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!

The Iraqi version of Jeremy Kyle, wigs that stay on when you twerk, a seductive instrument between her thighs, daft dyed-blond Lydia and a murderous mannequin

"It's like a family reunion!" said Little Tony. "Only if this is 'Mommie Dearest'", said I.

As stalwarts of "London's peerless gay literary salon" [I have been attending for eleven years out of the esteemed event's twelve-year existence (this is my 96th blog post about the event!), and LaBrown for eight of them], Paul and I were on the guest list last night for Polari’s 12th birthday celebration - and I am so, so very pleased we were, for it was brilliant from beginning to end!



Hordes of the punters and participants from Polari's history were there, faces I recognised but could not name, plus the aforementioned Little Tony, Emma and Toby, Bryanne and Simon and Lesley, VG Lee, Keith Jarrett, Karen McLeod, Sexy Lexi and Mr B's hubbie Paolo, as well as a host of newcomers (presumably lured by our headline reader) - it was packed!


Paul B in October 2015

Speaking of beginnings, our esteemed "Mistress of Ceremonies" Paul Burston was simply bursting with pride on opening the evening, and with very good reason. Through thick and through thin, through changes of venue, through "unpleasant break-ups", through sniping and back-biting and high praise and accolades alike, his indomitable (Welsh!) doggedness has seen a Polari event of some kind appear somewhere in the UK around once a month since Leona-fucking-Lewis was at #1 in the charts! That's quite an achievement; many others have fallen at the hurdle of organising half a dozen events, yet Mr B has pulled out all the stops for a DOZEN YEARS. All hail!



Before his head gets too big, on with the show.

First up, Bridgend's finest introduced one of the most remarkable of characters, Amrou Al-Kadhi...

...by day. By night, I am Glamrou, an empowered, confident and acerbic drag queen who wears seven-inch heels and says the things that nobody else dares to.

Growing up in a strict Iraqi Muslim household, it didn’t take long for me to realise I was different. When I was ten years old, I announced to my family that I was in love with Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone. The resultant fallout might best be described as something like the Iraqi version of Jeremy Kyle. And that was just the beginning.

This is the story of how I got from there to here. You’ll read about my teenage obsession with marine biology, and how fluid aquatic life helped me understand my non-binary gender identity. You’ll read about my scholarship at Eton college, during which I wondered if I could forge a new identity as a British aristocrat (spoiler alert: it didn’t work). You’ll read about how I discovered the transformative powers of drag while at Cambridge University; about how I suffered a massive breakdown after I left, and very nearly lost my mind; and about how, after years of rage towards it, I finally began to understand Islam in a new, queer way.

Most of all, this is a book about my mother, my first love, the most beautiful and glamorous woman I’ve ever known, the unknowing inspiration for my career as a drag queen – and a fierce, vociferous critic of anything that transgresses normal gender boundaries. It’s about how we lost and found each other, about forgiveness, understanding, hope – and the life-long search for belonging.

They [chosen adjective] were marvellous - from the opening gambit: "How proud I am to be appearing in this - erm - foyer!" to the readings from their book Unicorn: The Memoir of a Muslim Drag Queen, we were in fits of laughter!



As a last-minute substitute for the scheduled guest Tamara McFarlane, who was unwell, the phenomenon that is P.J. Samuels was a splendid choice, and she rose to the occasion with aplomb. Reading from a selection of her poetry about life as a black lesbian in her inimitable fashion, we loved her. Fortuitously, someone captured her appearance at a previous Polari for the cameras, so there's no need for me to describe the sheer impact she made, dear reader - enjoy!

PJ Samuels Polari at the Southbank

Concluding the impressive first-half line-up was Alison (Ali) Child, who, with her partner Rosie Wakley formed the performance act Behind The Lines [who we enjoyed at their appearance at Polari back in September 2015] to showcase forgotten lesbian characters from history. Among those characters were the Music Hall duo Gwen Farrar and Norah Blaney - who were wildly popular in their day, headlining at the Coliseum, the Palladium, the Alhambra and the Victoria Palace as well as music halls up and down the country.

So enthralling did she find their story that Alison has now written a book about their lives Tell Me I'm Forgiven, from which - accompanied by accomplished cellist Kate Shortt (Gwen Farrar played cello) - she read extracts, describing their meeting (and Gwen's musical seduction of Norah) on a train, how their paths crossed with such society lesbians of the 1930s as Tallulah Bankhead, and how they managed to sustain a more-or-less "out" lifestyle in what could be seen as a somewhat strait-laced era.

Faboo!

Time for a fag break and a top-up at the bar, and then... the main event!



What to say about the eminent Russell T Davies? The man behind the revival of Doctor Who for the 21st century, the creator of the most ground-breaking television series in recent history Queer As Folk, winner of five BAFTAS, Comedy Writer Of the Year 2001 - and OBE?! Just being in the same room was enough to make ya proud...

As a speaker, he is every bit as charming and funny as one might expect from his work; and he gave us a little potted overview of his life and career, before reading for the enraptured room the introductory passages from his recently-published novelisation of Rose - his first Doctor Who episode (2005), the first appearance of The Doctor on our screens in nine years, and the story that introduced Christopher Eccleston as our eponymous hero and Billie Piper as Rose Tyler, destined to be an enduring companion in the coming decades.

He explained that he loved writing the novelisation, mainly because it provided him with a chance to flesh-out some of the back-story that could not have been captured by a telly series - not least the crooked caretaker of the Henrik's department store where all the action of that first episode unfolded. Bernie Wilson, he revealed, had gained the trust of fellow employees as the "custodian" of their weekly Lottery syndicate collection; giving him the responsibility to purchase all the tickets on their behalf. This was a very misguided level of trust, it turns out, as Bernie had, instead of purchasing anything for his esteemed colleagues at all, been pocketing the money in an elaborate scam, one which he thought he could forever get away with...

...And then Lydia Belmont won.

Lydia. Daft, dyed-blonde Lydia, a cook in Henrik's Third Floor Green Glade Cafe. She was in charge of the Catering syndicate and had used the same numbers for years, a combination of her house number and various birthdays, including Chris Rea's, the fourth of March.

She'd won on the Wednesday draw. But no-one had noticed. Everyone assumed Bernie would have told them if there was good news. But bad luck is ingenious; that Friday was Chris Rea's birthday, so Lydia had naturally turned to her Lottery numbers, and she'd dug yesterday's paper out of the bin the check the results...

Uproar in the Green Glade! Tears! Hugs! Envy! An impromptu little party was held in the food preparation area, to which Bernie was summoned. He was told that Lydia Belmont had won the rollover jackpot of £16.2 million.

"Amazing!" said Bernie. "Blimey! Wonderful!" And then, "Goodness me!" He added that hadn't got round to checking the ticket because there'd been that leak, in the basement, of oil, which was tricky, obviously, but never mind, her ticket was safe and sound, locked away, in his office, don't you worry. "Let's go and get it!" cried Lydia, but Bernie said no, it was actually inside the safe and that was the best place for it, because if she had it in her hand now, oh, she'd wave it about and rip it and get it wet and lose it, and anyway, he added, with a sudden burst of inspiration, the safe was on a timer and wouldn't open till 8 o'clock tomorrow morning, so that left her free to get drunk and be merry, and then on Saturday, at 8.01am precisely, he could hand over the ticket, perhaps in a little ceremony of sorts, and then Lydia's new life could begin, how did that sound?

A string of lies, to buy Bernie Wilson one more day. And he would use that day well.

He'd burn down the shop.

Friday night. Bernie was alone. He knew what to do. Like any British employee, he had spent many hours trying to work out how to raze his workplace to the ground.

First, he had to get his story right, and one thing kept bugging him. Would a ticket inside a safe survive a fire? Would the metal melt? If not, would the temperature inside become high enough to ignite paper? Or merely bake it? And what did baked paper look like, would the numbers still be legible? Hmm. Interesting. Okay, he'd have to burn some papers and place the ashes inside the safe, and then lock it, so that, if the safe survived, it would look as though the lottery ticket had disintegrated. That worked, didn't it? Yes, thought Bernie, he was getting good at this! ...

...Then he heard a creak.

He looked around.

No-one.

Only a wall of half-dressed shop-window dummies, staring at him with blank eyes.

So Bernie turned back to the fuse box. He prised open the grey metal covering. And then his entire life changed, shortly before its end.

The inside of the box was... alive.

The fuses couldn't be seen, buried beneath... fingers. A thousand long, thin, writhing, pink fingers. They swayed and poked the air as if someone had spread a sea anemone across the box with a knife. He realised they were growing somehow, visibly thickening as they began to spill over the edge of the metal. Bernie reached out to poke the centre of the mass...

And then he knew something was very wrong, because he had never felt anything like it before. The squirming mass felt hot and cold, dry and wet, smooth and spiky, fleshy, and yet sort of... plastic.

It felt like nothing from this world.

He pulled his hand back in shock, and his mind was thundering now, taking in many things at once. The feel of that thing on his fingers. The slurp of the tendrils as they surged out of their nest. That he'd never sent that letter to Erica Forsyth, the one in his bedroom drawer, written and hidden 20 long years ago. And that someone was now standing behind him, too close.

He turned around to see some bloke dressed as a shop-window dummy, with a plastic mask over his face, wearing 501s and a bright yellow t-shirt. he was raising his hand up above Bernie, his palm flexed wide open as though preparing for a karate chop.

Nothing in that moment made sense. The fuse box. The fingers. The dummy. He saw that our stories are only part of bigger stories, and that the stories around us a are so vast, we will never know our place in them, or how they end.

Then the arm swung down.

With his lilting Swansea baritone, Mr Davies had the silent enraptured audience in the palm of his hand.

A good grounding, therefore, for a relaxed (the two know each other) "in-conversation/Q&A" session with Paul Burston, which went further into the great man's background, his joy at writing, his sad loss of his husband, his pride at the retrospective accolades his (then-controversial) Queer As Folk has received, and his continued determination to promote and publicise gay themes and gay lives through dramas such as his recent Cucumber, Tofu and Banana.

Wow. I honestly felt this was one of the very best Polari evenings in a while. They're always good, of course, but this one felt cohesive and complete. Paul B agreed, but has high hopes for the Xmas outing, too - as well as a return visit to Heaven nightclub in the Spring.



So, with the final curtain call and a lot of schmoozing it was time to depart, spirits well-and-truly lifted.

Our next outing will be A Very Polari Xmas on 9th December, featuring Lisa Jewell, Will Brooker (Why Bowie Matters ), Ben Fergusson and Carolyn Robertson.

Can't wait!

We love Polari.