Desperate Living

Why does everyone think I’m a drug addict? Yesterday I was skulking at my desk in the day job when everyone else was at a leaving drink at the pub (no, I never join them) when some geezer from the next office came in...

Checking round to make sure that no one else would overhear him, he started asking me where he could score drugs in Vauxhall. Apparently he was in Area at the weekend and the prices “on the floor” were too expensive. As I’m a DJ he assumed I must be down with all the dealers. I don’t know a single one of them! I’ve never taken a substance that can’t be bought at the local chemists in my lifetime, as Jonny Woo once said – don’t do drugs, do DRAG!

Tut – honestly!

By coincidence, a drug reference was my favourite laugh out loud moment at John Waters’ show at Hammersmith on Thursday. “Ecstasy is a drug that makes you like everybody?” he questioned. “That sounds like my idea of HELL.”

I ruddy loved being so close to John Waters - he's one of my few still-living idols that I hadn't yet had the opportunity to witness.
The show was like some kind of gay pilgrimage; trundling across the street from the tube station were all manner of freaks, weirdos and batty boys - or, as I prefer to call them, my people – and why the hell not, he is trash royalty!

John’s delivery is kind of like machine gun fire, there’s no wandering round the stage um-ing and ah-ing and pausing for breath, from the second he walked on stage he launched straight into a dialogue about how he’d accepted the engagement by wondering, “What would the Lunts do?” From then he talked about his experiences in Baltimore ... shop lifting ... anecdotes about Divine ... his film making career. A lot of it was familiar from the This Filthy World DVD, but it didn’t matter that I’d heard it before, I was in the presence of JOHN WATERS!!

I particularly love his bit about bears and isn’t it bad enough you’ve told your parents that you're gay, you don’t have to go back and tell them you’re a bear to compound the issue. Oh, and his bit about gay marriage and how he’d always considered it one of the privileges of being gay that you didn’t have to do all that shit. I’d love to see him and Penny Arcade in a head-to-head, that would be flippin HILARIOUS!

Less amusing was the Q and A that came directly after the main performance. The general public are largely undeserving of an audience, and this was no exception. “Have you ever met Charles Manson?” they gushed ... “Have you ever met John Wayne Gacy?” For God’s sakes. I enjoyed his response to a sad sap who asked if he could hug him – a firm, “NO, I don’t even hug the people I care about” – but really, who allows these people oxygen?

Even among my kind of people, there are assholes.