Channel 4 in the UK goes rainbow for the day to wish “good luck to everyone out in Sochi”

Channel 4 in the UK will be rainbow branded in the colours of the gay pride flag today to mark the start of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games and will launch a major new television promotional trail to wish good luck to all athletes competing at the Games – gay or straight – with the message “good luck to everyone out in Sochi”.

The television trail will launch with a 90 second spot at 7.00pm as a ‘roadblock’ across all of Channel 4’s channels – including E4, More4 and 4Seven – and will also air just before the peak-time 9.00pm and 10.30pm junctions on Channel 4.  The tongue-in-cheek promo features a ‘bear’ cabaret act singing a celebratory ‘Gay Mountain’ song in honour of all the athletes competing in Sochi.  

VIEW THE SPOT

Ahead of the launch of the promo, Channel 4 will also broadcast a short interview with former England rugby player and founder of the StandUp anti-bullying foundation, Ben Cohen – who talks candidly about bullying, homophobia and homophobia in sport.  The interview will be broadcast just before 7pm today.

The television trail is produced by the award-winning 4Creative team and features acclaimed ‘bearlesque’ act Fred Bear. 

The full lyrics to the Gay Mountain song are:

Be fabulous, be free

Good luck gays, on gay mountain

Says Channel 4’s chief marketing and communications officer, Dan Brooke: “This is a typically Channel 4 way of celebrating the start of the Winter Games and showing our support to all of the athletes out in Sochi – gay or straight.”

Channel 4 has a long and established reputation for diversity and, across 2014, is broadcasting a number of major new programmes exploring gay themes and issues.  Later this year, award-winning writer Russell T Davies returns to the channel fifteen years after his drama Queer as Folk was broadcast, with two new series for Channel 4 and E4 exploring the passions and pitfalls of 21st century gay life, Cucumber and Banana.  Also this year, in a new documentary Dr Christian Jessen takes an extraordinary and sometimes shocking journey as he looks at past and present therapies in both the UK and USA that offer to ‘cure’ gay people who are desperate to be straight.

Earlier this week – and ahead of the Sochi Winter Olympics when Russia is officially welcoming gay athletes and spectators – Channel 4 broadcast a shocking Dispatches investigation into vigilante gangs in Russia that target gay men and women – in what Russian gays have called ‘hunting season’.