Sex under the pier, whose sperm is it anyway?, Olympic voguing, an underwater breakdown and boogying in British sign-language

John-John, "Auntie Paul" and I gathered, with regulars Emma and Toby, Paulo and (not-so-regular any more) "Little Tony" at the historic and revered Heaven gay nightclub for another edifying evening at "London's peerless gay literary salon" Polari on Thursday, the first such event of 2024. Once again, we were in for a treat.

Our host, the faboo Paul Burston was sparkling from top-to-toe, as befits such an occasion, as he proudly opened the show...

One of my favourite authors/readers at Polari, Neil Bartlett opened proceedings with a salacious extract from his 2014 novel The Disappearance Boy [set in the early 1950s], in which [disabled by polio] magician's assistant "Reggie Rainbow" [whose job it is to help make the assistants "disappear", hence the title] discovers a secretive, hidden gay world of wonder, and sex, under the pier at Brighton.

Been there, done that - and absolutely loved the book! Remarkably, it has only recently been published in paperback.

Polari Prize winner in 2020, Kate Davies was up next, with a brand new delight for us - reading from her new novel Nuclear Family, which is out in February. A salutary tale of what happens when a loving daughter Lena decides to buy a DNA test for her dad, only to be completely devastated by the news that she and her twin sister were conceived from donor sperm. Lena goes off the deep end in her obsession with who her "real" father is, while her sibling Alison more-or-less takes it in her stride, trying as she is to conceive a child with her wife using the exact same method.

In the (very funny) extract Kate read for us, the couple's attempt to broach the subject of donation with their friends, a gay couple, while at a dinner date, doesn't actually go quite as planned...

With the laughter still ringing in our ears, it was time for a complete contrast...

...as it was the turn of our friend and Polari stalwart Alexis Gregory to explode onto the stage, the force of nature that he is - he has a new show on at the King's Head theatre in Islington, FutureQueer, described thus: "...part theatre, stand-up comedy, DIY queer lecture, pop-culture commentary, and meditation on disco music as a metaphor for queer survival." It certainly was a bit of a mind-fuck! Set in the year 2071, he conjured up for us a fantastical future where everything is "gay-gay-gay"; a world where voguing and lip-syncing are categories in the Olympics, the national anthem is by Dannii Minogue, there's a statue to George Michael on Hampstead Heath, and the goddess of Disco herself Donna Summer [NB 2071 happens to be exactly as far into the future from today as Miss Summer's I Feel Love is in the past] dominates society.

Who better to enter such a fantabulosa world with than "Sexy Lexi" ?!

We needed a fag and a top-up after all that...

After the break, our final reader was 2023's Polari Prize winner Julia Armfield, with a reading from her mysterious new work Our Wives Under The Sea.

As the review in The Guardian put it:

It is told in two alternating voices: Leah’s, in the form of a journal she kept on a deep-sea dive that stranded her and two others in undersea darkness; and that of her wife, Miri, who presumed her lost, after Leah’s return. The tale travels, with Leah and the submarine, down through the missing six months and the ocean’s vertical zones (sunlight, twilight, midnight, abyssal, hadal), while on land Miri tracks how their relationship is changing in the present.

From the extract she read, it would appear that those changes are even more mysterious than anyone could predict... Chilling stuff!

Our evening was not over yet, however - as a real feast of frolics was in store, with the arrival on stage of the ever-joyful David McAlmont with HiFi Sean!

They played a blinder of a set, and got everybody (including the lovely BSL interpreter Paul Michaels) in a dancing mood! Here's a jolly one:

Hifi Sean & David McAlmont - All In The World

STOP PRESS: And then, there's this!

Hifi Sean & David McAlmont live at Polari in Heaven - Celebrate

Now, that's the way to finish an evening!

We love Polari! Roll on the next one...

A mattress of one's own, literary Lesbians, popperbating - we're gonna do it anyway!

Braving the cold and drear that this time of year always brings, John-John and I trolled into town on Wednesday for the last shout of "London's premier gay literary salon", Polari, in 2021 - the culmination of its fourteenth year, indeed. Our hostess-with-the-mostest Paul Burston took to the stage at Heaven nightclub to the strains of I'm Still Here by Eartha Kitt. A tribute to Stephen Sondheim, but also by way of an introduction to his personal recollections - on this World AIDS Day - of the struggles he and fellow campaigners of the early '80s encountered, in those terrifying early days, to get recognition and viable medical assistance for gay men in the "firing line" of that pandemic; and with the huge emotional strain of all the losses we all suffered.

Read the full piece at Paul's blog.

Taking up the baton the marvellous Neil Bartlett, a genius of the literary world and a Polari stalwart, read an extract from his recently published collection of tales (all stories based upon his imagined histories of various places he has lived) Address Book - a hugely emotional and touching recollection of a grimly homophobic era, revolving around the sheer joy and freedom a "queer dancing-queen” in 1987 feels when he finally gets “a room of one’s fucking own” and, braving all the public hatred, abuse, stigma and discrimination he endures on a daily basis, goes to buy his own, his very first, mattress. It sounds mundane, but by gawd, the tears were rolling down my face. I love Neil Bartlett's writing!

Here he is, talking about the book and how he came to write it.

Neil Bartlett talks about Address Book

Purchase your copy from Inkandescent Books.

It is always a joy to hear our next reader Diana Souhami - even if this time round, she read from prompt cards throughout - with her encyclopaedic knowledge of the lives and loves of historial Lesbians. She read for us a synopsis of her magnum opus No Modernism Without Lesbians, as here:

Polari presents Diana Souhami

Weirdly, other than our readers, Paul B and the ever-lovely Justin David, there were no regulars with which to shmooze during the break, so with a top-up of booze and a fag - time for part 2...

A former journalist, writer Adam Zmith recently produced his first book Deep Sniff, an in-depth history of Amyl Nitrite - better known as poppers - and its interwoven connection with the LGBT community. It's a convoluted tale, indeed! None other than the brilliant fellow author Jonathan Kemp reviewed it for Queer Guru, so I'll let him take up the tale:

From their humble beginnings in mid-nineteenth century, introduced as a source of relief for angina sufferers, to their ubiquity within gay life, from dancefloor to bedroom, Zmith recounts it all with lusty relish. He introduces us to Antoine Jérome Balard of Montpellier, France, the man who started it all when, in 1844, he passed nitrogen fumes through amyl alcohol and discovered that inhaling the resulting pungent vapour caused his face to redden and dilated his blood vessels, lowering his blood pressure. At the time, he couldn’t think what earthly use it would be, but twenty-two years later, a young Scotsman, Thomas Lauder Brunton, used the vapour to relieve his angina patients’ pain. Pretty soon, it was being sold in small glass vials that you ‘popped’ to release the fumes.

Recounting poppers’ history is interesting enough in itself but understanding their place in history is where Zmith excels. Using episodes in the history of poppers, he explores, imagines and extrapolates on, among other things, gender norms, popperbators, science fiction, and the AIDS crisis. He adorns his book with gems of stories – like that of Roland Chemist on Praed Street near Paddington Station, London, who sold 185,700 ampoules of amyl nitrite in one year, compared to Boots Chemists in Piccadilly who sold around 288 ampoules. We learn about W. Jay Freezer the man who marketed poppers to gay men specifically – establishing the magazine Drummer to serve as a platform for advertising the product to its hedonistic readers. He dreamed of poppers being sold alongside shampoo and nail polish remover in supermarkets. Then, of course, AIDS hit, and anything associated with pleasure-seeking were shunned. For a while, amyl nitrite was considered the cause of what became known as HIV.

There’s a rich diversity of ideas, facts and musings here. Alongside an account of popperbating and a section on queer utopias as imagined by sci-fi writers, there’s a chapter on the police raids in 1986/87 on London’s iconic queer heritage public house, The Royal Vauxhall Tavern, to seize the poppers being sold there. The seven uniformed officers wore unnecessary surgical gloves. In protest at their provocative prophylactics, Lily Savage, who was on stage at the time, gave the Old Bill a Scouse mouthful and told the crowd to riot, earning herself a night in the cell.

Fascinating stuff - I need a sniff now!

Then, in a flurry of chiffon and attitude - it was time for our "headline act"...

Son of a Tutu, for it is he/she/they, is an award-winning drag queen and LGBTQ+ activist (who also landed a role in the film version of Everyone's Talking About Jamie). She chose her songs carefully for the occasion - recalling Neil Bartlett's piece about gay men being verbally abused by straight strangers, she said she needed to sing Sweet Caroline "to reclaim it from the football thugs".

And, reminding the audience of the fact that Labi Siffre's anthem of resistance was not, in fact, to do with racial discrimination (despite it being adopted by anti-apartheid campaigners), but about his own life experiences as a gay man, this:

Son of a Tutu - Something Inside So Strong

​Not a dry eye in the house.

And, with the customary curtain call, that was it for the year...

We look forward to the treats in store in 2022 - we love Polari!

Heaven, I'm in Heaven

From the venue's gigs website:

London clubland in the 1970s was a fairly dismal place. It compared very unfavourably with New York and many European cities and the concept of ‘clubbing’ as we understand the term today simply did not exist.

To that end a group of innovative characters got together and took over the site that was a run down old roller disco called Global Village and in December 1979 Heaven opened its doors for the first time. It was timed perfectly. Six months earlier Mrs Thatcher had been elected and an era began that saw unemployment rise to levels last seen in the 1930s. The sense of decay and gloom was palpable. The ‘Swinging London’ of the 1960s a distant memory. London needed a splash of colour and flamboyance to counter-balance the otherwise grey monochrome that was the reality of the British capital.

Heaven was the brainchild of Jeremy Norman, responsible for the Embassy Club, which was seen as the nearest London had to Studio 54 in New York. Heaven quickly became the focal point for what had until then been a fairly understated gay scene that hitherto had been based in small hidden cellar bars or pub discos. When Heaven opened its doors in 1979 only twelve years had elapsed since the decriminalisation of homosexuality, and at the time there was still a lot of overt prejudice against gay men and lesbians. Heaven bore the brunt of some of that intolerance and in those days was regarded warily by the authorities.

It did however establish itself as a club venue that constantly re-invented itself... There were periodic live shows featuring bands who fancied playing an off the wall venue rather than the usual spit and sawdust live music venues. New Order played their first London show here in 1981. Bauhaus were filmed at Heaven in 1982 performing their classic Bela Lugosi’s Dead, the footage for which was used in the Catherine Deneuve/David Bowie film The Hunger – one of the original ‘sexy vampire’ movies.

In 2008 MAMA Group went into partnership with G-A-Y founder Jeremy Joseph and purchased Heaven... Jeremy took over sole ownership of Heaven in 2013. G-A-Y was moved over from the Astoria, which was in the process of closing down, and this now occupies the main club sessions on a Thursday, Friday and Saturday and has featured notable performances since that time by Adele, Lady Gaga, Jessie J, Miley Cyrus, One Direction amongst many others.

The rest, as they say, is history.

And so it was that on Wednesday night a little gang of us joined a packed room of old regulars, together with hordes of new faces, in that legendary cavernous under-the-arches venue for a very special 40th anniversary event indeed - as "London's peerless gay literary salon" Polari joined the party. And it was spectacular!



Our host Mr Paul Burston was as proud as a new dad to be up there on the glittering stage that has previously played host to Kylie, Madonna and Britney, as he paid tribute to his experiences of first coming to Heaven as an out-of-town teen - then it was time for our first guest...



Our chum "Sexy Lexi" Alexis Gregory has come a long way since we first knew him as bar whore at BarCode Soho. Playwright, award-winning writer, and - above all, as his performance here tonight ably demonstrated [notwithstanding the magnificence of his "immersive" play Slap that we went to see back in 2015] - an accomplished actor. His latest play Riot Act is actually a completely verbatim portrayal of the stories told by three gay pioneers [whom Lexi personally interviewed]: our very own Mr Burston (who was an activist in the UK in the days of ACT-UP); Miss Lavinia Co-op, drag queen with Bette Bourne's Bloolips troupe and veteran of the 1970s Gay Lib movement; and [the character he inhabited this evening] Michael-Anthony Nozzi, possibly the last survivor of the Stonewall riots in New York [which happened 50 years ago this year].

As Trinidad and Tobago gay activist Jason Jones said in his review:

The Stonewall Riots of June 1969 are fairly well documented, but this first-hand and deeply personal account is full of subtle details and nuances that only someone who was truly present at that historic moment can capture and express.

Nozzi’s account is deeply profound as it captures the essence of what transpired nearly fifty years ago, and what the sparks were that lit the flames that night (Judy Garland RIP); it echoes today in a rather poignant manner as we see Pride celebrations across the world being mired in identity politics, infighting, commercialisation and seemingly losing relevance as to the original intended purposes.

When Alexis Gregory’s atmospheric raspy vocal of Nozzi talks about the blood and gore being everywhere, that even the coins from 'the wishing well', a glass jar that was inside of The Stonewall Inn to collect donations - which a drag queen smashed over a policeman’s head that night of the raid - had spilled out and were stuck to the pavement with blood, you are left wondering: what has LGBT activism become today, and are we too docile in fighting for our equal rights?

And so it was - I was on occasions left gasping for breath as Lexi brought this whole shocking and ground-breaking scenario to life, with the impeccably conveyed world-weary drawl of a New York resident remembering for the first time in years how empowering - if terrifying - the riot was. He still recalled: "You know what's strange, I felt safer on the night of the riots, on the sidewalk in front of Stonewall, than I did in my own home town."

Shocking yet fabulous stuff. Here's Lexi himself talking about the play:

Alexis Gregory talks about Riot Act

Our host Paul himself faced some effort to follow that! He did so admirably, of course, with an extract from his own latest novel, the psychological thriller The Closer I Get - a tantalising snippet of the tale of best-selling author Tom and his coldly obsessive "stalker" Evie; he set the scene at a stage where the obsession seems apparently to have taken them as far as the courts, yet Evie refuses to let it be:

Listening to all the legal arguments today, I was struck by a number of things. One: what a mess we've made for ourselves! Two: what clever bastards these lawyers are. They twist everything, don't they? And three: wouldn't it be easier if we just sorted this our between ourselves?

I know we tried before, that night I waited for you outside your flat. Maybe if you'd invited me in instead of freaking out and calling the police, we could have resolved our differences there and then. We still could. It's not too late. Why make is harder than it needs to be? I'm willing to forgive and forget if you are.

Promise me you'll think about it. Sleep on it and email me in the morning. And if I don't hear from you, at least I'll know where I stand.

And I'll see you tomorrow in court.

Yours,

Evie

Chilling.



An evening of such impressive stature wouldn't be complete, of course, if one didn't get "Varjacked"! And by that, I of course refer to the one-woman whirlwind that is Ms Paula Varjack, lesbian-bisexual poetry's answer to Beyoncé...

We first saw the divine Ms V yonks ago, in 2011 in fact. She stunned us then, and she stunned us again, with her vehemently defiant readings of classics such as Dear Straight Girl [follow the link earlier in this paragraph for that] and more from her vast catalogue, plus this [or at least a brief extract thereof, courtesy of our host Paul] - a sublime musical monologue/paean to her own first encounter with our host venue, created especially for the evening:

Paula Varjack - I'm in Heaven

We love being Varjacked.



We've enjoyed the complete lunacy of the "Writer-in-Residence at the 197 bus stop on Croydon Road in Penge" Barbara Brownskirt many times before, of course. However, when accompanied/introduced by her very own cagoule-clad dance combo "The Brownskirts", we were in fits of laughter! Suitably fired-up by this Terpsichorean spectacle, we lapped up Ms B's delightfully tacky odes including Fabergé Eggs (Between Your Legs), Cruelty-Free Shoes and, of course, the crowd-pleaser Judi Judi Judi Judi Judi Judi Judi Dench!

Ms Karen McLeod, the woman behind the brown skirt, is an absolute genius...



Not to be outdone, the living icon that is Neil Bartlett, OBE - acclaimed writer, theatrical impresario and director, gay rights campaigner and utterly mesmerising thesp - took to the stage of the venue that was at one time his "second home". His monologue, all about his discovery of Hi-NRG pop, poppers and sleazy sex - with three men, in a cubicle, in the club [nah, Ive never done that; much] - all courtesy of Heaven in its heyday, led to a most bizarre conclusion.

Reciting, as Mr Bartlett did, the lyrics as if they were profound poetry, the audience found themselves singing along as one to (ahem)... Miss Belinda Carlisle!

Ooh, baby, do you know what that's worth?
Ooh heaven is a place on earth
They say in heaven love comes first
We'll make heaven a place on earth
Ooh heaven is a place on earth

When I feel alone
I reach for you
And you bring me home
When I'm lost at sea
I hear your voice
And it carries me

In this world we're just beginning
To understand the miracle of living
Baby I was afraid before
But I'm not afraid anymore

I will look at that song in a very different light forever more.



Finally, headlining an evening of poetry, prose, drama, monologues and dance - a singer extraordinaire! Ms Adele Anderson (for it is she) is another beloved artiste here at Dolores Delargo Towers - we've seen her several times as a founding member of Fascinating Aida, and as a part of the ensemble of artistes hosted by the irrepressible Eve Ferret in her show. Now it was her turn as a solo act to provide the thrills...

She certainly didn't disappoint! Opening with a faboo "German" number - all "Marlene Dietrich-esque" growling vocals and and playing upon the homophone "Weill/Vile" - Adele just owned that stage for the next twenty minutes or so. Here's a clip [courtesy of Paul B again]:

Adele Anderson - That Old Kurt Weill Song (Ray Jessel)

Her takes on Tell Laura I Love Her, a number with which we are unfamiliar which I think was called Baby Let Me Wear Your Clothes, and - in particular - her stalker-ish take on the otherwise camp classic I Who Have Nothing were all fantastic. The audience gave her a much-deserved standing ovation.



This was just as well, as, following the customary "curtain call", the club's minions set to work collecting the chairs, and the DJ Dave Cross ascended to the stage...

...as he was setting up, we went outside en masse for a fag - and just so happened to bump into Our Sal, dragged her into the club, and we all had a bop for the rest of the evening to a load of 70s-80s-90s anthems. I ached. Oh, I ached...



It was one of the most fantabulosa nights out I can recall in a long time.

Our next outing for Polari looks particularly interesting, as the headliner is activist, writer and film producer (Milk) Dustin Lance Black. I am hoping his hubby, and avowed lust object of mine, Tom Daley turns up - I have my tickets. And clean knickers ready... Also appearing are authors Collin Kelley, Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott and Angela Chadwick.

We love Polari!

Berlin blackmail, corpses, temps, obsessive painters, a mysterious boy and the lesbian Bermuda Triangle

[Photo Justin David]

It was a somewhat depleted "gang" at this month's Polari - no Paul, John-John, Jim, Emma or Toby. Just me, Wayne, Little Tony, Simon, Bryanne, Val, Paulo, Jane, Anni and a crowd of the great and the good of the glitterati that included the legendary Bette Bourne in attendance, as our host Paul Burston proudly welcomed us to the seventh anniversary edition of "London's peerless gay literary salon" (can it really be that long? Scary).



Opening the show was Mr Ben Fergusson, writer and impresario at the Hayward Gallery on the Southbank Centre, who read for us an extract from his sinister and atmospheric first novel The Spring of Kasper Meier - a tale of blackmail, black markets and black deeds in the seedy underbelly of a post-War Berlin that had been reduced to rubble and a morass of half-lit corners, where one might stumble across a secretive bar, a suspicious character, or both. The piece he read introduced us to the story's anti-hero Kasper and his confidant bar-owner Frau Muller, and hinted at several of the sinister twists and turns that had - or were about to - unfold. A very promising start, we thought. Read an extract of the book here.

Here is Mr Fergusson talking about the book - which was also featured on BBC Radio 2's "Book Club" recently - on Celebrity Radio:

Ben Fergusson - The Spring of Kasper Meier

[Photo Justin David]

The ever-ebullient Alex Marwood (pen-name of Serena Mackesy, whose book The Temp was a "chick-lit" bestseller) was next to the stage, to lighten the mood somewhat. As a former journalist and columnist for The Independent, she has a knack for observation whether writing about shoes, office life or grisly necrophiliac murderers(!). And so it was that she was able to dip into her pre-Marwood world to talk about life as The Temp, and top it off with a chilling piece from her latest as Alex Marwood - Crime Writer, the semi-fictional account of a serial killer of the Dennis Nielsen type, whose neighbours in the shared house in which he lived never knew he was keeping corpses of people he murdered as companions...

Here's the lady herself, talking about the latter story The Killer Next Door:

Alex Marwood - The Killer Next Door

But it was her hilarious anecdotes of how people behave towards authors at book fairs ("What do you mean, you're not Adrian McKinty?!!") and her list of office "stereotypes" in the style of fantasy characters - The Gollum, the Barbie, the Handsome Prince, the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion, and so on - that had us in stitches most of all.



Niven Govinden is no stranger to Polari, and is now on his fourth novel - which is short-listed for The Green Carnation Prize 2014. It was from his newest work All The Days And Nights - a tale of manipulation in a relationship between a dying artist and her husband John, as he sets off on a pilgrimage searching out his past in the portraits she painted of him now hanging in museums, galleries and private homes across America - that he read for us a passage. It is an intriguing construct, with even John's observations on his journey narrated second-hand by his wife back home, and an exhausting one as we tried to concentrate hard enough to keep up with who was supposed to be where, and doing what, during the narrative. Beautifully done of course, if a little difficult to follow.



Quite the opposite was the case with our third reader, Sarah Westwood, who opened the second half after the fag-n-booze top-up break. Sarah famously (notoriously) writes for Diva magazine a column titled "The Rubbish Lesbian", and her short stories are always a joy to listen to. Including this one - Lesbian sex. It's a bit like the Bermuda Triangle:

I mentioned my habit of 'fat-fingering' to a straight friend this week. She went very quiet, and then said, "Is that a lesbian thing?" What? No, it's an inability to use an iPhone thing. It made me laugh, but it also made me realise that lesbian sex is still the big question mark that remains unanswered for a lot of people. In the words of 80's songstress Toyah, "it's a mystery."

I've been asked "But how DO you have sex?" on many occasions. It seems odd, but for whatever reason many people just can't get their heads around lesbian sex. Maybe I'm just particularly flexible, but I've never found it that much of a strain.

Even before I became a lesbian, if I closed my eyes I could picture it with ease, and did, on many occasions. The image wasn't sketchy, and it didn't fade-to-black like a 1940's film when it got to the good bit. But for many people lesbian sex remains as baffling as the Bermuda Triangle - actually make that two Bermuda triangles rubbing together.

In the past when I've talked about "having sex" to some of my straight girlfriends I've noticed that their faces fail to compute. They have the look of someone reading the assembly instructions for an IKEA bedside table. It's as if they are sitting cross-legged on the floor with all the bits laid out in front of them, but they just can't picture how we'll come together.

I think it's the lack of penis that throws people; their minds are desperately grappling with the logistics of how sex is possible without one. It's hard to know what goes where; like a game of naked Twister, there are body parts swinging around, and skin slapping against skin, but they can't see the wood for the trees. Perhaps because there is no wood, or trees - only bushes?

What is it about two women having sex that's so hard to imagine? It's not as if we're aliens from planet Zorb with paint bushes for genitals. We've got all the same bits as straight women, and like them sex comes down to personal preference. There's no "one size fits all" answer.

We might have put people on the moon, but for some reason lesbian sex is one giant mental leap too far. Oh well, as long as it remains the final frontier I'll just have to keep on boldly going where no man has gone before.

[Photo Justin David]



And finally, that maestro of the English language, Neil Bartlett. We love him. An accomplished and respected writer, playwright and gay cultural historian - and OBE, no less - he exudes a magical way with words, not least in the piece he read from his newest work The Disappearance Boy, a heart-stopping passage about the panic-stricken rescue from the path of a train of a strange, mute, emotionless boy. We were gripped!

However, it was his reading of his poetic monologue from those dreadful days of loss in the AIDS era of the 1980s that had us all emotionally drained. Here he is, reading That's What Friends Are For:

Neil Bartlett - That's What Friends Are For

I cried. I was not alone.


[Photo Justin David]

With the rush of adrenalin and emotion out of our systems, that, bar the schmoozing, was that for another month... An absolutely wonderful evening, as always.

Our next outing will be "A Very Polari Xmas" on 12th December, featuring Susie Boyt, Rosie Wilby, Yrsa Daley-Ward, VG Lee, and headliner Jonathan Harvey reading from his new novel, The Girl Who Just Appeared.

Roll on December, I say!

Polari website

Dubious drag, superpoofs, mystery, murder, Music Hall and mayhem

We went to another wonderful Polari on Monday evening in the glittering Royal Festival Hall - and we regulars (John-John, little Tony, Ange, Paul and I) were joined by a "virgin" to the event, Craig, who thoroughly enjoyed it.



Her Majesty Paul Burston - fresh from celebrating her Diamond Jubilee last weekend - opened the show draped in ermine and Union Jacks (appropriately enough), but without dear Philip she looked a bit lonely (hee hee!).


Alex Hopkins, Paul Burston and moi. Photo by Krys FitzGerald-Morris

The fantabulosa Alex Hopkins, Polari regular, journalist, writer, dilettante and all-round sweetheart opened the show - teetering onto the stage in six-inch heels in a remarkably good impression of Tori Spelling. His dark, confessional tale of cow-pats, bullying, suicide attempts, coming-out, and pursuit of sleazy sexual encounters was engrossing, and certainly set the scene for the rest of the evening. Progressing into more familiar territory, we entered the nightlife of Soho in the company of Mr Hopkins and his large and strident lady friend, as they encounter such delightful characters as “Prudence Chastity Chambers – Drag Queen of Dubious Distinction”. He had us laughing and gaping in awe as the adventures unfolded. Excellent stuff, and as always left me wanting to read more...



The rather sexy Kristian Johns was up next. Apparently one of the "most influential gay people on Twitter" (whatever that means) Mr Johns was a contributor to last year's short story anthology Men and Women, edited by Mr Burston. So well-received was his excellent story - an allegory of the powerlessness of an HIV diagnosis offset by the young protagonist's discovery of superhuman abilities - Dying, and other super-powers that it is now being made into a film!



Well done that man... Here he is reading from his tale, at the launch of Men and Women:

Kristian Johns - Dying and other Super-powers

Completing the first half of the evening's entertainment, and in complete contrast, Mr David Waller had a true tale about a Music Hall entertainer and strongman - a long-forgotten Victorian/Edwardian "Muscle Mary" indeed - by the name of Eugen Sandow. His is a fascinating (and brilliantly researched by Mr Waller) story of success and scandal, and quite possibly one worthy of its own blog entry one day hence...



After the break, a rare overseas visitor Mr Colin Kelley - all the way from Atlanta, Georgia - read for us a passage from his new novel Remain in Light - a tangled web of relationships that unfolds in unexpected ways in Paris at the time of Princess Diana's death. Intriguing and mysterious...



Our most anticipated speaker, Mr Neil Bartlett was next. In typically dramatic manner (his theatrical back-catalogue is indeed impressive) he stunned the audience into (almost) silence with his readings from his new work Queer Voices. Harking back to the endless fundraisers and awareness-raising events he was involved in (as were we all - "Ask someone with white hair. They were there.") during the AIDS panic 80s, his monologues - heavy on sarcasm and quiet, subtle, seething anger - were not so much effective weapons as downright gut-wrenching in their impact. I was mightily impressed (and choked) at the same time...



And so it fell to headliner Alex Marwood to cheer us up. In the circumstances, the story she had to tell (from her new novel The Wicked Girls, about two young girls from very different backgrounds who committed a random murder, then through happenstance end up meeting again as adults) was not exactly a jolly bundle of laughs. What it was, however, was brilliantly written and absolutely engrossing, and we loved it!



Once again, a remarkable and fascinating array of readings and styles of writing were gathered together to make a fine evening's entertainment, and once again it left us emotionally drained and hankering for another helping.

Roll on next month - where we will be treated to the announcement of the Polari First Book Prize 2012 "long-list" and readings from Mark McCormack, Alex Drummond, Vicky Ryder, Michael Wynne and Stuart Wakefield. I shiver in antici.....pation!

Polari at the Southbank