Ghosts, Gods, Blue Peter, Proustian brothels and a sausage on the side

After a little hiatus (thanks to the complications of this darned house move, unfortunately) it was with great excitement that I, in the company of Paul, Jim, little Tony and John-John (whose own hiatus, due to a lot of family problems, had been a bit longer than that - he hadn't been since last October!), ventured off on a gloriously hot evening yesterday (too hot in the 5th floor function room of the Royal Festival Hall, truth be told, but that's incidental) for the final summer outing for "London's premier gay literary salon" Polari.

Our host Paul Burston was bursting with energy as usual as he opened proceedings - to a packed house including Emma and Toby, Lauren Henderson aka Rebecca Chance and her coterie of "safety gays", Anni, Val, Bryanne and Simon, and assorted literati, regulars and otherwise, as well as Polari virgins" Dug (who I used to work with) and boyf Simon.



We were extremely proud that our chum, esteemed fellow blogger and "friend to the famous" (it was he to whom I am eternally grateful for arranging tickets for the Mari Wilson concert at Soho Jazz Café in January) Wayne Herbert was occupying the "first-timer slot", as our opening reader.

The audience was enraptured as he read an extract from his fabulous blog Introspections of a displaced Boulevardier, set around the minutiae of eccentric (real-life-I'm-sure) characters in North London's up-and-coming Crouch Hill district, where he lives:

‘Who’s Cyril?’ I asked.

‘Don’t you listen to a word I say Wayne? Cyril, the guy who lives in my block.’

‘Lil I promise you haven’t mentioned him before.’ Lil told so many stories it was difficult to retain the detail. They were invariably colourful, contained drama or tragedy or both. I’m not sure I’d have forgotten hearing about her other gay friends though.

‘Well anyway, he’s in his late sixties and a confirmed bachelor, or so he says.’ Lil released a mammoth cackle, ‘I wasn’t fooled. I managed to wheedle it out of him.’

I was glad I’d ordered a vegetarian breakfast, with a sausage on the side; listening to Lil on a roll was hungry work. I sliced a juicy grilled tomato and pressed it against a sliver of Halloumi. I raised the loaded fork to my mouth and looked expectantly at Lil to continue.

‘He moved in three years ago and wears yellow Marks’ trousers with floral shirts and silk scarves and I knew straight away. He’d lived in Brighton and done a flat swap.

I asked him if he watched Downton Abbey. He said he did, and then I asked who his favourite character was, and do you know who he said?’

‘No idea Lil.’ I didn’t know where our conversation was going or how many clichés we would be embracing.

‘Thomas the Under-butler.’ Lil’s response was perspicacious from her tone but I wasn’t so sure.

‘Thomas is a conniving, sly manipulator. Perhaps Cyril likes those qualities. I don’t think identifying with a character in a TV show gives certainty Lil, although the clothing you describe could tell a different story,’ I said. I started to laugh and thought I’d been funny. Lil wasn’t laughing.

‘No, Cyril is a nice chap. He’s drawn to Thomas as he hides his sexuality too.’ Lil was orating as if a University Professor. ‘And I’m certain that Thomas would be your favourite character too Mr Boulevardier.’ Lil crowed again.

‘I like the Dowager Countess. Maggie Smith has all the best lines,’ I said. In fact I liked Maggie Smith in most of her roles, ‘Tea with Mussolini’ being my favourite.

‘Exactly. That’s precisely the same,’ Lil wasn’t for turning today.

Following Wayne's triumphal debut was another newbie, Mr Vernal Scott (former Head of Equality and Diversity for Islington Council, no less; admittedly before I started work there). His seminal work God's Other Children - A London Memoir has (impressively) forewords by Lord Paul Boateng, Sir Nick Partridge and Peter Tatchell, and covers not only his nasty upbringing in a stiflingly gospel-church-y household (whose brethren had a distinctly pervy method of "excising the demons" that were associated - by them - with his coming out as gay), but also chronicles the devastation that AIDS cut through a whole generation of gorgeous and talented young men in the 80s and 90s.

Familiar - and very upsetting at points - territory, his reading really summed up an era of sadness and survival quite magnificently, I thought. I could hardly breathe by the end.

Here he is in person, talking about the book:

[2019 UPDATE - video gone from the interwebs]



Providing a little (needed) light relief, next up was a familiar face to us Polari-ites - Tiffany Murray, a very entertaining woman whose readings from her memoir Diamond Star Halo enthralled us back in 2012. She's ventured into the world of fiction of late (specifically the genre of ghost stories) with her new book Sugar Hall, which tells the tale of a German-born family whose straitened circumstances force them to desert the comforts of London for a spooky old house on the Welsh borders.

Miss Murray's writing is sublime, as is evidenced by these passages. First, the wistful (and ever-so-slightly camp) cogitations of the novel's central character, the boy Dieter:

Not long ago Ma had been so glamorous.

Glamour was a word Dieter loved because he had read it in a thick-as-a-brick magazine called Vogue that Ma kept between her mattress and bedsprings at 52C Shelley House, Churchill Gardens, SW1. ‘Glamour’ was a word Dieter loved because when you said it the words made your face smile at the first ‘gla’ and then they made you blow a kiss on the ‘mour’.

‘Gla-mour.’

Dieter liked that. He liked it so much he once practised the word in the bathroom mirror, wearing Ma’s Siren Red lipstick.

‘Gla-mour.’

And, as young Dieter tries to tell his mother and sister about the ghostly boy he has seen:

‘I’m not making it up. He just popped into the air, from nothing, and he stared at me and didn’t say a word, and he looked so ill, and I felt dreadfully funny all over. There is a strange boy out there.’

Dieter pointed to the bay window and the wild red gardens. He squinted; it was all too bright in the countryside and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like this house: he hated the fact it was home now. London was his place to be. By the river: Churchill Gardens.

‘He just appeared, and he wore a silver collar…’ Dieter’s voice tailed off.

Saskia latched onto these last words and snorted. ‘Don’t be silly, Dee. Boys don’t wear collars. Vicars do and dogs do.’ She glared at him and Dieter felt his fear settle, a burrowing toad. The points of the toad’s wet, sharp feet, its warty sides, all dug deep into Dieter’s belly; his breath went and he collapsed into his grandfather’s lime-green armchair.

Dust puffed.

Remarkable.

After a break for a fag and a top-up of booze, it was time for the ever-wonderful VG (Val) Lee, one of the panel of judges, to take to the stage to announce the longlist for this year's Polari First Book Prize. The titles are:

• I Am Nobody's Nigger by Dean Atta (Westbourne Press)
• Stephen Dearsley’s Summer of Love by Colin Bell (Ward Wood Publishing)
• The Girl with The Treasure Chest by VA Fearon (VIllage Books)
• The Palace of Curiosities by Rosie Garland (Harper Collins)
• The Falling Sky by Pippa Goldschmidt (Freight Books)
• Petite Mort by Beatrice Hitchman (Serpent’s Tail)
• Hainault via Newbury Park and Other Broken Tracks by Keith Jarrett (self-published)
• The Birds That Never Flew by Margot McCuaig (ThunderPoint Publishing)
• Fairytales for Lost Children by Diriye Osman (Team Angelica)
• God's Other Children - A London Memoir by Vernal W. Scott (self-published)
• The Rubbish Lesbian by Sarah Westwood (Mimwood Press)
• Out in the Army by James Wharton (Biteback Publishing)

All very worthy, I'm sure - and the shortlist will be unveiled in September.



But next up was a big surprise! For opening the second half with an extract from her new, and as yet unpublished, historical work was none other than former Blue Peter presenter (and mother of house fave Sophie Ellis-Bexter) Miss Janet Ellis!

The piece she read was very amusing, in a creepy-sort-of-way given its subject matter, as a naive young girl in the Georgian era is given a little more of an extra-curricular anatomy lesson from her lascivious home tutor than she could have bargained for...

I look forward to reading/hearing more from the lovely Miss Ellis's new chosen career move [no clips or extracts appear to be online as yet, more's the pity].

Our headliner, however, was a real treat (again). Looking rather physically frail these days, but nonetheless with every iota of wit and subtlety fully intact, Mr Paul Bailey is a true veteran of literature. Twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize, he was awarded the EM Forster Award in 1974 and, forty years on, is still writing magnificent classics. He treated us to one of his pithy readings last year (when the combination of Celia Imrie, Fidelis Morgan and Rebecca Chance, who preceded his arrival, were a formidable act to follow), and is an all-round charming person.

He read a passage from his first solidly gay-themed masterwork The Prince's Boy , a convoluted tale of a Parisian brothel part-founded by Marcel Proust, a former "favourite boy" of a Romanian minor royal who now turns "tricks", and the randy encounters of the tale's narrator (another émigré - "Romanian by birth, French by choice, English by accident") with him, in the fantastically decadent and dangerous world just before the rise of fascism. Read an extract online.



It was utterly fabulous, and the audience rightly gave him a heartfelt ovation.

And that, unfortunately, was it - until September! [Featuring Joanna Briscoe, Colin Kelley, Carole Morin, Trudy Howson and more, apparently. I can't wait.]

Polari

Lassi lesbians, sexy poets, gay Turks, sheep-shearing and a Halo

Once more, Mr Paul Burston and his "peerless gay literary salon" Polari came up trumps on Monday, with a fun-packed evening of intellectual stimulus second to none!



Opening the show Mr Hugh Mulhall, accompanied by an on-screen presentation from the world-class artist Maggi Hambling, spoke emotively of his support for the ongoing campaign to secure the commission of a permanent sculptural memorial to the gay manager of The Beatles, Brian Epstein. The planned monument, designed by Ms Hambling, would, he argued, make up for the complete omission of any mention of Mr Epstein's cultural legacy in the recent "Liverpool - City of Culture" celebrations, and in other tributes to the Fab Four. Passionately put, we wish the project well.

Moving swiftly on, and in complete contrast Miss Faarea Masud, broadcaster and writer, enthralled the audience with her hilarious descriptions of the South Asian lesbian world, reading from her as yet unpublished book Lassi Lesbians. Her accounts of the interplay between the girls of different cultures (and their various attitudes to sex and the topiary of the downstairs lady bits) were fabulous - can't wait to hear more!



Suddenly my attention perked up even more, as the stunning presence of model and poet Mr Max Wallis took to the podium, cheekbones to the fore... [And he's not a shy boy, I have discovered, having posed seductively across Coleridge's bed for a charity fundraising calendar!]



Edible.

He also happens to be a talented poet beyond his years, and he read a few of his charming works from his compilation Modern Love, including this particularly breathtaking one:

When A Thief Kisses You, Count Your Teeth
Take my coat and hang it by the door next to others.
Rip my shirt, button by popped button, tie it around your waist.
Pick up the little black things and put them in your pocket.
Undo my belt, wrench it until the loops split, curl it up.
Slide down skin-clung trousers. Fumble with my feet and socks.
Cut off my boxers. Naked, take in my scent and shy eyes.
With a razor shave my hair, brows, pubes; store them in a pillowcase.
Use your fingers to peel off the dead skin from my heels.
Tap my head three times to unlock my skull, open the cavity
Prise out my brain and let it dry on the windowsill.
Shed off my case and dump it shrivelled by your bed.
Wipe the blood from my musculature and smear it on your clothes.
Use spoons and knives and forks and dismember my limbs.
Put my toes and fingers in your dog’s bowl.
Crack open my ribs, suck the breath from my lungs.
Siphon the wine of me. Decant it with the rest.
Use my tendons as thread, my bones as knitting needles.
Gouge my eyes and add them to the necklace you wear.
Take it all. Everything. Now.
Bare, wordless, prop me up, a model skeleton for your museum.

Wow.



To break the mood nicely, it was the turn of Mr Jack Scott, who gave us a fabulous insight into the complications and intrigues that befell him and his boyfriend as they took the unusual decision to become ex-pats in Bodrum in Turkey - a contradictory cultural mix of tolerance and menace, bitching and back-biting, and very entertaining stuff! Mr Scott's blog - also the title of his book - Perking the Pansies is a cracking read, and it is from this point that the published work began.

"Just imagine the absurdity of two openly gay, recently married, middle-aged, middle class men escaping the liberal sanctuary of anonymous London to relocate to a Muslim country. The country in question is not Iran (we had no desire to be lynched from the nearest olive tree by the Revolutionary Guard) but neighbouring Turkey, a secular nation practising a moderate and state-supervised form of Islam. Even so, Turkey provides a challenge to the free-spirited wishing to live unconventionally. Openly gay Turks in visible same sex relationships are as rare as ginger imams."

Indeed.



After the break, Catherine Hall, recent winner of the Green Carnation Prize for gay literature, read a tantalising extract from her novel The Proof Of Love, featuring the interplay between a closeted intellectual who has arrived to work on a farm in Cumbria and the burly shirtless boy with whom he is learning the art of sheep-shearing (and, he hopes, more). Set in the long hot summer of 1976, this certainly was a bit steamy... Her writing is mesmerising, and from the sound of it a worthy prize-winner.

Here is Ms Hall reading another passage from the book:

Catherine Hall - The Proof of Love

And last, and most definitely not least, our headliner was the ebullient Miss Tiffany Murray, who we last saw at Polari back in June 2010.



As on that occasion, she treated us to some extracts from her hit novel Diamond Star Halo. Her semi-autobiographical stories of an upbringing in the midst of a wild recording studio in Wales, her eccentric dad, and the presence of an enticingly gorgeous half-brother were as enthralling now as they were when we first encountered them.

As the review on For Books' Sake website says:

For those desperate to crack Murray’s brain open and feast on her childhood memories of rock legends, Diamond Star Halo is the book you’ve been waiting for. The story is set in the fictional haven of Rockfarm, in the Welsh countryside.

It’s a picturesque family home that just happens to also be a recording studio for musicians from all over the World. Chickens peck at plectrums in the dust, and the sound of drum solos and playback wash over the rolling hills of brown-sugar cows and the family’s pet horses, Ziggy and Stardust.

This coming-of-age tale is narrated by Halo Llewellyn, so called because she learnt to walk to T-Rex’s Get It On. She is five-years-old when the story begins on a hot evening in 1977, while the family are waiting for the next band to arrive at Rockfarm.

The American eight-piece, Tequila, pull up the drive in a silver tour bus, and Halo is immediately taken with their lead singer, a heavily pregnant young woman called Jenny Connor, who wears cowboy boots under her dress and has a voice like "chewing dough and toffee at the same time". If Halo is in awe of Jenny, she is positively star-struck by her unborn baby, the boy that gives her a jolt of electricity every time she touches Jenny’s belly.

When Fred Connor is born, Halo knows right away that he is extraordinary, and when he is left to be raised by the Llewellyns on the farm, it is obvious to the whole family that the boy who is “half seal-pup half bloody Heathcliff” is destined for rock ‘n’ roll greatness.

Bloody marvellous...



Another great evening! Roll on next month, when we are joined by none other than the award-winning author Patrick Gale! Completing the line-up are our faves Sophia Blackwell and Nick Field, plus Will Davis, Deborah Levy and Justin Torres.

Polari at the Southbank Centre

Marc, Otis, Ozzy, glam and avant-garde

A great time was had by all at last night's Polari Goes Pop night last night - including Paul Burston's mother-in-law Heidi, seated proudly with Paulo in the front row!

As befits an evening focussing on the pop music world (a nod in the direction of the Meltdown Festival), Paul was resplendent in Bowie t-shirt (and later glasses and a boa!), I dug out my hand-made Debbie Harry "punk" t-shirt, and the place filled with its usual eclectic mixture of faded gentry and enthusiastic homosexualist aesthetes...

Opening the show, John Lucas read his amusing short story about Being Marc Almond - a modern-day fable of one man's obsession that overshadows the hum-drum reality of his boring real life - fab stuff!

Next up was a really bizarre performance - in video and live reading - by Polari regular Joe Storey-Scott, who in turn baffled and amused the audience with his eclectic avant-garde modern poetry. Gauge for yourself...

Joe Storey-Scott - Untitled #4

A little light relief was needed at this stage, and that was provided by the charming Nick Field, whose chirpy campness made a pleasant contrast. He is currently working on a major piece called Cosmos and Cosmetics, and the title alone should give an idea of what the man is about...



There are few adjectives that could describe the presence that is Laura Dockrill - effervescent, wild and slightly mad, a mate of Kate Nash and a headliner at the "Latitude" festival, she performed a few extracts from her new anthology Mistakes in the Background. Her ode to the "try-hard middle class mums" (who desperately want to be streetwise and youthful again) was particularly hilarious! John-John purchased a copy of the book - with its doodles and handwritten texts, cartoons and cuttings - and I may have to borrow it when he has finished it.

Almost the headline reader of our evening was Tiffany Murray, described by The Guardian as "the glam-rock Dodie Smith". Her new book Diamond Star Halo is Miss Murray's semi-fictional account of her own bizarre childhood at rural Monmouth recording studio Rockfield.

Appropriately for the occasion, not only did she do a couple of (very funny) readings from the book, but she brought along her own musician who set some of her words to his own music! I was enthralled and bemused by her anecdotes about praying to Otis Redding, her nonchalance at being surrounded by the great and the good of the music world, and her beautiful adopted brother who fulfils the dream and becomes a rock star himself. Enthralling and beautifully written - I loved her performance!



Last but by no means least, Steven Machat was another great coup for Paul. The legendary son of the legendary manager of Sam Cooke and James Brown, he was destined to enter the legal management of rock stars - but, as his convoluted and wonderful monologue uncovered, he soon discovered that behind the glitter and the glam was a world full of no-hopers, back-stabbers and bastards.

Screwed out of a fortune by Leonard Cohen, present at the hospital when Ozzy Osbourne was receiving rabies shots after eating a live bat on stage, messed around by the mob and the "mental midgets with an MBA mentality" who run the major record labels - he has seen it all! And was more than prepared to talk about it... Figuring that this could be like a modern day Hollywood Babylon I just had to buy a copy of his memoir Gods, Gangsters and Honour, which Mr Machat kindly signed for me.



Another bloody brilliant night, with our friend Paul (who is himself becoming a bit of a regular), the lovely Jeannie (who sacrificed Ascot Ladies' Day to be there!) and of course Paul B's extended family... I am going to miss the fact that there is no Polari next month!

Polari