Is Tinky Winky really gay? We have a right to know!

Well now we know. The American evangelist the late Jerry Falwell didn’t say Tinky Winky was gay.

I learned this from the interesting US blog run by Hemant Mehta et al., Friendly Atheist, in a post headed Even after his death, Jerry Falwell causes trouble.

Mehta is discussing a book that has had a load of disclaimers placed by it in the bookstore of Falwell’s Liberty University. Liberty are selling the book in their campus bookstore, but say it contains inaccuracies, including that Falwell said Tinky Winky – the well-known Teletubby, on the right in our picture, and looking rather fetching, don’t you think? – was gay because he carried a handbag.

Well, the book Mehta is discussing – The Unlikely Disciple by Kevin Roose, who spent a semester at the university – didn’t actually make that claim. Just the opposite. Mehta quotes it as saying:

“I remember learning that Dr Falwell’s comments about Tinky Winky may not have been entirely his – they originated in an unsigned editorial in his National Liberty Journal newsletter.”

So that’s solved that one, then. And it was a disclaimer that wasn’t even necessary.

But the question we’re all now asking is this: is Tinky Winky gay? The public has a right to know. Write to your MP. Write to The Times. Demand that this vital information be available under the Freedom of Information Act.