Still Standing: The Savage Years (30 page)

I’d appeared at the Albert Hall for Fashion Aid, sharing a dressing room with Sandie Shaw and Ann Mitchell, Dolly from the TV series
Widows
, and had been down the Seine on a beautiful boat with Hush and David Dale, LSD booked as the cabaret for a party Katharine Hamnett was throwing to celebrate her new collection. We got ready in a section of the minuscule galley, putting our make-up on in the side of a highly polished fridge freezer as none of us had thought to bring a mirror.

I don’t know what kicked it all off. Probably a few petty grudges reared their ugly heads and were transformed by alcohol into a snarling, sniping Hydra spouting extremely cross words that led to our physically laying into each other. I leapt on David, hauling his wig off and pushing him violently against the door which promptly fell in, sending us brawling like two hissing, spitting tomcats on the floor among Ms Hamnett’s slightly startled guests.

Hush, resplendent as always in emerald-green sequin and flame-red wig, was chatting politely to the French minister of
culture when we landed at their feet. ‘Shall we go over there?’ Hush said, pretending he didn’t know us and steering the minister away from the scene of the crime. ‘It’s getting a little rowdy in here.’

It took four security guards to prise us off each other, and to prevent further reprisals David was removed from the boat at Notre Dame. We met up again later when Katharine took us to supper at La Coupole, where I threw oysters at David while he sat at the other end of the table weeping like the Mock Turtle.

We made it up the next day. Drunken spats like that aren’t worth falling out over and anyway we were going to work in Israel together for a week, so it was best to clear the air.

I’d got the booking through Paul Wilde, an agent I worked for. Paul was a real wheeler-dealer. If you wanted to book an Inuit belly dancer who performed with singing parrots then Paul was your man. He had his fingers in many pies, all of them within the law of course, he’d claim with a twinkle in his eye, but he was straight down the line when it came to the acts. He was one of the good guys and he would never cheat you. I liked Paul a lot. He was bloody good fun and wasn’t afraid of a challenge and when Tel Aviv’s only gay bar, the Divine club, requested a drag act he booked the Playgirls in.

Hush wasn’t having any of it.

‘Under no circumstances am I going to bloody Tel Aviv to be blown to bits,’ he declared through pursed lips. ‘I’ve seen it on the telly, it’s not safe and I’m not going.’

Nothing could persuade him to change his mind. I couldn’t go alone as they wanted a mime double act so I went to work on David, who like Hush was also extremely doubtful about going to Israel and didn’t want to know. David can be fearless in many respects but he is a natural born worrier, particularly
when it comes to his health and safety, and if he has a headache he’ll convince himself that it’s actually a tumour.

I went back to work on Hush, but just as I was getting him to warm to the idea of Israel he fell off his high heels and broke his ankle, so it was back to David. This time I was more forceful, until in the end he agreed to go.

Parts of Tel Aviv looked as though they’d been thrown together that morning out of materials found in a skip but I loved the beaches, the weather and the food, and I thought the Israelis were some of the most beautiful men and women I’d ever seen.

It was great fun working at the Divine club, which I seem to remember had an Egyptian theme with mock columns and a frieze of hieroglyphics running round the walls.

We were asked if we would perform for the opening of a new clothes shop and had to get changed in the window as there was nowhere else for us to go. They’d sellotaped sheets of paper over the glass in an attempt at privacy but they soon came loose and fell off from the heat of the overhead lighting, and within minutes quite a crowd had gathered outside the shop to watch us getting changed like a couple of Amsterdam tarts until the police arrived wanting to know what was going on.

We also worked in Eilat at King Solomon’s Palace, doing two shows a night, the first at five o’clock in front of a packed room full of nice Jewish families who sat open-mouthed and silent with shock all through the show. The late show was a lot better, while the reception we were given at the show we put on for the staff in their club made the entire trip worthwhile.

I picked up a right stunner that night – an Alsatian pup
living rough on the streets who took a fancy to me. Eilat wasn’t as built up then as it is now, although there were lots of hotels under construction, and the one that we stayed in hadn’t even opened yet. Incredible as it might sound, when I opened my door the next morning the Alsatian puppy was curled up asleep outside. Somehow he’d worked out what room I was in and made his way up fifteen floors to stake it out. That was it. I was in love with this hound, and for the rest of my stay in Eilat we were inseparable. Even though on his side it probably had a lot to do with my feeding him regularly, when the time came to go home parting was agony. I’d enquired about bringing him back with me but he would’ve had to stay in quarantine for six months and I couldn’t afford the expense.

I often wonder what became of him. He was smart as a whip and a real beauty. Of course I do realize that he will be dead by now, unless he was the canine version of Noah, who supposedly built the Ark at the grand old age of 480, but the sentimental side of me likes to think that he had a long, happy life. Sadly, the realist in me seriously doubts it.

CHAPTER 9

NOW THAT I
was travelling the length and breadth of the country on such a regular basis, the train fares and hotel bills were taking a major slice out of the night’s fee. I’d also just won
Capital Gay
’s Entertainer of the Year, the only thing I’d ever won since the Easter egg in Miss Bolger’s raffle at St Joseph’s Primary School. I pretended to be very nonchalant about this award but in secret I was overjoyed, and throwing caution to the wind I bought a car.

As I couldn’t afford the Lotus Europa MK 2, the car Tara King had driven in
The Avengers
and the one I desperately wanted, I went for a bright red Citroën BX which I bought brand new on the HP. That car was my prized possession. I’d look out of the window each night to gaze down lovingly at it, parked proudly outside on the South Lambeth Road. It had electric windows, which we all thought were the height of sophistication, and as I couldn’t drive Murphy took the wheel and together we covered miles, travelling to venues all over the country in luxury.

It wasn’t unusual for me to work Cardiff, London, Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield and Bournemouth, all in one week. If we were eager to get home to our own bed then Murphy would drive through the night with an Elkie Brooks
tape playing and me desperately trying to stay awake in case he fell asleep at the wheel, not that he ever did as in all the years I spent in a car with him we never had an accident. Murphy was an excellent if aggressive driver, who took no prisoners on the road. God help anyone who cut him up as he’d pursue them in a car chase worthy of
The Sweeney
. We had lots of arguments over this and many a journey was spent in silent anger.

The places we stayed in overnight ranged from decent to dumps. Grim little rooms with damp beds and grubby nylon sheets that sent sparks flying when you got into bed in the dark were a false economy, no matter how inexpensive they were. It was far better for the soul to shell out an extra fifteen quid and stay in a ‘proper’ hotel, if only for the luxury of a shower. In one such hotel in Cardiff after a night working in one of my favourite venues, the Tunnel Club, we lay in bed watching the telly and eating a box of Cadbury’s Roses, pleasantly pissed. We fell asleep and the first thing that greeted me when I opened my eyes in the morning was the sight of Murphy’s back smeared in what looked like shit.

I pulled the sheets back. The one we were lying on was slathered, as were my legs, and out of the corner of my eye I could see a lump hanging in my hair.

‘Murphy, wake up! You’ve shit the bed,’ I screamed.

‘No I haven’t,’ he said matter-of-factly, patting his backside to check. ‘It must have been you.’

I patted my nether regions as well, just in case, and found to my relief that I wasn’t the guilty party either. Maybe the room was haunted by a ghost badly in need of an Imodium?

‘It’s chocolate, you lunatic,’ Murphy said, bravely sniffing
his fingers. ‘You left those bloody chocolates in the bed, didn’t you?’

‘I did?’

Ding, ding, round one.

Concerned at what the chambermaid might think, I made Murphy get up so I could strip the bed and wash the sheets in the bath with a miniature bottle of shampoo.

‘How are you going to dry them?’ Murphy asked, amused by what he considered to be the actions of a madman. ‘You can’t put them back wet. They’ll only think we’ve pissed the bed.’

As I’d been to Cardiff so many times, I knew the city centre pretty well and remembered seeing a launderette. Smuggling the sheets out in a carrier bag, I tracked it down and spun ’em and dried ’em and had them back on the bed by midday checkout, while Murphy sensibly read his paper over a leisurely breakfast.

If we weren’t in a hurry to get to the next venue, we took the opportunity to visit the countryside on our way home. Each time I worked the Nightingale in Birmingham, another club that I worked regularly for years and always liked, we’d drive back to London via the Cotswolds. We’d stop off in Woodstock or Witney for something to eat and I’d be let loose around the antique shops. I never came away empty-handed from a trip to a market or an interesting junk shop piled high with what Murphy dismissively referred to as shite.

In York Market on our way back from Newcastle I bought a cheap ceramic statue of a cockatoo that I still have today as it reminded me of Kiki, the bird from Enid Blyton’s ‘Adventure’ series, and in Witney there was a shop that sold all manner of bric-a-brac guaranteed to make me part with the previous night’s fee. I once spent twenty-five quid on an
art deco muffin dish that had Murphy asking repeatedly all the way home what in God’s name did I want a muffin dish for, especially one that cost twenty-five quid, and did I actually know what a muffin was?

Soon the tiny front room of Vicky Mansions was crammed with the treasures that I’d picked up on my many travels up and down the country. Pictures covered my magnolia woodchip while every available surface was loaded with bibelots and curios, ranging from a wind-up gramophone that I had to stuff a towel down the horn of every time I played a 78 on it as it was so loud, to a set of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves garden ornaments that Vera had bought me for Christmas even though I only had a window box.

Murphy and I embarked on our first holiday together to the Greek island of Lefkas, courtesy of a raffle organized by my favourite agent, Paul Wilde, at the Hippodrome in Leicester Square. I’d been asked to draw this raffle and was genuinely amazed to see that the holder of the winning ticket for ‘an unforgettable, romantic holiday for two in a stunning resort on the beautiful tranquil island of Lefkas’ just happened to be Murphy. It was only later that he told me that he and Paul had identical books of raffle tickets and simply tore the matching number out when I called it. It was Lefkas, and all its promised beauty, here we come.

We landed on Greek soil and stayed there trapped inside a boiling hot plane on the runway for over three hours as no landing docks were available. Of course Murphy and I kicked off, Murphy issuing an ultimatum to the cabin crew that he’d forcibly open the doors himself if they didn’t let us off the plane immediately, a threat that fell on deaf ears and was met with the benign smile of a Stepford Wife, infuriating him even further.

Once we’d been released from this flying Black Hole of Calcutta and had cleared customs, we were piled on to an antique coach such as one would expect to find ferrying the campers around Maplin’s Holiday Camp. We sat on this for a further hour while Jo, our airhead rep, sorted out the allocations. What struck me was just how placid all our fellow travellers were, taking this hanging about the airport in assorted forms of boiling hot transport as par for the course.

When I questioned the man behind me about this he simply said, ‘Ah well, welcome to Lefkas.’

‘That’s if we ever bloody see any of it,’ Murphy snarled, rising from his seat and going in search of Jo. She was hovering outside the coach looking anxious as she consulted her clipboard, wondering what she was going to do with the excess of holidaymakers. Our numbers didn’t tally with her list. Eventually some sort of decision was made and the coach pulled out of the airport car park and off to somewhere called Nidri, which sounded to me like a Welsh brand of toilet cleaner.

Jo did her stuff on the mike, delivering the standard patter that she’d learned in her introductory course on how to be a travel rep, jollying us all along and getting us to stand up and introduce ourselves.

‘She can fuck off, the daft cow,’ Murphy muttered, a sentiment that I could only echo.