A life in drag
My first face-to-face encounters with drag came fairly late on in my teens. It was my grandfather’s seventieth birthday at the Homeguard Working men’s club in Garston, a small, some would say ‘rough’, part of Liverpool. It was a club (now sadly closed) that accommodated both deadly serious rounds of nightly bingo and sordid gossip, the interplay of the two never so clear as when the bingo caller hollered “Legs 11” to the chorus of elderly women cackling “round yer neck”.
On this particular night, in the belief that my grandfather probably wouldn’t be celebrating much longer, Uncle Tony had appropriately donned a miniskirt, high heels, a cheap blonde wig and smeared on some lipstick to recite a crude poem about the sex lives of septuagenarians. With completely unshaven legs and a carefully coutured moustache, he grabbed the compere’s microphone and reeled off line after self-penned line of unpalatable, disgustingly salacious lyric. He finished to considerable applause and tottered his wayward gait back to the men’s toilets. As the bingo prizes (for the bingo didn’t stop even for a birthday), comprising Argos hair rollers and the market stall rip-off of Scalextric were handed out, the compere rounded off the evening with her softly sozzled take on Billie Jo Spears’ ‘Blanket on the Ground’, cigarette in dutiful hand.
While Uncle Tony could hardly be described as being at the helm of a neat, professional operation, the fascination endured. In an arena where one would expect jibes and jocular heckling, the sweet, well-worn image of a man dressed as a woman for pure comic effect was received without prejudice. ‘Drag’ takes on more meanings, more connoted occupations with every passing year as diverse personalities further invent and revive its history. But here was a reminder in a pure, simplistic sense of its essential strain.
Drag is entertainment, and never was this so apparent as in my first forays into the Liverpool club scene, which were peppered with the witty bile of DJ Lavinia. Lavinia didn’t put a great deal of effort into achieving an impressive drag look, let alone one pertaining to some realistic expectation of feminine quality. He (for there is no real point in using ‘she’) had a wife and three kids, and his spouse loved the fact his job was to be a drag queen. A wife, certainly, would have to sympathise, as Lavinia stopped songs to pass judgement on the artists (“The Spice Girls are a bunch of dried up old slappers”), and press upon the audience the odorous state of his vagina. After a clubgoer drunkenly inquired as to why he had opted to ditch his usual blonde wig for a brown alternative, Lavinia responded “I can’t afford to do my roots ‘cos of the credit crunch”. On spotting a group of youths jerking in accordance with their Poppers headache, the DJ implored a middle-aged man to “Come here! If you’ve got any money you’ll pull any one of these whores.”
DJ Lavinia certainly gave you some sound bytes to remember the next morning, alongside his rarely updated musical library. The comedic vein in drag is clear, and its association with scathing comedy was propelled into the mainstream first by Dame Edna Everage in the seventies and later by Lily Savage in the nineties. Paul O’Grady’s persona was especially significant. A drag act on daytime television talking about shoving sage stuffing up the back passage of “Our Vera”? Yes, that happened in the nineties. Drag Queen Amber Dextrous credits Everage and Savage with “bringing the drag scene out of the gay bars and into the real world.” She observes that “Even now there isn’t really a mainstream drag queen on TV”.
The innate hilarity of man in drag is something that is being challenged, however, by contemporary drag queens seeking to expand the field by which a drag artist defines herself. Jodie Harsh, probably the most well-known active drag figure in the country, has taken on a special role within London’s artistic community. Regularly papped alongside the cream of young London’s celebrity talent, Harsh is more feminine, more fashion-conscious and more business-orientated than the classic drag queen model, as jarring as that sounds. DJ sets, nightclub promotions and careful aesthetic guarantee entry into the pages of Dazed and Confused and i-D and a consistent stream of low-key appearances on the terrestrial network.
My brief encounter with Jodie Harsh was profoundly humourless, however. Having exhausted myself dancing to her setlist at Circus in the (again, no longer extant) Soho Revue Bar, I had decided to sit down with a few friends in a quiet corner of the corridor. We were soon enough told by Jodie, security guard in tow, to stand up and dance or bugger off.
Dusty ‘O’, a longtime figure on the London drag scene, was about to go for dinner with Miss Harsh as I interviewed her. Dusty tells me that there is a tight-knit drag community, and that there isn’t the bitchiness you might expect from people you would imagine to be competing against each other for gigs at the top London nightspots. “Lady Lloyd was my lodger until recently. We all work different markets. I work pretty much as often as I want so I don’t feel threatened by anyone. There is enough for us all.”
It would certainly appear so, as a life in drag has made Dusty many friends, including Pete Burns and a host of other celebrities who found fame in the 1980s, when Dusty first appeared in London clubs: “Boy George is one of my best mates. Steve Strange is also a friend and I get on really well with Chris from the Pet Shop Boys”.
All of this is a far cry from Dusty’s less than optimistic start in life: “I was born in the hell hole that is Walsall in the West Midlands. I came to London 23 years ago and I cant imagine living anywhere else now”. London represented an escape for Dusty, an essential flight from an area of the country that was not yet ready to accept her sexuality.
The name of a drag artist is often a sexual pun, but the name ‘Dusty’ holds for its owner a special relevance: “Dusty was the name the kids at school tortured me with. I was a Dusty Springfield fan. They liked Spandeau Ballet. It was my ‘gay’ name. I turned it on its head though, adopted it and made a mint on the journey. So thanks to all those small minded homophobes who are still sitting in their council flats in Walsall, getting fat and never doing anything! Your kind words helped me no end! Ha!”
Obviously walking around the streets of London dressed in ostentatious ensembles is likely to engender some negative reaction, but Dusty insists that, removed from Walsall, she now has the ammunition to battle back: “Sometimes people get clever; I can deal with it. They usually wish they hadn’t bothered.”
There has been tangible change in the country’s attitude towards drag and other manifestations of alternative culture over the past thirty years. Dusty has seen this change take hold and develop, but says: “Drag has always been there. I think my club Trannyshack has helped focus kids who want to dress up, be it drag or not. Drag is kind of cool at the moment. Mainly ‘cos the club has done so well and recieved so much attention. It goes in cycles. In the nineties Kinky Gerlinky [a London clubnight] was massive and drag was more mainstream. Then it went quiet. Now the wheel has turned our way again.”
Drag has recently been thrust into media spotlight by virtue of two very disparate drag entities. The first is what will surely be the short-lived fame of Mamma Trish, a mime drag persona in the classic mould, who appeared in the semi-final of Britain’s Got Talent. Her outfits showcased her portly person, showered, of course, in tasteless glitter. However, the real development in drag is in how contemporary drag queens like Harsh and Lloyd have rendered the boundary between traditional drag occupations and the outside sphere increasingly permeable. Dusty arguably helped invigorate the slow increase in drag queens achieving minor celebrity status through consistent high-profile work and a fashion sense that is deeply and unwaveringly on trend.
Dusty believes however that there are more important things than individual status. A thriving drag scene needs to look at itself in the mirror and ensure that its original verve has not dissipated. Dusty errs on the side of caution: “I am not keen on how corporate things have joined together with chains of gay bars and clubs owned by the same person. it takes the character out of the scene.”
For Dusty the gay scene and drag culture are indelibly linked. There is no separation from drag and everyday life. On a personal level, David Hodge [her real name] and Dusty are one and the same, and Dusty feels “more confident when I have my face on because I think I look better. It’s the same with anyone. If you have a new haircut or a new top you have more vavoom. My look just takes 3 hours to put on! I’m high gloss and high maintenance!”
The London drag scene requires its best-known names to evade traditional drag garments and keep in tandem with the capital’s ever-shifting style. “I am not a tits and feather boa type gal,” Dusty protests, “My look is more of a [Vivienne] Westwood one really. I don’t do stand-up or sing ‘I Am What I Am’. I am a dj and club host. Thats what i have done for over twenty years.”
Despite the vast differences between traditional drag queen cabaret and its modernised, slick London sister, Dusty praises the work of the acts travelling the country from Working Men’s club one day to a hen do the next: “I think they are amazing. I love ‘em. Good comedy drag is my fave thing! Those gals WORK!”
The key in understanding the difference between progressive, postmodern drag in London is Dusty’s statement: “There is no persona”.
For Uncle Tony, DJ Lavinia and the other drag artists I interviewed, the personality is the ego to the id, an emphatic version of themselves or something entirely separate from their normal life. David Pollikett [aka Davina Sparkle] easily distinguishes between the two, and his act is in the vein of acidic comedy that Dusty so admires. Kensington-born, Pollikett moved to liberal Brighton to pursue his career. I interviewed Pollikett in character: “I work wherever they pay me dear!” he opens, “seriously, it can be the Social Club in Rochester or the Red Lion in Dudley, just depends who rings and what the job is, I work abroad in Thailand and the USA as well”.
Briefly back to the pre-persona voice, David describes his alter ego Davina as “a cuddly but tarty Auntie who is gobby and blue but very caring.”
Quickly switching back to Davina Sparkle, the differential between the two is nevertheless highlighted: “I’m never in drag darling in the street. How common! I’m a cabaret performer so I get ready in the venue, and NEVER parade around in sequins otherwise, it’s amazing how many people think you’re a tranny!”
Cardiff resident Paul Coombes [aka the wonderfully named Amber Dextrous] has been a comedy drag artist for the past thirteen years, and was featured in the media for helping his mother through cancer; building her self-confidence and self-image through simple, delicate but effective procedures like showing her how to treat her newly acquired wigs.
Coombes, too, likes to distance Amber from himself: “The persona tends to come on as I’m getting ready. Once all the make-up and the outfit and the wig comes off that goes away and it’s just me again. But when I’m onstage there’s not a hint of Paul anywhere; it’s very much Amber Dextrous.”
Contrasting, too with Dusty’s phenomenal daily routine, it takes Coombes “about 50 minutes to get ready. I start firstly with the make up, so everything goes on from concealer, face powder, lipliners, eyeliners, liquid eyebrows, eyelashes, eye colours, lipsticks and straight after that the tights go on. If I need it on a bad day I’ll wear a corset, and then the frock, the jewellery, the wigs and the shoes.”
Amber Dextrous is a personality that through every facet evokes unabashed comedy. The outfits embody a brash, elemental physical comedy to go with the onstage verbal repertoire. Coombes has a busy schedule and does the ‘full spectrum’ of engagements geared towards the drag artist: gay clubs, hen and stag nights, civil partnerships. He notes especially that “I’ve done my fair share of social clubs and working men’s clubs and sometimes they can be the best gigs you’ve ever done.”
The crowds at working men’s clubs haven’t had any problems with Amber Dextrous. Coombes says “I’ve only ever had problems doing stag nights. It’s just the general heterosexual male attitude of ‘I’m not going to laugh at the gay bloke dressed as a woman in case my mates take the piss out of me’.”
Surprisingly, Coombes’ dullest and least enthusiastic crowd have been those composed of transvestites, and is keen to distinguish between drag and transvestism: “Despite the fact they dress as women, underneath it all it’s really just a big room of straight blokes. They imagine drag as us taking the piss out of them.
“Being a drag queen is just a job. It’s part of you but it’s still just a job. I don’t wear women’s clothes around the house. It all lives in a room upstairs and it comes down when I’m working. For them it’s a way of life. They enjoy it, that’s what they want to do. It’s a personal pleasure, whether sexual or otherwise. But I get no turn on from wearing drag whatsoever.”
Being an active member of the drag circuit does cause Coombes some problems though, especially in terms of maintaining relationships. “There are plenty of people that can’t handle what I do for a living,” he admits, “they can’t separate my drag from me. Either they have a problem going out with a man who wears women’s clothes or they have a trust issue. So if I’m going to work in a gay bar or gay club I’m going to be onstage and obviously I’m going to have attention when I come off stage and they think I’m going to cheat.”
Coombes asserts though, that above all, drag is meant to be fun. This individual genre of entertainment has spawned a talented list of cabaret performers, comedians and personalities without whom our cultural influences would be indefinitely poorer. Drag queens like Davina Sparkle and Amber Dextrous, through their earnest slog up and down the country, are ambassadors for a specialist scene, employing drag as a way to connect with people, right there in their faces, and to sustain a feasible living.
The seemingly separate world of London drag culture is equally important in that it renders the public aware of drag figures in a way that small performances can’t. It was ambition and talent that propelled Paul O’Grady and Dame Edna Everage into the spotlight, and the Twenty-first century is in despearte need of its own mainstream drag figure. I’d expect, given the current thrust of the capital’s drag scene, for such a figure to emerge through stylistic, artistic or musical means rather than through comedic aspirations.
Whatever future drag might carve out for itself, its history is secure. Regularly plundered and appropriated for our student parties, and even a hairy scouser coughing up rude poetry, drag is a subsidiary entertainment that will always be found, drag queen-dependent, funny or interesting.
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Very good article – well-written and interesting. Well done!
Why on earth would i care?
You have something every issue about losing your hair or rape, and now bloody drag queens! Who even reads it?
Yeah, because rape isn’t a big deal.
Fucking moron.