Kate Genever: Um, so here we are today, um, at, um, Brian’s house. It’s the 26th of April and we’re doing an oral recording for the Scene But Not Heard project, 2025. So, um, Brian tell us something about you start from the beginning.
00:25 Brian: Start from the beginning, wow. I was born in Liverpool in March, 1975, uh, we lived in Croxteth, which wasn’t at the time a particularly nice neighbourhood of Liverpool, uh, when I was about two and a half, my family relocated to Cambridge. We lived actually in Cambridge, just outside of the city centre for a couple of years, then we relocated again to a village called Fulbourn, just outside of Cambridge, where, until I was fifteen, we lived, and I had a fantastic childhood, looking back, fantastic childhood, um, we were lucky, living in the country surrounded by woodland and fields and country walks, and you don’t appreciate it as a child growing up, but looking back, yeah, I’d, I was so lucky, you know, and we had the freedom to go off on our bikes, and spend all day, especially summer holidays, my brother and my sister, I’m the youngest of three. My mum always joked she had three children – one of each. Little did she know [they laugh] years later it would come true, um, and we would just go, and off we went, um, for a while we lived on site in a residential home, my mum was a warden in a residential home, so we lived on site surrounded by what we thought were very old people, but probably weren’t, but probably maybe mid-60s or upwards, but when you’re six and seven, anyone over the age of forty is geriatric, um, and we were encouraged by the staff in the nursing home, um, residential home, sorry, not nursing, residential home to engage and interact with the residents, and talk to them and little did we know that that’s what kept them young, you know, it was very forward thinking for 1980 for places to be doing that, and I was speaking to my mom just Thursday night, and she was saying, you know, it’s, what an impact … We were too young to understand, but what an impact we made just by socializing and sitting and listening to people, letting them talk about their life experiences and their histories. To us, you know, World War II seemed forever ago, although it was only 35 years ago at that time, and to them, they lived, some of them lived from the first world war, we didn’t know that, you know, ’til afterwards. Um, moved to Hull when I was, like I said, fifteen, whole family moved to Hull, very quickly the family group broke up, my brother and sister broke relocated back down to Cambridge, uh, my parents separated and ultimately divorced, I stayed in Hull, nobody else did. I had a job, so, I thought, oh, you know, I’m settled, and stayed in Hull, so that’s the start, let’s say, so that takes us up to about 1990, I think. 1991 I was sixteen, and my dad took me from my first official pint in the St. George’s pub off … On, well, on St. George’s Road in Hull. Before we went in, he slipped me a ten pound note, he said, “go to the bar and just order the drinks,” and I was like, “they’re not gonna serve me, I’m too young, I look too young,” he said, “just get to the bar, order the drinks, have the money in your hand, be confident in what you’re saying, and they’ll serve you,” and they did, and the barmaid served me, great, she gave me the change, I ordered, you know, we had our drink, me and me dad, I ordered the second round, and my landlady at the time was Clarice Mack, who was a bit of an icon on ‘essle Road and in Hull, um, she looked at me, she said, “you’re not eighteen, I can’t serve you, sorry,” so me dad then ordered the round, directly, immediately afterwards, and she served me dad, and she said, “where’s your round, Colin?” and she said, “where’s the glass? Okay, for your son,” she said, “just keep it on the table in front of you should anyone question it, that’s all he’s drinking,” so that was my first official … I had been in a pub beforehand, but I didn’t tell me parents that [they chuckle], and it really, it was a different pub, um, so, yeah, my first pint with me dad, very memorable, uh, and little did I know but the pub he took me in, it would just happen to be the nearest pub to where we lived, would come back years, you know, a couple years later, and end up being my local pub where I’d meet lots of very interesting and colourful people and characters, and still be friends with them all these years later, so yeah, that’s that [they laugh].
06:29 KG: Um, can, and what can you remember about … I mean that’s an amazing story, to be taken into a pub by your dad, can you remember, uh, anything about the pub or the people?
06:45 B: I remember the pub having lots of plates and chinaware on a shelf around the top, where like a picture rail would be, right up at the top, and in the far corner of a pub there was a stage with a gold tassel curtain framing the outside, the back of the stage. I looked at it and noticed it, didn’t really pay too much attention to it, um, Clarice, the landlady was immaculately dressed, very petite, very short lady, brilliant white hair, uh, in a bouffant hairstyle, more suited to the ’60s than the early ’90s I would say, dripping in gold rings and necklaces, and she had on a very heavily beaded and sequined top and skirt what matched, and she was the epitome of old-school glamour of landladies, very much like Annie Walker from Rovers Return in Coronation Street, she would always be well, very well presented, you wouldn’t see her without her makeup on, you wouldn’t see her not looking her best, you know, where she woke up at a stupid o’clock in the morning to prepare it, she probably did, but yeah I never ever saw her nothing short of, like, just immaculate, everything was right. The two bar ladies she had, Eileen and Sheila, she had another bar lady, Linda, um, Linda was younger, quite a bit younger than the other two ladies, um, but they were old-school barmaids, they could serve four or five customers just by recognition, and, uh, add everything up in their head, they didn’t need the till, they knew exactly who drank what and who was next to be served, who was never in the argey-bargey over who was next, they just knew, and Clarice had, uh, a table where she would sit at predominantly, and it was directly next to the stage, and above this table is a very small mirror, if you didn’t know about it you wouldn’t notice it, it was quite concealed, and this mirror, she would be able to look at this mirror, and it would show directly what was going on behind her at the bar, so she could see who’d walked into the pub, who was getting served and everything, and the bar had two rooms, had a lounge and a public bar, and the lounge … It’s, uh, become a bit of a myth but it is actually true, it was a penny dearer on the drinks of a bar, but woe betide if you bought your drink in the bar and brought it through to the lounge, that was not allowed, if you was in the lounge, you drank and paid for your drinks in the lounge, because the lounge was where the entertainment happened, um, the entertainment, first time I saw that entertainment I was at, I think I was sixteen, I’d been there with me dad a couple of times, I’d gone in with a friend of mine, we were at college, and we were, it was a Sunday night, and we were both very giggly, ’cause we’d seen that they had a drag act advertised, never seen a drag act in person, we’d seen Danny LaRue and Dame Edna, or the two Ronnies dressing up on television doing sketches, but we never seen one we didn’t know what to expect, and it was, um, for Broadway Belles, John and Tony, we didn’t know who their names were at that time, um, and we said, “oh, we’ll go in and see them,” and we went in, and one of the guys who was operating with sound equipment was a DJ in the town centre in a bar we used to go in, but we didn’t know he was connected to the Broadway Belles, so he saw us and waved, you know, chatted to us, Clarice the landlady, um, made sure that we was on Coke that night, we weren’t allowed beer, um, kept an eye on us, but she kept an eye on us not in a bad way, just to make sure we were safe, ’cause she knew we were young, she knew we were I wouldn’t say vulnerable but maybe naïve, I think, would be the right word, um, and she just kept looking across, makin’ sure we was okay, not causing any harm, and then when it was the time for the show to start, the music started and the lights dimmed, and then we were just flooded, our sensations were just flooded by a riot of sequin and colour and feathers and music, and it was just wow, you know? As a young gay guy, who had come out with family, and didn’t have a problem with it, but I [was] still findin’ my feet, didn’t know where I really fitted in with society, too young, really, to be going on the gay scene just at, started college, you know, so navigating through that period of life, it was just great, and everyone in the pub just made sure we was okay, looked after us, it was great, it’s … and that’s what, I think, still happens now in some of the pubs in Hull, and I don’t know if that happens across the country, sensible people look out for naïve people, we want to make sure everyone’s okay, people like … People who go out to have a good time, and people like to make sure people are safe and happy, and that’s stayed with me all these years, you know, so … somebody looked out for me, looked after me, I do the same. I don’t mollycoddle, I don’t interfere, but I watch, and I observe, and I listen, and if I hear something what I feel is inappropriate, I will challenge, or if I hear something oh it’s a little bit creepy from somebody, I will certainly step in and say, you know, just, “we’re not interested, back off,” take it from there, but yeah, that’s what, that was my first, that’s what I remember about the pub.
13:55 KG: Do you remember that … what, that, other than the amazing colours and sequins and lights, do you remember the performance?
14:05 B: I remember them doing a song, uh, but they were do, dressed as the Andrew Sisters doing a song, so it must’ve been the Boogie Woogie Woogie Boys, something like that I think they were doing, I remember that, and I remember them doing a song that … I didn’t know what the song was I wasn’t familiar with it, but I later learned the song was Play Girls by it was an American act, I don’t know if it was female singers or drag queen, I don’t know, um, it was the song I came to know and learn, and actually perform[ed] myself with Bobby many years later, and I also remember them at the end of the night gettin’ members of the audience at one stage and everyone holding hands and swaying to, um, Brotherhood of Man, United we Stand, Divided we Fall, and I thought, “yeah, this is this is community, this is nice, everyone just being together.”
15:19 KG: And who were, who was in the pub, besides you, watching?
15:24 B: Good grief. Uh, obviously, the pub was a locals’ pub, so there was a lot of regulars in, um, some of which I was just slowly beginning to know, um, there was definitely a friend of ours, Maggie, she was in [they sigh] I’m trying to think who else was in that night, but I can’t remember, I’d have to really sit and think, it’s all stored in there somewhere, but I have to think about it or see a visual prompt or hear something and it’ll-
16:00 KG: Take you back.
16:01 B: Click into place and, yeah, I could take you back there now.
16:05 KG: But it felt like a safe place?
16:07 B: Very safe place, very safe place, like I said, Clarice, she knew, well, you know, she knew we was underage, but she looked out for us, because I think, because we were sensible as well, we weren’t stupid teenage drunks, um, sometimes we’d have literally half a lager, and it would last us all night, um, but we still always made sure we had a glass of Coke on the table, because Heaven forbid, there was always that fear that the pub was going to get raided and the police was going to come in and arrest us, I don’t know why ever thought that, because it, there was no reason for it to happen, but as a silly sixteen year old, you know, you think, you always think the worst, and you think something’s gonna happen, but I remember that, um, I mean, it was literally not even a five minute walk to my front door from there, so it was a safe pub to walk to, streets were safe, I knew the streets, I knew the area, I knew the people, so yeah, it was it was good, it was nice.
17:16 KG: And so after that experience, tell us what happened next in your life. You were at college, you said.
17:25 B: Oh, good Heavens, yeah, I was at college doing business and finance, that was a disaster, because I’m no good with money at all, um, but let me see, what happened next? Carried on doing my college course, um, carried on going out maybe once a month into the pub when I could afford it and seeing different drag acts on, she always had a rotation of different drag acts on, um, so I saw the Broadway Belles, I saw, ooh, I think it was the GG Girls, they used … part of them were the Vauxhall Dragettes, who I think had splintered off into two groups, and it was the GG Girls I saw but I can’t remember who was in the GG Girls, so if you’re listening – I’m sorry [they chuckle], um, and then a couple months later it was a Wednesday night, I remember it because it must have been half term or something at college, because I don’t, I didn’t normally go out on a work night, and Bobby was on at the St. George, and I’d heard people talk about Bobby, um, and because it was a pub I was beginning to know, feel familiar with, I knew a few faces in there, I plucked up the courage and I went in by myself, and I said hello to, you know, waved to people who I recognized and everything, and I stood by the bar … as you walked into the pub, there was a glass screen by the door, which sort of acted as a windbreak for when the door opened so people sat on the seating weren’t hit by a blast of air, and people called it the Goldfish Bowl, because you could stand there and look through and you can look through to the stage, and I stood there all by myself looking through over people’s heads of who were sat down watching the show when Bobby was on, and I was just, wow, because I’d seen, although I’d seen other drag acts, they’d done more, it’d normally been more ensemble acts, so they were on stage together doing things together, and a lot of comedy routines but I’d never seen anyone do come on as Shirley Bassey, do Shirley Bassey, go off then come on as Tina Turner and do Tina Turner, and I was just completely blown away, because looking at this person on stage, the costuming was perfect, the wigs were exactly right for that characterization, and to see somebody stand there and do Shirley Bassey with all the hand movements and the mouth gestures stock still brilliant, and then come on and have all the high energy and vitality that Tina Turner had back then, um, was just completely amazing and mindblowing, and then to see the final song, the finale where Bobby does the transformation from a woman back into a man, it just, I don’t know, I’d never seen anything like that before, ever, so it was just, yeah, I can’t even think of a word, there’s too many superlatives to use to describe how I felt, and why I felt that way, and it made me just think, “yeah, I’m lucky to be in this pub watching that person perform,” and again, life is strange, it takes you down different roads, little did I know that a couple years later Bobby would actually take over the pub, and be the landlord or landlady, however, whether it was Ray or Bobby, um, of the pub and then perform myself on that stage, again, for a one-off bit of nonsense, for a charity gig, yeah, it was just … that … life, I believe you go where you should go in life, um, there’s twists and turns, but fate is a big thing, I think, you know, it’s all pre-arranged, pre-ordained, you will end up meeting certain people in life, you will end up doing certain things, um, sometimes by chance, sometimes not by chance, and it’s meant to be, and yeah, that’s that is my take of the St. George.
23:04 KG: And so I guess it became a regular place to go out, then, at that point, after that?
23:13 B: It did, um-
23:13 KG: And was it only for drag, only to see drag, or?
23:17 B: I only went in there to see drag at that time, um, couple of years later, I bought my first house, which was just behind the St. George, and again. a very strange quirk of fate the house I lived in, my first house I bought, backed onto the house that Bobby grew up in. Yeah [they chuckle], very random, because when he came round to see my house, he was like, “I know this house,” huh, yeah, he went, “that was, my grandma’s house backs onto the alleyway, and that was the bedroom we stayed in,” and yeah, so that’s, it’s weird, it’s, like I said, life takes you down certain roads, and it’s, things are meant to be in life, aren’t they, I believe, um, but yeah, so, but once I bought that house, I was, obviously, a little bit older, had a bit of money for myself because I was working then, so I wasn’t at college, so I had some more income, so I started getting a pub a couple of times a week, um, I mean, like, when Bobby had it, on a Friday, no Thursday, sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself, Thursday they had a quiz, quiz night, uh, Friday was Bobby and Crystal as the Airs and Graces doing a show together, which was different, because I had only seen Bobby do his solo show, so Airs and Graces were doing, it was more of a comedy show, and the costumes would be identical, but Crystal was tall, slim, very long-legged, whereas Bobby, not so tall, and at the time, like myself, not so slim, so there was a good contrast there, and it, from a visual point of view, it looked good, uh, then on a Saturday, Bobby would do his show at the George. People call it the George, but it is actually the St. George, so if you hear me say the George, I mean the St. George, uh, it gets confusing because there were several pubs in a Hull called the George that have played parts in our lives with drag and nights out and stuff, um, and then on a Sunday, they would have a guest drag act on from, some from out of town, some from Manchester, some from London, Newcastle, ‘e even had one on from New York who flew over to appear, that was good, that was Brian Murphy, not the Brian Murphy from George and Mildred, but, uh, an Afro-American guy called Brian Murphy, quite heavy set, and I think that was the first time I’d seen a drag queen sing live vocals rather than mime to the prerecorded tape, and ‘e did a lot of, um, blues and Gershwin and Irving Berlin type music. It was different, I enjoyed it not everyone did, but I did, uh, and then I think one of the highlights for me of the acts that Bobby had on was Maisy Trolette, who very sadly passed away earlier this year, um, at the age, well, early nineties, and was still performing right up until the, almost the very end, so is and, was the UK’s oldest working drag queen, uh, but he had Maisy Trolette, on who was performing in panto at Hull New Theatre, uh, I believe as a fairy godmother, maybe one the ugly sisters in Cinderella, if I’ve got that wrong, I apologize, I’m not saying she was ugly she was a beautiful, beautiful person, uh, beautiful soul, and that was good, so it, that was good, because it gave the audience a fresh act every week to see, and it gave people something new to look forward to, not because seeing the same act over and over gets stale, because it, if you enjoy an act, you enjoy an act, it doesn’t get stale, but to see different people maybe do the same, almost the same style of show, or their own interpretation of a Tina Turner tribute, so they could be in a completely different style dress and wig, so somebody could come on one week and be dressed as Tina Turner but Tina Turner from the ’60s, the following week it could be somebody doing Tina Turner from the mid-’80s, um, the Mad Max era, so that was interesting to see, and that gave it a really good balance, I think, of perspective, and then Bobby decided, I can’t remember how it came about, I wasn’t one of the original members, to do, um, put together a couple of the members of the audience to do an amateur drag night. I went in there to watch, and I enjoyed it, and it was a lot of fun. I can’t remember what songs were performed, or … but I think there is … Andy, Alec, and Paul, definitely, there could have been a fourth person involved, I can’t remember, but very nicely, John from the Broadway Belles had said, “I’ll come in and I’ll support them,” [they cough] John Garlic of the Broadway Belles at the time came in, and supported and cheered and it was a little, two or three people in drag, but not performing as well, to support, which I thought was lovely, um, and then something had happened, I think it was the pub bombing of the Admiral Duncan in Soho, and Bobby had said, “we need to do something, we need to show support, solidarity to this bar, we need to [do] a fundraiser, we’ll do an amateur drag,” and ask me if I’d, asked several people, then asked me if I wanted to get involved. I said, “not really, I don’t think it’s my sort of thing, it’s, I enjoy drag, but I don’t think I’d do it, I’ve not got the confidence to do it, I wouldn’t enjoy being under that spotlight,” and then Alec, who’d done the previous amateur night, said, “just come on, it’s a bit of fun why not, you and I get on stage and do the Weathergirls It’s Raining Men,” he said, “we can just wear raincoats and a silly wig, and that’s it,” he said, “three minutes of a song, you know, it’s not going to stay with you forever,” and I was like, “well … go on, then,” uh, and this was like a week before the performance was due, so we sort of got together in the pub on the Wednesday night. and ran through who was going to be involved, and what people were going to do, just so there wasn’t, uh, a duplication of music, and at that time there was Les, Andy, Alec and myself. Les went on the name of Miss Patti O’Doors, Andy was Miss Legs L’amore, Alec was Betty Slack, and because I was doing something with Betty Slack, he was like, “okay, we need a name that sort of goes with Betty Slack, and we sat down and various names were bandied about, and we got a short list of three names, there was Kitty Kindcock, there was Dolly Dicklove, and Fanny Nice-and-Tight, and because Alec was Betty Slack, we thought, “well, Betty Slack, Fanny Nice-and-Tight, they work well together as a one-off, yes,” so … I’ve got some photos somewhere, I’ll have to have a look for them. I remember being on stage in a yellow Mac, and a, I think it was a pure white curly wig, to do the Weathergirls, completely didn’t look like them, but we weren’t trying to impersonate them, it was just more let’s do this song as a comedy routine, and I remember we had water pistols so when it said, “it’s rainin’ men,” we squirted people in the audience with water pistols, and in between each act, Bobby would get up and do a song and a costume change each time, to keep the flow of the night going, because, obviously, four guys just doing one song each isn’t gonna fill a night out, and it was a lot of fun, and then, that was the October, nothing happened in November, and then December time, it was, “oh, let’s do a Christmas fun night,” and I’m not sure if it fell, I can’t remember if it was, like the weekend before and Christmas were like a Monday, Tuesday or if it fell in between Christmas and New Year, I can’t remember when we did it, but I know we did Christmas songs, so we’d gone out and we’d just bought, from a fancy dress shop, these cheap, awful, it was almost like felt, red Christmas dresses, they were like smocks, there was no shape to them, there was no style to them, but all four of us bought them, so we were the same, um, sorry, no, three of us bought them, Alec, Andy, and myself bought them, Les couldn’t, because Les, at the time, was 27 stone, very. very big guy, very funny guy, sadly missed, and I think Bobby made Les his own Christmas outfit in a similar style to ours, so we all looked the piece, and Bobby made us all these capes, Christmas capes, full length red capes trimmed in white fur with a hood, and we did some of the Phil Spector songs like the Ronettes like Sleigh Ride, and what else did we do? Oh, dear. I’ve actually got the cassette, we actually learned, all the music was put onto a cassette tape, and we were given a copy each for each show, and the whole show was on the cassette, so we would get the cassette the week before the show, we’d have a week to learn the songs, a week to put together … I can’t even call it choreography, because it was just … it wasn’t a shambles, it was just unorganized, I think, would be the right word for it, and we would just stand … again, I was a bag of nerves, and I would freeze and come either very either very tense on stage or over animated to try to compensate, because I remember thinking to myself, “just relax, just relax, just relax, just go with it,” and so I think I would over execute, I would, more broadly, well, I waved me arms around and twirl around and misstep and everything, and we did a Christmas song, um, uh, Christmas show, and it was like, okay. it was a lot of fun, the audience enjoyed it, we enjoyed it, and so Bobby said, “okay, let’s make this a more regular thing,” you know, he said, “instead of being four individual people doing four individual …. we’ll put you together as a a troupe, as an ensemble, and we’ll sort of structure the shows a bit better so there’s a clear running order, there’s more definition as to who is who and who’s doing what,” and we became St. George’s Ladyboys, and oh my goodness, we would meet on a Wednesday night on, say, week one, and we would discuss what sort of music we’d like to do for the show, which was always the last Sunday of the month, um, but usually, after week one, we hadn’t finalised, we hadn’t decided, we’d meet again the following week, it was a bit more pinned down and things were starting to take shape, and people were saying, “well I want to do this and I want to do that,” so we was like, “okay, well you can’t really have two people doing two different Shirley Bassey songs in one night, so something’s got to give, if you do it this time. somebody else can do it next time.” um, I never really did any of the icons, because I thought, “whatever I do, people are instantly going to compare to what they’ve seen others do,” and that happens, and that happens not just in drag, but with singers, with with bands, with groups, if cover versions, people always refer back to “oh so-and-so did this first, they did it better or this better,” and I think with drag, it’s quite a personal thing, everyone has their favourites, and it doesn’t mean that somebody’s better than somebody at doing a particular song or sketch or look, but if somebody saw artist A first perform something, and that stays with them, so when we see another artist do the same song, you instantly compare, and that’s just human nature, so I thought to meself, “okay, well, I won’t do Diana Ross, I won’t do Shirley, I won’t do Tina,” so I went through my CD collection and I thought, “well, it has to be something that people would know, because, obviously, I want them to enjoy it and sing along with it,” and although I love ballads and big orchestral music, I wanted something a bit more energy to it, a bit more up to tempo, um, so what did I do? Good question. What did I do? I did a version of Can’t Take My Eyes Off [Of ]You by Mary Wilson, she was one of the Supremes, and I also did, we did two songs each, two, we did two songs one in each, because the show was split into act A and, uh, Act One and Act Two, so we did a song in each act, and we did the opening together the last song together as an ensemble to tie it all in, um, so I did Can’t Take My Eyes Off You, um, I did another song, ohhh … If I’d had time this week I could have dug the tape out, because I’ve still got all the tapes.
41:10 KG: There’ll be time.
41:11 B: I’ve still got all the tapes with it on, and I did … Well, whatever the song was, I did, um, the opening song together, I think it was from a Disney musical, and the finale we did together was We Are What We Are from La Cage, and although we were responsible for our own wardrobe for our solo sets, the ensemble pieces Bobby made identical outfits for us. I don’t know how he found the time to do it in between his own shows and the Airs and Graces and running the pub and having an own life, and but he made us these costumes, and they were absolutely … although a lot of work and effort went into them and we appreciated it, looking back, these costumes were awful, they were absolutely hideous, and Ray and I still laugh about it now, ’cause he says he made a mistake himself, it wasn’t the design or the effort gone into it, it was the fabric, it was a wrong choice of fabric, it was a really stiff fabric in canary yellow, and we had sequined ponchos over it, mine was silver, Pattie O’Doors’ was purple, Betty Slack was green, and Miss Legs L’amore, I think, was red, no Betty Slack was red, Miss Legs L’amore was green, and the poncho bits looked fabulous, and the sequin of these ponchos, the gown was trimmed, the gowns just split up the front to just above the knee, and round the hem and the split were trimmed in the same coloured sequin to match it all in, and it looked nice, but the gowns were so starchy we couldn’t really move in them, so we was almost like scarecrows, we were very stiff and wooden, um, I think we only wore them that once, I don’t think we wore them again. but the gowns we had at the start of the show and the end of the show were the same gown, we just duplicated them up for that. Um, the second show we did, Betty and I had gone, Betty Slack and I had gone shopping in, on to Hessle Road, into a shop, Big Stuff, what catered for the more fuller figured person, and we bought these, um, knee length dresses in a real dark purple sequin, and they were very nice, but they were quite plain, as plain as sequins can be, I know, we took them in to show Bobby, and we said we love the fabric, we love the colour, it’s just the style, “not a problem,” he said, “leave it with me, come back, like tomorrow or something,” I can’t remember what day it was, we went back on the Wednesday, as we … Wednesday evening in the pub, to start rehearsing, because at this time we was like, “come on, you know, we need to put a bit more effort into it,” so we like do what we could to make the show as smooth as possible, and get the running order right, and make sure there was, like I said, no duplication of music, and also it’s pointless us all going on stage one after each other all way in the same colour, that’d just look silly, um, and we must have bought these gowns, these dresses on a Saturday, on the Wednesday we’d gone in and Bobby had cut these gowns from the hip to a point at the front on both sides and the same at the back, and the off-cuts, he’d made some gauntlets for our arms with, and he just added some tassels to the gauntlets and to the gown front and back, and they looked fabulous, absolutely fabulous, and we did Dream Girls from the stage production Dream Girls long before the film came out, and because it hadn’t ever been a musical over here in the UK, a lot of people didn’t know the music, uh, so we did Dream Girls, and in them that was Betty and I, and then we did also a song called … Now then, was it Tell Him? I think it was Tell Him by Barbra Streisand and Celine Dion in the second half, again in these gowns, um, they just looked … We thought they looked stunning under lights, and we did, I mean, obviously it wasn’t too the high end, the high quality, of the couture of some of the gowns what other people wear, but for our budget, which was non-existent, by the way, they looked good; and then the following show, we have these blue sequin gowns, we’d gone into a … I think one of the customers from the pub, Linda, no, I tell a lie, she was a barmaid in the pub at that time, had a sewing shop in one of the shopping centres, so we’d gone into Boyes on the Hessle Road, and we purchased, uh, some blue sequin and some blue lining material, and she made us these strapless full length gowns, just vertical, almost like a tube dress, and we loved them, we thought they were great, I mean, it was it was made for us, and it fitted, and to us it was like oh wow this is glam [Brian chuckles], um, and I think the theme to the show … would be the theme, come on, I can’t remember why, [it] must’ve have been a maybe a bank holiday weekend or something like that, and it was a old time musical, so we’d go back to, like, the Edwardian era, and this is where growing up in a residential home came into its own, because I knew the songs through osmosis of listening to all the old sing alongs with the old ladies and gentlemen I grew up with singing the old songs, I knew them, so it wasn’t a … I didn’t have to learn the songs, um, and that was really bizarre, so we did old time musical, um, we did songs like Don’t Dillydally On The Way, uh, Burlington Bertie from Bobo, that was my solo song, um, I think we did We’re a Couple of Swells from I think that, is it Easter Parade with Judy Garland and Fred Astaire? Uh, and then, I can’t remember who had it but somebody had a cast album from EastEnders and it was the EastEnders single on party album, or something nonsense like that it was called, so we chose a couple of songs from this album, and that bookended the show as the open and then the finished, and I’m sure Bobby’s got it on DVD somewhere, well VHS, actually, well that’s, nobody had DVD players when they didn’t exist, oh, uh, on VHS, um, I’ve got a copy somewhere, but it might be up in the loft, I think, um, because I had it converted to, uh, DVD, and we’re there doing this old time sing along musical sketch, and, oh, it was marvellous, it was fun, it was different, people weren’t doing it, um, and that’s what I like, I like, I don’t like, well, I don’t mind quirk, um, I just like things what are just slightly different from the norm, and what else did we do? We had these gowns, we’d gone into this shop again on Hessle Road, Big Stuff, and bought these green velvet dresses, they were knee-length, we took them in, and Bobby had altered them, he’d added a hooped skirt, so, a fishtail skirt to the bottom of them, and put these puffed sleeves on, um, on the, obviously, on the arms, so they looked of the era, and we had these feathers, ’cause we didn’t have much of a wardrobe, then, I think, probably five outfits each at that time, and about three wigs in, so sometimes we would swap wigs around to vary it up, and we have these big feathers, big ostrich feathers attached to our wigs, which, I think they fell off during the set, so yeah, it’s, these things happen, and we had long, I remember wearing long evening gloves with these gowns, um, and they were beautiful, again, they were absolutely beautiful, uh, so that was that. Oh, what did we do? For some reason, I can’t remember. For some reason, there was a period of time where although there were four of us, for about three shows or four shows, there was only three of us. It could have been due to holidays and other commitments, um, and I think … Oh one of them was ill, oh one of them it was illness, it was, uh, Les Pattie O’Doors was ill, so on the night we had to change the show, um, and it was a themed show, and I can’t remember what we called the show, but it was all … These outfits what we had made were all very Rio Carnival inspired, and we did Calypso music, and music from Copa Cabana the musical, and, uh, bloomin’ steel drums music playing in between songs and stuff, I remember, and I … What else did we do? I did Happy Talk from South Pacific, which didn’t really fit in with the theme, but it worked for some reason, um, and I did Going Bananas, which I think was Madonna from Dick Tracy, and I was dressed in this awful, again canary yellow, could’ve made me canary yellow dress what I didn’t like and a huge and inflatable banana, it was mad, it was nonsense, but we did it. Uh … I can’t remember what that theme was, but it was along those lines, and then another show we did … We did a Christmas in July show, and the whole pub was decorated for Christmas in July, Christmas trees, garlands, um, the swags what you have on the ceilings, and people dressed up in Christmas jumpers, the customers were, people had made mince pies, there was mulled wine, um, and we did a full Christmas show in these Christmas outfits in July, I don’t know why, I don’t know why we did some of the things we did, seemed a good idea at the time, maybe, I don’t know, uh, well that was a lot of fun, that was an awful lot of fun, but again, there was a reason why, I can’t remember why, but there would have been a reason why there was only three of us instead of four of us. I know the next time it was all four of us, there was an incident … We used to get changed in the … the pub kitchen had like a very narrow kitchen, work surfaces down both sides, it was never used as a commercial kitchen, it was used more as a dressing room for all the acts who came and performed at the pub, and there was coat hooks on one wall, so all the gowns were hung up, and we had a little piece of worktop each of our own space for our makeup and jewellery and stuff, and the wigs were just on polystyrene heads, scattered about here, there, and everywhere, and Miss Legs L’amore had this beautiful brand new wig, a mermaid wig, it was lovely rich auburn colour, and it was John Garlic from Broadway Belles had combed it all up and styled it, it looked, ’cause John used to do some of our wigs for us, absolutely lovely job he did, and for some reason, this wig ended up being stood on top of a coffee, um, filter machine, and to this day nobody knows how or why but the coffee machine ended up being switched on, and it melted the wig to the polystyrene base, this brand new wig that hadn’t even been worn on stage, uh, I got the trouble, I got the blame for it, and I don’t know why, it wasn’t me, I genuinely don’t know who it was, uh, so I remember that happening, I remember I was doing … Betty and I, I tended to double up if I could with somebody, because at that time I just didn’t have a confidence of being on stage by myself, so I doubled up with Betty, and we did Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli doing, well, their version of it is called Hello Mama, but it’s actually the song Hello Dolly from Hello Dolly, but it’s done as a duet, and we did that, and we had on these black leotards, and then over these black leotards was a black blouse that had been trimmed in gold sequin around the hem and around the cuffs, and I think the collar had some sort of embellishment on, and for some reason, I’d picked up. because we didn’t really allow ourselves enough time for costume changes. and I picked up Betty’s blouse, um, and she was a couple of the silences bigger, I was, I wasn’t skinny, I’ve never been skinny in my life, but I was slimmer then, I actually had a waistline, Betty was bigger than me, and I ended up putting on her blouse in a rush, and she put mine on, but she said oh, I’ll fasten up as I go through, and she managed to fasten this blouse up, but the buttons were gaping, and it clearly was wrong, and mine was too big and baggy, and we just looked each other and burst out laughing, we couldn’t continue with the sketch, because it was like well, wrong outfit, uh, but you just go with it, you know, and back then, none of us spoke on the microphone, we dared, we were frightened of a microphone, we don’t know why, it’s not as if it was going to hurt you, but we was all, “oh no, it’s, I can’t do that, I can’t speak on the microphone,” so we just laughed our way through that sketch, um, and we never attempted that sketch again. What else happened? We did this other show, uh, it was called Showtime, that was the theme of the show, Showtime, and one of the sketches we did was two ladies from the musical Cabaret, and Bobby was in the sketch where was Bobby, we was, Bobby was playing the role of the emcee, and Betty Slack and I were the two ladies, and when we were in these very, very short, not quite babydoll, but they were, like, nightdresses which we’d hacked to a short, very short hemline, um, and Bobby was in, like, pyjamas and everything, and, uh, we’d rigged up a backdrop on this stage, we went behind the backdrop and it was backlit, so you could see our silhouettes through, and it was more of a case of us stood there laughing at each other, and crawling in between each other’s legs. and waving arms about, and not really knowing what we were doing, because we hadn’t rehearsed that part, it was just oh, we’ll just go with it, uh, but it looked good on the video watching it back, we were like, “ooh, okay,” and people were like, “well how did you do that, you know, had you pre recorded that sequence?” It was like, “no, of course we haven’t,” didn’t have the technology then, or the budget to pre-record a backlit scene, um, did the sheet fall down halfway through? Something covered it, there was always some calamity in the shows, it wouldn’t be a show without something happening.
1:00:59 KG: How long was this over a period of?
1:01:03 B: Oh, this was over two years, maybe two and a half, definitely two years, we definitely did two fall Christmas shows and the mid-year Christmas show, and we did some shows in the early 2000s, so it was from ’98 through to about April, 2000, um, so, no, that’s not two and a half years then, is it?
1:01:37 KG: Yeah.
1:01:37 B: However long it was it was, uh-
1:01:42 KG: And who were the punters in the pub?
1:01:45 B: Oh, that would be people from Hessle Road, uh, the locals, uh, and people who were … I wouldn’t say fans of Bobby, that’s wrong … friends, I’d say, more friends of Bobby, um, and like Chris and Denise, Maggie, Bobby’s family would come and his sister Val, uh, my mum would come and see me if she could, uh, and just regulars from the pub, so they knew us as us, and I don’t know, people, I don’t think people particularly came in to see us, it was like, oh, God, you know, the St. George’s Ladyboys are on, we must go and see them, I think it was, oh, the Ladyboys are on, we’re there anyway, uh, I think that was more of the occasion, um, but we did a show … I’d been on holiday, it was the February, early February, and I’d been on holiday, so I didn’t miss the February show, but I’d come back, I’d been to Tunisia with some friends, and we came back with kaftans, and we don’t know why but we thought, oh, they’ll get used in the show somewhere, and everyone on stage wore a kaftan, I can’t remember why, but it just … it didn’t work wiv the song we were doing, but it’s, again, it seemed a good idea at the time, uh, one time it wasn’t the St. George’s Ladyboy show, it was one of Bobby’s show, and back then Bobby and I had the same figure, um, I was about an inch taller than him, that was all, so he used to use me as his tailor’s dummy for when he was making his own gowns and stuff, because if it fitted me it would fit him, and it was easier for him to do it, and he could make sure it was pinned correctly, and the zip was aligned perfectly and everything else, and whatever he did was always a secret, I never told anyone what the new gown was like, everyone knew it was, I was up there, you know, being pinned, you know, middle of the week and everything else, uh, and Bobby had been dropping hints for weeks and weeks and weeks about this brand new outfit, never seen before, brand new outfit, never seen before, and it was a Friday night, because he made two one for him and one for Crystal who was the resident drag DJ there, um, for Airs and Graces, so he said, “I’m making these outfits, I’ve done Crystal’s, I just need to finish off mine,” he said, “and I’m gonna debut them next week, and you’ll love them, da da da,” and by then people were like, “he’s really going on about these outfits, better be special,” and I just happened to say, “not really,” I said, “I don’t particularly like them,” I said, “I like the style, I don’t like the fabric,” and they said, “why?” I said, “well, it looks like a Netto’s carrier bag,” it was all blue and black as Netto’s used to be yellow and black, then we went blue and black, and she said, “well, what do you mean all blue and black?” and went, “well, the blue and black prints on it,” he said, “but it just looks like a Netto’s carrier bag to me,” so, and I can’t remember whose idea it was, but I was certainly up for it, it was like let’s get our own back on Bobby, he’s been rubbing our noses in about these outfits, and Debbie, the lady, the barmaid who had the sewing store, she must have gone in, it was when carrier bags were free, she must have gone in got a whole bundle of carrier bags from the supermarket, and she made waistcoats out of them, she made ties, she made bow ties, she made skirts for the girls, she may have even made … did she make skirts for the lads? But she’d made all these different pieces of outfits for all the core customers who were in there week in and week out, and we knew Bobby was going to debut this new outfit on this particular night, so she ‘ad arrived to the pub early, Bobby was upstairs getting made up and everything else, so she ‘ad slipped into the kitchen what was the dressing room with all these outfits, because Bobby had his dressing room upstairs, he lived above the pub, he didn’t ever go in there, so he came on with Crystal, we did their opening act da da da, he event said, “right, for the moment you’ve all been waiting for, it’s the new outfits,” he’d gone up, they’d both gone upstairs to get changed, the whole pub emptied as we went into the kitchen, and we put on all these outfits, and they were made from carrier bags, and like I said, there was tunic tops, and waistcoats, and ties, and skirts, and we were all stood on the stage in a line in these outfits, so when the music started, um, Bobby’s partner Alan, well, his partner at the time, Alan, um, controlled all the music and everything, he was in on this, and he was like, “yeah, do it, do it, do it,” so he played the music, and the pub, where the stage was, was diametrically opposite the door you would have to come through from the private accommodation upstairs, and you’d have to work your way through the room, but the room was originally two rooms, but it had been extended, so there was a big chimney breast as a supporting column in the middle of the room, so when you came through that door you couldn’t see the stage, so the minute Bobby turned the corner we were all there in these carrier bag plastic outfits taking the mickey out of Bobby in his new, it was a 1950s styled inspired flared rockabilly, I don’t know what … uh, is that the type, maybe? Um, outfit, and he just saw the funny side, collapsed in laughter, called us some not very nice names, I held my hand up and said it, because I was the only one who knew what these outfits looked like, um, yeah, I got the blame for that, [Brian chuckles] so, yeah that was the sort of fun we would have. Um, one time in the pub when Bobby was on, I can’t remember why, end of the night we would do all silly songs like The Old Campfire and McCrosby1:09:19and Correcticus, and tambourines would come out, we’d all be there playing tambourines in the pub and singing along, and the show had finished, this was after the show, and for some reason … Oh, it was a song called Saxophone Jones, and they would have me get up on stage and prat around to it, it’s an awful song, it was certainly never a single, thing it was an album track on some album or other, I don’t even know who recorded it, um, and they would have me go on my tiptoes on pointe and almost tap dance, I can’t tap dance, I’m not a dancer, but almost tap dance, and do the splits on the stage, which, when you’re 23 and really drunk, it’s a good idea, but on this one particular time, I think the shoes I had on had been, they were new shoes 1:10:21 I’d taken my shoes off, and when I got back to my table where I’d been sat after I’d done this stupid song, somebody had poured my pint beer into my shoe. Obviously me shoe was on floor, it was dark, I didn’t see it, put my foot in me shoe, so that was a waste of beer. [Brian chuckles]
Um, another time, it was a Ladyboys show, and it must’ve been movies, must’ve been the theme, uh, and Pattie O’doors was doing Celine Dion My Heart Will Go On from Titanic, and, um, Alan, Ray’s partner, had made a lovely prop bow cutaway prop of the ship so Les could stand behind it and perform, and he sounded great, a couple of weeks later, as a in joke, Bobby said he was going to bring that song into his show, but as a serious number not as anything fun, but he’d had it mixed up, the music mixed around so there was, uh, Bobbing Along from Bedknobs and Broomsticks was mixed into this mix, um, dialogue from the film put into the mix of music, uh, the song, anything to do with ships or ice was all mixed into the song, and again, I knew this was going to happen, and we’d all, ‘e’d gone upstairs to get changed, he said, “when I come back, I’m gonna do the big song of Celine Dion, da da da,” so we had arranged, I can’t think who arranged it now, but I was certainly involved in this caper, um, Chris, a friend of ours, Chris and Denise, we’d arranged for her to be the iceberg, so we’d, somebody had cut out a hole, got a bed sheet, a white bed sheet, cut out a hole for Chris’ face to go through, plugged it over, very sort of typical 1920s black and white film ghost outfit, and she was the iceberg, so Ray started this song, I mean, Chris came through, and for some reason Chris got it in her head she was a ghost not an iceberg, so I think somebody said, “oh, she looks like a ghost,” so she was going up to people going, “oooh, ooooh,” and we all had, we’d all gone to the bar and got glasses and glasses and glasses of ice cubes, and every now and again we would just pick up some ice and flick it at the stage when Bobby was looking in a different direction, so he never knew who was doing it, um, and as the song progressed, I mean, music was getting messed around with, Chris was getting closer and closer to this prop bow of a ship, and the ice was getting more and more frequent at Bobby, and it was just, it was a free for all. There was, uh, oh goodness me, Les did Feed the Birds from Mary Poppins, and he was dressed as the bird lady, and on his head he had a bird cage strapped to a headscarf attached to his head, and in this birdcage was a talking parrot, so when you talked to the parrot it spoke back, so the microphone was next to this parrot so people could hear, and obviously it was picking up the sound from the Feed the Birds song and it was repeating it, and as Les is sat on stage, in his basket he’s got little bags of bread and he’s throwing them out to the customers, and it was meant to be just like here’s your bag of bread crumbs to feed the birds and that was it, somebody thought what a good idea to open these bread crumbs and throw them back at him whilst he’s sat on stage singing Feed the Birds, out of his little wicker basket he pulls out a box of KFC chicken legs and starts eating his KFC chicken whilst he’s having bread thrown at him, it was just stupid, stupid but funny days, what he did, and-
1:15:23 KG: So your family, this was a family, in a way?
1:15:26 B: Absolutely, it’s a family by choice, it’s a chosen family, and people become friends in life by choice, don’t they? And, you know, oh, and here I am 35 years later looking back on incidents, and I’ve had Bobby and Chris and Denise and other people as well in my life all these years, and we’re still doing crazy stupid things, we’re still making memories, we’re still laughing and celebrating the craziness of what we do and what we get up to, um, well, so, I don’t know-
1:16:17 KG: So after St. George’s closed, erm, well there’s two things to talk about, isn’t there? There’s you supporting Bobby.
1:16:29 B: Yeah.
1:16:30 KG: And then you performing as you.
1:16:32 B: Yes, okay, so-
1:16:34 KG: Separately, ’cause, yeah-
1:16:35 B: Separately, yes.
1:16:36 KG: -it didn’t just end at St. George’s, did it?
1:16:38 B: No, not at all, um, St. George’s closed due to various reasons, it’s not my business to go into, it’s not my story, um, but as a crowd, we’d found another pub – Darley’s down Porter Street, I think the pub’s closed now, we had migrated en masse to this other pub, and it had two gay landlords, and they just embraced everyone and booked Bobby as often as they possibly could, and you know, we had a lot of fun in his pub, and then about a year, that lasted for about a year or so, and then the Vauxhall Tavern on Hessle Road reopened, and what had happened was when Bobby left the pub, he needed to work, he wanted to work, and work was his therapy, it helped him cope with what was going on in his life, um, but he went back out on the road, and I went with him as his roadie, and we would travel to Newcastle, to Wrexham, to Manchester, to Peterborough, to Birmingham, to Leeds, we were all over mostly Northern England and working five nights a week.
1:18:11 KG: In pubs, or work…?
1:18:14 B: Mostly pubs, there was a few, um, working men’s clubs, there was some, a couple of gay bars, um, Newcastle was one, we did a show there, well Bobby did a show there, but when we went out on the road, we’d be out, with Bobby when Bobby went on the road, sorry, I say we, when Bobby went on the road, um, some of his newer stuff, newer material and sketches from the St. George he took with him, because people from outside of Hull had never seen him before, they may have seen Bobby, you know, five years previously, but they’ve not seen any of his new stuff, so naturally, he had updated the show and it came with him, and one of the sketches was called, um, Ken and Moira, and it was by the, originally by the Two Ronnies, was a soundtrack, and it was one of my favourite sketches to watch Bobby and Crystal perform, but Crystal was an on the road with Bobby, and Bobby said to me, “can I take over the role of Ken?” I said, “what do you mean?” he said, “I want to bring Ken and Moira into the show on the road, but I need you to be Ken,” I was like, “no,” “why?” I said, “well, for a start, Crystal was far, far smaller than me, the outfit,” he went, “nevermind the outfit, nevermind the costume, will you do it?” I said, “well, give me the music,” I said, “I’ve seen the sketch, but I don’t actually know the music, I’ve not listened to it ’cause I was too busy watching and laughing,” uh, so he gave me the music that he did, he made me brand new outfit for me what fitted, uh, ’cause that was fun, and we went out and this sketch we did it was called Ken and Moira, and we’re both in kilts, matching kilts, Bobby’s is full length, mine’s very short, and I’ve got a Tam o’ Shanter on and a tie, they all match, and Bobby has a tartan sash over his, one one shoulder sash what matches his kilt, and back then we used to be a lot more energetic, when we younger, we were fitter, we were slimmer, um, and part of it was I would go down and do the splits on on the, I used to be able to do the splits and go right down to the floor, and I would do the splits on stage during the sketch, and Bobby would have to help me up as part, because I would pretend I wouldn’t be able to get back up and he would have to help me up, and as he helped me up, my kilt with lift up and underneath I had a pair of boxer shorts on with a penis attached to, a plastic penis attached, absolutely ludicrous, Bobby would wear these oversized bloomer knickers, which during the sketch would fall down, and he’d have to bend down in a comedy fashion like Mrs. Slocum from Are You Being Served to pull up his oversized knickers that would keep falling down, and it sounds stupid but if you watch the sketch you would say, it’s actually on YouTube somewhere, um, us doin’ it as well as me the official version, and it was a sketch we joined doing, a sketch where audiences enjoy, and this one particular night we were doing it in the Yard in Newcastle, it was a gay bar called the Yard, and it wasn’t a permanent stage, so it was a temporary stage, and it was literally two big, black reinforced boxes put together. It was strong, it was stable, not a problem however as I did the splits during this particular sketch, the boxes separated, and it was quite high up, it was about three and a half foot off the floor, it was just quite high for a makeshift stage, as I did the splits and the stage separated, Bobby fell through onto the floor, people around couldn’t see about Bobby had fallen, and you have guys either side pushing the stage back with the thing with their feet, so Bobby’s trapped I’m in the middle of doing the splits, I genuinely couldn’t get up ’cause it had … I didn’t know which side of the stage to try to work from, and it was just a fiasco Bobby ends up standing up behind me, it looked like a scene from a 1970s Confession of a Driving Instructor or whatever film, really bad B list film, and it was just the must ludicrous thing ever. That continued, but we managed to get through it, end of the night, the venue booked, uh, you know, said, “oh, what brilliant night, can you come back?” Bobby took the booking back, got, went back, you know, six months later, “can you do that sketch again where you fall through the stage?” I was like, “no, no we can’t,” um, so for six and a half years, I was on the road with Bobby, but I also had my full-time job, and at that time I was working over in Lincolnshire, and I don’t drive, so I was having to get the bus every day from Hull to North Lincolnshire, I was doing, I was out the house eleven and a half hours a day, I know that’s what some people shifts are now, but I was getting home, getting showered, Ray was picking me up, and we were then driving sometimes two hours to get to a venue to do a show. I was getting home at half one, because pubs closed at sort of elevenish then, or, like, you know, we’d find a club, by the time we got home it could be half one two o’clock, I was up at half six for work, it became too much, and it was purely a work driven decision why I had to step away from being on the road with Bobby, but I always said to him, “if you get really stuck, if somebody, you know, if somebody can’t do it, let me know, and if I can I will,” and I was still going to see him in, as a member of the audience and support him when he did local gigs, I just couldn’t do the traveling, it was just became too much for me, um-
1:25:32 KG: But I bet really amazing to be in the car, and the stories and the-
1:25:36 B: We had more fun, and we still do, we still do, we had more fun backstage or in the car traveling than we did doing the shows. Whatever … ’cause going to a venue we would talk about it, especially if we’ve never been there before, be like, “oh, wonder what it’s like, wonder, you know,” when we’re getting changed, “will the your audience be any good, have we packed the right show, are we doing, you know, are we putting our heads up a block to this, da da da,” coming back we would say, “oh, what a great night we had, 1:26:13 I liked this, I liked that, do you remember this happening, that being said?” so it was always a dynamic between us and always that conversation, and like I said, we would laugh backstage, we would laugh at things, like … like I said, like the stage falling apart, uh, we would laugh at that, we find that funny, we don’t take that side of ourselves funny, uh, seriously at all, we just think, you know, anything what’s beyond your control, you’ve just got to go with it, if you can’t control the situation let it play out, you know, it’ll either work or it won’t, or as long as nobody gets hurt, you have to go with it, um, and I did miss the banter and everything with him, so like I said, I would still go and see him and support him, and so that was Christmas Eve 2006 was the last time I performed with Bobby, and it was at Perth Street Club, it’s sadly no longer here now, social club down the street, um, and we did Ken and Moira, because that was, my one request was my last time we’re 1:27:37 … can we just do this one song just one more time? Uh, ’cause it is an audience favourite, and it is one of our favourites, so we did it, and great, no mishaps this time, and then it was end of April 2008, and my mother-in-law, who I, I just adored her dearly was diagnosed with terminally ill, and it was a very rapid from the end of April to the first week of June, that was, you know, very, very short period of time, and then literally a couple of months later my father passed away of a terminal illness at the age of 57, far, far too young, and I was, well, heartbroken, but I wanted to do something I wanted to raise some money for MacMillan nurses who had performed just a sterling job with both my mother-in-law and my father separately, my father lived over in, um, Blackburn in Lancashire at the time, so I was spending every weekend traveling to Blackburn to see him, um, and I just witnessed firsthand the amazing job these nurses did, so I wanted to do something, and I thought well, what can I do? I don’t know, what can I do? What can I do to raise money? I thought, “I’ll do a charity night, great,” but how are we going to raise money, I can sell tickets, but what’s the draw, what’s going to bring people in? And I thought, I know I’ll organize a ladies’ night, though, “great, two birds one stone,” so it’s a ladies’ night people’ll enjoy it and we’ll raise some money in the meantime, so I booked a stripper, great, foolishly I hadn’t confirmed the date with Ray, and he couldn’t do this day what we’d advertised and sold tickets for, luckily we hadn’t advertised that Ray was doing it, so I was like, “we’ve got to do something, you know, we’ve sold all these tickets, and we’ve got all the money put aside ready for the charity, because we’ve covered the cost of the stripper,” and my friend Paula said to me, “well, why don’t you do it? You’ve got all the outfits, you’ve got the music, you know what you’re doing, why don’t you do a show?” I went, “me?” she went, “yeah, do a show,” she said, “all you need to do is just compere the stripper on and just do a couple of songs,” she said, “don’t worry about it, just do it,” so I thought, “oh, okay, this is something I can do, this is summat I want to do, because it’s for a good cause close to my heart,” so we did this show, um, in the, was the end of January of 2009, and I got there, and I did my very first true solo performance as Miss Fanny, and I hadn’t really performed as, in drag from about 2005, because when, just going back a bit now, when Bobby was on the road, every now and again we would do some sketches together, more locally than out of town, um, and we would have the matching outfits, and we’d go on, and we’d maybe do ABBA one time and the Supremes another time and this, that, and the other, but all the time that was happening, I was, Bobby carried the show, because I never spoke on microphone, I was still very nervous and shy about speaking on a microphone, so Bobby carried the show, but I thought, “you know what, I’ve got to do with one particular thing to raise money,” so we did it, and we raised a lot of money for the charity, um, I think we raised about £3,000 that night, because there was also a raffle going on and bits and pieces and, um, people were very generous with their donations as well, so I mean, afterwards I thought, “yeah, d’you know what, I enjoyed that, I enjoyed doing my show,” um, didn’t really give it any more thought at all, and then it was about September the same year, so we’d gone from the end of January to the September, nothing said, nothing done, and again it was my friend Paula, uh, and her husband Paul is my roadie and my DJ and everything else, um, she said to me, “my work’s lot want a Christmas party, but they want summat different, they don’t want a sit down dinner dance,” she said, “I was thinking of hiring Perth Street Club, Paul can DJ so we’ve got the music,” she said, she was gonna do, Paulie was gonna do the catering from the buffet but she said, “would you do a couple of turns? Would you do a couple of songs for us?” you know, and “make it a Christmas show,” so I thought, “d’you know what, why not? That’s all fun,” so she sold tickets to her work lot, I sold some tickets to my work lot, uh, and we did a Christmas party night, and so I had to go on, some, my original Christmas outfits from the St. George’s days didn’t fit me anymore, so I had to order new, um, Bobby was very busy on the road with his show, so I knew he wouldn’t have had time to help me with a costume. Had I ever asked him, I’m sure he would have found time, um, but I knew he was very busy and wouldn’t have had time to help me and so I just ordered offline, uh, probably more than I should have done, [Brian chuckles] but I can’t sew myself, I don’t have a sewing machine, so it was just easier and simpler to get that, so that’s really how I came back into doing my show now, um, and the show I do now people will see similarities from the show I did from the St. George’s days, um, I still goof around on stage, I don’t take myself seriously, but what I tend to do is I don’t do the stock sketches what people do, um, ’cause those other people can do them far better than I can, so, plus what’s the point of going out and everyone just doing the same old show, everyone does bits and pieces, and some sort of generic, and I do I Will Survive, everyone does I Will Survive, it’s a good, a good song is a good song, it doesn’t matter what songs they are or who does them, but it’s how you do it, so I will do I Will Survive, but I don’t do it by Gloria Gaynor, I find alternative versions of songs, uh, so I do a medley, put together a medley of songs, and we call it the diva anthems, and it’s Chain Reaction, I Will Survive, Holding Out For a Hero, and there’s another song in there, I can never remember until it plays, um, but it’s all by the same artist, so it’s all well known songs, but by a different artist put together especially for me, uh, and I do that, and that works. I do Valerie, but I don’t do the Amy Winehouse version, I do another version of Valerie, um, I do Shirley Bassey, I do Get the Party Started, but I don’t do a Shirley Bassey impersonation, and I do say I’m not a female impersonator, I don’t come out dressed as Diana Ross and want the audience to believe I’m Diana Ross, I do it more of a salute to the music because I like the music, um, I try to get the costumes right for the person, but I don’t impersonate, if you will, the acts, um … do … I’ll find songs but I’ll find up tempo and disco versions of ballads and classics, like the Diana Ross song When You Tell Me That You Love Me, I do a disco version of it, so when I come out in a Diana Ross style dress, I may do Chain Reaction, I may do a Supremes medley, but then I’ll do this up tempo version of When You Tell Me That You Love Me just to make it different and to make it my own. I do songs by Stevie Wonder, but female versions. I do songs … I do Human by the Killers, which everyone is like, “a drag act doing the Killers?” yeah, uh, I do … there’s some run-of-the-mill comedy songs that people do, and a lot of acts do, like Dogging from Fascinating Aida, song called Dogging, I do it, Bobby does it, I think the Dreamgirls do, I think Bailey does it, Milan does it, everyone does it, ’cause it’s a good song to do, but as long as you do it your own way and put your own spin on things, uh-
1:38:58 KG: And do you like that … because Ray talks about how we, the act of getting dressed and the makeup, and how as you get older it becomes more tiring, or not so exciting, is that … Can you, is there something about this changing from you to Miss Fanny? Can you talk about that as an experience, or…?
1:39:23 B: Um…
1:39:23 KG: Has it been important, does it feel an important thing, or…? Because you talk about doing the drag, it’s like you’d fallen into it because your friends were doing it, but I suspect when you talk about your early experiences of seeing it, there was an attraction to it?
1:39:39 B: There was an attraction, I think, to me it was the glamour of it, which I think some of the younger drag queens, although very talented, do lack some of the glamour nowadays, but that’s their style, that’s their-
1:39:57 KG: Changes.
1:39:58 B: -you know, vision, that’s how they want to be, but yeah, it’s … The prep, I don’t enjoy the prep so much of like shaving my arms, shaving my chest and all that, it’s a kerfuffle, but it needs to be done to look right. I could I could not go on stage without having painted my nails, shaved my arms, shaved my chest, because to me, it’s that impression, it looks right, plus that’s how I was taught, that’s how … I watched, and I learned, and you can learn how to do something correctly, but you can also learn what not to do just by watching, or what doesn’t work, or what doesn’t suit me, um, although I’m naturally dark haired, dark wigs don’t suit me on stage, it’s so silly, once I’ve got the makeup on, a dark wig doesn’t suit me, unless it’s with a particular gown, the actual finished product will then be right, but ordinarily, no, they don’t suit me. Um, I enjoy the prep, I enjoy being sat at the dressing table, bit of music on, which I don’t play my sheet music when I’m getting ready, um, I play Motown or ABBA or whatever’s just on I’ll play and listen to, um, but whilst I’m doing my makeup, I’m thinking about so many different things, I don’t think about what I’m going to be doing that night, um, I’ll think about what’s happened during my day, when I’ve been shopping or at work or anything what’s a distraction from the show. Once I’m at the venue and we’ve set up a sound system, we’ve done the sound check, and I’m sequestered away in me dressing room finishing off my makeup puttin’ on my tights, that’s when the adrenaline starts to come, and that’s when the excitement come. I get nervous, but I think it’s a good nerves what I get, I don’t get nervous as in I can’t do this, I’m nervous in like, well I hope I’ve got the right music, and I hope I’ve selected the right outfit for whoever is out there, because it’s … I look at it as people come, it’s their night out. Yes they’ve come to see me, and egotistically, that’s a lovely thing, to have people come to see you, um, but some people it’s, they’re just out, they’d be in that venue regardless of who was on it, because it’s their local, and it’s their night out, I want them to enjoy themselves, even if they haven’t come to see me, and you can tell from you … you can read the room, and you sort of know who is there cheering you on and supporting you and who’s just there because it’s, they’re there, and I leave them alone, and I’ll try to draw them in, but if they’re not interested I don’t labour a point, and I don’t … I used to get hung up about it thinking, “what am I doing wrong? Why aren’t they watching? What can I do to engage with them?” but I don’t anymore, I’m like, just leave them, let them lay, um, but the gettin’ ready, I get excited gettin’ ready, um, if I was say, for example, performing tonight, on Thursday night, you know, so two days prior to a show, I’ll make sure all the gowns are right, I’ll get the gowns out what I’ve selected to wear for that particular night, I’ll make sure the zippers work, I’ll make sure there’s no repair work needed, I’ll then pair up the gowns with the shoes, and the gowns with the wigs and the jewellery, and if I need to titivate any wigs I’ll do about then, so it’s not our last minute panic when I get there, um, again, this is something I’ve learned over years by being on the road with Bobby and seeing other drag acts perform. I’ve seen some drag queens arrive at a venue wiv a carrier bag wiv it, a ratty wig and a gown in a carrier bag, and I cringe, because I’m like, “where’s your professional pride? Where’s …?” wear what you want to wear that’s fine, but take some pride in it. All my gowns are all in, uh, plastic covers, and that’s two reasons – one, it keeps them clean, and if you … you don’t always have a luxury of getting changed in a nice dressing room directly next to the stage, and secondly, if you’ve got a lot of gowns which, sadly I have, and they’re packed in tight in the wardrobe you don’t want the sequins rubbing against, you know, because then they’ll rip and tear, and again, sadly I’ve seen drag acts arrive, and there’s been holes in the gowns and laddered tights and sequins missing off outfits, and it’s like no, you just, you’re just going through the motions you don’t care about what you’re doing. If that person worked in a shop, and their uniform was in that state, people would complain. Why should an artist who people make a conscious decision to go and see an act, um, and sometimes pay money, you know, if it’s a ticketed event to see an act, they want the best of what that person can do, what they can deliver, ’cause as a customer that’s what I want when when I go to see somebody, I want to see the best, and when I say the best I don’t mean, you know, Shirley Bassey compared to a backstreet singer in a pub could maybe entertain me more than Shirley Bassey can, but if they don’t have any professional pride in their appearance, it goes a long way, doesn’t it?
1:46:47 KG: It’s so funny because at the, right in the beginning, you talk about how, um, Clarice dressed.
1:46:52 B: Yeah.
1:46:53 KG: Absolutely perfectly, like, to meet her public, as it were, in these, and your … that is what you’re talking about.
1:47:02 B: Yeah it’s … but growing up in the late ’70s and early ’80s and watching television when we had, like, the big specials on or Sunday night at the Palladium, everyone was dressed up, everyone wore their best to make the right impression, or you’d watch the Royal Variety Show, and everyone would be immaculate, you know, nobody wore anything scandalous or revealing, I think yes, that was a sign of the times, but it’s what you remember as a child, and it stays with you, it’s .. I don’t remember my grandmother ever leaving my house without a headscarf or hat on, but that’s her generation, uh, I don’t remember my granddad ever not wearing a suit and a collar and tie, your dad still does, doesn’t he?
1:48:00 KG: Yeah,
1:48:01 B: Yeah, you know, it’s-
1:48:02 KG: Yeah.
1:48:05 B: It’s, yeah, it’s strange, and-
1:48:08 KG: And what were their … So just, um, because we didn’t touch on it earlier, what were your parents’ and your grandparents’ jobs?
1:48:15 B: My mum was a carer-
1:48:20 KG: Wasn’t she, yeah, you mentioned.
1:48:21 B: -residential home, um, then she became a warden in sheltered accommodation, uh, later in her life she went back to university, she did Open
University, she’s just got her doctorate.
1:48:34 KG: Brilliant.
1:48:35 B: Yeah, she’s … Me mum gave up her education to raise her family, uh, and it was a conscious decision she made, it was never a regret on her behalf, it was never, you know, we weren’t made to feel as if we had caused this to happen, she made that decision, she wanted to start a family, she had to work, financially, um, for periods and that’s fine, and she enjoyed working, she’s … She wasn’t a stay at home mum, she couldn’t have been ever, um, although the house was always clean and warm and tidy and we always ate very well, uh, yeah, so she’s done, followed her path, followed her dreams what she’s wanted, and at the age of 75, yeah, she just got her doctorate, uh, so I’m proud of her for that. Me dad worked in the local, well, we called it the asylum then, but nowadays it would be a mental health unit, but it was actually a full hospital, um, and he worked in the boiler house and the porter’s lodge, working there, and he would work shifts, and it was, again, out in the country, outside of Cambridge, and he’d come home with rabbits, pheasants, anything, and we would, okay that’s what we’re having for dinner tonight, you know. Me mum’s a vegetarian, she has been most of my life, but she would skin a rabbit and pluck a pheasant and prepare it and cook it, you know, it didn’t bother her touching the thing, she just doesn’t like meat, you know, that’s fine, um, me dad’s parents emigrated to Australia in the mid-’70s, I only got to meet them a few times in life, um, because, you know, in the ’80s it was very expensive to fly from Australia to the UK, and of course, as you get older, you don’t want to do the 24 hour plane journeys and stuff, ah well, I’d be lucky to do a twelve hour journey now, you know, to, like, Bangkok or Singapore or somewhere, the thought of it it’s like, oh, but once you’re there it’s lovely. Um, my mum’s dad passed away before I was born, so I never met him, but me mum’s mum was a proper … We called her Nana, and she was a proper old lady, white curly hair, pinafore dresses, uh, and she was originally from Ireland, moved over to the UK, I believe, when Ireland became the Irish Republic, so 1922, maybe, she moved over as a young girl, she had a family, she married, she had four children, um, me mum was the third of four, she had one son, Sid, who emigrated to Canada with his wife and children, uh, me mum’s other two sisters, her younger sister Mary worked as a journalist and a librarian over in, um, Liverpool, and her elder sister, Helen, who my sister’s named after, um, and she was a nurse, and she also worked in the, uh, British Army, in the Queen Alexandra Royal Army nursing core, and she was the field matron, so she would go out to hotspots, so we have the world, wherever the British Army was deployed, and be a matron in the field hospital on deck.
1:52:57 KG: Amazing.
1:52:58 B: We didn’t know all this growing up, we just told she was traveling, you know, she was working away, um, but she would work, you know, in a field hospital on the shellfire, you know, amputated legs and dressing wounds or mopping a brow, whatever was required she did it, and I think that’s where, I think that all my mum’s side are very practical, if something needs doing, just get on and do it, even if you’ve not got the tools or the experience just muddle your way through it, do whatever’s needed to get to where you need to be or do what you need to do, um, and my mum’s sister, she sadly passed away, um, we spoke earlier on about, earlier this year, she passed away in March this year at the age of 85, and I’m hoping, um, she was awarded an OBE many, many years ago. and she also had the Royal Red Cross awarded to her, which I didn’t know about, um, but we’re hoping that her dress uniforms and her medals can go to the Imperial War Museum in Manchester to be preserved, um, but obviously, it’s not, you can’t just donate them and drop them off, there’s a lot of channels to go through, um, so yeah, I just wish that I’d applied myself more academically when I was at school. I didn’t, I was the class clown, um, it was an easy coping mechanism, um, I knew I was gay from a young age, and if I was the class clown, people weren’t picking up on the fact that I was gay, and it maybe prevented me be bullied in a little way, so, but hindsight’s a wonderful thing, you know, if I could go back, oh, 35 years and re-sit my GCSEs, I’d apply myself more than I did, uh, I let myself down. I didn’t let anyone else down, I just let myself down for not doing … and yeah, I could go back to college, do nightschool and everything, but I just don’t have that sort of academic brain that the rest of my family have, I just can’t do well, but bizarrely enough, after me, my parents had separated my dad moved back over to Lancashire and re-married and started running pubs, never been on the pub craze in his life ’til he was mid-forties, and one of the first things he did when he’d got a pub was to book Bobby, so Bobby and I would go across on the M62 to, well, me dad had pubs all over, so Blackburn, Burnley Oldham, Wrexham, oh Southport, Roundsbottom, all over Lancashire and the Northwest, and we’d go and do shows, well Ray would go and do a show I’d go roadie, and do that, uh, so it was a lot of fun because-
1:56:45 KG: It was somewhere you went.
1:56:46 B: Yeah, well Ray knew my dad, well, Ray knew my dad before Ray knew me, but he didn’t know Colin was my dad when he first met me, it was, you know, just one of them quite … but it was because me dad drank in the same pubs what Ray drank in, and they got talking, and Ray developed a, you know, friendship that lasted right through, you know, ’til me dad sadly passed away, um, but yeah, so, like I said, it’s weird how fate leads you to people in your life, and you’ll encounter things and people, situations, and you’ll encounter people, and it may not make sense at the time, or it may not even be a positive encounter, but that has happened for a reason, because at later, some point later on something will counteract that, or address that situation, but yeah, so, very strange like seeing me dad and Ray and everything, yeah.
1:58:00 KG: So when you … If … And now we’ve talked about all of these things, and you’ve shared all of these memories, and to reflect on all of that, how does it make you feel about this, up to now in your life?
1:58:21 B: Uh, very positive, um, I was lucky. I have a very supportive family, uh, it was never in issue me coming out to them, it was very supported, everything I’ve done, um, my sister, she lives out of town, you know, she lives down near Cambridge, but she’s a great LGBT champion and ally, you know, um, me brother is, uh, me mum is, never a problem, like I said, uh, so I feel lucky that I’ve met people in life who have enriched my life, um, not just through entertainment, but through friendship, and there was one time, going back to when I first I had going out as Miss Fanny, I made a conscious decision but I didn’t want to do it week in week out, I didn’t want to be up and down the motorways traveling the length and breadth of the country, um, that’s not me, and Miss Fanny would come second to whatever was in me diary, like family events and barbecues and weddings, the lot, they would always come first, um, and when I first started going out as Miss Fanny, Bobby came and supported me and everything else, which was lovely, I didn’t know he was coming, he came, cheered me on, and supported me, and he did some bookings for a person for several years, and then Bobby couldn’t do one particular gig for this person, and so I was asked to do it, and I said yes, and I got some backlash from some of Bobby’s friends for “taking work off Bobby,” they said I said, “well, I haven’t, he can’t do it, they can’t move the date, it’s already said, so Bobby can’t do it, they’ve asked me to do it, it’s not a case of me treading on his toes or taking work from him,” and then they said I was, you know, taking his money off him, because he’s not if he’s not doing that gig, he’s not getting paid, and I was like, “well, it’s a charity do, neither of us are gettin’ paid,” you know, “learn your facts, get it right,” and we’ve had promoters book Bobby one week and me the next at the same venue, and we’ve seen each other’s posters in dressing rooms and everything, and we’ve always messaged and texted, you know, “good luck for tonight,” but there was one promoter, which I don’t like to talk about negative things in life, uh, but this one promoter … I’d done several charity events for her over several years, as had Bobby, and there was one particular time she booked me and she booked Bobby for the same event, and I don’t know why she didn’t think we would speak to each other about this, uh, but we said, “great,” you know, so Bobby and I was like, “well, are you doing your thing, am I doing mine, should we do something together?” and this promoter, she changed the date, she didn’t ask us if the new date was right, she just changed the date and advertised Bobby and myself, and then she foolishly did, uh, an opinion poll on the event page, “who would you rather have, Bobby or Fanny?” but she foolishly tagged us both in this so we could see it, so I phoned up Ray straightaway and said, “have you seen this, have you seen what’s gone on?” he was like, “yeah, I’m just readin’ it now, I can’t believe it,” he went, “is it real? You know, is it a joke?” I went, “no, it’s real,” he said, “what are we gonna do?” I said, “well, I’m stepping away, I’m not going down this road,” I said, “but if you want to still do it, by all means, still do it,” he said, “no, if you’re stepping away, I’m stepping away,” he said, “I’m not having people play us off against each other,” um, so Bobby and I, we drafted a communicate between us, and I posted it on the event page, and I simultaneously sent it to the organizer, the promotor of this event and said, “I’m sorry, because of your actions, this is what we’re now doing, so we’re not doing it.” It then spiralled rapidly out of control, and how we were mistreating her, and she was trying to tell people we’d let her down, although she’d changed the date and not asked us if it was compatible, so luckily I’m quite methodical, I save things, so I have, I had the text messages, and I have the screenshots, so I said to her, “please take down your post, otherwise I will respond with copies of the text messages and the screenshots of what’s gone on,” “oh, you’re just being so unfair, you really made it, all I’m trying to do is give the girls the best time ever, you know, why can’t you and Bobby just do it?” I said, “no, you’re trying to play us off against each other, it’s not going to work,” I said, “you either have one of us or both of us or none of us,” I said, “but don’t play us up against each other,” so she said, “oh well, well…” so I posted all the screenshots and Ray did the same, and strangely enough, the event was cancelled, and the DJ she’d booked and the other acts she’d had booked she would, she was doing something similar to them as well, you just get a vibe, don’t you, so you, if something’s not right, but yeah, I mean, also there was another time when it was a pub in town, I won’t name the pub or the person, phoned me up, could I do this particular date? I said, “yeah,” what’s my fee? Told them my fee, “right, I’ll get back to you, bye,” they phones Bobby up, “can you do this date?” “Yeah,” “What’s your fee?” yeah, “oh, well, Fanny’s slightly different, can you bring your fee down?” and he’s like, “no, this is my fee,” they was like, “oh, well, if we can get Fanny cheaper, we’ll go with Fanny,” so Bobby was like, “fine, go with Fanny, I’m not bothered, you know, doesn’t bother me,” “well, yeah, but we want you,” he said, “well, why have you asked Fanny about it?” but they don’t realize that we talk to each other, you know, it’s, we’re very, very close friends, and, you know, I’ve even spoken to him this morning before you came, and they don’t we realize that, you know, we do communicate, we do do things … but there’s times where people said, “oh, can you have a word with … and can the two of you do something together?” and we will, you know, or, and we’ll gladly do stuff, you know, I mean, we still do shows together, and when we go out together now we call ourselves the Demon Divas. It was a bit, again, a bit of a joke name, um, but it seems to work, and we do shows together, I mean, we have done, really, since about 2016, 2017, um, so a couple of times a year we’ll go out and we’ll do stuff together, and that’s always fun, ’cause it’s different, it’s not Bobby’s show, it’s not my show, and it’s all the old stuff and what the same as we always, you know, stuff from the St. George’s Ladyboys that people who didn’t go in there didn’t see, ’cause it never went on the road, really, and I mean, we do a French and Saunders sketch dressed as schoolgirls, we do, uh, Ken and Moira, which gets asked for, like, every single time, but we don’t do it every time, we do ABBA, we do the Spice Girls, uh, we do Peters and Lee, where Bobby comes out as a blind man and falls off, deliberately falls off the stage, you love that one, don’t you? Peters and Lee.
2:07:48 Ian: It’s one of my favourites, yeah, it is.
2:07:49 B: [chuckles]
2:07:51 Ian: I love it, yeah. So obviously, it’s-
2:07:52 B: Politically incorrect.
2:07:54 Ian: Yeah, but it is funny, I like that one, and I like the Ken and Moira one, and I like your Miss America one.
2:08:05 B: Oh, yeah.
2:08:06 Ian: They’re three of my favourite ones.
2:08:07 KG: Tell, describe what happens in Miss America.
2:08:10 Ian: It’s like ‘e’s dressed up real glam in, like, a swimsuit and everything, ‘e’s like a top model, and then you’ve got Ray who’s, like, dressed as a frumpy old woman, and it’s, uh-
2:08:21 B: It’s a beauty pageant.
2:08:23 Ian: -it’s a beauty pageant, yeah, so ‘e’s Miss America, and Ray’s, like, thinking, “well, I need to be this,” and he’s not; and Ken and Moira was good, that’s about eight minutes long, innit?
2:08:33 B: Ken and Moira, probably.
2:08:34 Ian: Yeah, but I’d never seen it until-
2:08:38 B: Savile Row, wasn’t it?
2:08:38 Ian: -you did it … Yeah.
2:08:39 B: Yeah.
2:08:39 Ian: Yeah.
2:08:41 B: Came up as a memory, actually, a couple of weeks ago.
2:08:45 Ian: Yeah, they’re my three favourite acts.
2:08:48 B: There’s … Ian never went to the St. George, you see.
2:08:51 Ian: No.
2:08:51 KG: Even though you’re a Hull boy?
2:08:53 Ian: Yeah, never, yeah, but I’m from East Hull, so completely different area, yeah, but I never went to the St. George’s, did I?
2:09:03 B: No.
2:09:03 Ian: Yeah.
2:09:04 KG: Don’t have the memories.
2:09:06 Ian: No, that’s why I like going out with them folks, I like just listening to the stories.
2:09:10 B: [chuckles] There’s plenty of them [chuckles], yeah, I dare say if Ray was here now, ‘e would, he’ll say something and it sparks off, sometimes we can be [someone coughs] and a conversation will start, and it will just take a very sharp turn, go down a rabbit hole of memories and bits and pieces, and we was all out together, weren’t we, last September in Beverley for a day out-?
2:09:37 Ian: Yes.
2:09:38B: -just drinking, uh, and we was, Ian, myself-
2:09:42 Ian: Chris and Denise.
2:09:42 B: -Chris, Denise, and our friend Paula, and we was all out drinking, and people from the other table actually moved their table closer to listen, and they was laughing and joining in, it was like, is that real, you know, did that really happen? Like, ooh, yes it did really happen, um, okay, one occasion, Bobby and I were doing a show together at a pub, and it was just after lockdown, when you could drink outside but you couldn’t drink inside, so they’d erected this big marquee, and built this outdoor stage, and we got there, they all did a sound test, great, Bobby and went to get changed, came on to do our opening song, and I thought, “this stage feels a bit flimsy,” and I looked at Ray and he looked at me, we can read each other’s minds, we know what the other’s thinking just by our facial expressions, all of a sudden my foot went through the stage, right through, and it was just as tall as that coffee table, so I had one leg down on the floor one leg on stage, I couldn’t move, my leg was through the stage, Bobby’s there carrying on, you know, why aren’t you dancing, what’s going on, you know-
2:10:54 Ian: Yeah.
2:10:54 B: -and when he saw me, and just, oh, it took three members of the audience to help me out, the solution was, from the landlord, oh, just put a towel over that hole in the stage and continue, so we’re like, oh, okay, this isn’t really gonna work, but we keep on going, we keep on smiling, so I’ve fallen off, through the stage, I’ve fallen off stage, I’ve fallen on stage, um, and I’ve had, we was at Goole Pride last year, Bobby and I, performing, halfway through one of the songs, I went, kicked my leg and the whole sole of my shoe just fell off, so I was like, “oh, well, this isn’t really going to do,” then I’m just, like, hobbling along with one shoe, um, Paul who was with us, my roadie, driver, dresser and everything, um, he had to go back to the dressing room to get me a pair of shoes, but where the stage was, it was a good four minute walk to the dressing room, because it was an outside event. Paul gets to the dressing room to get my shoes, and two female singers were in there getting changed, because it was a shared dressing room. Luckily we know the girls, and we know them very well, they’re there in just their underwear and everything, but Paul said they were like go through the jewellery box going, “look at that, look at that.”
2:12:22 KG: Really?
2:12:23 B: Yeah, trying on the coats and everything, oh, he went, “hi, you’re being rumbled,” [chuckles] um, and they said to us, they went, “we just need a day at your house just to have a dress update, we just need to go through the wardrobe, we want to try and all the wigs and all the jewellery,” and they’re two petite, tiny, tiny, little girls, um, but they want to try on all the dresses, I’m like, “well, you can both fit inside one dress,” um, what else?
2:12:58 KG: So will … You’re carrying on, you’ll carry on.
2:13:01 B: I’m still all the time I’m fit and able, and all the time I’m offered for work and it’s something I feel I can get something out of, this is gonna sound big-headed, I turn down more than I accept, usually because of a clash of the dates, I can’t do the date, really, sometimes though, I’m a believer if it’s not going to be fun don’t do it, and you get a vibe sometimes, or I know that that particular venue isn’t right for a drag act, regardless of if it’s me, if it’s Bobby, I just slapped a sordid secret, it doesn’t matter, it’s not right, and you sort of, because we know the pubs in Hull, you know it’s not right for, uh, drag, um, so I very politely refuse those jobs, but yeah I would like to see myself still at it in five years’ time, you know, it’s fun, it’s an expensive hobby, maybe, uh, because you have to keep on investing in stage wear, and I like each outfit to have its own piece of jewellery, or its own wig, some of it, uh, are interchangeable, and sometimes I’ll maybe try three or four different wigs with one gown to get the right look, uh, but once I’ve settled on it, it’s right, that’s for that and nothing else, uh, shoes, oh, I’m a wide foot, and I’m a size ten, so footwear I refuse to pay like 140 pound for shoes what I’ll wear six times a year, um, because it, I just don’t, wouldn’t get my value for money for it. I found an online retailer that does my size and the correct fit and they’re comfortable for a fraction of a price, so but to me, footwear you’ve got to be comfortable, you’re on your feet a lot, and if you’re not comfortable, that’s the only thing when Bobby and I had, like, when we do the shows together, our outfits and wigs and even jewellery would be the same, but our shoes are different, I mean, you can see with Bobby, he has a very petite size six shoe, he can go into any retailer and pick up a pair of shoes, I can’t, sadly, ’cause there’s not that many physical shops left now, um-
2:15:48 KG: There’s no longer Big Stuff on Hessle Road, for example.
2:15:50 B: Exactly, um, I used to get, my first lot of stiletto shoes were from Barrett’s, Barrett’s Shoes, and they don’t exist anymore, but they were perfect, and I’d had them years, and this was the pair of shoes that fell apart at Goole Pride last year, so I’d had them, oh, God, twenty years or something, so I’d had me value for money out of them, um, but yeah, I’d like to think I’m still performing, um, I’m always thinking of different songs I can do and different people I could maybe borrow a song from, but I’ve got to like a song, there’s a lot of good songs out there, but if I don’t personally like the song, I can’t commit to it, so it’s, maybe it’s an age thing, I don’t know, I love who I love, like artistically, um, and some of the music I listen to I would never do on stage, because it just wouldn’t work. I like to do up tempo, cheerful, bouncy songs, um, but saying that, one of my favourite songs to do, um, again, it’s with Bobby, is a song called Andante Andante, um, by ABBA, and it’s, it was an album track. Not many people knew who it was by when we first started doing it, and we do that, when we do our shows together we do that as our closing number, Bobby doesn’t do a changeover like he does on his show, when we do a double show he doesn’t do it, uh, and I don’t do one in my show anyway, um, but it’s just such a beautiful, lyrically and musically, crafted song, and that gets an ovation every time, yeah, and it’s, I would, although I don’t really do ballads, I would do that song every single show without fail, because it just, it describes … although it’s a love song, it can also be used to describe a friendship relationship, and I think that’s how Ray and I see it was it just describes how we feel as friends for each other, and how … take away, I mean, there’s no sexual references in the song, but instead of listening to it as a a love song between a man and a woman, or even a couple, doesn’t have to be a man and a woman does it, um, think of it as a lyrics based on friendship, and it’s, it just, it’s us, it just, yeah, it tells us.
