Surprising, indeed

Scanning the "hatched, matched and despatched" columns (as is my wont), I came across the name Michael Aspinall above], which I was sure I knew from somewhere. His meagre three-paragraph Wikipedia bio was hardly illuminating, either [musicologist, teacher, scholar, all very dry] - until I spotted a citation...

...from (the sadly now no longer updated) oracle Queer Music Heritage, and the penny dropped.

He was indeed everything that Wikipedia said he was - and such an expert in operatic musical styles that even Montserrat Caballe sought his guidance on finessing the bel canto mezzo roles for which she became known - but it was as a performer, imitating and sending-up the divas of opera, dressed in drag, that Mr Aspinall became famous!

As "The Surprising Soprano", he carved an international career as an opera parodist, using his falsetto range to delight audiences with his impressions. As the LA Times said of him: "It is a brave voice, however, a voice that dares awaken the ghosts of Adelina Patti, Pauline Viardot Garcia, Maria Malibran, Jenny Lind, Amelita Galli-Curci, Fritzi Scheff, Conchita Supervia, Maria Callas and Luisa Tetrazzini.", even if, as its critic continues, "Unfortunately, Aspinall often conjures up unintended images: ...Florence Foster Jenkins, Beatrice Lillie... Mae West..." Regardless, even Dame Joan Sutherland and Richard Bonynge were fans.

And thus, the reason for knowing his name became clear - we (of course) have his album [as pictured above] in our collection here at Dolores Delargo Towers!

So, for your delectation...

Michael Aspinall, The Surprising Soprano - Der Erlkönig [Schubert]

Michael Aspinall, The Surprising Soprano - Sempre libera [Verdi: La Traviata]

Michael Aspinall, The Surprising Soprano - There are Fairies at the Bottom of Our Garden

RIP, Michael Aspinall (31st October 1939 – 10th July 2026)

The most expensive drag queen in the UK

The world is a far less glittery place, with the sad news that the legendary Stanley Baxter - one of the most popular entertainers in Britain over several decades - has shaken out that "Duchess of Brendah" wig for the very last time and ascended the glittering London Weekend Television stairway to Fabulon, at the magnificent age of 99.

Another piece of my childhood gone...

As the faboo Television Heaven site put it:

For 25 years Stanley Baxter produced the type of television spectacular that Morecambe and Wise could only afford to put on as part of their Christmas specials. Those legendary song and dance routines that Eric and Ernie performed in their shows may well be the stuff of television legend, but for Stanley Baxter, spectacular musical-comedy specials, reminiscent of Hollywood's best extravaganzas, were part of every series. And they were so flamboyant, and proved to be so costly, that Baxter was sacked not from just one, but two TV channels, who simply couldn't afford to keep him...

He was one of the true creative geniuses in British television light entertainment, and as far as comedy goes... Stanley Baxter was the true King of Scotland.

With his background in variety theatre, the Combined Entertainment Unit of the army in the post-War National Service years (alongside Kenneth Williams, John Schlesinger, Gordon Jackson and Peter Nichols) and - of course - panto, he was almost destined for a career in the fledging world of television (starting out in the 1950s), where his comedic talents and in particular his talent for mimicry (and drag) became a staple of Britain's "light entertainment" genre.

Very much a product of his time - his ITV "spectaculars" won the BAFTA Best Light Entertainment Programme Award two years running in 1973 and 1974 - much of Mr Baxter's fondly remembered output would nowadays be considered extremely non-PC, so repeats (were there ever to be any anyway) would needless to say be heavily edited [deep sigh]; hence the reason why he is largely forgotten. However, by way of a tribute to the great man [who, incidentally, only decided to finally "come out" as gay at the age of 94(!)], here are just three of Stanley's memorable sketches...

Stanley Baxter - Towering Quake '75

Stanley Baxter - The Fast Food Follies

Stanley Baxter - The Duchess of Brendagh

Irreplaceable!

RIP, Stanley Livingstone Baxter (24th May 1926 – 11th December 2025)

'Twas the night before...

...Gay Xmas!

On the cusp of London's Gay Pride celebrations tomorrow, we have a visitor from across the channel to the Dolores Delargo Towers Museum of Camp...

Guilda - Quand on se Retrouve

Zut Alors!

The End of an Era

Sad news. Icon of the UK drag scene, one of the oldest performing drag queens in the world, Maisie Trollette has departed - feathers, sequins, high heels and acid tongue in hand - at the age of 91, to reign supreme in the Gay Pride Drag Tent on Fabulon!

Born David Raven in the oh-so-twee artistic haven of St Ives in Cornwall, raised in the rural flatlands of Suffolk, he finally left the closeted life behind in 1960 for the bright lights of London. There he met fellow entertainer James Court and founded the legendary Trollettes, who ascended to become a dominant force in blacked-out-window gay venues like The Black Cap in Camden and the Royal Vauxhall Tavern for decades.

Like so many queens in that oppressive era, David/Maisie and his life partner, banker Don Coull, gravitated to the much more gay-friendy environs of the south coast resort of Brighton and opened a bed-and-breakfast guesthouse (that ran for many years), all the while travelling up and down the country with the Trollettes, with another faboo old drag queen Phil Starr, and as a solo act.

She was still performing well into her 80s - a career of more than 50 years - and, in recognition of her longevity, a biographical film was released in 2021.
[We still haven't yet seen it, as it only seems to be on subscription services and has never been released on DVD or on terrestrial TV.]

Maisie trailer

We saw Maisie perform on many occasions, and she was a stalwart of Gay Prides in Brighton and London (raising thousands for charities supporting people with AIDS and other causes through such performances). Here are some classic moments from the old girl:

Maisie Trollette at the Vauxhall Tavern Circa 1987

Phil Starr (with Maisie Trollette) - The Old Bazaar at Cairo:

David Raven (AKA Maisie Trollette) on trolling

Maisie Trollette - When I Fall In Love

Another glittering star has dimmed, and the loss is palpable.

There'll never be another! - RIP, Maisie Trollette (David Raven, 16th August 1933 – 12th March 2025)

Haway!

Our latest "exhibit" here at the Dolores Delargo Towers Museum of Camp - and our latest obsession...

...Smoggie Queens!

Smoggie Queens - Have a guess, Stewart

Smoggie Queens - Smoggie Ice Cream Van

Smoggie Queens - I've seen Lucinda's new man before, I swearrrrrr

Smoggie Queens - Smoggie lingo!

You may need the subtitles.

All this and Michelle Visage as you've never seen her before!

The Bourne Identity

As I recounted in my post back in 2013:

On 9th September 1971 Mary Whitehouse, Malcolm Muggeridge, Lord Longford, Cliff-fucking-Richard and various assorted clergy, god-botherers and other nutters convened a mass meeting of their Festival of Light, a movement dedicated to opposing "the permissive society" in all its forms, at Methodist Central Hall opposite the Palace of Westminster.

Unbeknownst to the assembled worthies, Bette Bourne, Lavinia Co-op, Michael James, Gretal Feather, Martin Corbett, Peter Tatchell and many other founding members of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) had infiltrated the prayers. Many of Bette's coterie were disguised as nuns, and as the speakers tried to address the crowd they began slinging porn from the balcony. Others shouted, clapped and screamed at inappropriate moments. Mr Corbett, who had calmly pretended to be a Hall official and ordered technical staff out of the basement, brought the lights down.

As Peter Tatchell recalls: "On the night, mayhem erupted. When Malcolm Muggeridge, speaking out about homosexuals, declared, 'I don't like them.' The feeling was mutual. Mice were released into the audience; lesbian couples stood up and passionately embraced. A dozen GLF nuns in immaculate blue and white habits charged the platform shouting gay liberation slogans, and a GLF bishop began preaching an impromptu sermon which urged people to 'keep on sinning.'"

It all apparently ended, before the police and security were able to forcibly remove them, with the drag nuns doing the can-can on the stage in front of the astounded speakers!

The last word, of course, went to Bette, who, at her subsequent trial for her part in the protest, was asked by the judge to remove her hat, and said "No! It goes with the shoes."

The great avant-garde drag entertainer, actor, wit, creative genius and, above all, champion of the battle for gay rights in the UK, Ms Bette Bourne has departed for the highest echelons of Fabulon, where she will no doubt preside, bestowing her pithy quips on all who surround her.

We adored Bette Bourne. It was sixteen years ago that our gang first encountered him/her in person - at the Oval Theatre, portraying the lascivious Hollywood talent manager Henry Willson who made Rock Hudson a star, and afterwards being inducted into the "Homosexual Hall of Fame" - and fell under his spell. Two years later, we were overjoyed to be at Soho Theatre for the first run of his and Mark Ravenhill's partly dramatised A Life in Three Acts.

Then in 2013, a double-bill - not just a showing at the V&A of the film about Bette Bourne It Goes With the Shoes [see the link in the intro above for more on that], but he and his longtime partner and fellow Bloolips veteran Paul Shaw [who survives him] made a special in-person appearance at the venerable Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology to perform an extract of the troupe's classic interpretion of the lives of Roman Emperor Hadrian and his lover Antinous, Get Hur!...

He/she could turn her hand to anything - from Blanche DuBois to Lady Bracknell, Quentin Crisp to Queen Victoria, in drag or out of it. A remarkable individual.

We'll miss Bette!

A lot.

Bette Bourne - It Goes With The Shoes

Stuart Feather and Bette Bourne talk about Polari

RIP, Bette Bourne (born Peter Bourne, 22nd September 1939 – 23rd August 2024)

Iconic

Henry (Adrian) Arango, 93-year old drag queen, pictured in 2021.

When we're together, you and I

The Doctor and The Dame

They had fans...

...including Princess Diana...

...and Dame Joan Sutherland!

Such sad news to come home to...

...George Logan, "Dr Evadne" in the magnificent and ground-breaking female impersonator duo Hinge and Bracket ["Patron Saints" here at Dolores Delargo Towers], has departed to join "Dame Hilda" in Fabulon's fabled Music Hall in the sky.

A rare "class act" indeed, the pair successfully transferred their "operatic ladies-of-substance" show from the gay pub circuit via a trumphal turn at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe way back in 1974 to gain mainstream success - with appearances on The Good Old Days, their own television and radio shows, and and audience of millions of fans (including HM The Queen Mother) within a matter of a few years.

Such was the skill of their performance - they never appeared anywhere in public nor in the media out of character - that there were many naive souls who actually believed they were old posh ladies, rather than two drag queens!

Managing to sustain the act over several decades, the pair landed their own hit sitcom Dear Ladies (set in their fictional home village "Stackton Tressel"), appeared on stage in The Importance of Being Earnest and Peter Shaffer's play Lettice and Lovage - and even had parts in the Royal Opera House production of Die Fledermaus as well as starring at various Gilbert and Sullivan galas.

The pinnacle of their whirlwind careers must, however, have been that they were invited not once, but twice to perform at The Royal Variety Performance!

Speaking of which:

Hinge & Bracket - We'll Gather Lilacs [Royal Variety Performance 1979]

RIP, Dr Evadne Hinge aka George Logan (7th July 1944 - 21st May 2023)

The Met Gala is nothing new

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute (Met) Gala 2023

A Gigastar has gone

“Never be afraid to laugh at yourself. After all, you could be missing out on the joke of the century.”

"I was born with a priceless gift, the ability to laugh at the misfortunes of others."

“My mother used to say that there are no strangers, only friends you haven't met yet. She's now in a maximum security twilight home in Australia.”

"I love making an audience gasp. I don’t crave the sound of applause. I crave the sound of sharply indrawn breath. That’s a good sound."

It's turning into a rather depressing year for losing our icons, with the sad news of the magnificent Barry Humphries, aka "Housewife Gigastar" Dame Edna Everage, who departed for Fabulon today.

From his early days in Melbourne as an academic, DaDaist exhibitor and budding thespian, he made a big jump by moving to London, just in time for what became known as "the satire boom". He befriended the leading lights of the genre, including Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennett, Willie Rushton and all, and worked with Spike Milligan in his absurdist production The Bed Sitting Room - and also launched Dame Edna (as well as his myriad other characters including Sir Les Patterson and Sandy Stone) on an unsuspecting West End.

Inevitably, of course, the Brits took him/her to their hearts, and it was over here that he/she skyrocketed to fame and a righful position of "national treasure" (despite being Australian) - and The Dame Edna Experience chat show became a massive prime-time telly success in the 1980s!

Even once he'd put the Dame into semi-retirement, he remained a formidable cutural figure, with a revue based on Weimar Republic cabaret songs performed by chanteuse Meow Meow, and his own nostalgic BBC Radio 2 show all about "forgotten musical gems" from the early 20th century.

Adored the man - and, of course the Dame! We saw Edna on stage winding up another "lost treasure" Sir Terry Wogan at Proms in the Park ten years ago, and I and our friend Mark went to see his "farewell" show, also in 2013.

RIP, John Barry Humphries AO CBE (17th February 1934 – 22nd April 2023)

Morning, noon, and night-time, too

This week way back in 1978 saw the birth of a legend...

...as Miss Lily Savage made her world debut at the Black Cap in Camden!

Sad to say, the Black Cap remains boarded-up as the legal wranglings continue over its future, as they have been for the past six years. Happily, that other "venerable drag institution" the Royal Vauxhall Tavern - having won its own, similar, battle aganst developers - remains very much open. Here, in a grainy old bit of footage, Lily joins forces with fellow icons David Dale and Sandra Lush as "LSD" at the RVT back in the 1980s:

LSD (The Playgirls) at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern - All I Do Is Dream of You

...and here she is on top form, live at the Filth concert in aid of the Terence Higgins Trust a few years later, in 1994:

Lily Savage - Filth

A national treasure, indeed.

More of "Our Lil" here, here, here and here.

Bet you didn't know it

This weekend, I am mostly dressing casual...

...like the original "Little Girl from Little Rock", The Incomparable Mr Harvey Lee!

Born Harvey Wilson Lee Goodwin in 1912, she's described by by Kaye Lundgren of CAHC (the Center for Arkansas History and Culture, where the grande dame's archive of papers, correspondence and articles is now curated) as "...the intrepid Arkansan who ventured forth into the bright lights and big cities of the United States’ East and West Coasts, as well as Europe, to pursue his passion and talent for the stage in the guises of singer, comedian, and female impersonator."

You can download Miss Lundgren's full article on the CAHC website, but here is an extract:

As a child, Harvey had a flair for singing and dancing and acting, performing shows, which [he] usually arranged and directed. Harvey's father, Ernest, supported his young son's theatrical interests by arranging canvasses and drapes for a makeshift stage in the family's backyard. Harvey enjoyed playing the parts of little girls in these amateur productions and he invariably received taunts and torments from his classmates.

At the age of fourteen, Goodwin witnessed the performance of a professional female impersonator, Mr. Jean Barrios, on a local Little Rock stage. Enthralled by Barrios' performance, Goodwin wrote to the performer regarding entrée into the world of female impersonation. Unfortunately, Goodwin did not receive a reply to his enquiry but this did not deter him. In fact, Goodwin diligently worked during his high school years to pay for dancing lessons which gave him dexterity of feet and hands.

After graduation from Little Rock High School in 1930, Goodwin attended business school and subsequently accepted a clerical position in Washington, D.C. There, he continued his dance lessons at the Hazel Richard Dance Studio. At this studio, he made his debut as a semi-professional female impersonator in 1933 performing a song and dance routine. Goodwin's youthful talents were noticed. In January 1934, Goodwin was asked to perform in costume at one of the first of the birthday balls of the late President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In 1934, Goodwin received his big break when Club Richman in New York City offered him a position with a salary equal to his government employment. He proved quite the success, as noted in a Walter Winchell column dated December 24, 1934: "One of the girls at the Richman Club, who is really a feller, left a job with the government to switch his petticoats." Harvey's good luck continued during his time at Club Richman when he secured the part of a female impersonator in Warner Brothers-Vitaphone musical comedy The City Slicker. One day, while Harvey was on the movie set on Long Island, the head of the studio made an appearance and commented that Goodwin resembled the movie star Jean Harlow, then at the height of her popularity...

...In 1947, Goodwin acquired his signature partner, "Nikki," a Borzoi (or Russian Wolfhound). Nikki was a notable addition to the act as Harvey commented that "we create quite a mild sensation wherever we appear both on the stage, on the sidewalks, and in the hotels and trains." Goodwin formed his own revue of five female impersonators in 1950 and noted that his group was well received during their various club tours on the East Coast... in New York during 1952, he competed as a female impersonator at the famous Beaux Arts Ball at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel sponsored by the Art Students League. Once again, the public took note of his talent. Dorothy Kilgallen, a well-known columnist and panellist for the then popular television show What's My Line, commented on Harvey's talent by stating, "That can't be a boy with that body and legs!"...

...Harvey Goodwin's career spanned the bulk of the twentieth century. During that time he saw many societal reactions to the gay community, ranging from acceptance to outright hostility. Though an artist, not an activist, he followed the gay-rights struggle with interest as his collection of papers attest. Vincent Astor wrote in his article "The Incomparable Mr. Harvey Lee," that Goodwin "never mentioned hardships or prejudice because he was gay."

Goodwin was a performer above all else and was ever aware of his audience as noted by the following quotation:

A certain amount of decorum and restraint must be practised and adhered to when one is engaged in the profession of a female impersonator as the great American public is always alert to detect and criticize any slight fault or mannerism that is out of the ordinary.

"A Certain Amount of Decorum" is a fitting epitaph for Harvey Goodwin, a man of letters, style, and talent.

Harvey Lee Goodwin suffered all his life from bouts of tuberculosis. He still lived a very full and eventful life, however - he gave his farewell performance in San Francisco in 1984 after fifty years in frocks, and died on 4th July 1992.

More Mr Harvey Lee at the incomparable Queer Music Heritage site.

The only natural thing about any of this is the light

From an article by Abby Aguire in Vogue, May 2019:

If you approach Mother Ru from the side, as I did, the first thing you will need to process is the eyelashes. The skull-to-eyelash ratio is so physiologically improbable that it’s a good 30 seconds before I realize that Ru is not dressed as any of his familiar alter egos. Rather, he’s a modern facsimile of Queen Elizabeth I, clothed in a billowing gold-brocade skirt, a corset, and a halo of red dreadlocks.

He knows which side is his good side. He knows how the light is hitting. He knows to lower the lashes to half-mast and let them hover there as the camera clicks. And when, after a while, Leibovitz suggests he remove his headpiece, he knows to object.

“It becomes something else without the piece,” Ru says, gesturing to the rest of his puffy-sleeved costume. “The piece sells everything else.”

“Your hair becomes a crown,” Leibovitz says gently. The exchange goes on for two minutes. Finally, RuPaul puts his (combat boot–clad) foot down. Remove the piece, and he is no longer in character. “Everything here is overdone,” he says, motioning again to his look, and then to the surroundings. “The only natural thing about any of this is the light.”

It occurs to me that RuPaul has just offered up a definition of camp. (“The essence of camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration,” Susan Sontag wrote in “Notes on ‘Camp.’ ”) More remarkably, he and Leibovitz have just unwittingly re-created one of the photographer’s most memorable shoots.

You see, twelve years ago, when Leibovitz took official portraits of Queen Elizabeth II in full regalia at Buckingham Palace, one of America’s most well-known portrait photographers asked England’s longest-reigning monarch to remove her “crown.” (It was a tiara.) A BBC film crew captured the exchange.

Leibovitz: “It will look better - less dressy - because the garter robe is so...”

Queen Elizabeth II: “Less dressy? What do you think this is?”

The queen of the United Kingdom did not want to take off her headpiece. And here in beautiful downtown Burbank, neither does the Queen of Drag.

RuPaul is 60 years old today.

All Hail!

RuPaul (born RuPaul Andre Charles, 17th November 1960)

A tits-and-feathers man

...It was showbiz rather than acting that had the greater appeal for him. "I'm a tits-and-feathers man really," he explained. He loved the Tiller Girls, who were his idea of glamour, and blamed the Beatles for making show-business less glamorous."

The marvellous John Inman would have been 85 years old today.

All together, now... "I'm Free!"

Frederick John Inman (28th June 1935 – 8th March 2007)

Life's a Drag

Jude Law in Rage (2009)


Sir Laurence Olivier and Kenneth More arriving for Night Of A Hundred Stars at The London Palladium (1960)


Hugh Herbert in La Conga Nights (1940)


Stephen Dorff as Candy Darling in I Shot Andy Warhol (1996)


Robert Mitchum in Girl Rush (1944)


Rupert Everett in St Trinians (2007)


The Rolling Stones in drag, 1966