Nicky Wire laughs. ''I'm not sure where we got the slogan from,'' he says of the T-shirt the Manic Street Preachers produced in 1993 bearing the striking legend: ''All rock'n'roll is homosexual.'' Wire, the band's bass player and lyricist, goes on. ''It fitted into a lot of what we believed in: narcissism, nihilism, self-love, self-delusion. All those things made for thrilling rock'n'roll.''

To the artist Jeremy Deller, the slogan was ''just the most offensive, brilliant thing you could put on a T-shirt regardless of whether it was true … It's as much about pop's ability to provoke as it is about homosexuality in rock and pop,'' he says, although you could argue that those two things are linked.

Relegated ... Antony Hegarty is still flying the flag. Credit:Mark Westwood/Redferns

As the critic Jon Savage points out, even rock'n'roll's very roots - the blues - contained a weird gay subculture. The genre was home to songs such as George Hannah's Freakish Man Blues, Luis Russell's The New Call of the Freaks, and Kokomo Arnold's Sissy Man Blues. ''I woke up this morning with my pork grindin' business in my hand,'' offers Arnold, adding, ''Lord, if you can't send me no woman, please send me some sissy man.''

Rock's relationship with gay culture in Britain began with the rise of the gay rock manager: first Larry Parnes, with his ''stable of stars'' (Billy Fury, Tommy Steele, Georgie Fame, Marty Wilde) then Brian Epstein (the Beatles), Simon Napier-Bell (the Yardbirds), Kit Lambert (the Who). Napier-Bell, who started out as a musician and went on to be Wham!'s manager, explains the job's attraction: ''At a time when being gay was illegal, and the only way to live as an out gay man was to work in the theatre or as a hairdresser, pop management offered a new opportunity.''