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In some areas of the media and entertainment industry it's more acceptable to be openly gay than others. David Spedding reports…

Country Music

Thick-necked guys in tight denim, Dolly Parton's tits and (irrefutable, deal-clinching proof) Line Dancing? Country music is, on the surface at least, gayer than a clutch of singing nuns at a Sound Of Music screening. A spangly proliferation of transvestite and transsexual C&W singing acts would appear to confirm the trend, although remain (mercifully) constrained to the cabaret fringe. One Patrick Haggerty is credited with releasing the world's first openly gay country album in 1973, but is hardly in the same league as Shania Twain. Bigger by far (and yes, we're indulging rumours about his genitals here), US C&W legend Ty Herndon is - we stress - happily married and heterosexual, although his public display of said endowment before a (male) law enforcement officer in 1995 will presumably have given him a lifetime's worth of lyrical inspiration to play with.

Gay Advantage: 12

Chat/Game Show Hosts

Bye bye sofa, hello pouffe. Yes, Eminence Grise is currently clinging to its final shreds of broadcast viability, whilst Vicious Pink gleefully struts around in size 12 stilletoes, as worn by Graham "He's so RUDE! But it's OK, there's no sexual intent" Norton, Dale "I only just came out - how surprised are you?" Winton, Lily Savage and (until recently) Michael Barrymore. Light entertainment, then, is the biggest threat to heterosexual employment in the TV industry, a challenge best met with exagerrated laddishness (Johnny Vaughan) or, rather more cunningly, behaving and dressing like you really wish you were gay (Jonathon Ross).

Gay Advantage: 87

Leading actors (male)

"If it weren't for homosexuals, there'd be no Hollywood," said Elizabeth Taylor, and she wasn't far wrong. However, when it comes to naming an openly gay man who gets cast in mainstream heterosexual roles, she'd probably be less eloquent. Only two current examples leap to mind: Dan Butler's ferociously straight Bulldog in Frasier, and Jeremy Sheffield's Dr Alex Adams in Holby City. Oh, and Sir Ian McKellen too, although quite what Gandalf's sex-life entails is possibly best left untold. And of course, we have Rupert Everett for those roles that demand a gay version of Hugh Grant. Other than that, though, we're looking at a long and blurred list of rumour-beset and/or outed celebrities, dozens of whom we could list here, but all of whom are less latent with their litigious tendencies. Which is why we won't.

Gay Advantage: 23 (86 if you're discreet)

Leading actors (female)

Well Anne Heche was damned proud to be the first out Hollywood actress in her bean-flicking days, but that particular jaunt to Wonder Woman Island soon proved to be little more than a momentary deviation from her otherwise heterosexual trajectory. Equally, Miriam Margolyes has been known to jump off the fence at times, although is quick to ram those pickets back up her arse when involved in higher-profile projects. Non-tourist lesbianism is generally the unchallenged domain of Sandra Bernhardt, although in her case it's the "actor" tag that sits a little uneasily, and essentially we're looking at the same phenomenon that dominates the male side of the profession, namely a wealth of straight-acting actors crammed into a relatively obvious closet. You're fooling no one, people…

Gay Advantage: 17

Children's TV Presenters

Back in the day, it was all about well-spoken Matronly figures making puppets out of socks and teaching you songs about asses. Then telly execs got, like, hip to the young people's shit and decided they wanted youthful shouty types making gags about arses instead. Step forward SM:TV's Brian 'Big Brother' Dowling and T4's Simon Amstell. Yes, despite the current climate of paranoia surrounding showbiz paedophilia, the public evidently remain happy enough to trust their ankle-biters with openly gay men. To claim that this explains why 5 year olds are now wearing hair-mousse would be presumptious, but at least they're not giggling about the name "Muffin" these days.

Gay Advantage: 34

Boy Band Members

The surest way to get yourself labelled an utter homo used to be to join a boy band. Market considerations, however, mean that you can't put in a viable claim for teenage girls' wallspace if you announce yourself as a purloiner of the pink cigar. As you read this, though, plans are already underway for a gay version of Popstars. Which, if nothing else, tells us how much pre-fab fame has come since the days when Stephen Gately was waxing lyrical about his dream girlfriend to Smash Hits (funny how he didn't stipulate "should have a nice penis" in his wish-list). Indeed the self-proclaimed "World's first gay boy band", Marilyn's Boys already exists in Germany (apparently quite the hit on the Berlin club scene), and a quick trawl of the Internet reveals several more embryonic outfits all set to relight your fire. But the gay market - whilst recognised as a fair indicator of teen-tastes - is not that lucrative on its own. We look forward to acrimonious, handbag-swinging splits.

Gay Advantage: 19

Band Managers

Like most of the entertainment industry, it's the other side of the lens that throws up the real demographic of the trade, and band management boasts a particularly enduring and illustrious poofter pedigree. There was The Beatles' Brian Epstein, The Bee Gee's Robert Stigwood, Wham!'s Simon Napier-Bell, Bros' Tom Watkins and Take That's Nigel Martin-Smith. Makes perfect sense from where we're sitting - let's face it, if you were gay, you'd quite like to get paid for auditioning endless queues of lithe young men, positively bursting to take their shirts off and gyrate their pelvis in your direction. Ah g'wan, you would…

Gay Advantage: 89

Rock Band Members

Pre-HIV, every other rock star was only too keen to announce that they'd served their stint on the brown side (like, open to new experiences, man), leading to a glut of faux-gays flirting with androgynous bisexual fluffiness, but never really giving us the full 'mo monty. How things change. Michael Stipe would be the classic example of the "So what?" coming-out, although on the other side of the coin, when Neil Tennant found that the Pet Shop Boys were being handled by their US label's "Gay and lesbian division" he felt, and not unreasonably, that the move was more regressive and divisive than it might have been. Elsewhere, Roddy Bottum, Suede's Simon Gilbert, former Judas Priest frontman Rod Halford are generally getting about their business without so much as a raised eyebrow from the world. Gaining less respect, the retro-bunch who announce themselves as bisexual without ever having had a gay experience. Sorry, Brett Anderson, but a lifestyle is something you live, not something you style.

Gay Advantage: 67

Rap Musicians

Rap? Gay? You jest. This is faggot-shootin' terrain, cocksuckers. And in this category more than any of the others, we'd dearly love to name that name, the BIG name in hip-hop… But while that particular nigga judiciously surrounds himself with bitchez and denies any such suggestion, we must refrain. Not that he's even especially hard. But essentially, this is a dead-end. We've seen gay acceptance in pretty much every musical field, but Rap can only point (and weakly, at that) to Eminem duetting with Elton John as its standout homo-moment. Besides which, Elton, being nouveau-gay, only half counts. That, and the fact that the duet was utter bilge.

Gay Advantage: 0

Comedians

Much as gay characters made the transition from people who were laughed at, to people who were laughed with, so the stand-up industry has moved on. It has to be stressed, though, that we're focusing (and in many cases necessarily so) more on the orientation of the act than their actual funniness. The only problem in moving from the innuendo-lined smut of John Inman and Frankie Howerd to the 'right up to the elbow' directness of Julian Clary and Graham Norton isn't so much to do with offence, but the simple fact that good innuendo is generally more amusing than shock-value sexual references. And of course, Ellen DeGeneres famously murdered her own sitcom by leaving out any gags that might make the remotest sense to a heterosexual viewer. Mercifully, we have Stephen Fry - one of the funniest men alive in the world - to show how being gay can be a sideline, rather than a raison d'etre.

Gay Advantage: 84

Fashion Designers

King Gay of Gayland leading the annual Gay parade would look positively heterosexual next to this lot, no surprise there. What's bewildering, though, is the industry's intense prissiness towards the gay market. Versace, for example, refused to supply any material for the American version of Queer As Folk (in passing, the rumours that Donatella is actually a drag-act from Burnley are wholly without foundation), claiming that the show did not 'respresent our target market'. Mizrahi, Gaultier, McQueen, Saint-Laurent, Mugler and all the others might disagree, and the credit-card statements of untold gay men confirm the absurdity of such a claim, but hey… So long as Elton can be counted on to parade around in something that looks like someone just threw up on it, that customer-base seems secure enough.

Gay Advantage: 100

Folk Singers

More lesbicious than all the cc-footage from the ladies' changing rooms at Wimbledon, folk has an unassailable throne in the same-sex stakes. Take a woman, place a guitar in her hands, voila. It really is that simple. Melissa Etheridge, kd Lang, Joan Baez, Janis Ian and a whole gaggle of 'maybe's have duly put in their time around the campfire, proving that there's nowt as queer as Folk. Even (heterosexual) Loudon Wainwright III was good enough to sire a gay son, Rufus, now treading the same boards as his pop.

Gay Advantage: 94