Belinda & Rhoda are Freshly Squeezed

If you don’t know the name already, Freshly Squeezed is one to watch out for. The brainchild of Belinda O’Hooley and Rhoda McClure, Freshly Squeezed is the production company behind the “An L of a Night” event brand – and if you haven’t heard about “An L of a Night” already, you’re in for a real treat.

We’re often socially challenged as lesbians. Whilst a plethora of TV programmes, plays, books, magazines, movies and music exist, there is proportionally very little that is lesbian driven and lesbian focussed, and virtually nothing that is being done on a grand scale. You only have to look at the runaway success of the L Word to see a ‘starving’ viewing community in action. Give us something to watch that is large-scale enough to grab our attention and we flock to it: instant fanbase. Make it a live event outside of the main lesbian metropolises of London, Brighton or Manchester and you’re onto a winner – not only an instant, loyal fanbase, but a grateful one too.

When Rhoda was made redundant from her graphic design job earlier this year, the idea of staging one such grand scale lesbian event just grew and grew … literally. “We were sitting in a coffee bar, thinking about ways of making money,” said Rhoda, “and then got to thinking about what we would want to see, and the scale we’d love to see it on too.”

Belinda, a performer and growing celebrity in her own right, pitched in “Most lesbian singer/songwriters just get stuck in the circuit, which is great for a while, but then where do they go from there? If they’re looking for another, bigger platform, where is there?”

The idea evolved into “An L of a Night” a one-off grand scale showcase of new and established lesbian talent, the first of which packed out Leeds City Varieties Theatre in September. The line up was impressive: Rhona Cameron, Horse, Belinda O’Hooley, Clitty Rubquick and the feedback has been more than positive. The next event promises to be even bigger with Nottingham Playhouse hosting Sue Perkins, Clare Summerskill, Al Start and Greymatter in February. Tickets are already flying off the shelves.

They accept that the future may present difficulties they haven’t encountered so far, after all the lesbian artist talent pool is not a bottomless one. And after the line ups of the first two shows, the remaining list for future events is depressingly short. They remain undaunted; the eventual plan is to stage 6 shows a year in 6 different venues across the UK

It’s a hard slog, but considering they have been friends for only just over a year, Rhoda and Belinda work well together. “Rhoda’s really gifted in loads of things; design, organisational skills, you name it she can do it,” said Belinda “and I guess I bring ‘cheek’ to the business. Sometimes it’s just about having the balls to ring up and see if people are interested … and they are! Well, most of them are anyway.” A certain theatre in Bath apparently ‘just wouldn’t consider’ the proposition, and therein lies the downside of the event business, for Rhoda anyway; venues that are obstructive. For Belinda, she has a love/hate relationship with the insecurity of it all, but the high they both got from the success of their first event far outweighed the lows: they both cite it as the thing they are most proud of in their lives.

Rhoda wasn’t willing to discuss the thing she’s most embarrassed about so far in her life and Belinda took so long to run through the list in her head that we ran out of time to talk about it, but apparently she does have a habit of coming out to straight audiences. She is a familiar face on the lesbian cabaret circuit but has only recently started writing and performing her own material – the reviews for her first album have so far been good. Rhoda first met Belinda when she went to see her perform at Hebden Bridge, “I saw these awful fliers and I just had to go see what she was like … and just loved her music,” she said, although she denies any ‘groupie’ inference, and let’s face it, being that honest about the fliers you just have to believe her. They both hail from Huddersfield and a friendship was firmly forged.

That was just over a year ago and already there is one event to their name and one already well on the way to being another roaring success. You can’t help but think that it was a good night for the lesbian community that night, and while redundancy can often close many doors, in this case it has resulted in a curtain call well worth applauding.