Tranny with attitude

There are zillions of drag shows, all doing roughly the same thing – big dresses, big hair, risqué jokes, outrageous actions, tributes to the devastated divas (from Judy Garland and Doris Day to Amy Whitehouse and Whitney Houston) and over-the-top renditions of ‘I Will Survive’ and ‘I Am What I Am’. It’s a formula. And it’s barely changed in forty years. But...

This evening I was walking through Fenton (an abandoned industrial town if there ever was one), and I heard the disco noise coming from a pub. Drawn in, I entered the Sparkle Lee show.
Sparkle does exactly the same as any other drag show, but somehow… the act was imbued with a kind of reality and pathos that made it special.

S/he (a “tranny with attitude”) knew everybody in the function room – by name. Because … unbelievably… s/he lives in the next street.
This was the first night that this version of the show had been put on - and it looked like everybody in the street (young and old, man and woman) had turned out to see their favourite son’s debut. It was kinda like … Coronation Street meets La Cage Aux Folles!!

Yes, there was ‘I Am What I Am’, of course - but who would put ‘Working Man’ into their show, except a boy who lives slap-bang here, in dirty old Stoke-on-Trent? 
(For those that don’t know, the lyrics of this song go: “And the coal dust lies heavy / on your lungs / It's a working man I am. / And I've been down underground” – and all this, sung in a big Shirley Bassey dress!). I expect you don’t often get that song in a Las Vegas-style show. It was a tear-jerker moment, believe me.

Sparkle will now go on a string of dates to venues around Wales and the North of England, but who knows if s/he will be able to repeat the emotion of that show?  After all, the first show before a home crowd is always special – for performer and audience alike.

But, s/he’s already booked for the Xmas Eve 2012 show back in Fenton; and … I think I’d want to be there.

Link: Sparkle Lee