Still Standing: The Savage Years (35 page)

I had a little notebook in which I’d jotted down all manner of jokes and stories. I kept it hidden, embarrassed in case anyone saw it as I assumed that all comedy was supposed to be spontaneous. None of the other drag acts kept a ‘joke book’, or at least if they did I wasn’t aware of it. Writing stuff down
and preparing what you were going to say on stage I saw as slightly fraudulent.

Hattie Hayridge, a very funny comic on the bill who became our pal, sat down beside me and whipped a pad out, writing something at the top of the page.

‘I always put down “Good Evening”,’ she said, pausing to think what was going to follow this greeting. ‘Even though I never actually say it, it gets me started.’

‘Do you always write out what you’re going to say?’ I asked her, agog that I’d found a kindred spirit who shared my guilty secret.

‘Of course I do,’ she said. ‘I think everyone writes their set out, helps you to remember it.’

Another revelation, and from that day forth I no longer felt ashamed to consult my notebook in front of others.

I was loath to leave at the end of the week so Murphy suggested that we drive up to the Isle of Skye for a few days.

The four-hour drive from Glasgow to the Kyle of Lochalsh is one of the most beautiful in the world and the more I saw of Scotland the more I liked it. At the Kyle of Lochalsh we took the boat over to Skye, a more romantic way to get there but less practical than the yet-to-be-built controversial bridge.

The Isle of Skye. Even the name sounds magical and, compared to South Lambeth Road, it was. We checked into the Skeabost Country House Hotel, a former hunting lodge built by MacDonalds (the clan, not the fast food chain) on the edge of Loch Snizort. The view from our bedroom window was straight off the lid of a 1960s chocolate box, so beautiful it couldn’t possibly be real. Not that stunning views are a rarity on Skye; everywhere you turn there’s scenery to take your breath away.

Murphy went off to play golf while I took advantage of the
bathroom and the giant bath just screaming to be filled with hot water and the bluebell bath oil that sat on a snowy white flannel on the bath rack. My bathroom at Vicky Mansions was still painted the same depressing chocolate-brown colour that the previous tenant had claimed made the room feel ‘womb-like’. I couldn’t be bothered to decorate it. I didn’t know where to start as so much needed doing, including a new bath, sink and toilet. The fittings hadn’t been changed since the day they were first installed just after the war.

Even John Haigh, the acid-bath murderer, would’ve come up with a different way of disposing of his victims faced with the prospect of my bath and bathroom.

Murphy was forever taking me on long hikes up mountains. I’d give out and moan every inch of the ascent, only to find when I got to the top and was finally allowed to sit, silent for once, and drink in the unbelievable glory of the panoramic view around us that I was glad I’d made the effort. When I wasn’t walking and eating I was ensconced in the luxurious bathroom soaking in a bath reeking of bluebell soap and bath oil. I became addicted to the smell and craved it as an addict would cocaine, only instead of standing over the lavatory cistern snorting coke I was inhaling the complimentary bottles of all things bluebell.

Our supposed few days grew into a fortnight moving around the islands and staying in small hotels and I’d probably still be there now, I was so in love with the place, if we hadn’t run out of money. I needed to get back to work.

The Royal Burlesk
was billed as ‘The Most Outrageous Show in Britain’ when in actuality it was pretty tame stuff. It was a male strip show with me acting as compère and we appeared
at the Wimbledon Theatre, the Theatre Royal, Hanley, and the Pavilion in Brighton. In spite of Brighton’s racy reputation there was a rule about how much a stripper was allowed to take off and when the stage manager reminded everyone over the backstage tannoy just before the show went up that ‘Strippers must leave their G-strings on or we’ll be raided,’ it was music to my ears – pure
Gypsy
. The expectant ladies in the audience weren’t very pleased, however, if their repeated chant was anything to go by. The only thing they seemed to want to see was ‘dick’.

God bless the Tory councillor who accused the show of turning Brighton into the ‘cesspit of Europe’ and said we were ‘promoting the most depraved filth to the younger generation’, for no sooner had the
Brighton and Hove Leader
hit the newsagents’ counters with its damning front-page editorial than the phones in the box office went mad, selling every ticket within half an hour. Such was the demand we could’ve run all through the summer with ‘House Full’ signs outside every night. It goes to prove, give the public what they want …

Despite having lots of offers to go and work in Liverpool I’d always turned them down as I reckoned I’d be slaughtered. You’re never a prophet in your own town and as the majority of folk up there are wickedly funny I thought I didn’t stand a chance. But after persistent phone requests from Tommy, the manager of Jody’s club, and a pep talk from Murphy I conceded defeat and we set off for Liverpool. The tide was high and the room provided for me to get ready in downstairs was flooded and I had to get dressed standing in my case to avoid rising damp up my tights. It seemed the entire gay population had turned out for the homecoming of Lily Savage, each and every one a critic. I took more than a
deep breath before I walked on to the dance floor in front of them – I necked a pint of cider.

‘“How long are you in Liverpool for?” the bus conductor asked me,’ I said. ‘“Do you come back home a lot then, girl?”

‘“Well, it depends on how often our Vera sends me a VO [visiting order],”’ and with that I was off like a rat out of a trap.

It was wonderful working in Liverpool. We spoke the same language and I could joke about all the old characters who hung about Liverpool’s gay bars, even daring to send up that sacred cow, Sadie, the formidable owner of Sadie’s Bar Royale. Far from being offended, he appeared to be flattered, to the extent of allowing me to pull him up on to the dance floor at the end to take a bow, and stunning me and the audience by smiling graciously, the first time Sadie’s lips had made such a movement in living memory.

We stayed in the Adelphi that night, the hotel that I’d walked past as a child, my mother telling me that it was ‘too posh for us’ when I asked her if we could go in. The Adelphi was once regarded as the most luxurious hotel outside of London and had played host in its day to such diverse characters as Winston Churchill and Roy Rogers and his horse, Trigger.

The magnificent public room was used as the interior of a liner for
Brideshead Revisited
, which is apt as the Adelphi was where all the wealthy transatlantic passengers stayed when waiting to take the boat to the States. The hotel has such wide corridors to enable the porters to stagger along under the weight of trolleys piled high and wide with steamer trunks. There used to be traces of the hotel’s glory days in the rooms, particularly those with the huge walk-in wardrobes, the rows of glass-fronted drawers, each with a little brass
plate bearing the name of the articles inside – evening gloves, wing collars, suspenders – memories of a bygone age slightly at odds with the avocado-green jacuzzi. I’ve got a soft spot for the Adelphi, having stayed there so many times over the years, and would love nothing more than for a trillionaire entrepreneur with a passion for the great liner hotels to restore her to her former glory.

I couldn’t sneak into Liverpool and out again without visiting my mother first, so I rang her up and told her we were coming over.

‘We?’ she said, slightly panicked.

‘Yes, me and a mate.’ It seemed odd referring to Murphy as a mate but then I was hardly going to say he was my lover, was I? Not that I would’ve anyway. ‘Lover’ is too Lady Chatterley for me, ‘boyfriend’ is juvenile and ‘partner’ sounds far too formal, and as for introducing the paramour as ‘This is me friend’ … well.

‘I hope you’re not looking for something to eat,’ she said, munching something, ‘cos I’ve got nothing in.’

‘Don’t worry about food, see you in an hour.’

Before we checked out I rang Vera to tell him how the night had gone.

‘Bernard Padden’s been on the phone for you all morning. You’ve got to call him, it’s urgent,’ Vera said.

Bernard had written the plays I’d appeared in at the Latchmere and he’d recently set himself up as an agent, working from the front room of his north London flat. I’d signed up with him and he was bloody good as within three days he’d got me an interview for
The Bill
. I’d gone along to Barlby Road in west London to meet Angela Grosvenor, the casting director, who told me that they were looking for
someone to play a snout for one of the most popular characters, DS Ted Roach.

A snout is a police informant and this one just so happened to be a fully paid-up, card-carrying transvestite. At the meeting I discussed the part with the writer, Kevin Clarke, a fellow Birkonian, and the director, Brian Farnham, all of us coming to the same conclusion: that Roxanne, for that was this character’s name, shouldn’t be anything like Lily. She should be slightly pathetic, a raddled old alley cat, nervously chain-smoking as she delivered her information to Roach in some dark back alley or in a car parked in a side street of a rundown area of west London.

Kevin was one of the principal writers on
The Bill
and I ended up going back as Roxanne for three episodes as ‘Personal Imports’, my first episode, was considered one of the best ever written in the series so far. Kevin was a great writer. I took him down to the Elly to meet a couple of real-life Roxannes and I could see his mind clocking up overtime as he observed everything that was going on around him.

Even though my meeting went very well I couldn’t help thinking on the bus home that in the end they’d probably settle on an experienced actor, and when I still hadn’t heard anything after a week I reluctantly put it out of mind. Now here was Bernard telling me I’d got the job and would start filming on 22 August. I wanted to rush down Lime Street telling everyone I was going to be on
The Bill
. Everyone, that is, except my ma, who was still under the misapprehension that I was employed by Camden Council. She might just question this sudden transition from social services to acting. I was reticent about telling her as I wasn’t sure how she’d react to seeing me trannied up. Also I didn’t want her to worry. She was always wondering what I was up to and
wouldn’t understand why I’d given up a good job to go into a business that was notoriously competitive.

As we drove through the Mersey Tunnel I could imagine her frantically tidying up, plumping cushions and folding up the
Liverpool Echo
that was strewn across the sofa. She’d be ‘throwing the Hoover around’ before popping the teeth in, fluffing up her hair and patting her face with her Max Factor powder puff that was hard as a rock with age.

‘So are you going to tell her about
The Bill
?’ Murphy asked.

‘I dunno,’ I muttered.

‘Does she watch it?’

‘She loves it, so does Aunty Annie. They have lengthy discussions over the phone about it like they do after they’ve watched
Corrie
.’

‘Well, you’re scuppered then, aren’t you, sugar? Why don’t you just tell her? She’ll more than likely be delighted.’

‘But I’m in drag, Murphy,’ I moaned.

‘Who cares? She won’t. Get over yourself, Savage, it’s an acting job. Now shurrup and pass me some change out of the ashtray so I can pay the toll.’

My mother was instantly taken with Murphy’s quiet reserve and completely bowled over when he paid her genuine compliments about her garden. I knew he’d really made the grade when I saw she’d got the best dishes out, the shiny orange ones with the translucent sheen that Uncle Harold had brought back from a trip to Hong Kong. Not many had that honour bestowed upon them.

‘If me laddo had have given me fair warning you were coming I’d have got something in,’ she apologized to Murphy,
pressing him to sit down in front of a plate piled high with boiled ham and a salad made up of two lettuce leaves, a stick of celery, a spring onion, some slices of cucumber, half a hardboiled egg and a tomato neatly arranged on the plate, followed by an apple pie and custard she’d knocked up in the time since I’d rung her.

‘So why are you back up here then?’ she asked, neglecting to add as she used to do that she hoped I didn’t have the police on my tail. I told her we were visiting friends of Murphy’s in Manchester, which was partly true as I was working there at Rockies that night and staying in Salford with pals of mine.

‘You look like you need a good pan of scouse down you,’ she said, eyeing me up. ‘And when did you last have a good night’s sleep? You’ve got circles under your eyes darker than a coal hole. I hope you’re looking after yourself.’

It was true, I was showing all the hallmarks of too many late nights and was sporting what was known among the acts and fellow night owls as a nightclub tan. I’d been working for twenty-eight consecutive nights up and down the country, sometimes twice a night, and out of all those dates fifteen of them were unpaid benefits and fundraisers.

Although we didn’t mind turning out to help raise a few bob, the majority of the acts, myself included, couldn’t help feeling that we were being taken advantage of, especially when we found out that a couple of the pubs had pocketed the money instead of giving it to charity. From then on we vowed we’d only play benefits in pubs and clubs we knew and could trust.

Despite the enormous amount of funds raised by the drag acts, it rankled that we were still not allowed to perform on the main stage at the annual Lesbian and Gay Pride rally held
in one of London’s parks. Even though drag was the most popular form of entertainment with a lot of gay men and women on the pub circuit, the painfully politically correct crowd who ran the committee were totally opposed to anything as offensive as a drag queen on stage – unless of course you were American, when that was sexy and therefore totally acceptable. But a lowly British pub act? Get thee banished to a small tent somewhere out of the way, you shameful leper. It wasn’t until 1990 that I was invited to step out of the cabaret tent and grace the main stage and that was only because I’d ‘broken through the archetype and was received wonderfully as a social commentator’. In the face of such patronizing crap I should’ve told them to stuff it, but as I wanted to get up in front of thousands of people in the park on a very important day and be a part of it, unusually for me, I held my tongue.