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

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

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

Jake Arnott, Alice Denny, VG Lee, John McCullough

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

Mesmerising stuff!

Jake Arnott - Blood Rival

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

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

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

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

We love him!

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

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

VG Lee on the Polari tour, 2015

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

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

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

We love Polari!

Post-lockdown euphoria, an edible poet, Cunto, The Boy, a Diva retires, and oral history is a Riot!

It was with the greatest of excitement that I, John-John and (eventually) our friend Paul met up for the first time since last October - in a pub (Halfway to Heaven, of course). For not only were we getting our first taste of "freedom" as lockdown restrictions are lifted, but the occasion was for the triumphal return of "London's peerless literary salon" Polari to the legendary Heaven nightclub! And what an evening's entertainment was in store...

Our hostess-with-the-mostest Paul Burston looked ecstatic to welcome us back, opening proceedings with an apposite reminder that, although the sense of relief was palpable at the prospect of the coronavirus pandemic coming under control in the UK, for many people in the room this was actually the second pandemic we have lived through and survived to tell the tale - about which there would be more in parts of the evening's programme.

Opening the evening, however - emerging through the "rock concert-style" dazzling light-show and dry ice that enveloped the stage [the effect of which meant that 160 out of the 183 photos I took went straight to the delete bin as the glare made it impossible to see anything in them] - was a gleam of exuberant joy, in the form of the delightful PJ Samuels. I love the way she described herself in one of her blog posts way back in 2014:

I am a black woman. Rastafarian. Christian. Immigrant. Exile. Lesbian... I am by no means confused. This relationship in my skin sits like ice lolly on a hot day, a magnum original on the stick. So many reasons why it shouldn’t work together but heaven when you taste it. So for every group that I don’t fit in because of the other aspect of me that I embrace, it’s your loss. I’m delicious. All kinds of delicious. A smorgasbord of incongruous flavours that are heaven on a platter. Damn I want to eat me…

Mesmerised by her recitative delivery of a selection of her poems and songs: some tender, some angry, some empowering, our audience wanted to "eat" her up, too!

PJ Samuels - Dear Black Woman

Speaking of "poetry powerhouses", next was the turn of Joelle Taylor, as excited to have just received her first print copy of her new anthology Cunto and Othered Poems [this Polari being its "unofficial" launch] as she was to be performing extracts from it on stage again!

According to the eminent Patience Agbabi she is

"...a shape-shifter, myth-maker, linguistic risk-taker; poetical activist, surrealist with a raised fist. She knows how to handle a pen. Razor sharp, tattooed or AWOL, her women are the best dressed men. Her material – fractured glass and human skin; the effect – a maze, a mosaic, a hall of mirrors. She redefines the dispossessed, the caged in and gives them a way out."

Focusing largely on her own experiences as a masculine presenting woman, a "Butch" or "Boi" on the in London lesbian scene in the 1990s, the poems she read for us were a combination of pent-up frustration, intriguing and sometimes menacing characters, politics, anger, love, lust and loss - like this one:

Joelle Taylor - Trauma: The Opera

...and here's one she made earlier...

Joelle Taylor - No Man's Land (We Belong Here)

Just when we thought "how does one possibly top that?!" - our lovely "Sexy Lexi", the sublimely talented Alexis Gregory trolled up to the mike...

Riot Act is surely his magnum opus - he wrote this one-man-drama based upon three real-life interviews: with Michael-Anthony Nozzi, one of the only remaining Stonewall survivors; Lavinia Co-op, a 1970s London radical-drag artist; and someone a little closer to home.

The piece he performed from it for us was the tale of an activist in the era of fear and loss and anger that encompassed the gay world when AIDS reared its ugly head in the 1980s, of his conflicting experiences of camaraderie and dull political correctness, of placards and protests and forming a chained blockade across Waterloo Bridge, of attending funeral after funeral after funeral of people who were too young to die, of experiencing rejection and denial on the gay scene, burn-out and "survivor guilt", partying too hard to try and blot out the grief, and the feeling of hopelessness that a whole generation of collective memory has been lost, so the next wave of gays has no connection with that era and would rather forget it ever happened - all too, too real. And familiar. I cried.

The subject of the monologue was, of course... Paul Burston himself.

Here's the trailer for the show:

Alexis Gregory - Riot Act

I really needed a cigarette after that!

After the break and some more drinkies, served to our table of course, it was time for a familiar friend and Polari stalwart to appear. However - shock! horror! - to our dismay, Paul announced that would be the very last time the lovely VG Lee [for it is she] would ever perform live again...

From her entrance with a sort-of "1960s catwalk model" routine, to the end of her performance with a series of her hilarious "Dear Auntie Val" agony aunt letters, she had us enthralled!

Accompanied as she was [in fact, all our speakers including Paul B had their own similar large-screen back-drop] by a selection of photos from various points of her younger - and dead glam - life, she revealed that ("before I was a lesbian") she had actually been married (to "Hemel Hempstead's answer to Barry Gibb") for quite a few years - and even wrote a semi-fictional, and hilarious, short story about it in her recent anthology Oh You Pretty Thing, which she read for us. Here she is with a [unfortunately abridged - the longer extract she read for us continued with a more pithy take on the relationship and its inevitable fate...] version from a Zoom-based event she did last year:

VG Lee - Oh You Pretty Thing

If this really was the "farewell performance" of such a legend, there's going to be one helluva gap in the Polari repertoire... We'll certainly miss her!

Finally, from one legendary long-serving performer to another.

Ian Elmslie was (the cuter) half of the cabaret duo Katrina and the Boy [who I saw on stage - after attending Gay Pride in Kennington Park - at the long-demised gay pub the Market Tavern in Nine Elms/Vauxhall way back in 1991. There's some fab footage of one of their performances in this video on YouTube - however, you'll need to skip to the 2:20:00 mark to see a very youthful Mr Elmslie in action!]

click any photo to embiggen

Latterly, Mr Elmslie published his entertainment memoirs - A Marvellous Party, from which he read an extract at Polari back in December 2017 - and still "keeps his hand in" as a cabaret singer-songwriter; indeed, he had not one, but two CDs on sale last night. He also, it emerged, is a bit of a Bowie fan [hence the photo at the head of this post with the neon sign "Boys Keep Swinging"] - and the major part of his performance was indeed dedicated to the great man, with audience participation, to boot! I'm not sure any previous audience in the history of Heaven nightclub has been encouraged to shout "Hot Tramp!" en masse in quite the same way before...

He also treated us to one of his own songs The Other Man from the new Old Boyfriends CD, which I think is brilliant:

Ian Elmslie - The Other Man

After resounding applause came the customary curtain call...

 

...and without further ado, it was time to clear the decks and bugger off for last orders at the pub.

It was such a brilliant evening that, despite having suffered the "getting up for work" bit afterwards, I'm still coming down to earth.

Unfortunately we might miss the next outing at the RVT on 4th June (with headliner the lovely Adele Anderson), as it's not just selling out fast, but apparently clashes with other arrangements... but we do indeed love Polari!

Santa's beard hairs, an assassin, the Boy, perfectly Frank, boarding school dorm fun, and an Agony Aunt

"And so here it is, Merry Polari,
Ev'rybody's having fun!"

So it was that I trolled off (on my own - although Bryanne and Simon arrived to keep me company) through the slush and the biting winds on Monday to the Southbank, for the very last outing of "London's peerless gay literary salon" in 2017 - A Very Polari Christmas! Unfortunately I had neglected to put my camera into my bag in the haze of getting ready to to go to work, so any pics here are courtesy of fellow Polari-ites...



Our host Paul Burston was gaily bedecked as a hipster Santa to open proceedings, managing to hold it all together despite spitting out beard hairs, wished us Season's Greetings - and, without further ado introduced our first reader (and Polari regular) William Parker.

Fellow "New-putt"-born Mr Parker read from us a couple of pieces from his as-yet-unpublished new work. Weaving together the childhood experiences of a lonely (gay) schoolboy, the trepidation he and and his chums feel using a Ouija board for the first time, and (as reflected in a series of flashbacks to her own childhood) the spirit they conjure up - bizarrely, that of Charlotte Corday, the woman who was caught up in the French Revolution and became notorious as the assassin of the vicious Jean-Paul Marat, his selection was bewildering, and yet very intriguing indeed...



Next to the stand was a real raconteur of the old school variety - Mr Ian Elmslie. Formerly "the Boy" of legendary cabaret duo Katrina and the Boy [who I saw perform at the now-defunct Market Tavern in Vauxhall waaaay back in 1991!], apparently he was born at the same hospital as Quentin Crisp; he certainly brought a little load of camp to the proceedings - resplendent as he was with immaculate maquillage and sparkly brooch [pictured above]!

He read for us (with all the voices!) a couple of pieces from his memoir (or, as he described it, "a series of thank-you notes") A Marvellous Party, featuring his meetings with the great and the good among his (and our) heroes, including Dame Julie Walters (whose appearance was subject to a running commentary by the local bric-a-brac shopkeeper and the theatre's charlady)... and Armistead Maupin:

Ian Elmslie - A Marvellous Party - The day I met Armistead Maupin

Simply faboo, sweeties!

How could the delightful Miss Susie Boyt possibly follow that? Arriving on stage, top-to-toe in the most divine silver ensemble, and with her characteristically dry-as-dust delivery, she managed very well, methinks - especially as she opened with a little prize quiz. "Who is the only Oscar-winner, both of whose parents were also Oscar-winners?", she asked. "Liza Minnelli", I responded in a stage whisper - and promptly won a copy of her book Love & Fame (from which her reading for us was taken)!

And what a story this was - the convoluted escapades of our heroine, a media-type waiting at a posh hotel for her supposed celeb-interviewee (who, she knows after six hours, is never going to show up); she makes a rash decision to instead amuse herself by inviting an older stranger ("Perfectly Frank") she met in the bar to her room. Then she promptly spends the rest of the evening on the phone to her sister, going over and over the feelings they felt at their mother's funeral. Meanwhile, the disappointed stranger leaves - and we are left hanging, wondering what she's up to...

I cannot pay sufficient justice to Miss Boyt's talents - the audience was enraptured!

With all that ringing in our ears, however, it was time to brave the chill for a fag-break and a top-up at the bar.

Warming up the audience for the second half [metaphorically and literally; the room was cosier than the windswept walkways of the Southbank!], Paul - "robbed" of his Santa-suit - proudly introduced a "literary hero of his" to the stand, the remarkable Mr Tony Peake.

He read from us a few passages from his first new novel in 20 years North Facing, the blurb for which reads thus:

A novel of awakening and atonement, this exquisitely realised story revisits a seminal boyhood moment as it plays out - with unexpected and sinister consequences - against the backdrop of political upheaval in South Africa. For one long, intense week in October 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis brought with it an East-West stand-off and the possibility of nuclear holocaust. On the other side of the globe, in Pretoria, a group of schoolboys scan the horizon for signs that the world is about to end. There is political tension here too, and the power struggles and cruelties of the boys mirror the corruption of a deeply divided country. Paul Harvey - sensitive, isolated, and desperate to fit in at school despite his English heritage - will do whatever is needed to please the class ringleader, Andre du Toit. Now in his sixties and living abroad, Paul is drawn back to South Africa to confront the unexpected and chilling consequences of this seminal boyhood moment - and the part he unwittingly played in the drama that unfolded.

At times teasingly erotic (just what was he prepared to do for Andre in the dorm in order to be accepted into the "gang"?) and funny (the older Paul encountering an "English countryside"-themed hotel in the midst of the lawless "badlands" outside Johannesburg), this has the promise of being a very good read, indeed.

But, of course, now it was time for the "true" Spirit of Xmas to take to the stage: the "Secret Santa" herself, "Aunty" Val Lee!

Reading a selection of hilarious "letters" from her "agony aunt postbag", she dished out a wealth of pithy (and often ridiculously awry) "advice" to all and sundry. With the laughter subsiding, she shed her "advice columnist" persona in favour of "VG Lee, Author" - to read for us a passage from her classic Always You, Edina.

The piece she focused us on was engrossing - the childhood memories of the book's protagonist Bonnie, and her daily attempts to impress the idol of her life: Joanna Bayliss, the most popular girl at her school; the games she invented, the glances they shared, the desperate yearning... and the contrast between her dreams and the reality of her home life, and her relationship with her no-nonsense Nan. Brilliant, as always!





And so, with the customary "curtain call" of all the evening's readers, another fantabulosa evening's literary entertainment came to a close - with resounding applause, as one might expect!

Now we have to wait till the itinerary for next year's Polari events is published before making plans for the next visit - hopefully it won't be too long a wait.

We love Polari!

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

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

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



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

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

Stuart Feather and Bette Bourne talk about Polari

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fabulous.



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

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

VG Lee reads at Polari

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



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

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



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

We love Polari.

Seventies gay earnestness, photo-booth-ready dolls, a new Spanish soap opera, a shortlist, an array of false breasts and a sexy poet

With the mad social whorl of the past few days - the amazing Bowie Prom on Friday rapidly followed by the excesses of my dear sister's fiftieth birthday party last night - it's taken a while to get my head together. However, on Thursday evening I did also troll along to the sunny South Bank for the latest instalment of "London's peerless gay literary salon" Polari...

Before opening proceedings, our host Mr Paul Burston had some sad news to impart - his mother-in-law, Paolo's dear mum Heidi (who I first met back in 2013) recently died. Such a lovely woman. RIP.

However, the show - dedicated to her - must go on, and thus Mr B introduced our first guest.



Stevan Alcock, making a very welcome return to Polari, read a rather fab passage from his acclaimed debut novel - and Polari First Book Prize nominee - Blood Relatives, which tells the tale of Ricky, growing up gay in Leeds in the 70s against the backdrop of the Yorkshire Ripper murders. Although the passage he read (brilliantly) described his teenage protagonist's trepidation as he hovers in a pub prior to attending a typically earnest 70s gay group meeting upstairs, then to his horror encounters by chance a school friend at the bar just as the out-gay punters start arriving, I can't find that extract online. Instead, here is Mr Alcock reading the introductory passage from the novel - written as it is read, in the Yorkshire dialect...

Stevan Alcock - Blood Relatives

Next up was a Polari "newbie", crime-writer Sarah Hilary, who read (as she had promised) a somewhat chilling scene-setting passage from her new work Tastes Like Fear that described the sinister scenario of a disparate group of young girls, a "family of photo-booth-ready dolls, smooth hair down to their waists, new tits under neat shirts", all of them trapped in the mysterious web of a man called "Harm". What's going on? What is his hold over them? What is going to be their fate? I really should read the novel to find out...



However, all thoughts of crime, murder and mystery evaporated with the arrival on stage of the utterly marvellous Mr James Maker (Polari First Prize winner for his autobiography Autofellatio in 2011)! Heaven knows what his plans are for the story he read for us - my vote would be for a television soap-opera-cum-comedy. Set around a small gated community in Spain (the country where until recently Mr Maker was an ex-pat), he introduced a stream of increasingly uproarious camp characters - from the pretentious gay couple hosting the party at which everyone was gathering, one a hysterical mess, the other a dull lothario, to the demandingly snooty wannabe-matriarch of the estate, to whip-wielding estate agent, to the (inevitable) busy-body gossips and unhappily married couples that always inhabit such spaces. With his customarily droll delivery, this was a thoroughly enjoyable and quite hilarious scenario, and I look forward to finding out where it will lead...

Thus cheered, it was time for a fag and a top-up before making my way back to the Fifth Floor Function Room, for part two.



Before our final acts, it was time for VG (Val) Lee to take to the stage to announce the Polari First Book Prize 2016 shortlist. Now in its sixth year, the Prize is awarded annually to a writer whose first book explores the LGBT experience, whether in poetry, prose, fiction or non-fiction. The six shortlisted titles are:

• Blood Relatives by Stevan Alcock
• Sugar and Snails by Anne Goodwin
• Trans by Juliet Jacques
• Different for Girls by Jacquie Lawrence
• Physical by Andrew McMillan
• The Good Son by Paul McVeigh

As Mr B said, it's a good job two of the night's readers (who were long-listed) made it to the shortlist, otherwise it may well have been embarrassing. Not least Juliet Jacques, opening part two. She was in fine fettle as she read one of her short stories, which focused on the S&M fantasies of a budding trans woman in Brighton, well, "Hove, actually":

The door felt heavy. As he entered he saw hangers of lingerie, red, black, white and soft pink, PVC nurses and maids’ uniforms, a bin full of eyeliner and lipstick. At the counter there were books and magazines: The Tranny Guide and Utterly Fabulous, with impossibly beautiful people on their covers. A middle-aged man stood behind them, his clean-shaven face caked in foundation, brown eyes with a little mascara on the lashes.
“Can I help you?”
“Do you have any tickets for Divinity?”
“We’ve got a few.” Patrick noticed that the assistant’s hands were also shaved, with clear nail varnish. He moved his gaze to catch the assistant’s eyes. They smiled at each other.
“How many did you want?”
“Just one.”
“£15, please. What are you going to wear?”
“I don’t know . . . I’ve got some heels, tights, a few dresses but I’m not sure they’re right. I was thinking of buying a wig. ”
“We’ve got plenty of those.”

Patrick saw stilettos, a room full of wigs on mannequin heads, some white boxes, open, with an array of false breasts, different sizes but all quite large, a few brown, mostly beige. He wondered if the silicone might feel nicer than cotton wool.
“What style were you after?”
“I don’t know . . . ”
“Hmm . . . I reckon light brown, not too long. Try these.”
Patrick tried a brown wig in front of the mirror.
“I think the blonde highlights brings out your eyes.”
“I love it,” said Patrick.
“Now you’ll need a dress.” The assistant shot him a smile. “Are you a top or a bottom?”
“Huh?”
“Are you dominant, or submissive?”

Patrick said nothing.
“You look like a sub to me.”
“How can you tell?”
“You’re just a bit coquettish. Not rocket science, I know.”
“But I don’t want to tie myself to anything.”
“No, but you want someone else to tie you to something.”
They laughed awkwardly.

Quite remarkable what happens in Suburbia...



And finally, it was time for the very gorgeous John McCullough to round off the evening's entertainment. His first collection of poems The Frost Fairs won the Polari First Book Prize in 2012. His new collection of poems Spacecraft has, as he explained, nothing to do with space or sci-fi, but, according to the blurb "the white space of the page and the distance between people". Several use as their allegory Mr MucCullough's musings on the death of his first partner from an AIDS-related illness, not least this one:

In Minnesota, they reeled a sixty ton house
over ice: a caught fish. The tow truck eased

forward, a steel cable stretched and quivered.
Walls crept. Why it sets me thinking of you

I can’t fathom. Who’d rescue your building –
split gutters, bleedings from oxidized pipes?

Still, I picture it skating, its porch nosing
the air. The house where you swallowed

your diagnosis. Where you phoned from, drunk.
It plunges through ice to the lake’s silty floor.

Brown water discovers its rooms.
Algae furs chairs and bedposts,

traces circles on ceilings – the loft crowded
with minnows, a wandering bass.

And with those emotions ringing in our ears, it was curtain-call time, and the end of the show.



All excellent stuff - we adore Polari!

However, our next outing is not until (bizarrely) 7th October - lord alone knows why the lengthy hiatus - when the winner of the Polari First Book Prize will be announced, Paul himself will be reading from his own new crime novel The Black Path, and also on the bill will be Namita Chakrabarty, Alexis Gregory, North Morgan and Amy Acre.

Dusty at the boutique, our favourite trans prozzie, lesbians through history, a gay poem and a moment of mourning for the death of old Soho

[I'm not quite so old as to remember the pub like this]

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Whatever happened to The Theatre Bar? Friendly, reasonably-priced, old-fashioned, comfortable - the only gay venue in London where you could hear the likes of Ethel Merman, Peggy Lee, Shirley Bassey, John Barrowman, Liza Minnelli, Bernadette Peters, Dorothy Squires and innumerable "songs from the shows" being played night after night? The place where we first met all those characters from the theatre world such as our favourite roller-skating drag queen Eb-on-knee; the artiste soon to be known as Mrs Moore; stage-hands and wig-makers; and even Graham Norton? The place where I won (singlehandedly) the pub music quiz? Whatever happened to our hosts Wezley (aka Cassidy Connors), or Rupert or Graeme? Or regulars Tom, Roddy and Marc? Long gone, I'm afraid. The Theatre Bar closed when its "mother-ship" downstairs the West Central pub (formerly the White Bear or Polar Bear, now known as Ku Bar) disappeared for a while and "went straight". More's the pity.

Why the reminiscing? Well, the new incarnation of what was formerly the West End's campest bar is called Light Lounge, and this was the chosen venue for "London's peerless gay literary salon" Polari's much-vaunted "return to its Soho roots", that I managed (painfully) to stagger along to on Monday. As a location for such an event it is most definitely found wanting. Gone is any semblance of the illustrious revelry that marked out this most historic (and perhaps slightly seedy) of corners in Soho/Chinatown, in favour of shiny surfaces and (the nowadays ubiquitous) low banquette seating. Gone is any notion of an affordable night out, in favour of drinks at £9 a pop - cocktails are, no matter how "fancily" packaged, only tiny measures of booze, and don't last long; and the venue's cider (or beer) is served in miniscule bottles for the same price as a pint everywhere else in the real world, including the Ku Bar downstairs. Ambience? Clinical. Comfort? Negligible. Toilets? Incomprehensibly awkward [flush behind the seat? How very British Rail.] Value for money? Ludicrous.

Worst of all, many of the punters - some Polari regulars (including me, Paul, little Tony, Bryanne and Simon, as well as Anny, Jayne, Tanyth and chums), and some newbies - who were crammed into the confines of the seating area couldn't even see the evening's readers. Shame, because they were worth seeing (as well as listening to, of course). Still, the glittering environs made a great backdrop for the bods at cable channel London Live, who were there (along with free gay mag Boyz) to cover the evening...



Opening the show was a "safe pair of hands" for any Polari evening, in any venue - the utterly marvellous VG (Val) Lee. She read from her soon-to-be-published new novel Mr Oliver's Object of Desire, a funny and insightful exposé of the clashing values of a boutique owner with the rapidly-changing world of late 60s/early 70s London, as he finds himself disappointed that his chosen "celebrities" for his shop's grand opening the Beverley Sisters were substituted at the last moment by some "new whipper-snapper" of a singer (bewilderingly popular with "the girls", to his chagrin) Miss Dusty Springfield...

Concluding with a crowd-pleasing "Deirdre" story, Val had the audience suitably "warmed up". Here is the lady herself, in conversation with the London Live talking head, about Polari and the London Book & Screen Week, of which this evening was a part:

London Live - Polari - VG Lee

No sooner had VG finished, it was time for a break. This, we surmised, was to give sufficient time for people to empty their credit cards behind the bar, so we went for a fag out the back.



The lovely Alexis "Lexi" Gregory, Soho stalwart himself (we first met when he was "bar whore" at another deceased venue BarCode), read us his first performance piece Through the Wilderness, about a Madonna-obsessed, half-Italian, half-Greek gay kid growing up in the suburbs of 1980s North West London dreaming of becoming an actor. Unsurprisingly, he revealed, it is autobiographical.

He also treated us to an extract from his latest play, the utterly marvellous Slap (that John-John and I went to see in Stratford last year), which completely captivated the audience, needless to say!

Here's Lexi chatting about it on London Live:

London Live - Polari - Alexis Gregory

Another break. Another over-priced drink.



Our next reader Diana Souhami is a writer of prodigious talents - in addition to the lesbian biographies for which she is most famous, she curated an exhibition on women's rights for the British Council that travelled worldwide, she has also written about the real-life Robinson Crusoe, an obscure 1940s murder, the "Bounty" mutineers and Leon Bakst's panels on the fable of Sleeping Beauty that were commissioned by the Rothschilds. Whew.

However, for Monday's audience, it was lesbians all the way - as Ms Souhami took us on a tour through her various works about painter Hannah Gluckstein ("Gluck") and her aristocratic lovers (including famed floral artiste Constance Spry), Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Mrs Alice Keppel's daughter Violet Trefusis (lover of Vita Sackville-West) and the Sapphic world of inter-War Paris with Romaine Brooks and Natalie Barney. This was an engrossing and entertaining journey, indeed - her wealth of research is impressive. Loved it.

Another break. Another fag.



Headlining this unusually disjointed Polari evening was the cute Keith Jarrett, poet and performance artist. Not to be outdone by Lexi's "autobiographical work", he gave us a selection of pieces about his own life and experiences being brought up as a budding gay boy in a God-fearing Jamaican community, culminating this one - A Gay Poem:

Keith Jarrett - A Gay Poem

He wowed the crowd, that's for certain.

And, of course, the last word goes to Mr Burston...

London Live - Polari - Paul Burston

Loved the speakers, love Polari. Thankfully the next one is back somewhere sensible - the South Bank - on 25th April (twice in a month? We are spoiled...) featuring Juno Dawson, Will Davis, Rachel B Glaser, Mark Lock, and the long-overdue return of our fave Rebecca Chance!

I can't wait!

Polari

A dude, a lesbian surprise, a feast, a brunch, a pansy and big baubles

Our little gang (Me, John-John, little Tony, Paul, Jim, Emma, the lovely Justin, Bryanne, Simon and chums) gathered on Monday for Polari's traditional Xmas send-off. A double celebration - the last outing for "London's peerless gay literary salon" for 2015, and the grand finale of host Paul Burston's ground-breaking Polari national tour - which seems to have hit more towns and cities up and down the UK than the Olympic torch!



So it was with great pride that Paul introduced our opener for the evening, his stalwart accompanist on every one of those "roadshow" events, the marvellous VG (Val) Lee to the stage. Sparkling and entertaining as always, she glittered with festive baubles as she read for us some suitable extracts from her forthcoming anthology featuring the fearsome ex-friend and neighbour "Deirdre". In the absence of any of those out there in interweb-land, however, here she is reading two (more familiar) "Deirdre" stories from Brighton's L-Fest earlier this year, "dude":

VG Lee reads at L-Fest

Andrea Stuart, author of the prize-winning historical examination of her own (shocking) heritage Sugar in the Blood read from her short story that was published in Granta journal, The Tourist, about her own coming-out as a lesbian - which, given her youthful propensity for men, appears to have been as much of a surprise to her as it was to everyone else... Read more if you are a Granta subscriber.


[Photo: Krystyna FitzGerald-Morris]

Next up was the (first outing for) our friend, the multi-talented Mr Marcus Reeves, who has "ditched the mask" in favour of a rather fetching black velvet evening gown, in which he performed for us a couple of new numbers he recently released, including Three Little Words:

Marcus Reeves - Three Little Words

He also read from his anthology of prose and poetry Sighs Ten ("fresh from my publisher, Prontaprint"), including a rather juicy poem, Eat You Whole from which this is a mere snippet:

Don't talk with your mouth full
Or bite off more than you can chew
The only dish I'm laying on my table
Is a man-sized portion of you

Phew. It was time for a break, a smoke and a top-up to cool down...



The last time we saw Ms Paula Varjack at Polari four years ago(!), I described the experience as "being 'Varjacked'". Little has changed...

She's utterly mesmerising in the way she blends her background music with her spoken word performance - her star piece was a pithy rumination on the contrast between actually seeing drum and bass legend Goldie live at last recently, with a full orchestra (and it was over the man's music she recited), and her remembered feelings as a young girl first listening to his albums. However, it was this short startler with which she opened (and got the audience perked up) - Brunch Date:




[Photo: Krystyna FitzGerald-Morris]

And so, our star reader of the evening, the enchanting Paul Bailey had (once again) to try and follow something like that...

That he managed it, in his measured, subtle and very, very funny way was a credit to the man. We loved his recollections - from his memoir An Immaculate Mistake: Scenes from Childhood and Beyond - of his closeted (and unconventional) childhood and teen years as a gay boy attempting to throw off the constraints of convention in the 1950s, the disapproval of his mother (whose cultural references included calling opera "closet music" sung by "squawking foreign cows" and Shakespeare "a snob"; and whose concerns about her son were that he was "not natural") and enter the world of the theatre (with its coterie of gay men, users and mentors alike).

Our favourite quote: ”I was a Battersea pansy, wary of displaying his true colours in the sunlight. Pansy. The hardiest of perennials.”

Perfection. The audience loved him.


[Photo: Krystyna FitzGerald-Morris]

There was one more treat in store, however. As it is the Festering Season, the finale could only be - as is traditional at Polari - courtesy of the Singing Christmas Tree (Mr Reeves again)!



Unstoppable.

And so, as Paul called the readers back to the stage to rousing applause, we bid our fond seasonal greetings to the assembled punters and to Polari itself for 2015.



Our next outing is on 29th January, with Alex Marwood, Timothy Graves, Stevie Henden, Anya Nyx - and our headliner is Adam Mars-Jones.


[Photo: Krystyna FitzGerald-Morris]

Polari. We love it.