A Bridgend Santa, sniffin' in yer pants, and poor Mike's been brown-skirted!

Paul, John-John and I had a great evening at our first outing to "London's peerless gay literary salon" in months last week, a "pop-up" A Very Polari Xmas event at the formerly sleazy Vauxhall venue Eagle London. A few familar faces were in attendance, including Emma (sans Toby, who'd double-booked) and chums, and our hostess-with-the mostest Paul Burston's hubby Paulo; but the majority of attendees in the packed house (despite the frosty weather) were people I didn't recognise.

One person who did not show up however, due to ill-health, was our advertised opening reader the lovely Susie Boyt, so Paul B, as is his wont, manfully ("person-fully"?) stepped in. He read for us a suitably Xmas-themed snippet from his forthcoming memoir We Can Be Heroes - in front of a remarkably moody pic of himself with an unconvincing Santa in Wales:

I have, of course, placed my pre-order for the book and can't wait to read it when it comes out in May!

As we tucked into the complimentary Ferrero Rocher and mince pies at the bar, "Santa Paul" introduced our next reader - who had removed his trousers for the occasion!

Polari First Book Prize 2022 winner Adam Zmith (for it was he), proudly wearing a t-shirt appropriately emblazoned with a diamante-encrusted bottle of the stuff, gave us an entertaining and inciteful extract from his extensively-researched history of the amyl nitrite family and its role in queer life, Deep Sniff: A History of Poppers and Queer Futures - all while sniffing from "the little brown bottle"!

From a review by the revered gay author Jonathan Kemp for QueerGuru:

There’s no doubt that Deep Sniff is a passion project for Zmith. That it’s also an impressive intellectual endeavour that soberly celebrates poppers’ place in queer history is no mean feat. To sniff amyl nitrite is to join the Village People, hang out at the Mineshaft, or be an extra in Cruising. Deep Sniff acknowledges all this without shying away from poppers' more problematic aspects. All told, it’s quite intoxicating.

Praise, indeed. And yes, it is a fascinating story - how poppers coincided with (and possibly drove) the burgeoning gay scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s, with its "hanky code", butch clones, thumping H-NRG music et al, and in turn came to be vilified in the press (and by some radical medical theorists) as a contributory factor when AIDS reared its ugly head.

Shame, really, that Mr Zmith didn't have any copies of his book for sale, otherwise I might have been tempted to buy it. It's on my wishlist.

After a short fag-break and a top-up of booze, it was time for our "headline act" - and a dearly-loved favourite, the "Poet Laureate of Penge" herself...

...Barbara Brownskirt!

After a series of calamities involving the lectern and the mike-stand, she asked if there was anyone called Mike in the house - and indeed there was, so he became her assistant for the opening crowd-pleaser, her tribute to her icon and lust-object, Judi Dench:

Judi Judi Judi Judi Judi Judi Judi Dench!
10 hours I stood there
You walked past me (on the red carpet)
I was on the pavement not red but grey
I watched you go by with yet another sigh

Judi Judi Judi Judi Judi Judi Judi Dench!
Your smile and crinkly twinkly eyes
Your little hairstyle, high on your head
Sexy Grandma
To me you are wife material

Denchy Denchy Denchy Denchy Denchy Jud-ie
How you make me want to clenchy
And I would like to travel my hand
Over your wobbly belly
To cup the young Denchy, Thirsty Drenchy
A cup full of Dench quenched. Time all spent.

Judi Judi Judi Judi Judi Judi Judi Judi Dench!

And that was just the first of what she threatened would be 108 poems from her extensive anthology - including this minimal masterpiece:

Barbara Brownskirt - Men-O-Pause (Outside Penge Conservative Club)

She's just brilliant.

As the laughter subsided, it was all over far too soon, with the customary curtain call:

Although Mr B was DJ-ing for the rest of the evening by way of a jolly celebration to round off the Polari year, we decided not to risk getting caught up in any wintry-weather-related travel madness (Vauxhall isn't close to any of our abodes) and to go our different ways home - still buzzing.

We love Polari!

Roll on the next big outing - in Heaven in February 2023.