01/11/13: There’s something quite refreshing about the prospect of having a night out away from my usual central London-based haunts. And last Friday I did just that. Clutching a freshly issued visa I made a beeline for… Zone 5.
Arriving at The Windsor Castle’s Pink Night, in aid of Drag/MacMillan Cancer Support and Breast Cancer Care, organised by Robert Cowley and manager Glen, we started as we meant to go on by glugging down something green and slimy from the shot girl, and then buckled up for an evening of dragtastic entertainment.
Host for the evening, Rose Garden, got right into the spirit (vodka) of the night, dressed head to toe in pink, to make the boy’s (arseholes?) wink. She kept everyone and everything in order perfectly – you’re really not gonna argue with mistress Rose now are you? The first part of the night was quite a sedate affair, compared to what was to come later. Lola Lasagne, breaking her Windsor Castle cherry, opened, providing impeccable cabaret standards and the infamous Lola retorts to Rose’s (Rosetta Stone) cajoling.
Martha D’Arthur’s jukebox drag followed, meandering her way through the crowd and behind the bar – well a girl’s gotta drink, hasn’t she? Next up was everyone’s favourite Nigerian immigrant and all-round drag diamond, Son Of a Tutu, who moved everything up a gear with a frantic, high energy set, treating the collective to a great rendition of ‘I Will Follow Him’ – like the good Christian woman she is.
This is where it all started to go a bit bonkers. Most of that mayhem coming courtesy of a group of rather delicious army lads. You know, the sort that would wipe their cock on your curtain on the way out? Tutu invited one of said lads onstage and got more than she was expecting, we reckon, after he gave her a slobbery old snog. Despite looking so shocked after, we know she loved it! Filth. Good Christian woman, my foot.
Sparkling starlet Stephanie Von Clitz was next up (into the lion’s den) and she held her own wonderfully amongst her much more consummate drag sisters. Watch out for this lass, she’s been bitten by the drag bug. As the night was drawing to a close, Topsie Redfern, who had been happily drinking with Rose for most of the evening stumbled up to the stage. Just let those three words absorb for a moment: DRINKING WITH ROSE.
Cue the return of those boozed-up army lads eager to drop their trousers and get their Walnut Whip out for a good cause, and mix it in with a ‘merry’ drag queen who “doesn’t usually drink” and you have the perfect concoction for drag show gold. I think everyone had clearly seen far too much of Lady Gaga prancing about with her nunu out at G-A-Y last week and were trying to re-enact it. Either that or they’d all moved on to drinking turps.
A cracking night, proving that there’s more to life than just Soho. There’s Hounslow. With all of the merry madness it holds.
Windsor Castle, 152 Bath Road, Hounslow, TW3 3ET
Words by Jason Reid
