Of Oedipus in Kent, trans lives, the dyke of desire, a giraffe and a Tutu

It was a dark and stormy night on Wednesday - it was pissing-down - but despite the weather I, and a handful of stalwarts including Our Paul, Emma, Toby, Simon and chums, made our way to the cavernous surroundings of the legendary Heaven nightclub under Charing Cross... for the very welcome return of "London's peerless gay literary salon" Polari to its home city, after too long away!

With our "hostess-with-the-mostest" Mr Paul Burston presiding, we were in for another treat in store, with another selection of class acts:

Jake Arnott, Alice Denny, VG Lee, John McCullough

First up, Mr Jake Arnott, one of the UK's most successful crime writers - among his works are The Long Firm and He Kills Coppers, both adapted into much-lauded television serials. In his customary style, acting the roles of the characters, Mr Arnott read for us a dramatic segment of his new novel Blood Rival - heavily based around the multiple historic Greek stories of Oedipus - in which the anti-hero Eddie Pierce has "inherited the crown" (and wife) of the previous Kentish gangster kingpin Lee Royle, who was murdered in an apparent road-rage incident. During their efforts to uncover the secrets and lies left behind by his death, Eddie confesses that as a teen he had been raped by Royle - yet still loved him, nonetheless; and it was this desperate desire that drove his ambition to live up to, and eventually take over the "throne".

Mesmerising stuff!

Jake Arnott - Blood Rival

Next was Alice Denny – a Brighton-based performance poet and judge for the Polari Prize 2026 - who read for us some of her pieces, tackling gender, love, loss, sexuality, marginalisation and injustice. Quite downbeat, but heartfelt.

Although it seemed that Paul B was hesitant to offer us a break, I think we needed it. A pee, a fag, a top-up and some mingling - and it was time for part two...

...opening with the faboo John McCullough, another stalwart - he won The Polari First Book Prize 2012 - reading selection of quirky, often quite amusing poems from his new collection Crowd Voltage. Like this one:

You're working-class my lad,
don't you forget it, said Mum.
She was talking to a giraffe,
a lanky boy prone to ideas
above his station, soft ways
of slipping skyward.
I loved being a giraffe,
a vegetarian in fairyland,
the staircase of my neck
leading nowhere sharp.
I loved not being a lion
even though that meant
being hunted, carnivores slashing
at me till I galloped away.
I loved withdrawing to invisible
acacias - cathedrals of leaves
where my elastic tongue,
licked what it liked.
Because I loved discovering
other giraffes, entwining
bodies and probing necks
or simply standing together
as a crowd, a forest
of extravagant breathing.

We love him!

Our final reader was the lovely Polari stalwart VG Lee, everybody's favourite "Provincial Lesbian"! She read for us a segment from her forthcoming new novel Our Shadow Selves her short story The Last Gold Star Lesbian, focusing in on the experience of a lesbian of a certain age, whose life is drifting along in a shabby seaside town, and the frisson that she experiences when a long-distant butch "crush" of hers swans back into town - and she finally gets the attention she deserves!

There is no footage of the actual passage VG read for us, but here she is in full form, a few years ago:

VG Lee on the Polari tour, 2015

Then, by way of an encore, we had a faboo live set from the effervescent Son of a Tutu!

Son of a Tutu - And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going

Despite the somewhat smaller then usual audience (I blame the rain), all concerned got a well-deserved ovation:

We love Polari!

Radical fairies, the state of the gay nation, jerk chicken and stuffed vine leaves, pyjamas, Edgeworth Bess and Vita Lampada

It has been a while - too long - since last I traversed the portals of the Royal Festival Hall function rooms, but last night a troupe of us (me, John-John, Paul, little Tony, Emma, Wayne et al) gathered for the last outing of "London's peerless gay literary salon" for 2016 - the ninth birthday of Polari (where does the time go? I've been a regular at this event for eight years)!

Host Paul Burston was appropriately attired in his fabulous new silk suit (from the swanky Brighton and Spitalfields tailor Gresham Blake) for the occasion, as he introduced the readers for the evening.



Opening proceedings was a genuine pioneer: founder member of the Gay Liberation Front in the UK, and stalwart of the anarchic drag troupe Bloolips (alongside our fave "Homosexual Hall of Fame"-er Miss Bette Bourne - see here, here, here and here), Mr Stuart Feather. He read a few wonderful recollections of the characters from those remarkable days of proto-revolutionary gay politics and communal living from his new memoir Blowing the Lid - Gay Liberation, Sexual Revolution and Radical Queens, and I was bewitched by it all...

There is, as is inevitable with a "limited-edition publication" such as Mr Feather's, nothing resembling an extract online, so instead here is the great man himself, with the aforementioned Ms Bourne, talking about Polari (the lingo, not the literary evening):

Stuart Feather and Bette Bourne talk about Polari

Next up was Mr Matthew Todd, former editor of Attitude magazine, whose insights (following Mr Feather's recollections from our cultural history) into the "state of gay society" into the here-and-now from his masterwork Straight Jacket made for some occasionally uncomfortable listening:

Culturally, homosexuality and misery have been linked so tightly by the haters over the years that they have become an offensive cliché to the point where any discussion is dismissed as prejudice. But discuss it we must.

More and more statistics reveal that LGBT people have higher levels of depression, anxiety, addiction and suicidal thoughts. The British Crime Survey 2009 showed that gay men used illicit drugs three times more than heterosexual men. It’s hardly a surprise. As therapist and author Joe Kort states so well in his book 10 Smart Things Gay Men Can Do to Improve Their Lives, what’s wrong is not our sexuality, but our experience of growing up in a society that still does not fully accept that people can be anything other than heterosexual and cisgendered (i.e. born into the physical gender you feel you are). It is the damage done to us by growing up strapped inside a cultural straitjacket - tight-fitting, one-size restraint imposed on us at birth - that leaves no room to grow. It makes no allowances for the fact that, yes, indeed, some people are different and we deserve - and need - to be supported and loved for who we are, too.

His whole reading was serious, yet not stifling in its analysis of the problems gay people still face coping with our social-media-savvy, drug-fuelled, abs-obsessed scene. There was much nodding of heads among our audience. I sincerely hope there will be many more people out there in the hedonistic "real world" who will read and learn from this book.



The very cute (with his new cropped-hair and glasses-free change of image from last time we saw him) Mr Dean Atta took to the stage to complete our triumvirate of talent for the first half. Entertaining and charming as always, he treated us to some powerful insights into life, loss, and relationships through his marvellous poetry (from his wildly popular compilation I Am Nobody's Nigger), including this one - his answer to the frequent question "where do you come from?":

I come from shepherd’s pie and Sunday roast
Jerk chicken and stuffed vine leaves
I come from travelling through my taste buds but loving where I live

I come from a home that some would call broken
I come from D.I.Y. that never got done
I come from waiting by the phone for him to call

I come from waving the white flag to loneliness
I come from the rainbow flag and the Union Jack
I come from a British passport and an ever-ready suitcase

I come from jet fuel and fresh coconut water
I come from crossing oceans to find myself
I come from deep issues and shallow solutions

I come from a limited vocabulary but an unrestricted imagination
I come from a decent education and a marvellous mother
I come from being given permission to dream but choosing to wake up instead

I come from wherever I lay my head
I come from unanswered questions and unread books
Unnoticed effort and undelivered apologies and thanks

I come from who I trust and who I have left
I come from last year and last year and I don’t notice how I’ve changed
I come from looking in the mirror and looking online to find myself

I come from stories, myths, legends and folk tales
I come from lullabies and pop songs, Hip Hop and poetry
I come from griots, grandmothers and her-story tellers

I come from published words and strangers’ smiles
I come from my own pen but I see people torn apart like paper
Each a story or poem that never made it into a book.

Fabulous.



Speaking of fabulous, after the swift fag'n'booze break, in which I had a chance to catch up with the lovely Uli from Gay's the Word bookshop, we welcomed to the mike Polari stalwart VG (Val) Lee.

Doing her best to fit in with the "Being a Man" festival-themed evening, she read a couple of "pyjama-related" extracts from her new book Mr Oliver's Object of Desire, not least our eponymous hero's encounter with the predatory "Doreen":

VG Lee reads at Polari

As ever, a crowd-pleaser. We love her...



Our headliner for the evening was the bestselling author Mr Jake Arnott, who has a new novel The Fatal Tree out early next year - "a world of 'academies' (brothels), 'bung-nippers' (pickpockets), 'buttocks' (prostitutes) with 'Covent Garden Gout' (syphilis) being chased by 'prig-nappers' (Thief-Takers), it tells the tale of the notorious prostitute and pick pocket "Edgeworth Bess", and her escapades in the seedy underworld of 18th Century London with the gangs of ne'er-do-wells who met at Mother Clapp's Molly House. Sounds complex and deliciously intriguing, Mr Arnott's literary talents always impress - and I look forward to reading more about the terrifyingly amoral "Bess" and her motley crew when the book arrives in February.

However for us, he read a piece from his last novel, the equally mysterious House of Rumour, which wove an even more extravagantly decadent tale involving the mysterious disappearance of yet another "amoral" anti-heroine called "Pirate Jenny", and the rumoured involvement of transvestite prostitute named Vita Lampada. What actually became of all of them was about to be (literally) revealed in the middle of an encounter between a slightly-too-nosey female reporter and the book's protagonist "Jack". Exhaustingly curious...



And, on that note, with the customary curtain call and the usual round of schmoozing and "Happy New Year" wishes to all the assembled literati, that was it until - gulp - 27th January 2017. On that occasion, our erudite stars will be Stella Duffy, Rosie Garland, Nathan Evans, Chris Chalmers and Ann Mann. And I can't wait!

We love Polari.

Silver wings, furry footballer sex, bears, weddings and Aleister Crowley

Whoo-ooo-ooo! It was the "Hallowe'en Special" Polari last night, and John-John, little Tony, Ange, Roland, Emma, Toby and I were waiting to be thrilled...





As ever, Mr Paul Burston opened proceedings at "London's peerless gay literary salon" in a suitably OTT fashion - with borrowed silver lamé wing-cape and Grace Jones-stylee devil horns and mask, he fluttered from the wings to introduce our first guest reader, "Mr Charlie Bauer" (why he'd want to name himself after a dead "ultra-left anarchist sympathiser" beats me). Mr Bauer, a scriptwriter for such hit series as Monarch of the Glen and assistant director of films such as Howard's End and Peter's Friends, read some rather nifty pieces from the superbly titled The Man Who Wanked His Way To Greece (a TV drama series in development with ITV), involving family intrigues and theft at a gay wedding, which warmed us up rather nicely.



Next, tackling a far more serious subject of gender dysphoria and the impact that "coming out" as a trans woman to friends and family has, with its unexpected discoveries, confessions and the impossible-to-recreate memories of past lives, Andie Davidson read a few of her works on the subject. Quite emotional stuff to take on board, but carrying some important messages for our mixed audience nonetheless.



However any feelings of melancholy were swept away with the inimitable arrival of that "Hurricane Sandy of bonk-busters", our favourite Miss Rebecca Chance (aka Lauren Henderson; she answered the question on her publishers' website "What’s your best quality?" with "I'm very modest")!





Roping in, as is her wont, both her "gay husband" and Mr Burston into her sleazily salacious reading from the forthcoming new book Bad Angels, involving the refrigerated fur closet of a Russian oligarch (of course), a Premier League footballer not-at-all-based-on Wayne Rooney (of course) and his first gay sexual encounter with the apartment's hunky black concierge (of course) - complete with all the actions and groans. Very steamy stuff indeed; I needed some fresh air after that! And a change of pants.

Following the break, it was time for the evening's "big-hitters", starting with the formidable force that is Miss Stella Duffy, prize-winning author, writing in many different literary genres (fourteen books and counting), and all-round fab person.





In keeping with the night's Hallowe'en theme she opened with a chilling tale of a malevolent girl watching her older lover die, then keeping her finger in a box - which made the audience sit up a bit! - before treating us to an extract from her newest work The Purple Shroud, involving the book's heroine the soon-to-be-Empress Theodora witnessing her father being mauled to death by a bear. It sounds more grim than it actually was, for Miss Duffy's tales of Theodora (her first was subtitled "Actress, Empress, Whore") are fascinating and highly entertaining...

Stella Duffy - Theodora: Actress, Empress, Whore

From one intelligently-researched and complex storyteller to another, as the superb Mr Jake Arnott - voted "one of Britain's 100 most influential gay and lesbian people" in 2005 - took to the stage.



He, too, is a fabulous reader as well as writer, putting on all the voices as he drew us into the tangled web of his new novel The House of Rumour, with its fascinating interplay between Bond author Ian Fleming, the satanist Aleister Crowley (who was also a central character in Mr Arnott's The Devil's Paintbrush, which he read for us at Polari back in March 2010), Rudolf Hess, a retired spy and a transsexual prostitute. I'm sure it all makes sense in the end - the official website gives little away either - but the extracts were brilliant in themselves. One of my cultural icons Mr Mark Lawson loved the book, which is a good enough recommendation for me!



The evening ended as ever with tumultuous and well-deserved applause for all concerned. But it wasn't quite over, as darling Alex ("journo-slut") Hopkins and Beige magazine were on hand all evening, filming, and I as well as many of the authors (including VG Lee and DJ Connell) and fans present were interviewed for a special feature they will be doing for Polari's fifth birthday next month.



I can't wait to see the (no doubt embarrassing) footage, nor can I wait for the big birthday event on 26th November - with Susie Boyt, Neil Alexander, Jeff Kristian and Cherry Smyth. Fantabulosa...

Polari at the Southbank

"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