Love and insanity and pagan profanity before a worshipping crowd

"Someone once said to me ‘Billie, you are so pretentious – I think it was Jean Paul Sartre. Or it could’ve been the Dalai Lama, I forget."

Madam Acarti and I were very pleased to get tickets for the opening night of Musik, the new "sequel" to the faboo Pet Shop Boys musical Closer to Heaven, that we went to see in - gulp! - 2001!

The basic premise of this wonderful one-woman tour-de-force is that we are being "treated" to an evening with "Bille Trix", club hostess, muse to the world's great artists, the woman who was in the right place at the right time to witness many of the milestones of modern history. Think Forrest Gump, only with more vagina references and a shitload of drugs.

It's an utterly hilarious, camp-as-tits and entrancing performance by Miss Frances Barber [see also here] (as if we would expect anything less from our Patron Saint of the maniacal husky laugh) - and she had the audience [the Leicester Square Theatre was packed to the brim - the short five day run is sold out, apparently!] in the palm of her hand throughout. With shit-hot writing from the lovely Jonathan Harvey [see here, here and especially here] and musical numbers by PSB, it's a class act.

"Billie"'s journey veered from being the unwanted child of an unloving mother and and unknown soldier father (she describes her desolate childhood in the song Mongrel), through exodus to the USA and earning a crust busking (with a ridiculous "hippie-era" ditty called Cover Me in Calamine, apparently a duet with a girl later to be renamed Nico), to the Vietnam war (to which she attributed her song Run Girl Run), to Andy Warhol's Factory (she allegedly gave Warhol the inspiration for his Campbell's tin artworks, as explained in the bizarre Soup song), a year in a Soho Square phone box, and a resurrected career as a "disco diva"; en route she hung around with everyone from Dali to Donald Trump (who allegedly was a fellow émigré from Germany, took her virginity, and whom she "inspired" to build "the wall"), the Beatles, the Jaggers and Damien Hirst. Her Mother Courage was reviewed as “incomprehensible”; and her singing inspired everyone to shout, as her mother did on her death-bed: "When will it end?"



In her own world, however, Billie Trix is music, is art, is gender; a “zeitgeist for sore eyes” - and let no-one tell her otherwise!

We absolutely loved it, from beginning to end. Here are two of the songs Neil and Chris wrote especially for the show - first, her "disco diva" number:

Frances Barber as Billie Trix - Ich Bin Musik (Pet Shop Boys)

... and her contemplative closing number:

Frances Barber as Billie Trix - For Every Moment (Pet Shop Boys)

The PSB boys also re-used a couple of numbers from Closer To Heaven, not least our favourite, the "torch song" Friendly Fire. Fortuitously, some fabulous person out there in YouTube-land has found some actual footage of that original West End show from eighteen years ago, in which Miss Barber sings it:

Closer to Heaven (2001) - Frances Barber- Friendly Fire, Paul Keating - Closer to Heaven (reprise), Cast - Positive Role Model (finale)

An inspirational tirade against me
How to explain my life?
Boys to the left of me
girls to the right of me
neither husband nor wife
Though the days are filled with pain
there is no one who'll explain
why I'm coming under friendly fire
shot in the fatal cause of rock 'n' roll
but there's nothing, really nothing, to say

Why I endure under force majeure
slander without shame or tact
I who studied make-up, mime and Buddha
who taught two generations to react
About me the critics lied
I ignored them and survived
in spite of coming under friendly fire
shot in the fatal cause of of rock 'n' roll
I have nothing, really nothing, to deny

When I look back my eyes are filled with tears
Danger to mascara, applause to my peers

When fame sustained me and arenas acclaimed me
I floated through life in a cloud
of love and insanity and pagan profanity
before a worshipping crowd
Now my status is ill-defined
As an icon I'm inclined
to be coming under friendly fire
shot in the fatal cause of rock 'n' roll
but whatever dull or clever points they've scored
I have never, oh no never, been ignored.

Amen to that!

An angelic troublemaker, a Smalltown Boy, The Bear... and Our Joey's been a very naughty boy

Can it really be TEN YEARS since the very first Polari? Although I wasn't actually at the earliest outings of "London's peerless gay literary salon", I first encountered the co-founders of the (now defunct) House of Homosexual Culture Rupert Smith and Paul Burston at a linked event that they hosted called Between the Covers (part of LGBT History Month) way back in February 2008, so I am probably the longest-serving audience member of them all...



But most deserving of any such "long service medal" is, of course, hostess-with-the-mostest Mr Burston. And it was with well-earned pride that he opened proceedings for this very significant anniversary.

Least said soonest mended where opening act Carey Wood is concerned, unfortunately. Suffice to say that one-line epigrams do not a "poet" make, in my book. Ahem.



Next up was the beamingly cheerful Mr Bisi Alimi - described on his website as “Angelic Troublemaker Incarnate” - to save the day. The first Nigerian to openly declare his sexuality on national television in 2004, the subsequent threats to his life led him to move to the UK as a refugee; happily he was granted British citizenship in December 2014. He has managed to carve quite a name for himself out of the experiences: he has been much in demand as a speaker, has written for The Guardian (among others), and remains a prominent gay rights activist and HIV/AIDS advocate.

The piece he read for us on Friday he admitted he only finished a week earlier. A marvellously pithy and often humorous exploration of "identity", Who Am I? was sublime. Here is Mr Alimi speaking about his experiences at a recent event hosted by The Daily Beast:

Quorum: Bisi Alimi

We might have wished for a little "light relief" after that, but, continuing with the "first-hand experiences" theme, our darling "Sexy Lexi" Gregory read a heart-stopping one (which, together with two more, he hopes to bring to the stage as a full production next year) - about an archetypal "Smalltown Boy" and his venture to London, his part in the world of gay rights activism through the tumultuous 80s, the impact of AIDS, and the state of the "gay world" today in the wake of the loss of a whole generation and their collective lived experiences.

It was only towards the end of his impressively-performed monologue that the penny dropped. This was Paul Burston's story. The audience was stunned, and Mr B was visibly choked-up as he adjourned the evening for a much-needed break.



Suitably refreshed, it was the turn of the eminent American writer and "theatre-maker" J Fergus Evans to take the stage, reading a currently unpublished piece that I believe might be called The Bear. With its subtly erotic tone - a young boy's hero-worship of/desire for the eponymous "Bear" (an assumed fling of the boy-narrator's mother) - the lavish descriptions of the "Bear"'s body, muscles, beard hair and even his scent caused quite a few ripples of thrill through the audience... not least our John-John, who came over all unnecessary...



However, as always, it fell to the ever-brilliant Mr Jonathan Harvey to steal the show! Revisiting his excellent debut novel All She Wants, the piece he read (hilariously, I might add) was a familiar one - the aftermath in the family of the protagonist Jodie, after her brother "Our Joey" was arrested in flagrante delicto in a park...

Mum didn't acknowledge my arrival, she just kept staring straight ahead, her eyes on the blank TV. "I suppose you knew." There was so much vitriol in her tone of voice. Like I'd made him gay just to spite them. Like I'd been laughing behind her back all this time.

"Mum?!" I was acting dumb. Something I was very convincing at as I'd had a lot of experience doing it for real.
"I suppose you knew Our Joey is a freak."
"He's not a freak."
Dad came bombasting in from the kitchen now.
"Oh, and I suppose you think it's normal to go shagging blokes in the great outdoors?"
Things must have been bad as Mum didn't tell him off for saying "shagging". Though she did shiver like someone had rubbed a piece of ice down her back.
"Well, no I don't," I agreed.

"Otterspool Prom!" cried Mum. "We used to take you there for picnics." He'd clearly sullied her memory of it forever.

"What was he actually arrested for?"
"Gross indecency in a public place," said Dad, and each syllable was punctuated with his disgust.
"He wasn't arrested; he was just cautioned. Coz of his age."
"I mean, Jeez, it's one thing being a gay; it's another thing doing it in a frigging park." Dad shook his head.
"Malcolm!" Oh, so she was getting her mojo back. "And it's not a park is it? It's a beauty spot!"

"A beauty spot?!" I laughed involuntarily and she gave me one of her looks. It brought me up short. Time to back-pedal. "Well, yes, it is a thing of beauty in... spot form." God, must do better!
Mum sighed.

"Oh well," I said, trying to lighten the load, "now we know why he's put his career ahead of girlfriends!"
Mum rolled her eyes. "Don't make this about you, Jodie."
Why shouldn't I? Just for one moment. Surely she could see that I was fighting Our Joey for the crown of Golden Child. Surely I'd be allowed some Brownie points now for being... well... normal!

"The shame of it, Jodie. We had to go to the police station to get him. And he's completely unapologetic."
"He did say sorry, Sandra."
"Well I didn't hear him."
"I mean, he did sound a bit snarky when he said it, like."

"Poor Joey," I said. Whoops, bad move. Mum jolted in her seat like she was in the electric chair.
"Poor Joey? Poor Joey? What about poor us, having to go to the cop shop to fetch him?!" Mum had been watching too many soaps and had picked up most of her phrases from them. She'd start calling me Treacle or Princess next, like Dirty Den. "The shame of it, Jodie. The utter shame. The way they were looking at us. Judging us." And she dissolved into tears, pulling a paper hankie from the sleeve of her cardigan and burying her face in it. Dad rubbed her shoulder. It was hardly the most affectionate of moves: he looked like he was rubbing something off a car-seat cover.

Just then we heard footsteps coming across the carpet, and suddenly Our Joey was stood in the doorway with a bag over his shoulder. Greg followed behind him.
"Don't be a knob, Joe," Greg was saying. Joe? He called him Joe? I'd not heard that before.

"Where d'you think you're going?" said Mum, sounding like all the things she hated: common, unbecoming and fishwife-esque.
"As far away from here as possible!" gasped Our Joey. He sounded like he was in an episode of Dynasty.
"You've got nowhere to go," I pointed out.
"Haven't I?" said Our Joey.

Utterly faboo - and even better if you can imagine it all being said in a camp Scouse accent. Tantalising half-truths were yet to emerge, however. Just why is Jodie's boyf Greg so protective of Our Joey... and why did he have mud on his shoes? Where is Our Joey headed? And [in another passage Mr Harvey read] why is Jodie's best mate Hayls such a drama-queen, pretending to be disabled in order to "identify" with her wheelchair-using boyfriend?



As the applause (not least from our "gang" including John-John, Paul, Bryanne, Simon, Wayne and Roland, and a packed house that included Paul's hubbie Paolo and his cousin Elaine) threatened to take the roof off the Weston Pavilion (in which we had been uncomfortably located for the occasion), so Mr B called all the readers back to the stage, and... (more's the pity) that was that for a rather splendid evening's entertainment.

The last outing of the year will be A Very Polari Christmas on 11th December - with readings from Tony Peake, Susie Boyt, William Parker, Ian Elmslie and, of course, VG Lee.

Can't wait!

We love Polari.

Priapic fascination, sword-swallowing, hypnotic behaviour, a cinaedus and a jar of jelly-beans

It's LGBT History Month again - and our first event of this estimable feast of historical insights was Polari on Tuesday. Of course.

Hostess-with-the-mostest at "London's peerless gay literary salon" Mr Paul Burston, in the absence of partner-in-crime VG Lee had seated us (John-John, Alex, Jayne and I) in the "Royal Box" (one of the front tables), leaving Paul, Bryanne, Simon and the rest to languish in the stalls... We waved, regally. Occasionally.



Anyhoo - opening this month's show was historian Jennifer Ingleheart, with her fascinating talk (technically, a mini-lecture, given that we had handouts and everything) Romosexuality. Cleverly weaving in references to both EM Forster's classic gay love story Maurice and the Victorian pornographic novel Teleny (purportedly written, at least in part, by Oscar Wilde), her point was to illustrate how, in spite of repeated scorn from scholars through the ages, it is in fact the Roman perspective on gay relationships rather than the idealised Greek which bears more relevance to our modern lives:

Areas in which specifically Roman rather than Greek sexual practices and ideologies intersect in significant ways with modern homosexualities include, in particular, Rome’s ‘Priapic’ fascination with well-endowed males, its greater concentration on and candour about sex, and its adherence to a less rigidly structured age-related model of same-sex relationships than that of Greek pedagogic pederasty; Roman texts contain more examples of men’s desire for and sex with other adult males, and have thus been read as authorizing same-sex relationships which involve partners defined by their same-sex attraction rather than their desire for the sexually other...

Despite its prominence in scholarly accounts of homosexuality, and its important role for early gay rights activists, it might be argued that Greek homosexuality does not play a comparable role in contemporary popular culture: its pederastic aspect provides a stumbling block for many gay men.

Excellent stuff - as I am sure fellow gay historian and regular host of History Month events at our beloved Petrie Museum, John J Johnson (in the Polari audience for the very first time) agreed.



Next to the stage was poet David Clarke, who read a selection of works from his collection Arc. From that anthology, this...

Sword-Swallowing for Beginners
Start by flicking the fleshy switch at the back
of your throat. When you’ve thrown up a dozen times,
you’ll find the impulse subsides – you can sit for hours
with a knuckle softly pressed inside your head,

watching rolling news of the war. Insert spoons,
knitting needles, a length of plumber’s pipe.
Stare at the ceiling, your jaw loose as a gorging
python’s, and try to conjure those shocks that pass

through the body, but leave it intact – the rasp of panicked
breath, the whump of a nearby explosion, a scream.
Or think of the soldier who coughed up a sleeping bullet,
shrapnel burrowing out of a human thigh

to freedom. By then you’ll be ready to take a blunted
bayonet, silver and slick with spit. Arrange
your body around that deathly spindle,
repeat to yourself – I am unharmed. Unharmed.

Slurp!



Closing the first half, our chum Chris Green - most famous as the delightful Hip Hop Music Hall legend Miss Ida Barr (who we like so much, my sister even had her play at her wedding reception!). One thing we never knew was his lifelong fascination with hypnotism, and it was from his new book on the history of the subject Overpowered! from which he read a few engrossing pieces before inviting questions from the audience. And speaking of engrossing, how about his newest stage creation, The Singing Hypnotist?

Christopher Green - The Singing Hypnotist

Suitably - ahem - mesmerised, it was time for a quick break for a fag and a top-up.

Our next reader, novelist Sarah Walton has dedicated herself to her art. To prepare for writing her debut Rufius [his caricature heads this blog], Miss Walton studied for a PhD and, in her words "immersed myself for five years in the everyday clutter of ancient Roman lives – from favourite recipes to remedies for genital warts." She introduced the book thus:

"Meet Rufius, flamboyant hedonist with perfect eyebrows. Rufius is a cinaedus, Latin for an effeminate buggeree. Far from the hard, muscular Roman ideal, cinaedi wore make-up, curled their hair, plucked and painted on their eyebrows. They could be thought of as an ancient Roman version of transgender. The laws that condemned these men to public burning became more severe under the Christian Emperors, but Rufius is having none of it. He’s not ashamed of wearing his mother’s cameo brooches on his toga, and he’s not going to stop talking with a lisp because of a bunch of jumped up bishops!"

And who better to portray the man himself but Chris Green (again), complete with all the mincing..?

"Fill my glass, boy."

What a drag. Avoid the pirates, Damasus had said. I could strangle him. Who’d have thought I’d be cast off to the East? I must be the only cinaedus exiled in the history of the Roman Empire. Exile’s a punishment reserved for senators and poets. Legally it’s a valid sentence for my kind, but no judge would bother... unless bribed by Damasus, the Arch-bloody-bishop of Rome. Curse you, Damasus. I’ll fleece you for this...

"Curse that Archbishop and his double chins – at least he has a few more than me." Men are tortured and beheaded without a trial for being in possession of heretical books. Exile and in league with that scoundrel! But what choice did I have when he waved the law at me … and the Emperor Gratian wrapped around his fat finger... "Need I remind you of the punishment for being a cinaedus, Rufius?" I recall the smell of the roses in the Lateran Basilica that day. Yellow rose petals, crushed in Damasus’ hand, fluttered through his fingers as he spat out the word cinaedus. His laughter at having me cornered still makes me shiver with rage. I’ll fleece him for this. If he thinks he’s getting fifty percent of the profits he’s misjudged me. The best way to hurt Damasus is in his precious purse.

"Pharos," shouts a deck hand. "Lighthouse. Starboard."

"Shut him up will you, dear?" I reach out to stroke the slave’s hair. "I can’t tip you, but I can give you a kiss." He lets me pet him, ready to jump away at the slightest angry twitch. He’ll receive a decent tip for putting up with my ill temper. Simple joys, like surprising slaves with the odd forbidden possession, are what keep my pulse throbbing these days.

Campness abounds. Utterly sublime.



Only a reader of the brilliance of our eternal favourite Mr Jonathan Harvey could follow that! Reading from his new novel The Secrets We Keep, he teased us with the mysterious tale of Natalie "...that woman, the one whose husband disappeared. It's made me quite famous. I just wish it was for something else. He went out five years ago for a pint of milk and never came back. So here I am with a daughter who blames me for all that's wrong in the world, a son trying his best to pick up the pieces and a gaggle of new neighbours who are over friendly, and incredibly nosy. Then I find a left luggage ticket in the pocket of one of his old coats and suddenly I'm thinking... What's if he's not dead? What if he's still out there somewhere?" Here's a snippet:

It was the late eighties, and lots of loft apartments and offices lay empty. And it was at a party in one of these that I met a gorgeous guy just a year or two younger than me who was addicted to jelly bean sweets. This was Danny. He claimed he’d seen me out and about around London, working the door of a club near Piccadilly Circus. I had no recollection of him. But before I could say so he’d offered me a sweet. The rest, as they say, is history.

For years he kept a jar of these sweets in the fridge. I used to bicker with him that there was no need, those sweets don’t really go off, but he said he liked the colour they brought to the fridge. They were his sweet of choice and he enjoyed the ritual of opening the door, pulling the nipple shaped lid off the jar in the door, and furtling around inside for a handful of the multicoloured beans. After he disappeared I didn’t dare move them from their home. If that fridge was jelly-bean-free it meant I had given up hope. He would return. He would furtle and eat again.

The left luggage ticket and the jelly beans themselves come back into the story as our heroine decides to use subterfuge to investigate more. On discovering that a woman had come to collect the "lost" parcel, she gets a job as her cleaner - and it's then she discovers a familiar jar in her fridge...

We were on the edge of our seats - but will need to read the book to find the true story.

This was a splendid evening (once again), and, despite being left wanting more - it was a brilliant way to start out LGBT History Month celebrations.



Our next outing for Polari on 9th March will be part of the South Bank's Women of the World festival, and features headliner Polari First Book Prize 2013 winner Mari Hannah, together with Jacquie Lawrence, Sophie Sparham and VA Fearon and (again) Sophie Ellis-Bextor's mum Janet Ellis. Can't wait!

Polari website

Yearning, Ormskirk, revenge, Lea Salonga at McDonalds and a Jelly Baby Jesus

As my regular reader will no doubt be aware, I am no fan of this "Festering Season". Xmas for me is merely a few days off work; and weeks of trying to avoid Mariah Carey and Slade at all costs, with the whole world going absolutely crazy in supermarkets, department stores and pubs all around - for no particular reason except the chance to get utterly bladdered and stressed, all planning to spend a day trapped in a house with relatives they would prefer never to see in their life.

But there is one event that is always worth looking forward to at this time of year - A Very Polari Xmas! And so it was that Paul, John-John, Little Tony, Jim, Wayne and I (and hordes of fantabulosa literati) headed to the South Bank on Friday for the last outing of "London's peerless gay literary salon" for 2014. Our ebullient host Mr Paul Burston played "Santa" for the evening, as he proudly introduced us to a very special range of literary talent, indeed...



Yrsa Daley-Ward is "a model, actor and writer of mixed West Indian and West African heritage", and certainly strikes a stunning figure on stage. The poems she read for us from her anthology Bone were gorgeous, too - words of yearning, of love, relationships and difficult family relationships - not least this one, Not The End Of the World:



Utterly enchanting stuff - Miss Daley-Ward is a force to be reckoned with! You can read more of her poetry and buy her book via her Tumblr site.



Following that impressive start was the multi-talented Miss Rosie Wilby - once famously described by Diva Magazine editor Jane Czyzselska as a "lesbian Eddie Izzard". In my opinion, she is far funnier than that...

We last saw her at Polari way back in 2012. More recently she has turned her talents to writing, and her soon-to-be-published memoir is already short-listed for the Mslexia memoir award. Tackling subjects as disparate as life in Ormskirk, coming out as a lesbian, being a 90s BritPop singer and the perils of comedy clubs, she had the audience in the palm of her hand. We loved her! Here she is on The Science of Sex:

Rosie Wilby - The Science of Sex

Speaking of favourites, the very lovely VG (Val)Lee is most definitely one of ours. Long-time Polari stalwart (both as performer and audience member), when it became clear that hers was going to be a special entertainment for our Xmas extravaganza, we were intrigued. When she arrived from the side of the stage dressed as the Virgin Mary, complete with "Jelly Baby Jesus" ("Famous people become representatives of famous brands; I am the new 'Face of Bassett's'", she said], we were cracking up...

After offering bowls of sweets around the room, we were treated to some snippets of Val's observations on life, the universe and the price of tea-towels. Here she is reading (as she did for us on Friday) her short story featuring regular character the fearsome Deirdre - Alpaca Moonlight:





That marvellous wordsmith Miss Susie Boyt - another Polari favourite - was up first after the "comfort break". Hers was a much weightier tale (perhaps a semi-autobiographical one, given the fact that she is the child of the controversial Lucien Freud, about whom much was written - not always complimentary - after his death), that of a man whose normally indifferent composure is driven to thoughts of revenge by the betrayal of his own father's reputation by his former friend and biographer.

It was fascinating to listen to her portray her main character's descent from insouciance to concern, as friends and colleagues start to offer him words of pity and his own period of mourning is rudely broken, into seething and almost uncontrollable rage. We were hooked!



But of course, there was a final treat in store - for every time Mr Jonathan Harvey heads the bill at Polari, we know it is going to be good. We were not disappointed, as he read (hilariously - as an eight-year-old girl) an extract from his newest novel:

I lived in Tring. Tring didn’t even sound like a proper place; it sounded like the noise the bell on my bicycle made. Sometimes I pronounced it with a mock French accent to make it sound more exotic. Tringue. Or sometimes Trinje. Some thought that was pretentious for an eight-year-old, but as Mummy said to the neighbours on more than one occasion, "She’s not exactly a conventional child"...

I was very excited about going to see Miss Saigon as I had borrowed the CD from the local library and knew all the words because I had sung along to them non-stop in my bedroom for two weeks, even though I wasn’t sure what half of them meant. Plus there was a lady in it called Lea Salonga, which had to be the best name in the whole of the universe. Mummy disagreed with me on this – she thought the best name was a crumbly old actress called Googie Withers – but undeterred, I would often practise signing "love, Lea Salonga" in my autograph book for hours. One day I was going to change my name to Holly Salonga and star in Miss Saigon, even though Mummy said that wasn’t a possibility because I wasn’t ‘oriental’ enough. She had said the same when the local amateur dramatic group were putting on The King and I and I wanted to be Tuptim.

My favourite song in the show we were going to see was ‘The Heat Is On In Saigon’. I had worked out a whole dance routine to it, using cushions, which I pretended were pom-poms, and lots of high kicks. I was beside myself with excitement that we were finally, finally going to experience it!

But first we were going to do something else incredibly exciting. After taking the train from Tring to London Euston, we were going to have a pre-theatre lunch at...McDonald’s!!!! I had never been before. We didn’t have one in Tring. They had them in Hemel Hempstead and Aylesbury and Leighton Buzzard, but not where we lived. I would get so jealous of other children in my class saying how brilliant their lives were because they’d had a shopping trip to Hemel and gorged on eighty-three Big Macs. I had never had that pleasure. Till now...

I bit into my Filet-O-Fish. Kasey Woodlands was right: it was like biting into heaven.

But then Mummy spoke...

Having found out she's actually adopted (that was what "Mummy" wanted to say), so her suspicions about her "boring" parents seemed true to Holly, and she - The Girl Who Just Appeared of the book's title - makes a decision to try and find her "real" parents. I bought the book (and Mr Harvey kindly signed it), and I can't wait to find out what happens next...

And with that - and all the joie de vivre of the final mingling, air-kissing and seasonal greetings to everyone we knew - the evening came to a close (followed, inevitably, by late drinkies at Halfway to Heaven).

A wonderful evening!

Unfortunately I will miss the first outing for Polari in the New Year on 30th January - featuring Stella Duffy heading the bill, with James Maker, Catherine Hall, John R Gordon and Persia West - as we fly to Spain at some ungodly hour the following day, which is a shame... However, there is plenty more to look forward to in 2015 including Christopher Fowler, Diriye Osman and the multi-award-winning Sarah Waters!

Polari

Fangs, Lyons Corner House, Kiwis, a baby-doll nightie and Karen Carpenter

Hallowe'en may be still a week away, but skull jewellery, vampire chic and jet-black outfits were de rigeur at "London's peerless gay literary salon" Polari last night.



And my word, was it a packed house! To accommodate the 150 people who had bought tickets for what is definitely becoming the "must attend" monthly event in the LGBT calendar, gone was our usual "cabaret-style" table set-up in favour of more chairs - and no wonder, given the treats in store...



Ebullient hostess-with-the-mostest Paul Burston had borrowed some vampire fangs for the occasion (but soon ditched them when he realised he couldn't actually speak!), and without further ado, introduced us to our readers for the evening.



Opening the show was the first of three newbies, Lyn Guest de Swarte, a spiritualist minister by day and author of steamy lesbian literature by night. She read for us not - as we might have thought, given the theme - anything related to spirits, ghosts or ghoulies, but rather the tale of the complicated relationship between two "working girls" who also happened to be lesbians, and the (hilarious) moment when the "femme" one decides to wear her new baby-doll nightie - to the club! A fun start indeed.



Our next author making her debut was Mo Foster, who was friends with the likes of William Burroughs, performed with punk bands, and has written plays for radio in her time. Her debut novel - quite late in life - is A Blues for Shindig. [The absorbing extract she chose was read for us by her young friend Nina]:

I want some action so I move myself down to the corner house, see if I can't catch up with BB. I need some halfway decent conversation after my day. I enjoy the benefits that Joe Lyons has brought to the West End. The Coventry Street Corner House is startling in the way it fits in and complements deviant life.

It is a centre for mysteries and petty criminals. All classes and sexes trawl here from time to time. Ponces home in on likely fodder, old lecherous men after young boys and young boys from the "Meat Rack" in Piccadilly in search of rich men. Prostitutes are officially barred, but who knows what a girl is doing with her bits? Gamblers will drop in on their way home and bevvy merchants take a breather between the club and the next watering hole in Covent Garden or Spitalfields. There is never a time when you can't drink in London, but it requires a bit of ingenuity. The Corner House is a coffee shop in the morning, a Palm Court in the afternoon, restaurant in the evening and then an all night café of a superior kind. People gird their loins, ready for the next alcoholic foray or for the next bit of villainy.

It is buzzing as usual. A few hyenas and jackals lurk, with larceny in their hearts and cups of tea in their hands. They give a nice frisson of excitement to the atmosphere. I now most of them at least by sight and nod a greeting, give out a mutter from the side of my mouth, an affinity of the bent. Now and then a copper will come in but he sticks out like a sore thumb. Grasses, however, abound.

I see Billy straight away. I watch him for a few moments. He is also called BB. A Bengal Lancer of style and one to be watched. He is thin, wiry, yet not skinny; his face is in motion all the time. Eyes watching out for angles and boys, mouth ready to spurt scalding sarcasm and sharp wit, chin set hard against the world. One tough little fucker. I like his smartness, his sexiness, his style. We two reckon we're a cut above the rest. We're right, too.

Utterly brilliant - and a perfect evocation of a lost underworld in 50s London.



Closing part one of the set-list, we had a welcome return for the charming Diriye Osman, who we first saw in December 2012. His reading, from his anthology Fairytales For Lost Children, was the gentle tale of a Somalian mother's placid acceptance of her daughter's lesbianism, in a soliloquy while casting her dreams into the ocean on paper and bits of rock:

I have spent my whole life living near the coast of Bosaaso, Somalia. I don’t know any other land. While the boat beat, those who are hungry for new homes in places like London and Luxembourg, risk their lives on cargo ships, I stand firm on this soil and I tell stories. I tell stories to my daughters about kings and warrior queens, freedom-fighters and poets. I tell these stories to remind my children and myself that Somalia is fertile with history and myth. And the only seed that needs watering is our imagination.

He reads (and writes) beautifully.



After a break for a fag and a trip to the bar, it was time for another newcomer to take the stand. From her blurb: "Robyn Vinten grew up in New Zealand. She came to London in the mid 80s and forgot to leave. She has had a number of short stories published over the years. Bruceville is her third novel, but the first under her real name."

Hers was a triptych of back-stories that revolved around one rather nasty homophobic incident in the young lives of the novel's protagonists; one that, judging by all the interwoven and carefully-drawn personalities to which she introduced us, was likely to affect the rest of their lives. Intensely intriguing; we were gripped!



Trust our headliner, the fantabulosa Jonathan Harvey to provide the appropriate level of light relief.

In his own inimitable Scouser way, the genius behind such faves as Beautiful Thing, Gimme Gimme Gimme and Beautiful People read an uproarious extract from his second book [his first, All She Wants, being such a triumph when we saw him in September last year] The Confusion of Karen Carpenter.

Focusing on the meandering insecurities of our heroine - forever cursed with an embarrassing name identical to a famous individual - he drew us once again into a soap-operatic scenario whereby the eponymous Karen has her humdrum life catapulted into a turmoil of emotion by the breakdown of a relationship. And it was absolutely brilliant! I can't wait to read it (if book #1 was anything to go by, this should have me hooting on the bus again).

Here is the man himself, talking about the book:

Jonathan Harvey - The Confusion of Karen Carpenter

Having gathered the readers once more to the stage for the customary ovation, that was that. I (and Paul and John-John and little Tony) had Mr Harvey kindly sign a copy of his opus, and we bade our farewells to the multifarious crowd that included the lovely Eve Ferret (whose forthcoming shows Ferret Up The Arts we are planning to see at Soho's Arts Theatre next month), the impressively uplifted) Lauren Henderson (aka Rebecca Chance), DJ Connell, William Parker, Helen Sandler, VG (Val) Lee), Bryanne McIntosh-Melville, Simon Reeves, Jayne Rogers, Anny Knight et al, and meandered off into the unseasonably warm wet night for further refreshment at Halfway to Heaven.





Another utterly stunning evening.

Roll on November's gala - the sixth anniversary of Polari and the announcement of the winner of the Polari First Book Prize 2013 - in the prestigious Purcell Room at the Southbank Centre, featuring award-winning author Charlotte Mendelson, poet Dean Atta, authors Rosie Garland and Patrick Flanery, special guest Helen Lederer (yay!) and singer Dee Chanelle.

J'adore Polari!

Faghags, Scouse wheelchairs, handbags, fruits and Mary Queen of Scots

Ange, John-John, little Tony, Craig and I excitedly trolled off to the South Bank last night for the (very welcome indeed) return of Paul Burston's "peerless gay literary salon" Polari - truly one of the highlights of our burgeoning social calendar! It seemed everyone was there - among the packed house were Lauren Henderson/Rebecca Chance, VG Lee, DJ Connell, Alex Hopkins, Helen Smith, Joe Storey-Scott, Peter Daniels, Max Wallis, and none other than "Mr S-Express" himself, Mark Moore!





Opening proceedings in customary glamorous gangster-style, bedecked in trilby, sunglasses and the obligatory electronic cigarette, Mr P wasted no time in introducing us to the first in a glittering line-up of readers.



The rather cute pride of Yorkshire Mr Adam Lowe - variously described as "a one-man transsexual, alien, flute girl theatre of insanity" and "the Lady Gaga of literature" - read for us a series of short poems from his extensive repertoire. And very good, they were too - especially this one, Fruit:

Adrian Lowe - Fruit

Not to be outdone, he was followed swiftly by a most glamorous apparition, in the form of Adrian Dalton (also known as Lola Lypsinka). An astonishing individual, Mr Dalton actually began life as Katherine (apparently lesbian) before having full gender realignment to become not just a man, but a gay man who likes to dress in drag as a woman!



Sensationalism aside, Adrian is an accomplished author - and read for us a passage from his very camp first novel Inside Lindsey's Handbag, a chatty little "soap opera" about the intertwining lives of a group of friends, including the brilliantly-named "Gladys Cox-Hardt - drag queen hooker and avant garde cabaret performer". It's fantabulosa, sweeties!



Concluding the trio of readers in the first half, we had the improbably-named Jesse Blackadder. Described as a "sweeping, imaginative and original tale of political intrigue, misplaced loyalty, secret passion and implacable revenge is based on real characters and events from the reign of Mary Queen of Scots... a breathtaking epic from a bold, fresh Australian voice," her novel The Raven’s Heart - from the passage she read - seems a fascinating tale.

Jesse Blackadder - The Raven's Heart

I'm intrigued.

Anyhow, it was time for a break and a breather before the "star turns" arrived!



How does one adequately sum up the phenomenon that is Miss Penny Arcade? Warhol acolyte, performance artist and legend of the gay underground of New York's Greenwich Village, she starred alongside Jackie Curtis in Femme Fatale and Quentin Crisp in his one-man performances, was instrumental in producing oral histories of the likes of Jayne County and beat poet Herbert Huncke, and is the star of her own revue Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore! (which was on in London recently). Phew!

Ms Arcade read for us some (rather emotionally fraught at times) pieces from her anthology/autobiography Bad Reputation, focusing on the comedy and tragedy of her early life as a teenage runaway, and the horribly sordid individuals she encountered. I shan't go into detail, but there are some real pervs out there...

We were in awe.


Photo: Krysphotos.co.uk

Here is a clip from her original - and magnificently camp - book launch (which featured surviving fellow Warhol-ites and such superstars as Debbie Harry and Deeee-lite's Lady Miss Kier...) Amazing stuff:

Penny Arcade - Bad Reputation book launch party

Our much anticipated star reader, however, was the marvellously talented Jonathan Harvey, multi-award-winning writer of such classics as Beautiful Thing (the play and the film), as well as the Pet Shop Boys musical Closer to Heaven and Corrie! The Musical. He also created sitcom Gimme Gimme Gimme for friend Kathy Burke, wrote the screenplay for one of our favourite TV programmes Beautiful People and has been on the Coronation Street writing team since 2004.

His debut novel All She Wants is basically the story (told in the first person) of Jodie, the "girl next door" who manages to get away from her suffocating life in Liverpool as a shelf-stacker in the local supermarket "Sandalan" to make it big on telly, and her adventures en route. In the chapter he read, we get to meet our protagonist's friends Hayls and Debs, and later on Jodie's hunky boyf Greg, her family and her errant gay brother ‘Our Joey’ who has just been arrested in flagrante delecto at the local "beauty spot". But this passage alone was enough to have the audience in stitches - you have to imagine it being read in the thickest, roughest Scouse accent:

Greg's cousin, who Hayls copped off with at the barn dance, was called Lotan O'Grady. He'd claimed to have ended up in a wheelchair after playing on the railway lines as a kid and getting himself electrocuted. Whereas most of us thought that made him a bit of a knob, Hayls thought he was some kind of hero, or the victim of a huge miscarriage of justice. After a few Lambrinis she had even been known to moot the idea of a conspiracy theory about the railway bosses using him to make an example of what happens when children break the rules and go against the state. God love Hayls, ever the political animal, if a slightly misguided one.

Then one day his mum had told Hayls that Lotan had always been in a wheelchair, so she dumped him because he'd lied to her.

"He can't always have been in a wheelchair, " I said, while Hayls cried on my shoulder in the stock lift.

"He has. His Ma said," she spluttered between breaks in the tears.

"Well, he can't have come out of the womb in one," I pointed out, which mollified her.

"But why did he lie to me?" she asked.

"I dunno," I said with a shrug.

"Maybe," said Debs, "he was just trying to sound more interesting."

"Oh yes." I ran with this. "Like that time you told everyone your aunty was Wincey Willis."

Hayls blushed, though it was hard to tell under all that fake tan.

A week later they were back together. Hayls was very quick to inform everyone that Lotan hadn't lied through choice, but that society had forced him to lie. None of us minded as Lotan was basically a decent guy.

Hayls thought he was the bee's knees and fussed over him like he was a new born baby, treating the wheelchair like an oversized pram. She was forever lifting him out of it onto our couch, then folding it up with two sharp slaps and a kick and moaning about the lack of wheelchair access - even at Sandalan. Honestly, she couldn't even pop round without answering the first "How are you?" with "Well, Jodie. I'm fine. But what I'm thinking about is... how would Lotan have made it up them stairs?" It was enough to drive you mad. We lived in a dormer bungalow, for God's sake! There was one step up from the drive to the front door, and she made it sound like we lived at the top of the Thirty-Nine Steps.

He was a hoot! We laughed till the tears ran down our faces...





On that high note, it was almost time to draw a close to proceedings, but Paul had one more very special announcement to make - and introduced one of the judging panel Suzi Feay to announce the shortlist for The Polari First Book Prize 2012! The contenders are:

• The Frost Fairs by John McCullough (Salt)
• Ey Up and Away by Vicky Ryder (Wandering Star Press)
• Becoming Nancy by Terry Ronald (Transworld)
• Exit Through The Wound by North Morgan (Limehouse Books)
• Modern Love by Max Wallis (Flap)

The winner (of a grand prize of £1000, courtesy of Square Peg Media), will be announced in "glitz and glamour at Polari's fifth birthday bash on 26th November", apparently.





This was a triumphal return, a fantastic evening - and one we'll remember for a long time!

Roll on the next outing for Polari on Monday 29 October 2012, with Jake Arnott, Marco Mancassola, Stella Duffy, Rebecca Chance, Andie Davidson and Charlie Bauer.

Never wear nylon bought for you by a blind person

"I wasn't always a slightly fey window dresser in glamorous New York; I was a slightly fey schoolboy in humdrum Reading."

And so begins the new BBC comedy Beautiful People, based on the memoirs of New York window dresser (sorry- Creative Director for Barneys store) Simon Doonan, as told through a series of flashbacks to his teenage years in the 90s.

We watched the first episode last night, and I am hooked! As one would expect from a piece that is steered by the supremely talented Jonathan Harvey (Beautiful Thing, Gimme Gimme Gimme), this is a whirlwind of weird and wonderful characters, fantasy sequences, camp, dysfunctional family life, grim working class estates, tarts, and did I mention - camp?!

As Hermione Eyre, writing in the Independent on Sunday, says, "It's like the Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, except camp. Screamingly, thrashingly, life-threateningly camp."

Simon and his best friend "Kylie"/Kyle escape their boring surroundings by "doing everything that normal lads do - pretending to be Canadian in public places, working out complicated dance routines to 80s floorfillers and doling out unwanted fashion advice to the proletariat of Reading ('Ditch the fringe love, it ain't working')."

Family life is eccentric to say the least - sassy Mum and (quite cute) Dad are drinkers and generally bonkers, sister Ashlene is a wannabe slut, and blind Auntie Hayley (Meera Syal) is a sort of hippy with a guide dog that is more blind than she is. Their sheer joy at drinking, brawling, bitching and theatricality - look out for their brilliant rendition of the "Egoiste" perfume advert - is hilarious. It's like The Royle Family with show tunes.

But it is the experiences of the two boys and their exuberant gayness that makes for the best comic moments. When young Simon is caught out stealing the local slag's dress and wearing it "to see what I'd look like", his parents are understandably concerned. "What did you say to him?" says Dad. "I said what any mother would", says Mum - "What's wrong with my bloody dresses?!"

In the words of this wise teenager: "Two fashion pointers: never wear nylon, and never wear nylon bought for you by a blind person".

Unmissable! - and the opening episode is on BBC iPlayer for the next week or so.

Here's a taster of a future programme in the series:

Beautiful People - Something Better Than This

Review in The Stage