Sweet like Chocolat...

We trolled off to the South Bank again last night for "The Musical Type", one of the esteemed House of Homosexual Culture events - and had a spectacular time! It was fairly obvious that any event that describes itself as "a celebration of girl groups and chorus boys, showtunes and chart-toppers, all from a uniquely queer perspective" was bound to be right up our street, and indeed it was...



Our impresario the fantabulosa Rupert Smith always manages to put on a good show, but to open with the magnificent baritone of the outrageous Le Gateau Chocolat was treat that we could never have expected - for what could be better than a booming deep operatic voice belting out The Man That Got Away, Maybe This Time and Don't Rain On My Parade while flicking "her" wig and swooshing her frock around the audience? Paradise!

It must have been rather difficult for the esteemed Vanity Fair editor David Benedict to follow that kind of a performance, but he did a magnificent job of restoring some order to the proceedings. His talk was about the impact that musicals and musical cinema have on the gay world, and on gay men in particular throughout history. With clips such as Is There Anyone Here For Love? (Jane Russell's beefcake scene from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes), Doris Day singing Secret Love (an absolute gay anthem) and Judy Garland's The Man That Got Away (which David quite righly observed is a song that empowers the soul, rather than being a song about loss), we were enthralled. Many a mouth in the audience was miming to each of them, including ours...

After the brief break, it was the turn of Simon Watney, AIDS activist, writer and afficionado of 1960s girlie groups and divas, to give us his take on how the sparkling world of artistes such as the Ronnettes, Dionne Warwick, Aretha Franklin and Millie lifted him out of what sounded like a dreadful childhood into fully-formed gayness! Fascinating stuff, and Mr Watney painted many a scenario with which we all could identify - at some stage in every queen's childhood there was one song to which we mimed or danced, and it was at that stage that our mothers, too, realised there was little point in hoping for grandchildren...

Madame Chocolat took to the stage once more in a most sparkly skin-tight outfit for the finale. In his words, "imagine growing up in Nigeria dressing like this!" With more diva numbers, including a sing-a-long of Hopelessly Devoted To You, he wowed the audience again, closing with a spine-tingling rendition of Make Our Garden Grow from Candide.

A very special evening's entertainment and enlightenment once again...

Here is Le Gateaux Chocolat's scene-stealing appearance on the Paul O'Grady Show...

Le Gateau Chocolat