This turn to social engagement anticipated broader shifts in the arts sector, just as the Wifes’ eclectic musical tastes and the nurturing of experimental short-form live performance have become London LGBTQ+ nightlife standards.ĭuckie Saturday nights feel like family: a space to congregate in celebration and sadness, as when the RVT became a listed building or David Bowie died, and a place where trans and genderqueer lives are valued. The Posh Club, for instance, began as an afternoon tea party for older people without many friends or family and became an engine for fabulous adventures in dressing up, dancing and performing. It also co-creates community projects with older people, homeless people and queer people of colour – “homemade mutant hope machines”, as I think of them, quietly bringing better worlds into being. It has produced runs of experimental immersive shows at the Barbican and Southbank Centre and globally toured an Olivier-winning variety show internationally, long before La Clique. Photograph: Keith Larby/Alamyīeyond the RVT, Duckie creates big immersive parties such as the scabrously ironic Gay Shame, held each year on the night of Pride in London. And in 2014, after the pub’s sale to international developers, it helped secure legal protections safeguarding its future, including making it a Grade II listed building.ĭuckie’s Summer Tea Party, hosted by Amy Lamé in Hull, part of the LGBT 50 celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexuality in England and Wales. In 1999, it led the charge against plans involving a shopping centre and “snow dome”. Duckie also repeatedly defended the RVT against profit-led redevelopment. And one of London’s first drag bingo nights, hosted on Mondays by bearded eco-dragster Timberlina, built a big following off its experimental left-field humour and laid-back vibe. Trans-led showcase Bar Wotever forged a powerful fusion of radical sex-positive cabaret and inclusive grassroots solidarity, giving early platforms to artists such as Travis Alabanza. Punters are liable to be on the receiving end of both political challenge and bodily fluids, like those flying during an act by Mouse, a signature Duckie turn who regularly finds innovative new uses for various orifices.ĭuckie put the RVT on the map as London’s home of alternative queer performance, paving the way for other influential weekly residencies at the venue. New York underground legend Penny Arcade says facing the crowd there is “like running with the bulls at Pamplona”. They catalyse lifelong bonds among devoted punters while insisting on live performance as a kind of blood sport.
For Amy Lamé, being there “felt like us carrying on this torch” of experimental queer culture.ĭuckie’s Saturday nights are a kind of alchemy. The RVT hit a lull in the 90s, open just two days a week until the Duckie gang moved in and proved an instant hit. In the 80s, its prominent community role at the time of Aids and section 28 provoked police raids, one involving resident drag act Lily Savage. The RVT became a space of gay socialising after the war and was central to London’s 60s drag boom. And rather than Soho’s shiny new bars, Duckie found its spiritual home in a run-down boozer south of the river: the RVT.Īround 1860, the pub was the first building to go up when Vauxhall’s notorious pleasure gardens, home to early cocktails, pop songs and classless cruising, closed. The acts were short and scandalous – radical praxis meets music hall. The Readers Wifes’ eclectic playlist ranged from X-Ray Spex to Abba. Less consumerist-aspirational gay, more sarky art-school queer, the crowd was thoughtful, bolshie and (mostly) kind.
Rather than gym culture, dance music, strippers and pills, Duckie melded the boozy bonhomie of gay indie-pop night Popstarz with the live-art vibe of the ICA, creating what it called “homosexual honky-tonk”. And, like many other misfits, weirdos and queers, I felt right at home.Īll this went against the grain of the 90s gay scene. On stage, “anti-drag” act the Divine David castigated liberal complacency. On the speakers were David Bowie, Kate Bush and the Smiths.
It was liberating and intoxicating but, as a speccy, self-conscious type more into my parents’ 1960s LPs than house or techno, I didn’t really feel at home. As a gay teenage Londoner in the mid-90s, the first club I went to was Heaven, which felt somehow compulsory.