Best of British
Fuck me ragged, what a gay weekend I’ve just had.
A civil union ceremony, a pride parade, some full-on, tits-out partying, and an encounter with the world’s most awesome drag queen.
Allow me to explain. I’m in London at the moment, on a crazy two-week spree with my bloke. We came to see our friends Andrew and Andy get civilly unioned (or is that civilly united?) and we’ve been acting in a most uncivil manner ourselves, ever since.
The backdrop for our bad behaviour was London’s Europride celebrations, the centrepiece of which was the parade, which is a little bit like Mardi Gras, but far more earnest, and with a lot more pasty skin on display.
The mercury had topped out at 31 degrees and the locals were going predictably ape-shit. To spice things up, our posse played the category game, in which one spots the finest exemplar of a particular type -“ the worst coming-out hairdo, the most ridiculous application of the rainbow flag, the biggest arse, and so on.
The real fun came that night at the Ruby party in Kings Cross, which was replete with thumping house music and freakishly hot men. It got sardine-squeezy but nobody seemed to mind.
But the most mindfuckingly brilliant part of my long gay weekend happened on Sunday, when our host wrangled us out of bed to see something called the Dame Edna Experience at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern.
Apparently Dame Edna (who models her look on Ms Everage, but not her act) has been packing the pooves in at the RVT for some seven years now, and it must be seen to be believed.
Punters line up around 2pm to get a wrist-band so they can spend the afternoon drinking on the grassy knoll behind the pub (which has been renamed Mount Edna by the regulars, of whom there are many).
The lads sit, and chat, and drink, and sometimes dry-hump each other on the grass, for three solid hours before Dame Edna takes the stage for an hour of extraordinarily crass humour and a few singalong numbers.
She’s like Paul Capsis crossed with Joan Rivers -“ a freakish talent. Somebody has got to bring her to Sydney.
Alternatively, just join all the other Sydney queens in London and catch her act. This city crawls with gay Aussies, which is only one of the reasons why I love it.
