May 2002

5th May 2002

Scary Mary is so full of that attitude

YOU know how I'm always writing about American stars, especially when they breeze in to the UK with teams of big bouncers and create an air of hype and tension. I guess being a star - well, an American star - one feels obliged to look and act the part. You don't have to meet certain entertainers to realise they have attitude in abundance.

R&B queen Mary J Blige exudes it. The other night I popped along to see the ever-bubbly Jools Holland at the BBC and got to meet - no, witness - the firebrand that is Mary J.

I was wearing one of the most spectacular headpieces recreated from a design that the late artist-singer-dancer stupendous freak Leigh Bowery would wear on the night bus. How does one explain it? Let's just say its more Henry Moore then Her Majesty. If I could have bottled Mary's reaction to my punk, gravity-defying headpiece, blue ears and orange face, I could start my own perfume range and call it "Disgust". Or perhaps she thought I was Missy Elliot?

I was in the adjacent dressing room to "Scary Mary" and one could hardly move for wardrobe trunks and security thugs, who eyed me up and down like I was pond life. The biggest joke was that Mary performed in a pair of simple black trousers and a white t-shirt. Think sulky waitress in the Dorchester Hotel and you have it.

Now having dealt with her attitude - or is it called ghetto-fabulousness? - I must say that the lady can sing. Her voice is so full of suffering and I suspect it is very real, but who hasn't experianced suffering? Let's face it, you can't sing "No more hatred" and then act like you've just found a cockroach in your soup, or walk around with the expression that could put out a bush fire.

I asked Mary if I could take a picture of her with my friend who is a Greek transvestite who wishes he/she was black. Mary obliged but the fake smile was loaded with professional sincerity. It was very telling, having listened to Mary tell Jools that "being real" was what it was all about. Did she mean being "being unfriendly"?

Moving on, the relentlessly charming Elvis Costello was there too and treated us to some new songs and a couple of classics, Oliver's Army and I Don't want to go to Chelsea. I wanted to tell him that God Give Me Strength, which he wrote with Burt Bacharach, is the most moving song I've heard in a decade but I couldn't get close enough. Now there's a tune that Mary should get her chops around. Many a tear has been shed to that ditty. It runs close to Nina Simone's Mississippi Goddam, which is on the other side of emotion - pure anger but equally soul-stirring.

After the show I popped in to a friends house for supper and then it was off to Heaven nightclub. Well why waste a look?

AFTER selling millions of records for Ministry of Sound, its magazine wrote the most insulting piece about me. Ok, I can take abuse and what could be said about me that ain't already being said? However, Brother Brown, one of its acts, have just remixed my old song Generations of Love and have given it a very "now " vibe. So if I'm such a rubbish DJ and to quote the journalist, " Have done for Dance music was salt does for slugs", why did they work with me for so long? Worse still, the coward who wrote the article didn't even bother to put her name to it.
A letter of apology was sent after a raging call from yours truly and we are back on track. Generations of Love was clearly before its time because it feels "right on" with war tearing the planet apart. Everyone keeps telling me to re-release The War Song by Culture Club but while I agree with the sentiment, the timing might be a bit off.

12th May 2002

A Right-wing gay is a queer concept

THE pictures printed in almost every newspaper of the Dutch, gay, Right-wing politician Pim Fortuyn were disturbing, to say the least. As a gay man, a proud one at that (although I hate to label myself), I should be indifferent. But no one, however bigoted their views, should die in such a brutal way.

The very idea of a homosexual being Right-wing is surely a contradiction in terms but yet again it proves that not all queers, fags, benders, or whatever phrase you prefer to use, think or feel the same.

The night before he was slain, I had watched him give an interview on TV, butler in tow and full of "last days of the Raj" delusions. I couldn't help feeling he was urinating in his own handbag. Surely the idea is to learn from one's own suffering and not to inflict or project that suffering onto other minorities.

Having said that, we are all guilty - black, white, queer, straight - of thinking that our suffering is exclusive, or that our faith, if we have one, is superior. I realise that there are gays who harbour Right-wing views. I've met and argued with them, and still feel it's a bit like being a vegetarian butcher.

THE LATEST Eminem record is a testament to both his ability (I say this reluctantly) as a wordsmith and the knob-twiddling genius of Dr Dre. But in the song Eminem calls Moby - a fellow dance artist who dared to slate him in the press - a "balding 36-year-old fag".

Well, there's a simple solution to the problem: don't give it if you can't take it. I can use the word "fag" because I sleep with, and have relationships with, men - just as the black community can reclaim the word "nigga". But a white man using that term is asking for trouble. Freedom of speech is a wonderful thing but if you use it unwisely you can end up swallowing your own tongue.

If I, for example, made a record saying "kill all heterosexuals", would it be given airplay? Of course not, and I would never do it because I have this romantic idea we can all live in harmony. I think it's time that pretty-boy Eminem, who clearly loves his own reflection, stopped rattling on about gay issues because it's a subject he has no experience of - or is there something he's not telling us?

I repeat myself I know, but art should challenge stereotypes and if Eminem reckons he's only saying out loud what most people think, then he is not an artist, he is a sheep - and all that trailer-park trash is wearing thin, because he is minted, and there's nothing worse tthan a multi-millionaire going on about their humble roots.

Back in the Eighties, another white boy rapper, Dominic, dedicated a song to me called Favour Boy George. I was flattered, except for the line: "AIDS is a disease, me na wan catch it." Then there was Nicky Crane, racist leader of the skinhead movement, who turned out to be a homosexual after serving time for attacking West Indians and Asians, and later died of AIDS. Hilariously, there is now a tune doing the rounds from an act called Feminem, so clearly what goes around comes around.

I am just as guilty of abusing my musical and public platform as a form of revenge but I am happy to face the music should the person at the end of my wrath take exception.

Punk rocker Kirk Brandon took me to court and it cost me a small fortune, even though he lost his case for defamation of character. Perhaps I'm wrong and Eminem is, as Elton John claims, a "breath of fresh air".

I think what annoys me the most is the fact that radio stations will willingly play a record that puts down homosexuals but won't touch one that celebrates them.

19th May 2002

Our Becks, God's Nine-day Wonder

HAD I the guts to deliver the line to David Beckham that I'd been preparing since I was (to my utter surprise) invited to the pre-World Cup bash at Beckingham Palace, I would have told him - but I bottled out when he walked up to my table and thanked me for coming.

OK, I'm a queen and there isn't a queen on this planet who would not swap places with Posh because one flash of that winning smile and you just melt. Becks's press pictures - with him oiled, half dressed, homo-erotic, shot by whoever - do NO justice to the real thing. He is brimming with charm and sweetness and a smile that could defrost the Antarctic.

However, before I talk about the opulence of what will most certainly be the party of the year, let me tell you that I had planned to say to David: "And on the ninth day, God took his time to put you together." Still, it was gracious of him to leave his table and shake my hand after all the vile things I've said about the Spice Girls, but I take none of it back. Whether David was dressed by Posh or not, he looked suave in his dark blue mandarin-style frock coat and red sash.

Although I did not get to speak to Posh, my chum Philip Sallon cornered her and said she was very nice and as down to earth as you can be when you can afford, with a little help from the paying media, to erect a humungous Japanese marquee in your garden.Sadly, I didn't get to nose around the house. I hoped I could at least get to rifle through the bathroom cabinet but there was a serious pecking (or should I say "Becking"?) order. I suspect Elton got to twirl around the lounge.

As usual, Philip and I provided the freak element. Although the dress code was white and diamonds, I ignored it but Philip was kind of in white. By that I mean sporting a head full of shaving foam and a Vivienne Westwood cream suit. Viv herself came in a rugby shirt and a hairdo to house a flock of seagulls - the flying variety, not the band, but they might have fitted in, too, given a good shove.

Philip asked the great lady whether she'd like to pop along to Taboo and her response was: "I don't think I'd get anything out of it." Well, she might enjoy herself since it was most certainly she that said, and I quote: "Leigh Bowery was one of the great ideas people of the last century."

I should remind her that, at 16, when I begged my father to buy me a pair of her revolutionary bondage trousers, costing £560, my mother's response was: "I could buy a three-piece suite for that!" Oh my, how Anarchy In The UK became avarice in the UK! Maybe the rugby shirt was her way of telling us that she now takes sides but, whatever, I was inches away from David Beckham and briefly held his hand.

Plus, I met his parents and they were adorable. I understand completely why the the nation loves him - because he is a brilliant footballer, not that I give a hoot, but more importantly because he radiates vulnerability and, while I'm not always a good judge of character, I'm defiantly not off-side on this one. Only one bit of advice, smile more often.

ONE WEEK in as Leigh Bowery and I'm telling you that man must be chuckling away in Heaven - up there, not the club - as I rush between costume changes, fitting in the odd ciggie when possible. No smoking in the dressing room; yawn.The wonderful thing is that there is no time to think and modesty flies out the window. If you told me I'd be sitting in a room full of fit lads with just about everything hanging out this time last year I'd have laughed you out of town. Hairless and fearless.

26th May 2002

Criticism hurts less than compliments

THERE is a rule in rock 'n' roll that one never insults the sound man - you know, the geezer who stands at the front twiddling knobs and making sure you sound as near to perfect as possible. Apparently, the same rules apply in theatre.

Some months ago when a certain journalist complimented my songwriting after watching my latest venture, Taboo the musical, I cried for at least an hour and my poor make-up girl Sarah who was trying to apply mascara couldn't get it to stay on and it took ages.

I often wonder why I chose a career that meant I would spend my entire life being dissected by strangers who not only question my motives for craving attention, but also say the most spiteful things. I guess it goes back to the school playground, my father and, in fact, every institution of authority which I have rallied against during my career, or life, so far.

Even record companies are part of that battle. The joke, if there is one, is that I handle insults better than compliments. Or am I just, to quote Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire, "not accustomed to the kindness of strangers"?

A close friend who lost both parents in two years was more upset when his father left the Earth - and the man in question would punch and slap him every morning before he left for school. It's called (and I've used the line many times in this column) the victim identifying with the persecutor. We remember those who make our lives unpleasant.

I still, for example, remember almost word for word what was written by a reviewer in a pop magazine about Culture Club's first hit, Do You Really Want To Hurt Me? The song was both a question and a self-fulfilling prophecy. It went something like: "The only thing Culture Club have going for them is the hideously unphotogenic Boy George - ignore the airbrushed sleeve." This was long before I discovered airbrushing, but during a period in my life when I never left the house without the full war-paint.

AND so I come to Lyn Garnder's Guardian review of Taboo this week, which was at best grudgingly complimentary. In it, she wrote that the actor Euan Morton, playing the younger me in Taboo, was "far prettier" than I ever was in my day. While, of course, not displaying a picture of herself.

I would be doing myself an injustice if I said I was happy with the way I look. I have always maintained that being born average looking is a plus because, when one is born close to what is considered perfect, there is only one way to go and that's down. Not that Euan thinks he's prettier (actually I've never asked him) and, trust me, he was chosen, like the rest of the cast, for his acting and singing ability - and they've all done me proud.

In fact, sharing a cramped dressing room with them has been physically and emotionally liberating. Leigh Bowery was far braver than I ever was in terms of using his body as a living statement. While the rest of the tribe used clothing and make-up to disguise their defects, Leigh was a living, breathing work of art.

Lyn also pointed out that my accent was "very Eltham" - news to me. As for Leigh, he never spoke in an Australian accent. Perhaps the beautiful creature is sitting on a cloud, chuckling away at the impact he made when he reigned supreme on the club scene, and brightened up the horizon with his attitude to life and fashion and beauty. He would trot around the clubs with a plastic pig, dressed in marching costume, and say: "I see every living creature as a potential client."

So there's hope for us all, Lyn.

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