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2nd June 2002
Marquess's gift of wall-to-wall lunacy
Last Sunday I was driven by two lovely Irish dancers, Marguerite and Angie, along with my drag queen sister, Vicious, and loopy chum, Philip Sallon, for dinner iwth the Marquess of Bath and his companion, Trudy, at Longleat.
You really couldn't imagine a nuttier bunch but when it comes to eccentricity, the Marquess wins hands down. The decoration in the part of the house where he lives is quite spooky and spectacular. Imagine the painting The Scream by Munch and you have a slight idea of what he has been up to for years.
Some may think that the painting, which the Marquess has been daubing over the walls for the best part of his life, shows lack of respect for so noble a building but I was meserised. The private part of the house is a triumph of artistic lunacy. The Kamasutra room was my favourite, for reasons I shall not divulge other than the mix of graphic sexual images looming from the walls coupled with a four-poster bed with mirrors and the most beautifully ornate, Indian-style mosaic friezes.
These very "me" works of art by our host's nephew became more and more grand and detailed as we moved from room to room. I inquired how much they cost - the response was "plenty". The Marquess, who dresses pretty much how he lives - in the brightest of outfits - was absolutely charming and the conversation, thanks to Vicious, did get rather racy, to say the least.
While I was not sure I could live in such a place, I admired the boldness of it. The mix of modern art and classic was, well, complete fruitcake. Mind you, the drive out was pretty tiresome. It was meant to be a quick spin but a few wrong turns took their toll and it was bliss to arrive and chow down a lovely meal and enjoy the delightful company.
Vicious pointed out to several paintings of the Marquess's ex-lovers and offered our lady friends as next in line but luckily our host, who wears two hearing aids, did not catch on. It's a shame to think that whoever inherits the house might tear down all the madness and restore the building to predictable grandeur. Hopefully not. A touch of madness is always a pleasure to these eyes.
MY NEXT venture took me to Germany for a kind of mixed-up live concert to promote Taboo at a purpose-built village in the middle of nowhere. We dragged some costumes from the show and filmed me mincing around as Leigh Bowery against the futurist industrial backdrop.
Germans are a funny lot, in the sense that they almost pretend they don't see you, but we got some great footage. The song Ich Bin Kunst ("I Am Art") seems to have struck a chord and they lapped it up before my quick change into something slightly more sober for the hits, which pretty much work anywhere.
I did a bizarre TV interview in which I was asked if there were any questions I'd like to be asked. I responded, rightly I think, with "Well, you're the journalist." I rarely vet questions or ban any topic, except tea, yawn! But I don't expect to prepare my own.
I did think of doing an Andy Warhol and just sit there in silence but I can rarely keep quiet for long. I was rather disappointed to be given a fluffy toy car. I would have preferred one of the variety that gets you from A to B but I'm sure my niece will have loads of fun pushing it around the floor. Oh, well, it ain't the Eighties anymore, despite the fact that the German pop charts are full of Electro records harping back to that era. There's a fab new version of Duran's Girls on Film, called Girls on Pills, doing the rounds - but I wonder what the writers will have to say about it.
9th June 2002
Don't Cross A Queen In A Mood Like This
THIS week's column is dedicated to everything I hate: sun, rain, football... and the Pet Shop Boys, who had the cheek, like my vile ex-friend Janet Street-Porter and the vile theatre critic Nicholas de Jong to slag off my musical, Taboo. Unlike two fans, Dawn and Julie, who have seen Taboo 60 times, the PSBs, Janet and Nicholas came once and bitched. Now you see what mood I'm in.
I hate the sun because itąs the enemy of drag, and I hate the rain because it reminds me of being a child and being forced to run around school playgrounds in shorts while being drizzled on.
I hate football, except for David Beckham, who must surely have a hairdresser on the sidelines to keep his Mohican in peak condition after all that running about in the Japanese heat. Or is he one of those lucky people who just has great hair?
But back to reviews of my musical. I read everything, including the Irish Press. After I gave the Pet Shop Boys a good review, they sent me flowers. Well flowers die but words hang around. Nicholas de Jong's rag called Taboo "an aimless play" but tells us last week that Eminem is "remarkable". There is at least hope in New York from the gorgeous Michael Musto, who writes for the Village Voice. When Madonna recently made the idiotic comment: "At least Eminem has an opinion." Musto responded: "As if whether or not it's a good idea to slice up gay people is up for debate." He added: "Why didnąt she say he has a right to freedom of speech but lay off my gay children?" Right on, sister.
I could have, had I chosen, dissected the Pet Shop Boys' musical but I felt duty bound as a gay man to help my sisters and hold up the flag. Let's face it, the gay community in this country mostly stayed in and washed their hair during the PSBs' short run.
Other things I hate... being called a "pantomime dame". I am as far away from Danny La Rue or John Inman as the Earth is from Mars. But when ignorant heterosexuals try to diminish the spirit of queers, they always go for the lowest common denominator.
Janet Street-Porter's huge revelation was that she alone discovered the Notre Dame Hall in London's Leicester Square, home to Taboo, and filmed The Sex Pistols there in the seventies. Yawn. No matter that the building has been there since some time around the mid-1800s.
AND while I'm in this mood, good on ex-Sex Pistol Glen Matlock for saying he still wants "Anarchy over monarchy". I shredded my invite to the big Jubilee bash.
Another little shout out must go to the Daily Mirror's showbiz gossipers, the 3am Girls, whose big Wicked Whisper last week was about an Eighties icon being seeing buying Valium in North London. My doctor is in Sloane Street.
I'm on a role now. To quote Quentin Crisp: "You can't touch me now - I'm a stately homo!" Mind you, I'm desperate for a sex scandal, Let's hope that the wind kicks in but the sun hides behind Janet Street-Porter's braces.
Thank Heavens for the transsexual prostitutes and American tourists who come to see Taboo and say: "It's really weird that Boy George only comes on for Karma Chameleon" - not realising that the big busted creature with ink dripping from its brow is me.
And a big kiss to the three little children who curled up in fascinated terror as I approached them and said "Just think Sesame Street". They got it and joined us on stage for the encore.
16th June 2002
**NO COLUMN THIS WEEK**
23rd June 2002
Practical approach to an annual event
I AM NOW 41, not that I care. It's just another year. Mind you, I did get some gorgeous pressies, which is unusual as people assume I have everything. But I'm partial to practical stuff like socks and anything smelly.
Some lovely chap made me a Leigh Bowery plate, which is so divine. My make-up girl for Taboo, Christine Bateman, made me - with the help of her very talented jeweller boyfriend, Russ - three Leigh dolls. I'm afraid they make my Kiss collection - you know, the overdressed Seventies/Eighties group - look rather plain. Bart Simpson, which is a look I remember Leigh doing, seems quite at home. Certainly not threatened in the slightest.
Talking of looks, I'm with Joan Collins on her recent comments that a pot of cheap cream will do you as much good as one which costs a few bob. I have always maintained that heat is the enemy of drag. If one wants to mince around dressed up beyond the nines - which both Joan and moi do on occasion - it's sensible to stay out of the sun's rays. Mind you, a plate of dark green cabbage is more effective than any lotion or potion. Some say that it's in the genes but I'm not convinced.
Now that I'm out of work, in the payslip sense, I can get around to chucking out old socks, sending thank-you letters to all the sweeties who thought of my birthday and dealing with the utter boredom.
THERE was some silly fuss after the Beckhams' World Cup bash that I was bidding during the auction for a crate of port. Thank the Lord the function was covered by cameras, because I was only after Becks' shirt, boots or underwear - which, for some silly reason, were not offered.
Having now discovered the culprit (and he's a gentleman because he told me) I am forced to keep quiet but I don't like port, except, perhaps, Calais. And the bidder ain't short of a pound or two.
Mind you, I was in a panic last week on the cash front because a cabbie arrived with my records that had been locked in a cupboard at the Cafe de Paris all week. Two friends - Carolyn Mac, club hostess and style queen, and Andy Blake, top stylist - got married and I was meant to DJ at the function but none of the staff could find my records and so I got sloshed and hoped they'd come home.
The cabby decided to make himself comfortable on one of my hallway chairs, despite being asked to wait outside. There I wsa running around, looking for money, while he hounded me with inane questions. Once I found the dosh, I said: "Really annoying when I meet people like you." It's just a pity he didn't relax on the chair, because the arms are carved phalluses which rise as you sit back.
LAST week writer and radio DJ Robert Elms wrote something that struck a chord - a rare occurrence. Virtually everywhere in the West End there are youngsters with clipboards, trying to get your bank details for one charity or another.
Now I will give to any charity, bar a racist one, but this official begging is rather annoying when the police are constantly moving on those who sleep in blankets and are really desperate. I wouldn't even mind giving these clipboard beggars money but I certainly won't hand over my bank details.
I'm no saint: I give to those who seem genuine but you can't stop in every doorway. Why can't the real Queen set up a homeless fund? It is the year of her Jubilee - or is it jamboree? Or perhaps those twits lining up for dubious honours could melt down their medals and chuck the proceeds in a bucket. Sir George? Vile. Sour George - yes please.
30th June 2002
Joan's bad taste is perfect therapy
ONLY the fabulous Joan Rivers could get away with making jokes about terrorism in her show, but my therapist says we should laugh at everything, due to the fact that laughing and crying are just two sides of the same coin. However, before I get to Joan and her hilarious bad taste, I must mention the opening act, Kit and the Widow.
I saw them recently at one of Elton's (oops, dropped a name!) bashes and I didn't get their act at all. However, after seeing them support Joan, I know it was because the room at the Dorchester Hotel was full of queens too full of their own self-importance to pay attention. I hear the tables were expensive, so maybe the crowd felt they had paid enough.
Kit and the Widow were hysterical, a sort of Hinge and Bracket out of drag crossed with Morecambe and Wise - only much higher on camp. They opened their act with a song dedicated to the disbelief that Joan was still alive and ended it with a triumphant crowd sing-a-long.
Joan's best joke was about her dead husband: "He left me everything on the condition that I visited him every day, so I had him cremated and scattered his ashes at Neiman Marcus. I'm there every day shopping."
Joan is the first to send herself up and talks about her numerous face lifts, even saying: "My grandson calls me nanny new face." Back in the Eighties, I met Joan and have seen her numerous times. She used to joke: "Boy George, just what England needs - another queen who can't dress." Or: "Of course, Michael Jackson's gay, he lost his other white glove down Boy George's trousers!"
Talking of Jacko, he was in London this week to protest about Sony Records not promoting his album. All very George Michael. The fans showed their support, but they're missing the point. If he thinks he's hard done by, then he should spend less cash on statues of himself and making videos for the kind of money that could feed the world.
His problem is not Sony, it's simply that he is stuck in the past and has stopped making great records. He needs to get out more or work with the likes of Missy Elliot or Busta Rhymes. More importatnly, artists like him are killing music by being too greedy and signing deals for obscene amounts, leaving nothing in the pot for struggling artists. Isn't it typical that the artists with the most money always complain about having their music downloaded from the Internet or bootlegged?
Jacko may be right in saying that recording contracts are a form of slave labour. After all, in any other job, you could serve your notice and quit, whereas one is bound by recording contracts. But when one has enjoyed the perks of success, and Jackson has been living it large for years, it's a different matter.
I went out in the street dressed as Leigh Bowery and banged on Jackson's limo, screaming: "I've modelled my look on you, I just want to show you how to get your face really white." Mike Nichols (Taboo's costume designer) and I were shooting a video and couldn't resist saying hi. Apparently, he was terrified. Well, now he knows how we feel.
Then it was off to the Dominion Theatre to cause havoc. Myself and XFM DJ Adam Longworth were dragged up as Mr Bowery and had been driven up Tottenham Court Road in a ricksaw as we handed out flyers. A dry voice came over the Tannoy announcing: "I've seen Taboo and it's not recommended." I just wanted a shot of moi, dressed as Leigh in front of the Queen musical sign that reads: "Guaranteed to blow your mind." The English public pretended not to notice us but the tourists were clamouring for photos.
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