Myra Hindley, S&M, a sex-shop brawl, a missing child and the Bisset Surprise

"I think about a world to come
Where the books were found by the Golden Ones"

It was the first outing in 2016 for "London's peerless gay literary salon" Polari on Friday, and I, Paul, little Tony, Wayne, Emma, Toby, Roland, Bryanne, Simon and the rest of the (impressively big for a pay-day Friday in January) audience were champing at the bit... As usual, our host Paul Burston was equally energised but, after a suitably muted tribute to (the mentor of all of us) David Bowie, it was time to introduce our readers for the evening.

Mr Stevie Henden read us a mere snippet from his new novel - Anna Himmel and the Gold Sovereign - (apparently based on a true story) Andy Blenkinsopp's Tale. A young gay man in 1960s Manchester goes cruising. A car pulls up, and a blonde woman with a man in the passenger seat offers him a threesome, which he almost accepts - were it not for an apparition wearing said gold sovereign, which warns him off. It didn't really take "Miss Marple" to work out the fact that the couple were the notorious Moors Murderers, and when the penny drops for Andy, he realises he has had a very lucky escape indeed. Although somewhat predictable, it did tease us with what all this has to do with the greater meaning of the apparition with the medallion...


[Photo: Tony Wood]

Next up, an author who is becoming a bit of a regular at Polari, Anya Nyx (or is it Tanith today?; we're never sure). Her story was another sinister one (from the short story anthology L is For...) - Frankie and other F-words: all about a lesbian S&M threesome that goes disastrously wrong, with blood, death and a flight from the authorities. I somehow doubt they will ask Cliff Richard to read the audio book.


[Photo: Tony Wood]

I was up to Mr Timothy Graves, therefore, to turn up the jollity factor, as he grabbed his friend and fellow thesp Penelope Maynard to join him for an extract from his new work Pharmakeia - here involving a three-way argument in a sex shop between the leading protagonist Mahvand, a prostitute and the tranny proprietor of the store. Of course:

[UPDATE 2024: the video that was on Mr Graves' blog here has been removed from the interwebs. No idea why.]

Wonderfully manic - and particularly appreciated by their acting tutor and mentor [who we were intrigued and overjoyed to spot in the audience; we spoke later], Hi-De-Hi's "Sylvia" - Miss Nicki Kelly herself!

With that level of excitement, we needed a break for a fag and a trip to the bar to recover.


[Photo: Tony Wood]

Part two brought on the "big guns". Ms Alex Marwood is always a joy, and her reading - from her latest blockbuster The Darkest Secret - definitely did not disappoint. It's a marvellously intriguing tale - full of horrid, selfish bastards, and the enduring mystery of what exactly did happen to the three-year-old girl who disappeared from her bedroom while the pampered adults in her wealthy father's coterie were preoccupied enjoying themselves in splendour? [Shades of the Madeleine McCann case, methinks.]

None other than best-selling Scottish crime writer Val McDermid described it thus: "A genuinely shocking thriller where nothing is what it seems. So good I wish I'd written it myself." The story's blurb doesn't begin to do it justice:

When identical twin Coco goes missing during a family celebration, a media frenzy breaks out. Her parents are rich and influential, as are the friends they were with at their holiday home by the sea, and the guests’ talent for publicity pushes the case into the public eye.

But what really happened to Coco? Over two intense weekends - the first when Coco goes missing and the second, twelve years later, at the funeral of her father - the darkest of secrets will gradually be revealed...

We loved it.



Finally, it was time for another gem of a writer and our "headliner", the novelist and literary critic Adam Mars-Jones. He read some rather fab passages from his latest book Kid Gloves, a memoir about his years of clashing wits with his homophobic father, a renowned High Court judge. From the Guardian review:

His lawyerly refutations of Adam’s sexual orientation include The Princely Parallel (“he assured me ... that the older woman procedure had done the trick for Prince Charles”) and The Bisset Surprise, according to which Adam cannot be gay because Dad alleges that he once played with himself during a Jacqueline Bisset film.

It takes a finely honed sense of the comic value of the everyday to survive these wounds. Mars-Jones concedes with magnificent understatement that “the dynamics between homophobic judge and publicly gay writer son, tolerating each other at least to the extent of sharing a roof, are probably not standard”. When 'The Penguin Book of Homosexual Verse' is published in 1983, Sir William asks pointedly if Adam has edited it. Mars-Jones sniffs: “If I did decide to use a pseudonym, I would try to do better than the name on the book’s cover, Stephen Coote.”

This was a marvellously erudite way to end a brilliant evening.



Our next outing for Polari will be its LGBT History Month special on 16th February, featuring our fave Jonathan Harvey at the top of the bill with his new novel The Secrets We Keep, none other than "Ida Barr" herself Chris Green, who has written a new book Overpowered! about the history of hypnosis; plus historian Jennifer Ingleheart, novelist Sarah Walton and poet David Clarke.

Should be fantabulosa, and provide the perfect opportunity to show off my glowing tan from our week in Spain!

Polari. We love it.

Cranes, Coward - and Carry On!

Ah, Polari! How we love it...

It was with much anticipation that we gathered last night at the Royal Festival Hall for our monthly literary "fix". For the build-up had been whetting our appetities for weeks - until Paul Burston finally told the world that his "surprise" reader was none other than that mistress of the sultry double-entendre herself, Miss Fenella Fielding!

John-John and I and our new regular Maria were joined by the lovely Tony, "Polari virgin" Ange, and her friends Emma and Toby. And having breezed past the ebullient Molly Parkin (whose magnificent presence graced Polari back in December), who was being interviewed on camera, we bagged our usual Royal Box for the evening's entertainment.

After an introduction by Paul, our opening reading was from actor-turned-writer Tim Blackwell, whose first published work - a compilation of short stories called The Bingo Caller is due on the shelves this month. Very beautiful, it was too...



Next up, the Russian poet Dmitry Kuzmin read some charming pieces on life and love that he had translated especially for the occasion. Very sweet, once you got used to the pronunciation (English is his second language after all).

Diction is no problem for our "star turn" for the evening, however! Fenella Fielding [who we last saw at the inauguration of Bette Bourne - who was in the audience last night - into the House of Homosexual Culture at the Oval House Theatre in 2008] is a camp icon, a legend in her own lifetime, and a "national treasure"! She was appearing last night as her friend the Kiwi author Michael Menzies was allegedly "too shy", despite having flown from his LA home to be there especially. But weren't we ecstatic about that?!



Mr Menzies' memoir Deeply Superficial provided Miss Fielding with the camp material she needed for such an occasion - the story of a life touched by theatricality from a very early age. Noel Coward and Marlene Dietrich were his boyhood idols - and his obsession continued throughout his life.

I proudly showed my mother the purchases I had made.

She liked Lamb’s Tales of Shakespeare: had never heard of it, but didn’t seem to mind Le Petit Prince. (“Seems charming” she said as she flicked through the pages.) Prater Violet and The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood elicited no response, but when she came to the Coward autobiography, she made a gurgling sound, clutched her pearls and quite clearly displayed disapproval.

“I don t think this is quite suitable” she said.

“But you said I could buy whatever I liked”. (It was the biggest book I had bought)

“I did” she admitted, “but...” Her voice trailed off, her mouth a moue, as if it were full of lemon juice.

Of course, this made me extremely curious and I read the Coward autobiography, gulping the words and the thoughts greedily, as if they were English Trifle (to this day, my favourite dessert), Like the character Amanda in Coward’s masterpiece play – Private Lives – I became “jagged with sophistication” at the age of twelve, and went around saying “I love you awfully. Awfully, awfully, dreadfully”.

I thought it sounded very worldly.

Reading between the lines of his book, I became aware that Coward was a homosexual (as was I). All the guilt and shame I had felt about this part of my nature, and the resultant exclusion and avoidance of straight-boyhood companions, slid from me like a snake shedding it’s skin.

After consuming Present Indicative, my sexuality never bothered me again.

I could become as beloved and famous and as successful as Coward, for his homosexuality never held him back. I was determined mine would not do so, either.

Wonderful stuff, read beautifully in that smoky, seductive voice - and we were overjoyed to meet and have our photo taken with this splendid lady!



After the break, a gossip, a fag, and more wine, we settled in for the heavyweights. Opening reader Issy Festing is actually very new to the published literary world - and her first novel The Bird Keeper has received some excellent reviews.



Set in her native Indian sub-continent (Miss Festing was born in Bengal but moved to London when she was three years old), it traces the forbidden love between Satchin, an ornithologist at Naagpur bird sanctuary, and the charming and handsome tourist Peter. From the extract she read it seems a most beautiful story, as the return of Siberian Cranes (who pair for life) to the reserve serves as an analogy for the secret love between two men in a turbulent country:

"There was stillness to the golden light so peculiar to midday when everything has true colour. The sky overhead was a cloudless azure only seen in Rajasthan. Looking forward to a light lunch and a nap, I leisurely headed back to the Observatory, all thoughts of the Englishman gone from my mind. You see, at the time I forgot about you, but unknown to me then, your image had transposed itself into the mirror of my memory only to be reflected back to me again later."

Our next reader was one we have heard before. Adam Mars-Jones first came to Polari to read from his novel Pilcrow back in 2009, and last night he was back with its sequel Cedilla. [NB both are obscure terms for punctuation or pronunciation marks.] Still following the life of the disabled gay Hindu convert anti-hero John Cromer (Mr Mars-Jones apparently plans this to be a trilogy), it is an eccentric yet endearing tale of one boy's frustration and resilience in the face of the many obstacles that life throws in his way.



Taking the literary journey to its logical conclusion, our final "headline" reader, the eminent Paul Bailey - awarded the E. M. Forster Award in 1974 and the George Orwell Prize in 1978 - read from his perhaps autobiographical tale Chapman's Odyssey. In this story the narrator ruminates on his ebbing life from a hospital bed: "a voyage of discovery that could only end with his death. He read voraciously, then judiciously, and found his writing voice by rejecting the voices of those he was tempted to impersonate." Weighty yet touching stuff, Mr Bailey is a charming and elegant reader, and his insights into a world long ago when homosexuality was an almost alien concept in society were fascinating.



A triumphal night once again!

I really thoroughly enjoyed this evening, and once more cannot wait for the next one on Monday 23 May - the line-up so far announced includes (the biographer of Stephen Tennant and Noel Coward) Philip Hoare, the gender-bending Alex Drummond, "faggy genderqueer" Len Lukowska and gay ukulele-playing writer and historian Rose Collis. Should be very camp - but nothing to beat last night!

Polari at the Southbank Centre

Boyz Keep Swinging

Yesterday was certainly a busy one - and it has taken several cups of tea and a lazy day to recover...

I met up with John-John at Liverpool Street in the afternoon, and off we went to the "Simply Madonna" exhibition in Brick Lane. [Having recovered from the sight of so many cute "suits" gathered in one place, that is! I love the City...]



The exhibition is a wonderful and comprehensive assemblage of costumes - including that pointy bra, and outfits from Like A Virgin, Material Girl, Evita and from her tours - together with magazine covers, her entire back catalogue of albums, Madge dolls and case after case of souvenirs, autographs and awards. Well worth seeing, in spite of the grim warehouse-like exhibition space of the old Truman Brewery.

Read more about the exhibition



Then it was onwards to Polari. Especially for "Boyz Night", I had a t-shirt printed featuring a great pic of Bowie with William Burroughs, which I thought appropriate. Freedom Bar looked like an advertising campaign for the similarly-named magazine, however... They are "official sponsors" so I suppose it's only fair.



As always, the lovely Dom Agius provided a suitably-themed and eclectic mix of tunes (not often you'll hear Bessie Smith and Lindsey DePaul in the same playlist!), before the readings began with the very first Polari Night unpublished author - John Joseph Bibby (who we had previously seen doing a most unusual "striptease" at the Quentin Crispmas event in December). He proved to be a talented writer, too, with a bizarre tale of a gay drifter and his encounter with a fortune-teller ("The Oracle").



After a short hiatus, we were entertained by Drew Gummerson (above) reading from his new novel Me and Mickie James, a quirky tale about the adventures, life and loves of an aspiring pair of musicians. The fact that Mickie just "happens" to be a hunchback, the boys "happen" to be lovers, and they "happen" to end up in a hotel room in Ho Chi Minh City with a compulsive masturbator might give you an inkling of quite how quirky this tale is!

But this was not half as much of a spectacle as the arrival on stage of the fabulous (and also, surprisingly unsigned) Williams Sisters! I can't really describe this act in its full glory, so here is a little taster...

The Williams Sisters

How can you follow an act of that magnitude? Well, writer and columnist Adam Mars-Jones (below) certainly gave it a try. He began with a fantastic piece from his new book Pilcrow. Written from the perspective of a small boy, it accurately summed up how small boys think about things - in this particular case the "argument between a man and a lady about making pies" (his interpretation of the classic song Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better)).

Then he treated us to one of his unpublished works, a much more graphic tale about a sexual encounter between a closeted youth and a biker in the scrubland of Box Hill. It is a shame this fab story has never yet been seen in print (for family reasons, apparently), but hopefully one day it will get the exposure (oo-er) it deserves.



Yet another in a succession of excellent nights courtesy of Paul, Rupert and Dom, and as always they managed to pack out the sizeable Freedom function room - not bad for a midweek cultural event!



Not content with leaving it there (as is our wont) we ended up till the wee small hours in the fabulosa Players' Theatre piano bar - drinking Port of all things... No wonder I've been feeling slightly fragile today.