I was at the National Theatre in London on Tuesday night, at a production of Pride, which tells the story of the unlikely alliance between gay activists and Welsh miners during the 1984 miners’ strike, when news broke of Dolly Parton’s death. Well. Against the sadness, one couldn’t help smiling. At a very gay production, attended by a majority gay audience, I half expected them to stop the show or call out a team from St John Ambulance bearing stretchers. In the script for Pride, references to Judy Garland and Ethel Merman serve as shorthand for gay sensibilities, but it could just as easily have been Dolly Parton. The queen of country and crossover pop was beloved by so many communities – many antagonistic to each other – but it was perhaps her gay fans who claimed her most vociferously and publicly.

When we got home my friends and I danced around to 9 to 5, and on Wednesday morning it was Here You Come, Again (“looking better than a body has a right to” – oh, Dolly) on a loop, along with her 1971 hit Coat of Many Colors.

Parton was, in some ways, an unlikely gay icon. She was studiously neutral on a great many subjects, including politics, and while she could be funny and waspish, the person she most often poked fun at was herself. In my colleague Alexis Petridis’s lovely tribute, he mentions Parton’s 1977 encounter with Barbara Walters – a woman so rich in spite and Chanel suits as to win her her own following in corners of the gay community. She........

© The Guardian