A dandy, a urinal, Tiger Woman, Music Hall lesbianism and the Queen of Teen

And so, a new Autumn Season commences, with the first outing for "London's peerless gay literary salon" Polari. John-John and I were full of anticipation...

Our magnanimous host Paul Burston was particularly proud, opening proceedings, to announce the start of this year’s Polari National Tour, funded by Arts Council England - taking in venues up and down the country: Cambridge, Cardiff, Bristol, Brighton, Hertford, Liverpool, Birmingham, Nottingham, Newcastle and Bedford. Phew! At each event, Paul and partner-in-crime VG Lee will host a workshop, and one of the participants is invited to open the show - and one lucky performer (whose name unfortunately I didn't catch) from the workshop earlier in the day did just that for us. Admirable though her piece was, it was time for the advertised itinerary...



The very lovely Alex Klineberg, journalist, writer and self-described "gentleman of adventure", gave us a fascinating selection of snippets from his (unfortunately Kindle-only) memoir of his friendship with the late, great "King of the Dandies" Sebastian Horsley:

I'd assumed Sebastian would be like he was on film. Reeling off endless quips in an obnoxious fashion and generally showing off. I'd met that type before. Those who are 'always on', so to speak. Inevitably, it isn't long before one wonders if such people have an off button.

Sebastian was far more complex than that. It didn't take long to see how vulnerable he was. The quips were always flowing and he was always outrageous. But he was also a very good listener. And there was always an air of sadness that seemed to be haunting him. Stephen Fry said that the look in his eyes "stopped just shy of pleading."

When he was out and about he was always decked out in full Byronic splendour. But he could also be seen jogging through Soho early in the morning in sports wear...

Anyone who projects such an elaborate image of themselves onto the world will invite the question: "Who is the real so-and-so?" Some may be inclined to ask if the real Horsley was the made up dandy mincing through Soho, or if the haunted man in [his] final photos was the real him. But this is probably the wrong question. He was both of those people - often simultaneously.

We are extremely glad to have met (albeit briefly) the great man - reading at Polari way back in September 2008 - our very first time "at the salon" and again that December. RIP. Dear Sebastian is on Amazon.



Andrew McMillan's poetry is singular, and his deadpan delivery is perfect for it - the audience was rapt throughout. Mr McMillan in his latest anthology focuses on the body (male, of course) and all its foibles. Not least in this one, Urination:

I'm scared of bumping someone while they piss
those Mondays I'm a packhorse bags hung
swinging round the urinal bodies
and one day I know I'll knock someone
and they'll piss their legs or they'll turn slightly
and show another man their full arc
or they'll fall into their own wet puddle
cock limp and neither of us will look
or he'll look at me avoiding looking
feigning interest in the hard cream tiles
maybe it's that I dream of being bumped
knocked from my aim by a stranger
the briefest touch during the private act
the toilet is an intimacy
only shared with parents when you are young
and once again when you are older
and with lovers when say on a Sunday
morning stretching into the bathroom
you wake to the sound of stream in bowl
and go to hug the naked body
stood with its back to you
and kiss the neck
and taste the whole of the night on there
and smell the morning’s pale yellow loss
and take the whole of him in your hand
and feel the water moving through him
and knowing that this is love
the prone flesh
what we expel from the body and what we let inside

It was a complete delight to see our old friend and Polari stalwart Miss Celine Hispiche again. She concluded the first half with a rollicking set of numbers from her forthcoming cabaret production Betty May, The Musical: Tiger Woman versus The Beast. A total delight - and here is that very musical as highlighted on "Radio Gorgeous":

BETTY MAY: The Musical with Celine Hispiche Writer & Performer on RADIO GORGEOUS by Radio_Gorgeous on Mixcloud

Fab! - read more about Betty May the Musical.

After the brief fag'n'booze break, it was time for our chum Alex Hopkins to take to the stage to announce the Polari First Book Prize 2015 shortlist:

• Straight Expectations by Julie Bindel (Guardian Books)
• The Gift of Looking Closely by Al Brookes (Self-published)
• Everything Must Go by LaJohn Joseph (ITNA Press)
• The Rental Heart by Kirsty Logan (Salt)
• Self-portrait with The Happiness by David Tait (Smith/Doorstop books)
• The Informant by Susan Wilkins (Pan)

According to the press release: The six shortlisted titles... capture a vivid range of perspectives, all with a bold and inspiring LGBT narrative. With authors from all over the country, it brings to light some of the most exciting and varied new voices in contemporary writing, making it one of the year’s most representative literary prize lists.

Indeed.



From its promotional blurb (the revue is currently on tour, following its success at the Edinburgh Festival):

‘All The Nice Girls’ takes an entertaining glimpse at the lives of Gwen Farrar and Norah Blaney through the eyes of male impersonator Ella Shields. Starting out in Lena Ashwell’s concert parties for the troops in WW1 the young Farrar and Blaney quickly adapted their classical cello/piano act into a ‘turn’ full of repartee and physical humour.

Household names in the early 1920s Farrar and Blaney had an on and offstage partnership, singing popular love songs of the day to each other in West End Revues and living together openly. At the same time Ella Shields’ Music Hall act was in decline. ‘All The Nice Girls’ imagines her fictitious reaction to the younger pair as they live the starry life of Bright Young Things. Will their relationship survive the pressures of the age and the conflicting urges to marry and conform or to party wildly into oblivion?

This sounds like an utterly fascinating show, not least from the excerpts performed for us by Ali Child and Rosie Wakley.

Behind the Lines presents "All The Nice Girls"

I hope it comes to London soon! I want to find out more about those very "modern" ladies Gwen and Norah...



Crowned "Queen of Teen" 2014, the cherubic James Dawson is the multi award-winning author of dark teen thrillers Hollow Pike, Cruel Summer, Say Her Name and Under My Skin, as well as non-fiction works This Book is Gay and Being a Boy.

Entertainingly, he read for us some extracts from his first contemporary romance, All Of The Above, which he described thus:

"It would be neater, wouldn’t it, if this was a story about self harm or sexuality or eating disorders or ridiculously hot bass players, but it’s a story about all of them. Yeah, it’s a mess. And it’s about to get messier.”

As described on Goodreads:

When sixteen-year-old Toria Bland arrives at her new school she needs to work out who her friends are in a crazy whirl of worry, exam pressure and anxiety over fitting in. Things start looking up when Toria meets the funny and foul-mouthed Polly, who’s the coolest girl that Toria has ever seen. Polly and the rest of the ‘alternative’ kids take Toria under their wing. And that’s when she meets the irresistible Nico Mancini, lead singer of a local band – and it’s instalove at first sight! Toria likes Nico, Nico likes Toria, but then there’s Polly... love and friendship have a funny way of going round in circles.

It was absolutely brilliant - and our audience loved it - particularly one group of ladies we surmised might have been the author's 'Aunties', so enthused were they...

And with the traditional return to the stage of our entertainers for the evening, and a tumultuous ovation, it was all over for another evening.



A grand start to the new season, I'd say!

Our next outing - on 5th October - is "Polari at the Lit Fest" (London Literary Festival). Tom Rob Smith heads the bill, and readers include Juliet Jacques, Charlie Flowers, Anny Knight and Sunny Singh. The winner of The Polari First Book Prize 2015 will also be announced.

Looking forward to it already...

Limehouse tarts, Burundi beats, dystopia, hunky policemen and a singing Xmas tree!

A strangely festive evening last night, for me, the eternal Grinch. Of course, the occasion was a special one - the last outing in 2012 for "London's peerless gay literary salon" Polari.



Suitably attired in Dickensian top hat and undertaker-black suit, our host Paul Burston welcomed the eager crowd - me, little Tony, our Paul, Ange, Roland and "Polari virgins" Suzanne (all the way from Germany) and Jonathan, and literary types such as Karen McLeod, DJ Connell, the very cute Polari prize-winner John McCullough, Rebecca Chance/Lauren Henderson (and entourage), Alex Hopkins, Toby Tobes, Suzi Feay, photographer Krys, and many, many more (the room was full to bursting) - to another packed evening's entertainment.







And what better way to open proceedings than with the magnificent "modern day David Bowie" (or if you prefer Elaine Paige's description "a new Tim Rice") Mr Marcus Reeves?



One of our favourite performers du jour, he entertained us to his new single Black Tears, and - here in the footage I recorded of him performing at Gay Lifestyles in October - the fantabulosa Mad, Bad World:

Marcus Reeves - Mad, Bad World

To find out how you can help Marcus complete his debut album Quicksilver, visit his website.

Whew! How do you follow such an extraordinary performance? With a little lust, of course!



A rare beast - an out-gay Somalian - Diriye Osman is a multi-talented man. Artist, model, campaigner, and a fine writer to boot, he read for us a tantalising extract from his rather salacious tale of a camp boy's obsession with his grandmother's new boyfriend, titled Shoga:

‘Is it not true? And furthermore, this business of me braiding your hair has to stop! You’re a boy not a lady-boy!’

‘You know you love me,’ I smiled, ‘besides, what’s wrong with being a lady-boy? It’s a good look.’

She pulled my hair and said, ‘Waryaa, if you grow up to be gay, walaahi I will do saar.’

‘Saar’ was a brand of Somali exorcism. The ‘possessed’ – which was code for the mentally unstable – were put through their paces. Healers would beat drums to release spirits from the possessed, who would shimmy and shake, and if they got too frisky, would face the kind of beat-down usually reserved for criminals. Such superstition has always been rife in the bush and my gran, a country gal through and through, knew its effectiveness at deterring unacceptable behaviour.

I smiled now as she flexed my follicles. My grandmother did not know that I was gay and that I’ve always loved being gay. Sure, Kenya was not exactly queer nation but my sexuality gave me joy. I was young, not so dumb and full of cum! There was no place for me in heaven but I was content munching devil’s pie here on earth.

I was seventeen and I specialized in two things: weed and sex. And there was only one person in my neighbourhood who served both those dishes on a steaming plate for me.

Boniface.

But I’ve missed a beat, my bambinos. A narrative without a back-story is like meat with no bone; there’s no juice to it. So let me take two steps back.

My family moved to Kenya in ’91, after my dad hauled our asses from Mogadishu. I don’t remember much about Somalia – I was only a toddler when we fled – but over the years Mogadishu assumed mythical status in our lives. It became the kind of place that could only truly flourish in selective memory. It was years later that I learnt the precise term for what my family and millions of other Somalis had experienced during the war: post-traumatic stress.

But my father was not one for wasting time. He got to work and started amassing a small fortune by selling blankets and medicine to NGOs headed for Mogadishu. My mum did her bit and became a pharmacist in Hurlingham. Whilst baba na mama made money, my gran took care of home.

All that changed in ‘94. My parents were driving home from Trattoria Restaurant one night when they got stopped by the police. The cops ordered them to get out of the car but my dad refused. Kenyan police are the shiftiest crooks this side of the Sahara. If they want to extort you, nobody can stop them. If they want to make you disappear, no one can prevent it. My father knew this so he refused to get out. Without missing a beat, the police fired three shots in his head. Then they blasted my mother’s brains out when she started screaming. Their bodies were found floating in Athi River the next day. I was seven years old.

Whilst my gran’s peers were settling quietly into old age, she now had to support both of us. We owned our small maisonette, so housing wasn’t an issue. My parents had taken out life insurance but it wasn’t enough for us to live on. My grandmother took half the cash and invested it in a small import/export business she ran out of our living room. The rest went into my education.

As the years passed, gran decided she needed help around the house. She found it difficult to bend over and clean floors and cook three meals a day, raise a teenager and run a business. She didn’t want another woman in her home. She wanted a man who was strong enough to cook, clean and carry water to the tank. She wanted a man to protect us from burglaries. Basically, she wanted a budget superhero: a blank canvas she could mould into a domestic god.

Enter Boniface.

Boniface was from Burundi and my grandma dug this. She dug the fact that he was a refugee like us but I was more impressed with his muscle mass. While she saw enough brawn to carry three sacks of bariis at once, I saw prime beefcake. Papi was beautiful and he looked like he was packing. I licked my lips and locked and loaded.

Wow.



Right on cue, to break us out of our reverie, we applauded the very welcome return of the splendiferous Celine Hispiche!

Stalwart of many, many Polari evenings during its five-year history, Celine has veered from Music Hall (supporting and duetting with Marc Almond at Wilton's in 2008) to punky dance music (with Dave Ball in the band Nite Wreckage, whose inaugural performance we went to see in 2010), and back again - her long-awaited "Music Hall musical" Betty May - the Musical: Tiger Woman versus The Beast will premiere early next year at the swanky Brasserie Zedel. I think this will be a must!

No footage exists online of Celine singing the choon she chose last night Limehouse Sway, nor indeed any of her Victorian repertoire (unfortunately), so here instead is Nite Wreckage and Popbawa!

Celine & Nite Wreckage - Popbawa

Marvellous.



After the break, it was the turn of the very lovely Helen Smith (a fellow blogger), to read from her "dystopian" novel The Miracle Inspector, set in the aftermath of war and in the midst of a tyrannical and seriously disturbed society where you need to have your wits about you to survive, as our "hero" the poet Jesmond appears to be able to do. It is beautifully-written, and definitely left us wanting more. Here is the lady herself, reading the very extract with which she entertained us last night...

Helen Smith - The Miracle Inspector

Our headliner of this very special Polari was the petite Bethan Roberts, whose novel My Policeman sounds a most fascinating and emotional rollercoaster of a tale, a menage-a-trois of relationships between a woman and a (forcibly closeted - the story is set in the 50s) gay man and their mutual love Tom, the policeman of the title. The piece she read - brilliantly I might add - was the gay man Patrick's first meeting with the gorgeous Tom, and was funny and poignant. Here, Miss Roberts explains a bit more about the book...

Bethan Roberts - My Policeman

Just when you thought it was safe... It was time for a finale, as Marcus Reeves returned to the stage, sardonic as ever, as "The Singing Christmas Tree"! With his wonderfully camp take on the "classics", he even managed to get the whole audience waving in time to I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day by Wizzard. Truly extraordinary, as you will see...



A "Very Polari Christmas", indeed!



And so, with tears in our eyes we bid farewell to our culture fix until next year...

Our next Polari will be on 28th January 2013, with headliner the literary luminary Christopher Fowler.

Polari

Bookworm...

Internet has been down at home for two days, MySpazz has gone over to the dark side, but as predicted this is turning out to be a great literary week!



On Monday Madame Acarti, Paul, Jim and I settled ourselves in the "Royal Box" (front table) at Polari (back in the prime surroundings of St Paul's Pavilion where it belongs), to help celebrate the third birthday of "London's peerless gay literary salon". It seems like only yesterday that we first stepped across the hallowed threshold of the (late, dearly departed) Trash Palace in Wardour Street to be educated, entertained and indeed aurally assaulted by the magnificent (and also dearly departed, RIP) Sebastian Horsley!

As Paul Burston - in celebratory mood, understandably - mused, no-one involved in its launch back in The Green Carnation Bar in Frith Street would ever have believed that three years later we would be in such a prominent and prestigious venue as the Royal Festival Hall.

The evening's proceedings opened with fresh faced new author Ryan Child with his stunning and quite scary tale of a rabid queer-basher who falls for the boyfriend of one of his gang's victims. If Mr Child hadn't been so goddam sexy, we might have been a bit depressed at the gritty reality of his words. But he was mesmerising...



Lightening the mood somewhat, Justin Ward "strummed my life with his words" as he regaled with minute detail the excruciating tale of a small-town gay boy trapped in a world of ghastly family parties in social clubs, leery women and drunken oiks - superbly written and hilarious, but very very familiar... Read another of his short stories about dysfunctional families.

Our next reader William Parker was actually born in Newport (the small town that provided me with so many of those familiar scenarios Mr Ward described), but was brought up away from all that - with his booming actor's voice it was obvious he was one of the lucky ones. His story opened (hilariously) with the main character Ben falling drunkenly head-first down the stairs outside Charing Cross station, and revelled in the recollections of the bewildered childhood that had led him to that point - excellently read, excellently written. We loved it! Read more at http://william-parker.com/

Jonathan Kemp is one of the recently announced contenders short-listed for the brand new Green Carnation Prize for gay literature. His novel London Triptych flick-flaks between the lives of male prostitutes in three different eras - Oscar Wilde's turn-of-the-century, 50s post-war, and modern London - and with a couple of explicit extracts (each told from the rent boys' point of view), he had the audience gripped! A strong contender for the prize, I'd say (although my vote is for the fellow shortlisted Rupert Smith's Man's World).

Almost the climax(!) of the evening was the Kiwi author(ess) DJ Connell, whose debut novel Julian Corkle Is a Filthy Liar has variously been reviewed as "a Tasmanian Adrian Mole" and "one of the funniest rites of passage novels in a long time". From the extracts she read it certainly seems a very funny tale indeed, as the exceptionally camp Julian relates his adventures growing up in the uber-macho rural backwoods of Taz...

To round the night off with suitably big bang, our darling Celine had made an extra special effort to be there, and had brought along a very special friend to say a few words of congratulation on the anniversary - the Latino firebrand Mr Coati Mundi (of Kid Creole & the Coconuts and Dr Buzzard's Original Savannah Band fame)!



After Celine had entertained the punters with a selection of her rollicking rhythmic performance poems (during one of which she entwined herself rather firmly around Jim, seated as he was almost on the stage!), it was time for Paul to make his big announcement - the launch of The Polari Prize. Strictly limited to new works rather than previously published authors, the prize is open to a first book which explores the queer experience and is open to any work published in the UK in English within the twelve months leading up to the submission date (poetry or prose, fiction or non-fiction). So start thinking about your nominations now!

After the glitter had settled on the evening's proceedings Madame Arcati, Paul, Celine, Mr Mundi and I trolled off for a swifty at the Retro Bar before dispersing - such good company to finish off a magnificent evening!

---

Continuing the literary theme, last night I went along to Islington Central Library for Homosexuality in literature: sodomy & censorship with Neil McKenna, author of The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde.

This, too, was a fantabulosa (if much less well-attended) event, as the theatrical Mr McKenna took us through a lively selection of examples of where gay lifestyles have been censored, edited, legislated against or erased from the pages of novels, poetry, history books, biographies and the theatrical stage. From early Renaissance comedies, through the Earl of Rochester's play Sodom, to Victorian transvestite rent boys "Fanny" and "Stella", Oscar Wilde, Radcliffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness, Stephen Spender's war poetry to the control that the Lord Chancellor held over the theatre even in the era of Joe Orton, he covered them all...

Whew! It was great, and I want to read (and learn) more. Mr McKenna's historical work about those Victorian trannies, and their scandalous trial, will be published in the new year, and I can't wait to read it. Read more about Neil.

Tonight we are eschewing literature (the book readings by Rupert Smith, Christopher Fowler et al at "Gay's the Word" bookshop) in favour of a rare showing of Terrence McNally's marvellous film The Ritz at the BFI - but this week has definitely been one for books.

I am currently reading Mr Fowler's Paperboy for my LGBT reading group, I recently completed the fourth of Paul Magrs' "Brenda & Effie" books Hell's Belles, and I have decided that as times is 'ard, everyone this Xmas will be getting books from charity shops (which is just another excuse to rifle through the shelves of every "Save The Children", "Oxfam" or "Macmillan Cancer Care" shop from Enfield to Kingston!).

The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,
And all the sweet serenity of books.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The face of an angel...

We went to Celine & Nite Wreckage album launch last night. Well I say launch, more of a melée, really - it was held in the tiny Alaska Studios next to Pleasuredrome sauna in Waterloo, and it was so hot we might as well have been in that salubrious venue!

John-John and I met up with Ange and another fan Drew at Waterloo Station, dressed up for canapés and cocktails, not quite knowing what to expect. The venue itself is like Pan's Labyrinth (but with dishwasher and speakers), but there was copious quantities of free champers available, so that was OK.

We spotted a few faded 80s celebs, including Steve Strange, Philip Sallon, Martin Rushent and Tim and Mo (aka Tik and Tok), and spoke to a (very nervous) Celine before the show took off.



Packed into a dungeon-like performance space - with loads of spotty yoofs who obviously just come along to see any old band, regardless - Celine gave a tonsil-wrenching performance of fab numbers from the album Evolution? Revolution!

Among the numbers we spotted the new single Popabawa and one of my faves Take Your Money and Run - which everyone agrees sounds like an Ian Dury song. We were blown away! Unfortunately we needed oxygen as well as music, so we headed off fairly quickly to the nearest pub for a refresher, before dispersing (after congratulating Dave on the set).

An interesting evening, and one I am very glad to have gone to.

Here's a clip of Celine & Nite Wreckage on stage in Germany:

Celine & Nite Wreckage - Live at Mera Luna (2010)

And here is a song that I couldn't get out of my head after seeing Tik and Tok in the flesh again after thirty years - their performance as part of the wonderful (and rumoured to be re-forming) Shock!

Shock - Angel Face

Celine and Nite Wreckage

I haven't stopped dancing yet

It's the weekend at last, and I am looking forward to attending the launch of the lovely Celine's new album tonight. We heard a couple of the tracks live at Polari last year, and several are available here - Celine & Nite Wreckage

Meanwhile, here at Dolores Delargo Towers we always celebrate the end of the week on an up-beat note - Thank Disco It's Friday!

Gonzalez - I Haven't Stopped Dancing Yet

"Just my little sacrificial burlesque..."

We had another wonderful evening courtesy of Paul Burston's "peerless gay literary salon" Polari last night. In yet another new venue, the lovely Weston Pavilion on the roof of the Royal Festival Hall with its views of Parliament and the London Eye, the scene was set for a very cutural evening. We weren't disappointed!

Our opening reader was a superb new talent, the "performance poet" Keith Jarrett (not to be confused with the jazz pianist), whose reading took us on an author's journey through a series of conjectural scenarios, characters and relationships that could be part of a fictional work about gay life, ending with the audience being told "this is not my story, it is everyone's. You decide." Difficult to explain in print, but excellent in its effect...

Paul, wearing green in honour of St Paddy's Day - with trousers so tight I had to let him know that we could tell he wasn't Jewish! - read a passage from The Gay Divorcee in which the relief of a Welsh Mam on finding out that her gay son was (unexpectedly) getting married (to a girl!) was brilliantly evoked.



But after the break we had the real treats of the evening! Marcus Reeves is a walking art-form - singer, writer, performer and creator of the fantabulosa Postcards from God - The Sister Wendy Musical (which we so enjoyed back in 2007). He sang a couple of his beautiful songs and read a truly wonderful piece on the subject of love surviving through an abusive relationship. Little Tony was quite stunned when he walked over and sang one of his more emotional songs to him, clasping his hand in the process.



Heart-warming and stunning in turns, Mr Reeves also happens to be a lovely man and a close friend of our Polari pal Celine, and we spent the rest of the evening in their company.



Last and most certainly not least was the star reader of the evening, the award-winning novelist Mr Jake Arnott. Jake read a couple of passages from his new novel The Devil's Paintbrush, a complicated fantasy about the (imagined?) relationship between the disgraced Victorian Major-General Hector McDonald (who in real life was court-martialled for sodomy with Indian boys at the height of the British Raj) and the infamous aesthete, mystic, alchemist and Satanist Aleister Crowley. My favourite was an early encounter between Crowley (aka "The Beast") and his future lover, the collector and and female impersonator Jerome Pollitt:

"Alchemical elements are sexual: sulphur is male, salt is female."
"Fancy that."
They can create a transcendent union with philosophical mercury."
"Mercury?"
"Mercury if the spirit of flux."
"It's the only treatment for syphilis, darling. Nasty though. Turned Oscar's teeth quite black."
"It's a hermaphrodite element."
"Well, I know all about that, dear."
"Do you take anything seriously?"
"Oh yes," Pollitt replied, sonorously.
"My performance," he went on.
"You were very good..." Crowley offered.

"Just my little sacrificial burlesque..."

It seems that Mr Arnott can seamlessly combine campness of the highest order with what may turn out to be quite an intellectual read. We of course purchased copies, which he kindly signed.

Ending on a high note with a couple of songs from Celine (who has just landed a recording deal, and is heavily involved in researching her forthcoming East End musical), the evening came to a logical close. But not for us! Madame Acarti, Little Tony, Celine, John-John, Marcus and I trolled off to the Retro Bar for a few more bevvies, then ended the evening (very late) at the Players Theatre Piano Bar again...

Here, for your delectation, is a video offering from the lovely Marcus...

Marcus Reeves - Stranger Than Fiction

Yet another splendiferous evening, and I look forward to the next one on 14 April!

Polari on MySpace

Skinheads, Ball(s) and lesbians in love...

We had another great Polari evening in the lovely St Paul's Pavilion on the roof of the Royal Festival Hall.

Opening with a few "in-jokes" for the regulars, Paul Burston was thrilled to be playing to a packed house with loads of new faces. Of course John-John and I now count as regulars and we were very happy to have a table near the centre of the action. We shared a couple of bottles of wine with the lovely Celine, whose friends were on the adjacent table, and tried (unsuccessfully) to eavesdrop on the gossip from journalist Johann Hari's table.

After an opening poem by the winner of the recent Write Queer London competition, we were stunned into silence by author Max Schaefer, reading some unsettling passages from his new novel Children of the Sun. Centred around the difficult subject of homosexuality in the skinhead/Nazi movement in the 70s and more recently the 90s, his lead characters are an unsympathetically racist gay teenager and a modern writer and researcher obsessed by a vile character by the name of Nicky Crane, who apparently became a gay porn star before dying of AIDS. Challenging stuff, but brilliant.

After the break Celine performed a couple of upbeat electro numbers with collaborator Dave Ball, taken from her forthcoming album - a remixed version of her legendary Polari song, and a newer dancy number, which was fab. She has loads of stuff going on this year, but I particularly look forward to this release!

Our headliner Mia Farlane read some very funny pieces from her novel Footnotes to Sex, accurately and pithily capturing the day-to-day lives and mundane conversations of two women in a long-term (and ironically given the title, sexless) relationship. I could hear me and Madame Arcati played out in miniature in much of the pre-sleep chit-chat...

In its new home, it seems that Polari is really carving a niche for itself in the world of artiness - for it to be "sold out" is remarkable, and Paul deserves huge congratulations for continuing to make it such a varied and entertaining event. Roll on next month with headliner Jake Arnott, and I look forward to tonight's evening with Rupert Smith launching his new novel Man's World (a tale that covers 50 years of gay life in London). So literary, dahhhhling!

Others may have wine, but I have poetry

The smell of ink is intoxicating to me - others may have wine, but I have poetry.
Abbe Yeux-verdi

Last night's Polari Poetry Night was most certainly the busiest since the move to its new home at the beautiful (ahem) and atmospheric (ahem!) Concrete Bar on the South Bank. We arrived in a Byronic mood (I dressed the part anyhow!), and had a bit of a job at first getting seated as every table was full (either with avid Polari-ites, or with Haywood Gallery punters). But we managed to chuck a couple of tardy diners off their table eventually, and settled in for the evening's entertainment.

Paul Burston had told us that Radio 4 were going to be there and planned to include Polari in one of their programmes about language - and indeed we spotted poet and presenter Michael Rosen at the bar.

Our host (Paul) was in a "Stevie Nicks" mood, apparently (to which I responded: "What? A fat hippie?"). Something to do with her singing a song about poetry I believe, and he was wafting a scarf around a lot so I assume it was meant to be a literal interpretation. Once the preamble music was over, without further ado he introduced the ever-lovely Celine to open proceedings with her specially composed Polari song. Paul solemnly recited the lyrics to Abba's The Day Before You Came as an intro, and it was fairly obvious that half the audience had no clue that this was not a poem specially written for the occasion, which was quite funny...

Our first reader of the evening was Catherine Brogan who read some of her wonderful poems about life, love and lesbianism. A Belfast lass, she typically railed against her Catholic upbringing, and got several resounding rounds of applause. As we offered her congratulations on her way back to her seat she told us that she had avoided railing against the BBC, but was sorely tempted to do so as they had barred her from reading one of her gay poems on a recent radio appearance!

During the ciggie break, I got talking to Celine, Dave Ball from Soft Cell, Little Annie's promoter (whose name I forget), Christopher from the similarly-named Polari magazine, and none other than David Hoyle. Never having met him before I only had his (rather aggressive) stage persona upon which to judge the man, and I am not particularly keen on that. However in the flesh he is a gentle, charming man and I thoroughly enjoyed chatting to him. Quite a revelation, actually!



After the break it was the turn of the poet-cum-stripper (well not really, but he does like to do his readings shirtless) Trevor Medicine. I last saw him at the Polari Goes East "Stag Party" event last year, and he didn't disappoint last night either. Fast, furious and excellent poetry - this man deserves a publishing deal.

Last but by no means least was the effervescent Caroline Bird, who, despite looking about twelve is an excellent and accomplished poet and writer, and rounded the proceedings off nicely.



And what a surprise for John-John, when he and Celine were interviewed by Michael Rosen and recorded by the BBC crew, speaking a bit of the Polari lingo!

Despite having far too much wine (their other drinks are a bit pricey) and having a head like a boil waiting to pop this morning, it was altogether a great night as usual. And, so a little bird tells me, there may be another move afoot (within the South Bank complex), which can only be a good thing...

The next Polari is "London Night" on 9th December - and I look forward to it!

Oh, dem ruby slippers

We had another fantastic time at Polari Dorothy Night last night - cocktails, Dave Ball of Soft Cell, and Judy Garland's hat! What more could a queen ask for?



Celine was fabulous as ever, singing a couple of her bawdy music hall numbers, including a new one Boys of Soho. She told us she is excited, if not a little nervous, about singing with the aforementioned Mr Ball (as "Nite Wreckage") at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern next Tuesday as part of one of their variety evenings.



She introduced us to Dave, and he shook my hand - an experience I never thought would happen after all these years of idolising Soft Cell...



The headline attraction of the evening however, was the lovely Susie Boyt, who not only entertained us to some readings from her brilliant book My Judy Garland Life ("For anyone who's ever held a candle to a star" - buy it from Amazon).

Recounting her bitter disappointment at not becoming a musical star like her idol Judy, she read this hilarious piece:

Last year a friend of mine tells me that his cousin puts on musicals in women's prisons. She's planning to stage "Chicago" in our local women's jail in the coming year! I had seen, that day, a beautiful and capacious red patent handbag in a department store window for eight hundred pounds and, next to it, a stunning navy blue silk faille evening trench coat for twice that proce. The two items would lend my lacklustre autumn an intrepid Parisian flair. I instantly hatch a plan to smash into the store that night and steal the goods, thus ensuring I either have a highly glamorous season or I land a plum role in the forthcoming prison production, perhaps the only way it could ever happen to me, I explain.

"Thing is," my friend says, sucking in his breath with faux tact (why is the economy of sympathy so hard for most to master?), "in the prisons where my cousin works, the standard's usually really, really high, so you know..."

Not only did Susie sign a copy of her book for us, but - honour of honours - we were allowed to try on one of the ionic Judy Garland's hats! I shall never wash my hair again. I would have tried the shoes as well, but I think they were about eight sizes too small...



After a little impasse, Paul located our finale performer Michael Twaits ("Post drag. Post gender. Post giving a shit"), who performed an absolutely brilliant number from his new show Icons (at the Oval House Theatre in March) all about the link between the death of Judy Garland and the outbreak of the Stonewall riots: "Some say it was the bull dykes who started it, others say the leather boys. I rather like to believe it was the drag queens..."



Paul finished up DJ-ing with a few more of his (and Polari's) trademark mash-ups (who would ever think we would hear Perfidia and Grace Jones in one DJ set?), and the now traditional pole-dance...



Suitably impressed, the crowd dispersed (and not a bad crowd at all, bearing in mind we were up against both The Brits and The House of Homosexual Culture April Ashley event on the South Bank).

Some stayed on for Trannyshack, which has taken up residence at Freedom every Wednesday.

Absolutely brilliant fun - and I look forward to next month's Polari Boyz Night, with Adam Mars-Jones and Drew Gummerson!

Blog will eat itself

At Polari last night the bloggers came together to celebrate the art of blogging with readings by bloggers, and performances by bloggers... It's like being a Mason ..



What another fabulous night it turned out to be!

Skiving off the opportunity to reveal himself to his adoring public with the feeble excuse of being 10,000 miles away in Sydney, London Preppy sent a (rather pretty) substitute in his friend Mean (sic). The reading almost didn't take place at all as the original substitute reader didn't show up, and the extracts to be read out were only on email. Freedom - typical gay bar - had run out of printer toner, and there was a mad scramble to try and find an internet cafe in Soho to print it out... But, with his choice of a typically cynical blog about gay gym bunnies, we were enthralled.

Celine treated us to another of her bawdy classics, unsurprisingly featuring a whore from Soho, and then the main act took the stage.



Our real star was the ever-lovely Clayton Littlewood, reading (and performing) extracts from his blockbuster Dirty White Boy - Tales of Soho (which began as a blog). Brilliant as always, Clay embellished his reading with a full re-enactment of a couple of scenes:

- Arch decadent dandy Sebastian Horsley was played with spooky realism by - Sebastian Horsley!

Sebastian Horsley & Clayton Littlewood at Polari in Soho

- And the fans' favourite character Leslie was portrayed with effortless campery by none other than the lovely Dexter Clark - Celebrity Hairdresser - minus the wig(!).

Clayton Littlewood & Roger Lloyd-Thompson at Polari, Soho

Brilliantly entertaining stuff! With the house as packed as it was last night, I hope Clayton shifted a few copies of the book.

Yet the biggest laugh of the night was still to come, and it was one that very few people could have been prepared for...



Yes, indeed! As a precursor to the rest of the jollities that DJ Paul Burston had lined up for us, both he and the effervescent Rupert Smith donned skirts and flashed their scanties at the begging masses - complete with "Grace" and "Jones" emblazoned across the important bits! I bet the lady herself would have been proud.

We ended the evening pissed on expensive gin and heady with a range of music from Cole Porter to the 10 minute Macarthur Park Suite by Donna Summer...

A genius night, and I look forward to more divine decadence in January!

Polari

Bona to varda your fab cartzo

Another fab time was had by all at the first anniversary of Polari last night. And with a flair befitting such an august institution, the literary bent chosen for the occasion was every boy and girl's favourite subject - PORN!

Hosted by the porn-bedecked Paul Burston (he sews the cock-pics on himself you know), our evening's readings were kicked off in great style by the larger-than-life Jacqui Applebee, who describes herself as "a black bisexual woman, who breaks down barriers with smut".

And she certainly lived up to her description, with a smattering of one of her lesbian fantasy stories and a great poem about orgasm - which got the audience (of both sexes) twitching, and no mistake!

Jacqueline ApplebeeWriting in Shadows

Our shining star, however, was the lovely Rupert Smith, appearing last night as his pornographic author alter ego James Lear ("James - my middle name. Lear - because I was Amanda Lear's first husband.").



Not only did he read his first smutty passage (from The Secret Tunnel) entirely in Polari, but, after a rather wonderfully graphic extract (from The Back Passage) about cottaging we were treated to a lascivious flash of his impressive golden winged phallus. This of course was the recent trophy he received as James Lear at the Erotic Awards 2008.

Rupert Smith on porn, as featured in The Independent

Celine cooled the throbbing groins with her own particular brand of smut, singing a couple of numbers from her Music Hall repertoire, to the delight of the well-fed audience (thanks to the Trash Palace for feeding us!)



And, sated with lust of the ear, superb writing and superb company, we trolled downstairs to sample the disco-licious delights of Paul's DJ set (having already whooped with joy at DJ Dom Agius's Baccara'n'Grace Jones extravaganza at the beginning of the evening).

Unfortunately, the dance floor appeared to be lit by the kind of fluorescent bulbs that wouldn't look out of place in a dentist's surgery, and every seat in the house had been dragged to the centre of the floor by what seemed to be the entire population of Fiorenza, complete with shopping bags and animated non-stop talking over every track. Realising that this was not going to descend into a sticky-floored disco dream as on previous occasions, we ended up sadly finishing off our gins far too early and heading for the Tube...

However, the night was fantabulosa - and I look forward to the next one (Bloggers' Night!!) in December starring Dirty White Boy author Clayton Littlewood.

I love Clay's writing, and I am almost finished reading the book - I hope there will be a second one soon so I can learn more about his early sexual encounters on Weston-Super-Mare pier...

Polari

["Bona to varda your fab cartzo" - Polari slang = "lovely to see your great cock"]

He has a touch of Lavender

I have been so looking forward to seeing Marc Almond in the suitably decadent and slightly sleazy surroundings of Wilton's Music Hall - and the evening certainly lived up to that anticipation. What a brilliant night!

Marc, looking a damn sight younger than his 51 years, held the audience in the palm of his hands for a fully-fledged torch song extravaganza; all drama and melancholy - in the true tradition of what Music Hall was all about.

Rather in the style of other "dark" artistes like Nina Hagen or The Tiger Lillies, Marc's song titles read like a catalogue of depravity and depression. But the reality is that in his hands these torch songs become jewels of breathtaking intensity - numbers last night included A Weakness for Roses, Lonely Go Go Dancer, Black Heart, Mother Fist, Suicide Saloon, So Long Soho, Moonbathe Skin, Love to Die For and the sleazy Bluegate Fields. The set also included a very beautiful song about a rent-boy's unrequited love for a punter For Only You, and some rather more tenuous numbers, such as a melodramatic Russian song about a beggar woman, and a rather-too-Nashville-for-me gospel song called Calvary.

He was aptly supported by a team of like-minded bohemians, including Baby Dee (bizarre tranny performance artiste, songwriter and player of the piano, accordian and harp), Little Annie (tiny New York singer with the looks of Don Knotts and a voice like a more soulful Carol Channing) and her partner (and apparent Barry Manilow impersonator) Paul Wallfisch, Celine Hispiche (thunderous-voiced cabaret performer) and a coterie of talented musos, some of whom apparently were part of Marc's onetime band the Mambos.

One song Marc performed beautifully is a long-time favourite of mine, Lavender. Shamefully never yet released on CD, this ballad of gay pride and shame in a bygone age has never failed to lift my spirits since I heard him sing it on the radio a while back:

Marc Almond - Lavender Live at Wilton's Music Hall

A particular favourite was the duet with Annie on Charles Aznavour's Yesterday When I Was Young, but the big surprise of the evening was Marc's romping music hall duet with Celine on Masculine Women Feminine Men, a song originally done by 1920s camp drag artiste Douglas Byng and latterly covered by a number of people including - incredibly - Tom Robinson. Although the ubiquitous audience rhythmic clapping began to sound a bit like seals begging for fish, I loved the fact he introduced this song to a new audience, and I hope to see it appear on a future Marc album.

Hail to the king (queen)!

Masculine women, feminine men,
Which is the cock and which is the hen?
It's hard to tell 'em apart today! And, say!

Sister is busy learning to shave,
Brother just got a permanent wave,
It's hard to tell 'em apart today! Hey, hey!

Girls were girls and boys were boys when I was a tot,
Now we don't know who's who, even what's what!

Knickers and trousers, baggy and wide,
Nobody knows who's walking inside,
Those masculine women and feminine men!

Marc Almond official MySpace profile