Read Online Still Standing: The Savage Years by Paul O'Grady - Free Book Online Page A

only want to piss again. I only have to look at a lavvy, me, and it’s flying out of me.’ And with that little nugget of information he was gone.
    I liked working at the Stone Chair. The shows nearly always went well and the crowds were a warm, appreciative audience and even though when we performed there it was usually to pay off the commission we owed – a sensible arrangement – I still always enjoyed it.
    Liz Dawn had been working on the Street playing factory worker Vera since 1974. Vera’s husband Jack had recentlybeen introduced and her role had become more prominent, but even so Liz was still playing dates on the circuit. She had started her career as a club singer.
    We arrived at the Keighley Fun House to find a diminutive drag queen berating a couple of strapping youths towering above him in the corridor leading to the dressing room.
    ‘You think you’re funny, don’t you,’ he was shouting. ‘You’re lucky I don’t beat the shit out of you.’
    ‘Classy joint then,’ Hush muttered as he struggled to get past them with the costume sack.
    ‘We were only having a bit of a laugh, Diamonds, no offence like,’ one of the lads said in a feeble attempt to mollify this minuscule hell-cat.
    ‘ No offence! ’ Diamonds roared. ‘You great long streak of piss, go on, bugger off before you get the toe of me shoe up your arse!’
    The two lads scarpered, sniggering as they ran.
    ‘And if you’re going near that bar then you can get me a large brandy and water as an apology,’ he shouted after their retreating backs.
    ‘You having a bit of trouble then?’ I asked.
    ‘Do you know what they called me?’ he said, flicking his shoulder-length black wig out of his face. ‘They said I looked like Tattoo from Fantasy Island . Cheeky bastards.’
    Fantasy Island , if you remember, was a popular series set on an island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean where those who were able to afford it could go and live out their fantasies. Tattoo was the pint-sized assistant of Ricardo Montalban, who ran the island. I didn’t dare look in Hush’s direction in case I caught his eye and started laughing as this Diamonds didn’t look the type you’d want to offend, so instead I pretended to show great interest in a poster advertising the next week’s act.
    ‘For one night only!’ it proclaimed. ‘Mr Dave Berry!’ And to prove it there was a ten-by-eight photo of the great man peeping mysteriously over the collar of his leather jacket with ‘“The Crying Game” and other Big Hits!’ artfully written underneath in felt-tip pen.
    ‘You must be the Playgirls then,’ Diamonds said, unimpressed. He turned his attention to Hush’s sack. ‘What the hell have you got in there? A dead body?’
    Hush explained that it held our costumes.
    ‘And how many costumes have you brought then? They only want a twenty-minute spot, y’know, not the Ziegfeld bloody Follies . Are you live or mime?’
    ‘Mime.’
    ‘They prefer live in here. Never mind, I’ll tell the DJ you’re here and you can give him your tape.’
    When Liz Dawn arrived she was far more impressed. She was everything I’d hoped she’d be, friendly, warm and very funny.
    ‘Look at these dresses, Don,’ she kept saying to her husband, who, like Diamonds, couldn’t be less interested. ‘You don’t get the likes of these off the back of an ’andcart in Salford Market.’
    We went on and did our spot and going through my routine I was suddenly aware of just how incongruous our show must seem. An act that was originally conceived and tailored for a gay audience was now being performed to a crowd of mill-workers and miners. I made a mental note that if we were to survive and make a living on this northern pub and club circuit we would have to make the act a little more lairy.
    When the time came for Liz to go on stage she was suddenly gripped by fear.
    ‘I can’t do it,’ she said to me, grabbing my arm.
    ‘Of course you can, they’re gagging for you out