In the northern market town where I grew up, winter took a long time to pass into spring, and even then something about the sky made me feel hemmed in. I used to call it the armpit of Lancashire. It wasn’t quite George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier, but when I looked in the mirror when I was young, what I saw “wore … the most desolate, hopeless expression I have ever seen”. I was a broken weirdo longing for a mask. I thought if I could become a different person, everything would be fixed and I’d finally fit in. How wrong could I have been? As RuPaul’s Drag Race makes clear, it’s the inner weirdo who fixes you.
This weekend, while I was painting an egg for Easter Sunday, the queens were painting their faces on TV. They slipped into shining gowns and they lip-synced in the “ultimate lip-sync smackdown for the crown”. It was the finale of the second series of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK vs the World. Since February, 11 international performers have competed for the title of “Queen of the Mothertucking World”, with the UK as host nation. It’s sort of a mini-Olympics of drag, broadcast on the BBC. A spin-off of RuPaul’s media empire, this year it’s the first time the BBC has given away a cash prize – £50,000 was at stake in a glorious celebration of clownery.
