Collecting Hot Gossip on the Brighton Drag Scene. 

Drag queen Shelly Grotto reports on working overtime to collect Brighton’s drag gossip at A Queer Night at the Museum – Gender Stories Exhibition Opening Night.

On Friday the 6th of February, me and my drag king assistant Bob Chicalors clocked in for the night shift at Brighton Museum to conduct a place-based Drag Audit for the G.E.N.D.E.R Dept (Geographically Endorsed National Drag Exemplar Register). Setting up our office amongst some delightful seascapes, we got straight to our important and necessary work: gathering hearsay, rumours and gossip about the Brighton drag scene (past and present).

The crowds of late-night museum dwellers did not disappoint. We were inundated with disclosures to add to our growing drag dossier. Turns out people trust you with their secrets when you are wearing a wig full of them. Some of the intel was silly, some surreal, several were even slanderous. All of it helps shed light on what makes the Brighton drag scene specific to Brighton.

We furiously made chaotic notes on post-its and scraps of paper, adding them to a mounting pile that we later had to sift through, organise, and attempt to decipher. Some point to leads worth following up. Others capture in-jokes, strong opinions, and fleeting impressions of a scene that refuses to sit still.

Participants share some hot gossip about the Brighton drag scene at the museum

A representative sample of disclosures:

• Unabashed, rough around the edges, there’s always a surprise. When I go to the Queen’s Arms I don’t know what I’m going to see, I expect to be surprised and shocked. It’s not like RuPaul, it’s diverse.

• 2014: Silly Willy Wednesdays hosted by the Drag With No Name. It was like a gameshow night, there were vibrator races, and a game called Muff From Above (a play on the Shooting Stars game Dove From Above)… That night went on for years.
• I was being flirted with by the queen, who turned out to be Miss Jason. The next week I found out she’d died.
• We’re sick of women being the butt of the joke, the majority of drag acts in Brighton are misogynist. Not the younger ones.
• There was an ANONYMOUS DRAG QUEEN performing at Revenge and their vape ran out, so she ran out to the sea and was on the beach digging through the rocks like a dog. She broke her leg.
• Drag King Night! Was called something basic and descriptive like ‘Drag King Night’ or ‘Brighton Drag Kings’. Featuring Prince of Persia and Jack Fruit. Held at Komedia or Arcobelano. There was one act where Jack Fruit got someone on stage to eat a banana while wearing yellow washing up gloves. When I asked my bi friend why they went on stage and did it, they said “I was a bit peckish”.
• A drag queen once made me run around the bar with an egg between my legs and then lay it onstage into a pint glass at the Queens Arms.
• 1989: An Anti Drag Demo at The Oriental. There was an old school misogynist drag act on, and a bunch of activists went to her show and pretended to be into it for the first 5 minutes and then we all turned our backs to her while she was performing.
• ‘REDACTED’ burnt down the Royal Albion hotel with a cigarette. Alleged source: Rococo Channel.

Drag Audit notes spread out on the floor

This audit forms part of a wider investigation: The Drag Files - chronicling past & present drag scenes in coastal locations. What started in Margate has since travelled to Portsmouth, with Brighton under the microscope now and Blackpool next on the hit list.

Drag as an artform fascinates me: how wildly diverse it is, and how deeply it is shaped by place. Coastal drag, especially, has its own flavour. Perhaps it’s the possibility for re-invention, liberation and the literal and metaphorical edginess of the coast that provides such a fertile ground for the drag artform to flourish. It is certainly abundant in Brighton, drag can be found in practically every other pub and it has a rich heritage. And yet so much of this history isn’t formally recorded. It lives instead in hazy memories of bygone venues, of past performances and half-remembered anecdotes.

These fragments—the funny stories, personal experiences, all the drama, living legends, historic divas, local rumours—are the specifics that make up a drag scene. But they are also fragile. They shift, they fade, they disappear.

Bob Chicalors organises the Drag Audit notes

The Drag Files is an attempt to preserve the unpreservable: to gather, archive, and spill the tea before it slips through the cracks. A full disclosure on the Brighton Drag Files will be coming to Brighton later this year - keep your eyes peeled & if you have any intel (big or small) DM me @shellygrotto

Shelly Grotto sits at the Bureau of G.E.N.D.E.R table

With thanks to Arts Council England and Queer Heritage South.