In the early Nineties, an expression became voguish across gay communities. ‘Post-victim politics’ was a new mood, a shared hustle. A vibe shift, if you will. In response to the catastrophic death toll from HIV, something emboldened the living, a narrative U-turn which would stop us viewing ourselves as passive targets of a hostile establishment. The fightback began: bold, strident, funny, crude and clever. No more, that was the message delivered from the frontline. It was in this climate that Paul O’Grady, wearing the demonic Friday night drag and Bet Lynch wig of Lily Savage, started his gloriously unapologetic ascent to public prominence.
O’Grady was grassroots, working-class gay culture personified. Funniest man in the pub. Sharpest tongue on the block. In the gradients of razor-sharp regional gay humour, Scousers frequently win the comic lottery. O’Grady was a gold medallist across all disciplines.
Just because he had a taste for helping the little people — latterly, the little creatures, too — didn’t mean he was one of them. It takes a fearless fellow to be at the frontline, to spot the enemy at 20 paces and have a whole whiplash cavalry of caustic putdowns to reduce them to size, tucked away in the back pocket of his white PVC mini-skirt.
The outpouring of love for O’Grady since his death was announced two days ago is now reaching David Bowie levels of national sentiment. This love has been shared across class, creed, gender and race. Royalty has chimed in, making his death not just a poignant moment for the metaphorical queens.
When he shed the scally wardrobe and make-up of Lily, O’Grady turned himself into something even more potent, a weapons-grade favourite of middle England. Here was post-victim politics working at its most cheerfully effective. He ironed out the nervous energy of primetime TV and radio audiences, taking them with him on an effortless journey toward acceptance, without once mentioning the word.
In his honour, it may well be time to start donning a little of that post-victim politics armour once again. We have seen the abhorrent, draconian laws being passed in Tennessee to ban public drag performances. We have watched the confected outrage about drag story-time for kids, mostly from people who said nothing when paedophile priests were redistributed from parish to parish to keep the endemic molestation of childhood congregations quiet. We’ve heard the cheers as GIC clinics shut down, ushering a legion of gender-confused teenagers straight online to get their hands on the first sketchy hormone pills they can find, without any guidance.
Now is exactly the time to be more O’Grady. He was a scion of straight-speaking, bluff, hilarious, livid, defiant decency. Victimhood was anathema to him. For the Northern, working-class LGBT+ army who adored him, currently primed for a brand new battle, O’Grady exits the public stage exactly as he entered it. As one of us.
Special corners of London on film
Last night saw the opening of an amazing exhibition of work by nightlife photographer Jason Manning at the Whitechapel art space, Gallery 46.
Taken mostly from the late Nineties and early Noughties, Jason’s pictures document corners of London that mean a lot to me. He captured the things that I saw, turning the young, witty and wasted into something painterly and beautiful.
He pointed his camera at the louche corners of nightclubs.
His feeling for the intimacy of nightlife is the exact opposite of that Studio 54 grand entrance of a starlet on horseback.
It’s the kid with rolling eyes, trying to light a cigarette, the couple locked into a febrile embrace, the shadowy figures tumbling into one another as time and space collapse.
Somewhere in the middle of these images is the errant energy of youth itself, that gorgeous abandon of getting twisted for fun and never knowing where the night will take you.
