks them out and so I remember one person who is unfortunately no longer involved they didn't come the first month because they were too nervous second month they came in jeans and t-shirt and the fourth month they came and marched in pride in full gear I'm going to show you the steps and confidence of being able to do that and knowing it's okay it's fine and we have trans members and non-binary members mostly men it's a couple of women including women I used to work with years ago who's a biker but we have a good split of people in the west of Scotland and the east of Scotland but we've done all sorts of things like we had gone into in order to not make it all based around a bar and alcohol Scotland has a long problem with alcohol we started doing lunch or brunch before and it was a chance to meet and have a coffee or food and we want to start that again where we can we did Christmas just before Christmas in 2019 we had Christmas dinner and there were 32 of us along a huge table in this lovely Italian restaurant but we wanted to do more things like that we had plans to do whiskey tasting events and all go for afternoon tea and a posh hotel and all these things open top bus tour and they're all on the plan that we still want to do when we were preparing for this I was a bit naive when you told me that you conduct your meetings bilingually tell us about that the plan from day one was to try and do certainly online things bilingually Scottish garlic is an old language and is now spoken by about 2% of the population and there is a fear it could die out related historically to Irish but quite different now but we do have a Welshman who lives in Central Scotland who learned garlic and now teaches that school a class at school through the medium of Scottish garlic so it's like teaching physics through garlic and we also have another gentleman and his partner who have just joined and he is another who is fluent in garlic I'm not fluent but I love it so we made a big effort to have a couple of the main information pages on our website the hello about us page and the one for the join as being bilingually and on a desktop machine their side by side on a mobile that's her intention and I've got badges and stickers ready for events in both languages because people don't want both because it's a unique thing where do you see the group in 5 to 10 years it's difficult to know I think we have a significant number of people just now who are invested in things and their investment is what makes it happen we know there are other people here who don't come who don't get involved and that's fine you can't make people get involved things like zoom some people just don't like that it has held us together very very successfully it enables this interview exactly but we've also tried things like quiet sessions because we've had somewhere we always try and make sure everyone gets a chance to talk because there are people who are naturally more outgoing than others and so at the moment we're having a fortnightly Wednesday evening quiet chat and that's with one of our gaelic speakers who host that in English and we do intend when we're able to go back fully to in person things that there will still be some online because it's clear that there are good strong friendships and people want more time together it's easier for them than having to travel 60 miles to meet in a bar on a Sunday afternoon and they want a bit more than that initially the reason it was the third Sunday of the month the Manchester Leather Social was the first Saturday of the month we would go to that so it would make it kind of halfway between each other and we were going to try initially we would do a Saturday but then these bars are full on a Saturday a Sunday afternoon you can take over the place you can take over the venue you can talk we have some people who really really got into karaoke and so we had a bit of that as well we would serve as myself included to like a cigar and we've got the opportunity to do that we weren't just getting to the point where the venue was really wanting to support us and so they were going to give us sandwiches and things like that and then Covid and we couldn't do that anyway even if we could go to the venue we couldn't work that up again it was actually the venue owner because it's obviously been difficult for all of these venues and it's worked very hard and he actually got in contact and says I want you back how can we make that happen so yeah we haven't seen each other in person for like 15 months or something it could be a little rowdy and we'll have to control people and make sure they stay sitting down because it has to be seated and it has to be table service but we're going to try it and see how it goes because people are desperate to see each other again they really are what's the biggest misconception about you I have had and as part of this group I have had to force myself to do things force myself to be more outgoing if something goes wrong I'm the one ultimately in charge and I have to deal with it and I have to take the flag as well as the praise but the praise gets shared amongst the group generally we make it if it's something good publicise it as the group not an individual but yeah the biggest misconception about me is that I'm extremely outgoing there is a lot of fake it until you make it well Fraser Leith I'm not sure I'm getting that right Leith Fraser Leith I promise I'll practice I thank you very very much for being part of Inside Leather History of Firesight