by Julian Clary
Being ‘hard to let’, the flats housed an odd assortment of people who clearly suffered from a number of social problems. The sad old boy next door invited me in one day to admire his new wastepaper bin. ‘It’s for me little bits of refuge,’ he explained. Next door to him was a dirty girl with a cleft palate. One weekend she asked me to feed her cat for her and left me the key. It was unspeakably filthy and smelly inside, and I picked up the cat’s bowl to reveal a veritable mound of maggots wriggling on the floor.
Directly below me was a big-boned girl called ‘Lesley’ who had just come out of prison for stabbing her father. She told me she slept with a knife under her pillow. She knocked on my door one day and asked me to turn my radio down: ‘It’s getting on my nerves,’ she said menacingly, her tone suggesting that perhaps her father had bothered her in a similar fashion. Of course, I never turned it on again. She was quite mad. I heard her shouting one evening, having a furious row. Then her front door opened and slammed shut again. I looked nervously down the stairs and there was a battered yucca plant outside her door, covered in cigarette burns. She didn’t even get on with plants.
It was 1983. I never budgeted my unemployment benefit very wisely. When it arrived I went to the supermarket and bought whatever I fancied. When money was running out I ate a lot of baked potatoes. I signed on every other Wednesday at Greenwich unemployment office. My life was full of expectation. My nightly outings to Soho’s pubs and clubs were all-important. Surviving on limited resources was a triumph of ingenuity which carried its own sense of satisfaction. Stephen and I managed somehow to save and borrow enough money to go on a week’s holiday to Sitges, a gay seaside resort in Spain. We miscounted our pesetas when we arrived, imagining for three days that we were rich. We ate in the most expensive restaurants, guzzled champagne and purchased other stimulants as the fancy took us. On the fourth day, in a rare sober moment, we re-counted our funds and realised our error. There were so many noughts in the Spanish currency that we had mistaken our modest few thousand pesetas for millions. We were left with about £2 each for the remaining four days.
We laughed at our predicament but soon reality kicked in. During the day we went to the gay beach and Stephen tried valiantly to make a new best friend who might lend us some money, but he must have looked suspicious and desperate because, in our hour of need, no one wanted to be our chums. We were constantly hungry. We lived on bread, crisps and water. One afternoon I went for a swim. As I looked back at the crowded beach, I saw Stephen reach into my bag and steal the last of my bread. He tore at it like a hungry hyena, looking warily round as if his food might be grabbed off him by a hungry pack member. I swam back to shore and raced up the beach but it was too late, the bread had all been eaten. Stephen laughed triumphantly, picking crumbs off his towel and eating those too. By the time we got to the airport we were not only hungry but dehydrated. My last memory of that holiday was of us circling the canteen, pouncing on any discarded drink cans. We shook them expectantly. If there were any dregs in there, we threw our heads back and downed the contents. Stephen swallowed two cigarette ends. Karma for eating my bread, I told him.
I applied for a position with Help the Aged, but it was only a half-hearted attempt at getting a proper job. I was far too louche and languid to imagine myself working in any proper sense of the word. At the end of the interview they asked if I’d be prepared to cut my hair, as long hair didn’t go down too well with the old folk. I shook my head sadly. Anything but that, unfortunately.
I was always on the lookout for some means of support that didn’t involve proper nine-to-five work. Singing telegrams proved to be the solution. The Songbird Agency was run from the front room of a terraced house in Maida Vale by Kara Noble and Sue Holsten. I did some sort of audition and was set to work at once. My first assignment was to tour department stores throughout the country dressed in a top-hat and tails, present a red rose to the top Elizabeth Arden sales women of the year, and read them an encouraging poem in recognition of their achievement. I remember the last two lines of the poem were:
Keep on working, keep on graftin’
And best of luck from Elizabeth Arden.
It was quick, camp and painless, and I enjoyed the work. I travelled round by train, doing two stores a day and staying in cheap hotels. Once, when I’d completed my task in Edinburgh, I was walking down the Royal Mile and an attractive man passed me, turned and smiled, and went into a front door, leaving it slightly ajar. I followed. It seemed rude not to. Up the stone steps and through another open door into his flat. He smiled at me from the other side of the living room, where he was kicking off his shoes and unbuttoning his shirt at the same time. I did as he did. Not a word was spoken. Twenty minutes later I emerged and resumed my walk, laughing at the outrageousness of this spontaneous sexual encounter. I didn’t think of myself as a tart – but I wouldn’t argue with anyone who did.
Singing telegrams were all the rage at that time and I did lots of them. Tarzan was very popular, so I bought a leopardskin dress from Oxfam and cut it up to make a loincloth. I was also available as a Drag-o-gram (Gillian Pie-Face), Cupid (gold outfit, bow and arrow, popular for Valentine’s Day), the Human Christmas Tree (green leotard with baubles pinned to it and green tinsel wig, very festive) and a Nappy-gram (large nappy, big dummy and bonnet, ideal for expectant mothers). I once appeared as Cupid in the Essex County Court, proposing to the Clerk of the Court on behalf of his girlfriend.
The work was plentiful but spread far and wide and I really needed a car. Songbird came to my rescue, lending me a white Honda van to travel about in, the deal being that I also did balloon deliveries for £1 a time. It was a solitary sort of life, but Fanny sat in the passenger seat and we set out each day armed with maps and instructions, diligent in our task. In the back of the van were a helium tank and a supply of balloons, from metallic (longer lasting, more expensive), to your traditional rubber (available in all colours with matching ribbons and a poem), or the ever popular Balloon in a Box: a big, white, mysterious box wrapped in bright ribbons. When opened, a heart-shaped balloon arose, shimmering with glitter and confetti. Attached to the end of the trailing ribbon was a message from the beloved.
Seeing as I couldn’t do telegrams without the van, I agreed. Telegrams paid around £12 a time. My Tarzan was very popular and I could do two or three a night. In general it consisted of me turning up at some venue, anything from a rough pub in the East End to a posh 40th in Chalfont St Giles, changing into my loincloth in the back of the van or maybe in the pub gents, hiding my day wear above the cistern. I’d then locate my victim, pick him (I did Gay Tarzan too; no discernible difference) or her up, swing them round, recite a personalised poem with information from whoever booked me, maybe sing a snatch of ‘I’m The King Of The Swingers’, and feed them a banana as salaciously as possible. Being a cut above the rest, our agency prided itself on staying around for 20 minutes to get the party going. I was the life and soul for the appointed time, then slipped out of the door as the conga gained pace. Telegrams were usually delivered in fairly raucous situations, the recipient and their colleagues generally drunk. As things turned out, this work was handy training for comedy clubs a few years later.
The deal with the Honda seemed a good one at the time, but there were days when I’d spend all day doing balloon deliveries in Essex, Wimbledon, Caterham and Willesden, only to collect the paltry sum of £4. A few telegrams in the evening would redress the balance, and after a hard day’s work, off I went to the bars and clubs to unwind. I’d leave Fanny asleep in the van and nip into Heaven or Bang to see my friends and try my luck.
It was not the done thing to go home empty-handed. For some reason, I remember sitting on the floor in Heaven’s Star Bar, all ripped jeans and tousled hair, more or less waiting for a man playing pool to finish his game and come over. Nothing had been said but an entire dialogue had been spoken with looks and body language. I knew he was interested. I knew he had to finish the game first.
Later back at Kidbrooke, it was a trousers-round-ankles situation. I think the long drive home focused the mind somewhat. Small talk had been exhausted, thighs fondled as we drove along. Once inside the flat there was no talk of slipping into something more comfortable, cups of tea or even turning on the lights. Sexual acts were performed by the illumination of a streetlight, and were all the more memorable for it.
One of the necessary qualities for a camp comic is the overdevelopment of the muscle of aesthetic appreciation. The fact is, I remember the encounter only because the lighting was so filmic. Turns out he was a chef. A self-raising man. I can verify that. His administrations were so encouraging I had the good fortune to achieve an orgasm. We were both delighted for a moment, until the chef decided he wanted me to return the favour. I was thinking more cup of Horlicks and a taxi for Fanny Craddock. The wonder of the moment had evaporated in exact proportion to each thrusting deposit. Left dazed and sober, my sense of politeness went out the window. Suddenly an off-duty chef, infused with chip fat and the whiff of liver, was thrusting his meat in the general direction of my face and declaring with a drunk man’s sense of justice that it was his turn now. The Catholic in me did his duty for a while, but my heart wasn’t in it and my sense of self resurfaced as my heart rate returned to normal. But the chef was consumed with lust. Snorting poppers with gusto, he slapped and swiped my face with his member. A brief reprise of sexual duty from me did the trick and his knees buckled under the velocity of his ejaculation.
Sleep followed swiftly as it did in those days. No GBH overdose frenzy, no grinding of teeth or sexual dysfunction blighted our pleasure. Just the bleaching daylight, cruel and forthright in its revelations. The chef. Skin trouble, not noticed before. Acrid body odour. Teeth not great.
He was late for work, cursing and punching numbers into the phone with frantic dread. Fanny looked on with withering indifference. We drove up the Old Kent Road in silence, the chef slapping his legs with anxiety before leaping out of the car at traffic lights near to his alleged place of work. There may have been a ‘See ya, mate,’ or some such, but I was busy opening the car windows.
The chef has not entered my mind for 20-odd years. But he’s an example of the kind of encounters one might engage in at that time. I didn’t go out and expect to keep myself nice.
ONE DAY THE holdall containing the Gillian Pie-Face costume, wig, props and all, was stolen from the back of the van. The thief was probably more upset than I was with his booty. I didn’t bother to report it. Gillian was getting on my nerves. I had a bath and thought how I should proceed with the act. Female impersonation wasn’t what I wanted to do, but glamour and make-up were. My make-up application had grown particularly extreme, verging on the grotesque.
I jumped out of the bath quickly because Dynasty was on. By the time I’d dried myself, all had become clear. I would call myself the Joan Collins Fan Club. Joan was on the cover of every magazine at the time, wearing as much make-up as I did, and her character in Dynasty, Alexis Carrington, was the ultimate bitch. Joan’s aggressive glamour appealed to me, as did her relentless ability to sell herself. She had a twinkle in her eye; she knew that we knew it was all an illusion, a commercial ruse to earn a fabulous salary with make-up and back-lighting. Image was all. The title ‘Joan Collins Fan Club’ was deliciously self-explanatory. My appearance and my putdowns would be justified, and what’s more the DSS would never rumble me for earning a bit on the side. Although I was a comedian, my idea was to market myself as a pop star. The Marvin Shark of my youthful fantasies would come to life, the Gay Lusac of the schoolboy cartoons would take to the stage wearing my sister’s showgirl make-up, and feather boas would hang from every available limb.
I alerted the handful of regular cabaret bookings I had to my name change, and wrote some new material, which I could brutally if not skilfully weave in with the old.
In mock-evangelical style, I welcomed the audience to a Joan Collins convention and offered to sell them the crystallised remains of Joan’s own bathwater scum, tastefully packaged and bottled for their convenience. ‘A spoonful of this in your coffee each morning could change your life for the better.’ There was also the Joan Collins Vanilla Disco Rub – which doubled as dessert topping and lubricant. ‘Imagine the fun you could have at the tea table, or indeed under it.’ There was a lot more similar such nonsense. Sometimes the act went reasonably well, but sometimes I left the stage to a mere smattering of ‘thank God that’s over’ applause.
The other acts would commiserate. We were a curious collection of eccentric performers, happy to have found a world where we fitted in: a Marxist magician called Ian Saville, John Sparkes, who the poster promised ‘will be chatting to household items’, Jim Barclay, who hammered a nail through his nose, Randolph the Remarkable, fire-eater extraordinaire, whose act culminated in the raising of a blue plastic washing-up bowl from the ground with his stomach, and Kit Hollerbach, ‘San Francisco’s top female comic’. Paul Merton, a comedian who specialised in surreal stories about bus shelters and Marilyn Monroe and used to perform in his pyjamas, suggested I did more audience participation. He came to tea in Kidbrooke one afternoon and helped me write just such a section, called ‘The Joan Collins School of Acting – for stage, screen and airport terminal.’ This involved me plucking a punter from the audience and giving him a ‘vintage Dynasty script’ to read with me. I was to play the part of Alexis, of course, and the hapless punter was Blake: ‘My name is Blake Carrington, but you can call me big knob.’
At the end of the script he had to say: ‘I’m a wreck, a ruin and a shrine to despair. There’s only one thing that’s going to make me feel better and that’s to sing that old Roger Whittaker classic “I’m Gonna Leave Old Durham Town” at the top of my voice.’ (Roger was another of my fascinations: ‘Some people say he’s too old for me. Some people say he’s too old for anyone.’)
Having new material and a proper finale meant I died less often. I was still wearing clothes from the Oxfam shop, but I splashed out on sequins and stiletto heels. Later I progressed to rubber: no creasing and just rinse under the tap when you get home.
Work trickled in and alternative cabaret venues mushroomed. It went without saying that both acts and audiences were left-wing. Overtly socialist comedians such as Mark Thomas, Mark Steel and the musical satirists Skint Video found a ready audience for their anti-Tory material. Even I, whose act had virtually no political content, appreciated audiences that were curious but not phobic about my sexuality. I took to carrying a cassette player on with me, blasting out the 1812 Overture as my entrance music while I sprinkled confetti over the punters. It was an attempt at bringing glamour to such dingy surroundings, although in reality it meant the front row spent the first five minutes of my act picking bits of coloured paper out of their beer.
I summed up my audience at the time in a poem.
Dearest social workers and teachers of all kin,
Dear gingham shirts and readers of Harold Robbins,
Dear late twenties, early thirties
With your unbuttoned collarless shirties
And your little tins with Gold Virginia in . . .
Dear nest egg for a rainy day,
Dear cottage out in Wales,
Dear children called Germaine after Greer,
Dear housing co-op workers,
Dear Labour Party voters, have no fear . . .
Sometimes at these gigs there was no dressing room and I either gave Fanny to someone to look after while I was on, or simply instructed her to wait at the side of the stage. As long as she could see me she was happy enough. At the Earth Exchange, where there was no real stage, I took her on with me and told her to sit in the corner. After a few minutes she started to distract the audience and get titters of unexplained laughter – she was leering at a man at a front table. I picked her up and sat her on a chair and she alternated between looking adoringly at me and disdainfully at the audience. To keep her amused I tossed her a bit of wholemeal bread. She caugh
t it and got a round of applause. As any applause at that stage of my career was a welcome and unusual delight, I tossed her more bread throughout the rest of my act, and a star was born.
From then on I was to be the Joan Collins Fan Club with Fanny the Wonder Dog. I would throw her choc drops and demand the audience applaud her, then throw them to the crowd. ‘See, it’s not as easy as it looks!’ Her impressions were next. If you whispered in her ear she slowly raised her head: this was Tower Bridge. With a red wig she was Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York (‘complete with facial hair’). Lift her gums to reveal brown teeth and, hey presto, she was the Queen Mother.
She did films too. A green soldier’s hat: The Dogs Of War. A shower cap: Psycho. But Fanny’s main gift was to stare at the punters. Particularly rowdy ones. Perhaps it was her protective instinct towards me: she could silence a heckler with one glance and stare him out for the next 20 minutes before turning her back with body language of unmistakable contempt. Her timing was always spot on.
This, then, was my life for a couple of years. Between the comedy circuit and the singing telegrams, I survived. The latter made me fearless. I could deliver a telegram in a rowdy pub or at a drunken party no matter what the obstacles. I learnt my way round London in the Honda van, became expert at extracting a tip on top of my fee, and after a year or so earned a reputation on the circuit as a reliable turn.
My disastrous gigs became fewer and there were more and more calls for bookings. I grew my hair long; shoulder length, bleached and tonged into a spiky cross between Rod Stewart and Tammy Wynette. Off stage I wore ripped jeans and studded belts with a black handkerchief tied round my neck, a rock’n’roll gypsy look, and called in at gay pubs and clubs after work to meet Stephen or Mark, adept at finding my man for the evening, and Oscar winning when it came to ejecting him the next morning.
