Fanny, Stella, Jerry and me

I went to a very special event yesterday (in my role as co-Chair of Islington LGBT staff forum) in an unassuming back street in Bloomsbury.



Public recognition is bestowed at last upon two favourite gay heroes/heroines of ours - those Victorian pioneers of gay resistance Ernest Boulton and Frederick Park, better known (of course) as Stella and Fanny.

Read my entry in the Dolores Delargo Towers Museum of Camp about them.

The eponymous stars of a tremendous tome by Neil McKenna (the launch of which we attended during LGBT History Month this February), it was fitting - in the absence due to ill-health of the scheduled Bette Bourne - that he was asked by the sponsoring Marchmont Association to do the honour of unveiling a blue plaque to the pair.

As he said to the sizeable crowd (that included authors Rictor Norton and Neil Bartlett and representatives of gay history research organisations and Gay's The Word bookshop): "Unaccustomed as I am to pulling things in public..."



Given the outrageous behaviour of Fanny and Stella during their time in the "house of accommodation" [aka brothel] in Wakefield Street - cross-dressing, soliciting gentlemen in public, blatant homosexuality, arrest and trial - it was ironic indeed that the current site (the terrace was flattened during WW2) is occupied by the headquarters of the Unitarian Church!

However, as everyone mentioned in their speeches (not only the wonderfully entertaining Mr McKenna, but also Camden's Mayor (our friend) Jonathan Simpson, Ricci de Freitas of the Marchmont Society and the host Rev Roberta Rominger) times have changed since Fanny and Stella's day.

Sometimes, however, I wish we had more characters like Fanny and Stella these days...

Yesterday was also the birthday of another idol here at Dolores Delargo Towers, Mr Jerry Herman. And here is a marvellously apt song from the great man's La Cage Aux Folles that might have been written for our Victorian doyennes of drag - A Little More Mascara!

Randy Roberts - A Little More Mascara

Fanny and Stella - The Young Men Who Shocked Victorian England by Neil McKenna is published by Faber & Faber.

Became the special man

From the BBC:

David Bowie's glam rock alter-ego Ziggy Stardust will be celebrated with a plaque, 40 years after he appeared on the cover of Bowie's 1972 album.

The plaque will be placed on Heddon Street in central London, where Bowie was first photographed as Ziggy.

The shot was used for the front cover of his album The Rise And Fall of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars.

Forty years? Inconceivable...

Well overdue and well-deserved recognition for one of the most iconic [how I hate that word] pop images of the 20th century.

Spandau Ballet's Gary Kemp will unveil the plaque this morning.

David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust (live 1973)

Ziggy played guitar
Jamming good with Weird and Gilly
And the Spiders From Mars
He played it left hand
But made it too far
Became the special man
Then we were Ziggy's band

Ziggy really sang
Screwed up eyes and screwed down hair-do
Like some cat from Japan
He could lick 'em by smiling
He could leave them to hang
Came on so loaded man
Well hung and snow-white tan

So where were the Spiders
While the flies tried to break our balls
Just the beer light to guide us
So we bitch about his fans and should we crush his sweet hands

Ziggy played for time
Jiving us that we were voodoo
But the kids were just crass
He was the nazz, with God-given ass
He took it all too far
But boy, could he play guitar

Making love with his ego
Ziggy sucked up into his mind
Like a leper messiah
When the kids had killed the man
We had to break up the band

Now Ziggy played guitar...

Read my comprehensive tribute(s) to David Bowie on the occasion of his 65th birthday here and here

A blue plaque for a Blues lady

The actress and singer Elisabeth Welch moved away from the racial difficulties of her homeland America in the 1930s and settled in the UK, where she lived for the rest of her life.

A favourite singer of Ivor Novello, Cole Porter and Noel Coward, she was an early pioneer of (then) unusual and difficult cabaret material - she introduced Stormy Weather to British audiences, was the first to popularise As Time Goes By (before Casablanca) and fell foul of censorship when she became associated with the song Love for Sale.

She performed for the British troops during the war and for the Queen at several Royal Variety Performances, and broke new ground by being the first black person to have their own BBC radio show and by starring with Paul Robeson in some early film roles where black characters were - gasp! - not just "the servants". Robeson, a passionate campaigner for black civil rights, urged her to join the fight. "She said 'Paul, my father was African and native American, my mother was Scottish and Irish, I've got four people within me, I can't make a stand for all of them, you'll have to excuse me.' He roared with laughter and hugged her, and the subject was never mentioned again."

Now she has finally, posthumously, been recognised with a Blue Plaque on her Kensington home. Despite being nominated for Olivier and Tony awards for her work, she surprisingly never received an honour from the Queen in her lifetime.

Read more about the plaque unveiling

Here is a most stunning performance by Miss Welch singing her "signature tune" Stormy Weather in Derek Jarman's The Tempest, a scene described by George Melly as "arguably the campest, most sparkling moment in the history of cinema":

Elisabeth Welch - Stormy Weather

Elisabeth Welch obituary from The Telegraph

What a carry on!

John-John and I went along to see the unveiling of a plaque by Islington Council to one of its greatest sons Kenneth Williams today. His childhood home has obviously long gone, and is replaced by some anonymous sheltered housing in a tragically badly planned council estate off the Caledonian Road (all pit bulls and even fiercer women) - but they had dragged some "old ducks" from the neighbourhood out into the sunshine (none of whom had actually been neighbours of Kenny) so that was OK...

Anyhow, cynicism apart, the greatest joy was the fact that a genuine and long-term friend of Ken's, the lovely and eternally classy Sheila Hancock had been invited along to do the unveiling. I have always loved the passion and glee that Miss Hancock puts into her anecdotes (as well as her performances) - she was always my favourite "Grumpy Old Woman" - and she didn't disappoint!

Telling tales of her younger days with Ken (Sheila lived just down the road in a pub near Kings Cross), she quite rightly pointed out that many people made the mistake of thinking he was lonely and sad, when she remembered the funny, witty man who just happened to prefer his own company. It was indeed true, however, that he loathed his fame as one of the Carry On stars, preferring to be seen as an artist and classically trained actor.

"He would have been chuffed to bits to know he was being recognised by this plaque", she said, "It would have meant he had made it!"

They appeared together in the revue One Over the Eight in the early 1960s, and worked hard at their theatre careers even to the point of apparently missing the "Swinging Sixties" altogether ("only hairdressers seemed to experience it", apparently). On one occasion Ken was riding pillion on Sheila's moped going round Piccadilly Circus and he screamed at a group of "trendies" - "where's the bloody orgies?!"

Renowned for his insulting attitude towards women (he apparently even made the political harridan Barbara Castle cry), Sheila remained steadfast against his tirades, appeared aginst him on Just A Minute and obviously loved the man dearly right to the end (he apparently even proposed marriage at one stage even though she was already happily wed)...

This was a fabulous little event, and I am really pleased to have been there to see it!

Kenneth Williams - Stop Messin' About