Still Standing: The Savage Years (19 page)

When I knocked with her mug of Milo she was sitting up in bed, the teeth still in. She wasn’t so sloshed that she’d allow me to see her sans dentures.

‘I’ve had a very enjoyable time,’ she said, beckoning me to sit on her bed. ‘Although I do have a confession to make.’

Now, what could an old lady in a wheelchair surrounded by lesbians in a gay bar have got up to?

‘I used the gents’ lavatory,’ she said gleefully, her face lighting up like a young girl’s. ‘The ladies’ was right at the back of the pub and I’d never have got through the crowd in my chair, so Pat suggested I use the gents’ as it was closer and far more convenient.’

‘Pat?’

‘One of those women you left me with. They’re lesbians, by the way, but then I expect you already know that. Pat was the big one in the sweater, a very nice woman, as was her girlfriend.’ She paused to take a sip of her Milo. ‘Pat’s the man in the relationship,’ she said knowingly.

I’d asked her if she’d enjoyed the act in the taxi home but she hadn’t answered so I asked her again.

‘Yes I did, very much,’ she enthused. ‘And I fully understand why you mime.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, you can’t inflict a voice like yours on the public, can you? I’ve heard you singing in the kitchen, don’t forget. No, very inventive of you to hide behind those who have a real vocal talent and stay mute. Don’t wake me in the morning, dear, I’ll have a lie-in, I think. Good night.’

Living at Vicky Mansions suited me fine. Chrissie liked to describe life there as ‘Bohemian’ but I just wished he had not been so bloody laissez-faire about getting his name officially on the rent book, which although he’d lived there for a few years he’d never got round to doing. Consequently Lambeth Council refused to accept him as a legitimate tenant and served him with an eviction notice.

Chrissie simply packed his belongings and moved in with a neighbour downstairs while I vacated to an enormous flat over a cobblers on Streatham High Street with Hush and a guy he worked with in Allders. We only stayed two nights, realizing that this flat was hideously expensive and unaffordable even with the rent split three ways. Before the landlord came round with the contract for us to sign we did a moonlight flit, hampered slightly by Hush’s long, low, extremely heavy sideboard. He’d bought it in Allders’ sale using his staff discount and christened it ‘the good piece’, though it looked for all the world like an Ikea coffin.

We strapped the sideboard to the roof of a friend’s car and set off for our new lodgings on Somerleyton Road in Brixton. Coming down Brixton Hill the good piece started to break
free of its moorings and as we braked at the lights outside the town hall it slid off the roof, across the bonnet and launched itself on its maiden voyage into the middle of the road. There was a bit of a tailback with the traffic and a chorus of car horns rent the air until we managed to carry it on to the pavement. As we struggled with this bloody thing a couple of coppers turned up to smugly inform us that it was illegal to transport something the size of Hush’s good piece on the roof of a Ford Cortina. We ended up having to carry it to the flat in Somerleyton Road, receiving some strange looks en route and a group of gentlemen outside a pub in Coldharbour Lane asked us in all sincerity where the funeral was. Carrying that thing nearly killed us and I had hoped that when it fell off the roof of the car it would’ve smashed to pieces; however, it proved indestructible and apart from a few scratches survived unscathed.

The flat in Somerleyton Road belonged to a friend of Hush’s called David, better known as Blanche. He was extremely good company and had earned his drag name because he was crazy for the film
Mommie Dearest
starring Faye Dunaway in the part of Joan Crawford. Our Blanche would stay in the character of Joan for most of the time we lived there. As it was only a one-bedroom flat we all shared a room and it wasn’t uncommon to wake up and find Blanche standing at the foot of the bed clutching a wire coat hanger and screaming, ‘
No wire hangers!
’ This would be followed by a rant about how hard he worked at the studios to provide me with the decent things in life and for what thanks? I’m surprised he didn’t have Hush strapped to the bed à la Christopher.

We had a good time in that flat, lots of laughs but not a lot of room for three people, especially when one of them is Joan Crawford. So when we got the offer of an empty flat in a
high-rise on the Winstanley Estate in Battersea we loaded up the good piece – in a van this time – and waving bye-bye to Mommie Dearest we set off for life ‘up the junction’.

Our new abode had no cooking facilities so until we got round to buying a cooker I bought a tiny Baby Belling stove that had an oven, grill and hotplate that you could make a roast dinner on. It was money well spent as in later years when I was on tours around the country the Baby Belling proved indispensable, allowing me to knock up a decent meal in my dressing room when I didn’t want to take my make-up off between shows on matinee days.

Between us we scrubbed this flat out. Hush decorated the bedroom and living room and did any necessary repairs and once the three-piece suite that Hush’s mate Larn had given us was in place, together with the hated good piece with Hush’s prized Lladró collection tastefully arranged on top of it, the new place looked quite homey. I went up to Clapham Junction and rented a telly and an item I’d coveted since they’d first come out but could never afford: a video recorder.
The Avengers
was being shown again on Channel 4 and crazed fan that I was I was determined to own it all on videotape and watch it repeatedly at my leisure.

We worked a lot at a pub on Battersea Park Road called the Cricketers, which had been a famous drag pub for years. Once upon a time in the very early sixties when the house band at the Cricketers had consisted of two elderly ladies on piano and drums, an act called Alvis and O’Dell were arrested here, charged with aiding and abetting the running of a disorderly house and fined fifteen pounds each. Their crime? Miming to a recording of ‘Speedy Gonzales’, the exact same
act they performed at Butlin’s for the kids. Attitudes had certainly changed since those unenlightened times, for if you wandered into the Cricketers in ’83 for a drink you’d have found a heavily pregnant nun doing ‘The Vatican Rag’ and not a truncheon was raised nor a whistle blown.

The Cricketers was only a twenty-minute walk from the new flat and to save on the expense of a taxi we’d load everything into the wheelchair and push it there. I should explain the wheelchair. We did a take on the movie
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
, a cult classic particularly among gays but one that I’ve always found slightly disturbing. Chrissie had found the wheelchair for us in a skip (where else?) and after a bit of patching up it was nearly as good as new. When ‘the wheelie’ wasn’t on active service in the pubs and clubs, it substituted as a very convenient armchair back at the flat.

‘I could get used to this,’ I remarked to Hush one day as I spun across our sizeable living room to turn the telly over. ‘It saves you walking.’ Be careful what you wish for …

It was in the Union Tavern in Camberwell that I was ‘struck down’. During the Baby Jane routine with Hush in the wheelchair as Blanche and me poncing around as Jane complete with clown-white make-up and a scarlet slash for a mouth, Hush spun the chair around rather energetically, trapping my knee awkwardly between one of the speakers and a wheel and dislocating it.

I lay on the stage in agony, unable to move. The bar staff called an ambulance and I was whisked off to King’s College Hospital in full Baby Jane Hudson drag. Friday night in the A and E department of King’s College Hospital was how I imagine Bedlam must have been on the night of a full moon.

As there were obviously not enough staff to attend to all the casualties I was parked on my trolley next to a radiator to await my turn to see the doctor. A combination of intense pain, the heat from the radiator and the sheer volume of noise soon had me giving out louder than any of the drunks waiting to be seen, causing a fiery Irish nurse to threaten me with a ‘bar of soap in that mouth if you don’t stop using that kind of language in here’.

Eventually a harassed young doctor arrived and peering over the trolley at the apparition that lay before him asked me what my name was.

‘I’m Baby Jane Hudson,’ I simpered in my best Bette Davis voice. ‘Perhaps you remember me?’

The doctor wrote something down and then asked me if I’d had anything to eat or drink, which I had: I’d drunk two pints of cider and eaten one of Hush’s mammoth teas.

‘I’m afraid in that case you’ll have to wait a few hours before we can take you down to theatre and give you an anaesthetic,’ he said. ‘In the meantime I’ll give you a little something for the pain.’

A little something? For this amount of pain? I wanted a massive something, preferably in the form of a hypodermic full of morphine. Anything, as long as it stopped the agony.

Hours later, when I was being prepared for theatre, I kicked off again. They wanted to cut my tights off, but as they were new on that day I begged them to peel them off instead. It was bad enough being in this condition without having to fork out another £1.50 for a pack of four from the supermarket.

‘You’ll never guess what?’ Chrissie said gleefully, strolling into the ward all smiles. ‘You’re in the loony ward.’

They’d obviously taken me at my word when I’d given my
name as Baby Jane Hudson. I’d thought it was odd when I woke up to find the man in the bed opposite throwing oranges at me, while the only other occupant of our ward was sat on the floor by his bed tearing paper.

The nurse who brought me a cup of tea was quick to placate me, having obviously heard about my carry-on in A and E. Giving me a smile that she probably reserved for the seriously bewildered, she reassured me that my dress, tights and wig were perfectly happy in my locker and that she’d put my eyelashes in a little sputum cup on the side for safe keeping.

Despite Chrissie’s attempts at persuading the nursing staff that I really did have severe mental health problems and they weren’t to listen to my protestations of sanity, I was eventually moved on to the huge ward that was Men’s Surgical, my left leg encased in plaster from hip to ankle. They kept me in over the weekend and I sat in my bed on the Saturday night feeling very sorry for myself, my bottom lip wobbling like a four-year-old’s. Not only was I in hospital but I was missing the television event of the year – the return of
The Avengers
. Here I was, stuck in bed with no telly and Hush at home not having the faintest idea of how to operate the video recorder. Life really did stink at times.

To add to my misery, it looked like I wouldn’t be able to do the panto that year. Together with some of the other acts, Hush and I had met up at Adrella’s Soho flat to discuss ideas for an epic
Cinderella
panto that we’d planned to take around the pubs and clubs over Christmas. After a few lengthy living-in assignments since my return to the peripatetic team I was owed a lot of time off in lieu, part of which I had intended to take over the Christmas and New Year period. Now that I
was going to be in a hip-to-ankle plaster cast for some time, it no longer mattered. I would be stuck in the flat on my own, unable to go to work of a day and, even worse, forced to watch everyone else go off and have fun in the panto.

I spent the first few days in my wheelchair watching everyone rehearse in the big front room. The sewing machine was set up in the corner and when Hush wasn’t going through the routines he was bent over it furiously running up batches of costumes that I’d designed. During these rehearsals, egos clashed and tempers flared, particularly between the old queen of the jungle, Regina Fong, and reigning monarch Doris Dale.

David Dale, known in ladies’ sewing circles as Doris, was one of the most popular acts on the circuit. He’d recently had a big success with an autobiographical documentary on C4 called
If They’d Asked for a Lion Tamer
. As well as working solo, David Dale and Adrella worked together in a very clever act called High Society. They worked brilliantly as a team on stage but offstage it was a different matter. They had recently returned from a month in Copenhagen, working and living in such close proximity that a break from each other was wise for all concerned, before one of them committed murder. Adrella, who had enough work of his own over Christmas, tactfully and quietly withdrew from the panto and was replaced as the Prince by a pretty young lad with a ripped body (as they say) called Ian.

Reg, alias Regina Fong, was going through a tough time. The popularity of his brainchild, the once hugely successful trio the Disapointer Sisters, had waned long ago, and his costumes, stored at the Black Cap in bin-liners, had been mistaken for rubbish and inadvertently thrown out. Prior to becoming the little darling of the drag scene, Reg had been a
‘West-End Wendy’, dancing in many West End shows and even a couple of movies, as he never tired of telling us. Because of his experience he felt superior to the rest of us and as a result he could be, on occasions, terribly grand and overbearing.

Reg rarely appeared on any stage now, pub or West End. He spent most of his time in his Kentish Town flat, skint and worrying how he was going to feed his two cats. Once in a while Hush, Reg and I would get a little thirty-minute spot together and do a few shows around the pubs. It wasn’t very good. Reg never knew a word of what he was supposed to be miming to and even if he had it wouldn’t have made any difference as he’d forgotten how to lip-sync. Nevertheless I loved working with him, for as far as I was concerned he was a legend. I also loved his surreal sense of humour and my suggestion that we tackle Peggy Lee’s ‘Don’t Smoke In Bed’ was met with whoops of glee.

The idea was that Reg would sit on a stool dressed in a diaphanous negligee while I lay behind him in a sleeping bag, wearing a wig full of rollers and lighting endless fags. Finally, at the number’s conclusion, I’d let off a smoke bomb in the sleeping bag and engulf the stage in thick green smoke. It all sounded very good on paper but at the Black Cap one night I let off one of these smoke bombs without anticipating the effect the acrid fumes would create in such an enclosed space. They opened the fire doors to try to clear the air, to no avail. The smoke belching continuously out of the sleeping bag seemed to be growing stronger instead of diminishing, forcing the choking customers out of the bar and into the street. All that was left behind were a few diehards who were so pissed and such heavy smokers anyway that they never noticed any change in the atmosphere.