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!

I used to get my pee-pee out in the shopping mall

"I didn’t have a choice about being gay – I mean I literally fell out of my mother’s womb and landed in her high heels!"

In her review in Beige magazine, the estimable Dame Vesta Bules describes Mr Leslie Jordan's new one man show Fruit Fly as "a series of reminiscences told in a delicious Southern accent that makes Blanche Devereaux sound like a trucker."

And indeed it was thus - as we settled into a bijou and largely curtained-off Leicester Square Theatre last night [it didn't seem to be sold out, more's the pity] for an intimate evening with the star of Sordid Lives and Will and Grace, a man who has variously been nick-named "the American Ronnie Corbett", "a pint-sized Alan Bennett lookalike" and (by the man himself) “The Gayest Man I Know”.



Opening the evening's entertainment was the latest big name in drag entertainment, The Supreme Fabulettes (Miss Vicki Vivacious, Miss Maddison Lee and Miss Vanilla Lush), protégés of Boy George and purveyors of some of the best vocal harmonies in the business. They glittered, they pouted, they captivated the audience with ther "tribute to the girl groups and singers" - the Supremes, Tina Turner, Adele, ShangriLas and so on. They truly lived up to their stage name (they even showed a spoof cartoon of them as superheroines!), and we loved them so much we vowed to catch one of their full shows some time.



The appetiser over, it was time for the full meal - as Mr Jordan hurled his petite form on to the stage, and dragged us, hilariously, through the history in Polaroids of his evolution from an obviously gay boy in deepest darkest Chattanooga, Tennessee to the showbiz treasure we know today. He painstakingly described cherished trips to the beauty parlour, where he absorbed the mannerisms and bitchiness of the Southern belles ("I wanted to be Miss Varlene: "I don't want my hair teased, I want it terrorised!", she said"), his precocious development as a growth-hormone-infused pre-teen “choirboy slut”, his trips, in drag, to the black jazz club "Miss Odessa's Good Time House", a venue his family and neighbours would have been horrified to know he was frequenting - all illuminating and deliciously salacious stuff.



However, the man is so adorable, so mischievous - “Don’t you dare judge me!” is just one of his winking asides to the audience as yet another shocking anecdote (gonorrhoea at thirteen, deciding to quit college and become a female impersonator at seventeen, drink-and-drug-fuelled twitching and general whore-dom becoming his hobbies) causes a collective sharp intake of breath - while he minces back and forth across the stage, that we instantly fell for him and his honesty.

The point of this extravagant, meandering out-pouring of fun, frolics and madness (and, inevitably, moments of sadness)? To explore the eternal question: "Do gay boys become like their mothers?" Although his relationship with his beloved Daddy and his struggles with his masculine concerns (football, fishing) are a source of almost tearful soul-searching - Mr Jordan always felt, especially after Daddy's early death, he was a "disappointment" to him - and his jealous relationship with his twin sisters ("That's...uh...I forget her name!") is a perfect illustration of where his penchant for attention-seeking came from ("I used to get my pee-pee out in the shopping mall to get attention!"), it is his enduring love for Momma Peggy-Ann that is real crux of the Leslie Jordan story.

"I thought that my mother was a fairy princess because she was so pretty."



From his upbringing as a tiny "sissy", playing with his treasured umbrella and trying on his sisters' petticoats ("Don't show your Daddy" became a mantra), through the tempestuous upsets of Leslie's teenage sexual revelations, through her remarriage that almost alienated her from her son and brought on her bizarre psychosomatic illnesses, it is Miss Peggy-Ann who emerges as the star of this particular show. Indeed, it is the fabulous tale of her triumphal appearance on an all-gay cruise ship as Leslie's guest, and her soft words on meeting two elderly lesbians in a fifty-year relationship, that is the final touching story he tells to end this magnificent evening - when asked on the cruise if she was a “fag hag” she said, “No, I’m a fruit fly”, and thus gave the show its title.

This was an absolutely top-notch evening, only slightly marred by some over-enthusiastically "participative" members of the audience who had to be told to shut up. I fell ever-so-slightly in love with Leslie Jordan...

Leslie Jordan: Fruit Fly is at The Leicester Square Theatre until 16th March 2013.

Here's a trailer for his last triumphal show (now on DVD) - My Trip Down the Pink Carpet:

Leslie Jordan - My Trip Down the Pink Carpet

Leslie Jordan official website

"I'm a hero wid coward's legs"

On Wednesday we trouped off to the Leicester Square Theatre to see the new stage adaptation of Spike Milligan's Puckoon.

This has always been a favourite book of mine. I was a great fan of the mad Mr Milligan from an early age - I loved his poetry collection A Little Pot-Boiler, his war memoirs (Hitler - My Part in his Downfall et al) and his truly off-the-wall comedy series Q (especially Q8 in 1978).

But Puckoon was something else! Spike's first (and only) novel, it is a madcap account of the chaos that ensues in a small Irish village - where the church clock has been stuck at twenty past four for ever, so at least it's right twice a day! - during the partition in 1924, when the new border between North and South cuts right through the community.

In the ensuing anarchy, Mr Milligan's bizarre collection of characters - Father Rudden, Foggerty, Rafferty, Mrs O'Toole, Dr Goldstein, Sgt. McGillikuddie and the rest - exercise what little remains of their wits in a series of plots to outfox the incompetent border patrols.

In this stage version, the mass of characters is played brilliantly by a cast of only six actors, whose quck-change transformations between roles is hilarious. Their obvious glee in playing up to the shambolic feel of the story - "bickering" over whose turn it is to play what character, leaving the narrator alone on stage on occasions having to play two roles, the nods to the audience - is a joy to behold.

Increasingly tangled webs unfold - booze is now thirty percent cheaper in the corner of the pub that is now in the North so everyone is crowded into a two-foot square space, the church is separated from its own graveyard so burials have to be clandestinely organised, and the IRA has spotted an opportunity to smuggle bombs - and throughout it all our lead protagonist Dan Milligan tries to avoid trouble, work, and everything else (including a runaway black panther from the local circus)...

"With a roof over his head he had ceased to work, living off his pension and his wits, both hopelessly inadequate."

"The Lord said: 'Six days shalt thou labour and on the seventh thou shalt rest.' He hadn't reckoned wid the unions. Forty-eight hours a week shalt thou labour and on the seventh thou shalt get double time. Ha. It was more profitable to be in the unions.

This is a show that appeals on many levels. People familiar with the story of Puckoon (like me) will be delighted at the way its anarchic qualities are brought to the stage; people not so familiar with it will nonetheless have a great and very entertaining night out; and the visual humour of the show means that even kids can enjoy it.

I highly recommend this show (currently only on a short run in Leicester Square) wherever it pops up!

Big Telly Theatre Company's Puckoon website



If you have never read the book, Puckoon is available on Amazon

It's behind you!!

We went along to the penultimate evening of the now traditional "adult panto" at Leicester Square Theatre - Snow White and the Seven Poofs. With a title as unsubtle as that our gang went well prepared for an evening of filth, innuendo, campery and rowdiness.

What we were not prepared for was the audience! They were dreadful, and at times the players themselves were visibly angry as time and again "audience participation" descended into anarchy, as a couple of drunken women were determined to shout and talk over the punchlines.

Despite the level of tension that created (and the condensation dripping of the ceiling that kept raining icy blobs all down our row), we still had a rip-roaring time. The jokes are (as ever) obvious, random interpretations of familiar pop hits provided the hand-clapping interludes, and the cast remained brilliant through the whole thing.

Halfway to Heaven's very own Drag Idol winner the fab Tanya Hyde was the squeaky-voiced "virginal" Snow White, abused by all and sundry (including the filthy slag Hilda and her muff) in her quest to marry Prince Donkey-Dick [I said it wasn't subtle!] - and was consummately professional in holding it all together. West End drag stalwart Bette Rinse played the most evil of evil queens with a vehemence brought on partly by nature(!) and partly by the audience, and the show's creator Simon Gross was suitably vile as Hilda.



And what of the "Poofs"? The rest of the cast were excellent, each called upon to play several roles in the performance - in particular Paul Shears as the Magic Mirror (every time he shouted "All right me lovers?" in his best Plymouth accent, we all had to shout "Fuck off, mirror!") and Victoria Hopkins as the Butch Dyke, who explained to the straights in the audience such gay mysteries as "cottage", "queen" and "fish"...

Some of the scenes were truly hilarious. I almost wet myself laughing at the array of dreadful costumes assembled on stage for the "woodland animals" scene - I don't recall Tigger, two gorillas, a kangaroo and a grotesque giant robin in the original - and when Snow White killed the "vermin" (“Can someone get this fucking fox out of here?”) I nearly fell off my chair. The ensemble number (traditional panto fare) that involved the whole cast imagining what job they would do if they weren't working for the Queen - "A nurse I would be - pants down, needle out, it's just a little prick", "A postman I would be - lick it once, lick it twice, stick it in the box" etc - each with different actions, was superb!

With a sing-a-long finale and the traditionally incomprehensible pairings-off in the closing wedding scene, it was truly wild and brilliant evening's entertainment - in the true spirit of panto. Definitely not for the kids or your gran! As the opening announcer said (sounding suspiciously like Dame Judi), the easily offended should “kindly fuck off” and leave the rest of us to it...

A cathedral of a voice

"One day he will open his mouth and a cathedral will fall out"

Thanks to our friend Maria, I was invited (gratis) to see the very wonderful Mr David McAlmont live on stage at the Leicester Square Theatre last night.

What a brilliant evening it was too! I have always loved Mr McAlmont's soulful camp three-octave voice, his diverse collaborations - including with Bernard Butler (ex Suede), Bond theme composer David Arnold, and with esoteric modernist Michael Nyman - and his flamboyant gayness in an often homophobic black music world.

He arrived on stage with an air of nervousness, despite his fantabulosa feathers, fouff and faff outfit and dripping diamanté! He admitted to having had several sleepless nights in preparation for this event (it didn't help that this was being recorded for CD and DVD), and had caught a cold in the process. True, his voice was a little "cracked" in the opening numbers.

But like all true divas he soon got carried away by the performance, and by the time he had finished his classic rendition of Diamonds Are Forever he had regained his powers and had the audience enraptured! Then, in an innovative twist he invited our MySpace mate (and chief Almondette) Ange to become "Pythoness, Priestess of Delphi" for the evening - basically shaking a pair of dice to see which "who, what, when, where, how" questions were invited from the audience between each song... All you could hear from Ange for the rest of the evening was clickety-clack :-)

Classic followed classic - such as Blues in the Night, Unworthy and a brilliant version of the George Harrison song Isn't It A Pity?, made famous by Nina Simone. Some songs were dedicated to friends and acquaintances, including the poignantly beautiful I'm a Better Man (For Having Loved You), which he sang for a couple who are coping with the wife's diagnosis of breast cancer.

He clambered into the audience itself to sing a breathtaking slowed-down version of Dame Shirley's Never, Never, Never for the mum of another friend, and the sheer emotion of the moment brought a lump to the throat.

David McAlmont - Never Never Never

But even such a skilled balladeer as David can't keep the tone slow and lush for too long, and so the moment arrived for him to introduce his very special guest to the stage, the aforementioned Bernard Butler! And so came the more guitar-driven, sometimes upbeat hits - You Do, Yes, Falling and the rest.

McAlmont & Butler - You Do

McAlmont & Butler - Yes

McAlmont & Butler - Falling

The audience loved it (two standing ovations!), John-John loved it, Maria loved it, I loved it - With or without Bernard, ballads or bop, Mr McAlmont gave a spectacular performance, and one I am very glad I had the opportunity to see!

David McAlmont on MySpace

"It's behind you!"

We went to see the "adult panto" Sinderfella in the tiny basement of Leicester Square Theatre last night. It was possibly the best panto I have seen in years. No special effects, no pretension - and best of all, no kids allowed!

Starring Bette Rinse, drag queen extraordinaire, the story is basically that of Cinderella but with a twist, in that the leading lady has walked out to work in a shop in Oxford Street and the drag hostess gamely steps in to take the lead...

"Big Brother's Kat Cookie Monster" (no idea - never watched it) with her thick Thai accent was completely incomprehensible at times as the Fairy Godmother, but with a little help and translation from Miss Rinse we got the gist of her magic spell - basically instead of pumpkins she transforms the falsies into real boobs and lo and behold, a drag queen in her fifties really is a virginal scullery maid. [This is panto, remember!]

Subtle, this ain't - the Handsome Prince Donkey Dick spends the entire show with a very impressive dildo stuffed into his tights, and even Cinders' three wishes come true courtesy of rubbing a realistic Jeff Stryker member. The jokes were obvious, the songs were all versions of chart hits, the banter was filthy - and we loved every minute of it!

The players were all anarchic and very entertaining - not least the genuinely horrifying Ugly Sisters (the play's author Simon Gross and Adam Wooley), and Harry Dyer goofing it up as Buttons, whose unrequited love for Cinders/Bette is confusing to say the least. As for the gorgeous dancing boys - they made the evening go with a bit of a frisson!

A great evening out (despite the ridiculously steep bar prices), and it completed the "festering season" traditional entertainments off nicely.

Just New Year's Eve to go, and it'll all be over for another year. "Oh yes it will. Oh no it won't" ad infinitum...

Your own, your very own...

Before going to the Chris and Richard's wedding reception last night [which was a fab evening - friends, evening wear, posh poofs, drunken uncles, canapés and Ceilidh - a typical society wedding], we had a visit from our mother, whose birthday it was last week. As a treat my sister and I took her to the Players Theatre Victorian Music Hall at Leicester Square Theatre. It was excellent, as always!

Starting with a celebration of St Andrew's Day we were "entertained" by a bagpipe player, but we forgave them this as the show proper began. Opening (of course with the MC and his traditional "patter"), we had a full two hours of top class entertainment, including Players stalwart (and former Crackerjack regular) Jan Hunt, a tap-dancing tribute to Hollywood classic musicals, a portly comedienne from Wolverhampton (who was hilarious), a one-man interpretation of a Victorian melodrama (in which the player played all the parts, villain, girl in peril, mother and policeman), a cruise ship singer who tackled Nessun Dorma (and didn't quite make it), a chorus line of young lasses from drama school, and a lovely trilling singer of sentimental arias.

Mother loved it, we loved it, and for a couple of hours on a miserable Saturday afternoon we were transported back to the halcyon era when the marvellous Good Old Days was essential viewing on the BBC. I wish they'd bring this show back! And why-oh-why has the BBC not put their back catalogue of this series out on DVD? They've probably destroyed the archive I expect. To remind everyone how remarkable this type of entertainment really is, here's a fuzzy old clip of an original programme from 1974...

The Good Old Days

And here is a very inventive piece called Let's All Go To The Music Hall by a chap who goes by the name of "Ukulele Eric"...

Ukulele Eric - Let's All Go to the Music Hall

Players Theatre

"Fifty crept up on me like a Catholic priest in a lavatory."

"I’m 50. The shame of it. Too old for Alcopops, too young for Midsomer Murders. This will be an intimate evening – a celebration, no less, of my twenty-five years in the camp spotlight: how I got there and why I refuse to leave."

We went to see Julian Clary's final show in his Lord of the Mince tour last night at the Leicester Square Theatre (“I did Two Gentlemen of Verona here in 1984. They said they were from Verona, anyway”). Celebrating his 50th birthday and 25 years in showbiz, Mr Clary has lost none of his magic touch. "I’m a national trinket," he said - and he's not wrong!

We were in hysterics at times as Julian led us through his achievements over those five decades, including bizarre boyfriends, moving to the country, his best-selling books, caravanning ("I'm really only happy when I'm bent double in a small space washing my hair in recycled urine") and Strictly Come Dancing ("As soon as I pressed my Fred against her Ginger, I could smell triumph"). Oh, and fisting, of course!

Reflecting on his boyfriend’s flaky-skinned eczema, he described life as “like living with a gecko”. Nothing is safe from his sardonic observations - the audience, Dale Winton, Exeter ("shithole"), heterosexuals, his neighbour Paul O'Grady (Julian's impression of him was genius!), the restaurant next door ("I looked through the window and saw a mouse sucking a Rennie") - and he delivers every put down with his customary knowing look, eyebrow raised and deadpan tone of voice. Brilliantly done, and very funny!

The second half is devoted to even more audience humiliation, as Julian reveals his new-found psychic skills ("Madam, I'm getting spiritual vibes that next week you will dye your hair blonde, and it will be a disaster. Oh, sorry, that must have been last week.") Dragging two unsuspecting queens up onto the stage, he subjected them to some mortifying "psychic experiments" including blindfold taste tests and a psychokinetic experiment with a teddy bear. All done in the best possible taste, of course!

As a finale, he brought his dogs Valerie and Jism (!) on stage, much to the delight of the punters. But it wouldn't be Julian without one of his half-spoken "songs", and his closing number You Probably Are Gay was wonderful. Quite rightly, he received a thunderous ovation!

Madame Acarti went along not knowing quite what to expect, and was in fits of laughter all the way through. Last night proved (if any proof were necessary) that Julian Clary is one of the funniest comedians around, and I hope UK television wakes up to the fact and we get more of him on our screens again...

Here's Julian and Paul O'Grady camping it up on the latter's show this year...

Julian Clary on The Paul O'Grady Show

Julian Clary offical website