“I’ve been an alien ever since I was born,” drag artist Juno Birch says as she sits editing videos at her desk in her Castlefield apartment during one of the hottest days of the year so far.
The 29-year-old, originally from Runcorn in Cheshire, is unmistakable as a performer in her now-signature look involving a faceful of lavender blue paint, a bleach blonde Stepford Wife-esque wig, some perfectly-sketched pencil thin eyebrows and, of course, a pair of cat-eye glasses.
She’s basically Jennifer Coolidge if she was an extra-terrestrial with a northern accent and that’s the highest of compliments. And she’s riding high with more than 625,000 Instagram followers and over 31 million views on YouTube.
Coming out as transgender at the age of 13, Juno - both her real name and drag name - has always been told she’s ‘too weird’ for this world or not normal enough. So, she says, she’s learnt to embrace it and is making a career out of it.
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“Runcorn is a very small town so it was a bit of a strange time for me,” Juno, who has now lived in Manchester for seven years, tells the M.E.N. “I didn’t really know what being transgender meant and people certainly didn’t use that word. There was no education in school or on the television. The only time you’d hear about it was when someone was on Big Brother.
“Because of that I didn’t know how to explain how I felt besides knowing I was a girl. I was very lucky in that my parents really weren’t bothered about it. I think they knew I was always going to be very different anyway.”
School, however, was a different experience for Juno. She says that teachers would try to tell her to try and restrain herself and to not dress effeminately as they feared it would only lead to bullying.
“Transitioning at school was difficult,” she explains. “Teachers would tell me not to dress like a girl because they were worried I’d be bullied but I was getting bullied already so I wasn’t really sure what difference it would make.
“I remember the headteacher told me one day not to come into a school in a skirt so the next day, I did just that. I was a bit of a naughty b****. No one was ever going to be able to tell me to stop because, for me, it really was a matter of life or death. I felt uncomfortable in my body.
“When I walked into school, there was a lot of laughing and a lot of kids mocking me. I had to laugh with people almost as if I knew it was funny and was in on the joke when really it was such a serious thing for me.”
While young transgender people have online resources and dedicated organisations to try and ensure their experience are better than Juno’s, she says that there is still ‘a lot of bad media’ surrounding the transgender community today.
“There’s this misconception that teenagers or children can just say they’re transgender and then they immediately get medical help but that’s really not true,” she explains. “It takes years of therapy and appointments to even get a referral. For me, it was a very, very long wait but there was never a moment where I changed my mind.”
Juno says the start of her drag aesthetic can be tracked back down to days in her childhood when she would dress up for Halloween and try out different looks.
“I’ve always liked dressing up and putting on costumes but the blue makeup thing really came out of nowhere,” she explains. “When I was younger, I could never decide what I wanted to be for Halloween so I always just painted myself blue as I thought it looked glamorous.
“You could probably connect it to aliens and transgender people being alienated from society, but there’s really no deep meaning to it. It’s just something that’s always been there subconsciously.
“When I was younger, I wrote this little film about a young boy who goes to a salon with his mum and is convinced all of the women there are aliens. I’ve never had the chance to make it so I guess I just ended up playing out those characters on stage.
“In all honesty, me as a character and me as a person are really quite similar but there are some slight differences. When I’m in drag, I feel excited, I feel awake, I feel a bit chaotic. When I’m not in drag, I just feel tired!”
Juno’s next big project is a one woman show, which will tour London, Glasgow and Birmingham before arriving at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall on June 12. The ‘clumsy cabaret’ has been devised by herself and she says it’s something she’s always wanted to do.
“I’m very nervous because I’ve never done a show like this before,” she explains. “It’s stand-up comedy mixed with singing and dancing. There’s going to be lots of lobsters, lots of flamingos and lots of absolutely hilarious costumes. It’s going to be like The Muppets meets Rocky Horror.
“The reason the show came about is because I really want to be on television - my dream is to have my own chat show one day. So, I thought I’d just make my own television show and play it out on stage.”
The show will also feature Judith Louise, a toddler-sized puppet blessed with being Juno’s ‘daughter’. She first made her appearance in last year’s Attack of the Stunning show, which also featured Manchester-based drag queen Liquorice Black.
“She is going to be singing songs in the show,” she says of Judith. “It's very, very camp. It’s going to be gorgeous.
After performing in Manchester, Juno will take the show to America before heading to Australia for the Comedy Queens tour, alongside stars from the RuPaul’s Drag Race franchise.
“I’m going to be dead by October,” she laughs. “But, honestly, I love my job so much. I get to do so many great things and I’m very, very excited.
Speaking about what it means for her to be able to tour the world, she says: “All we hear about transgender people right now are the arguments and the fact that we have to fight for our rights constantly. So, I’m looking forward to being able to give people a break from that and just being stupid.
“I want to celebrate being transgender and make people laugh at the same time.”
The Juno Show comes to the Bridgewater Hall on June 12. Tickets here.
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