La Vie en Rose

Last week-end I was in London for Andrew Logan’s Alternative Miss World. I competed a couple of times in the eighties, but this time I’m here in my new role as Stage Mom. Andrew likes the idea of continuing the tradition down through the generations, so he’s asked my daughter Daisy Tea to sing.
“Will she mind opening the show? Is it too much pressure?”
“No, she loves pressure.” I tell him confidently.
But she is a little nervous beforehand.
“Don’t worry, it’s only the roundhouse.”
This is a joke between us. Bob Dylan did a concert here last week, and it’s been a cult venue since the sixties, when Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd and the Doors all played here. In the seventies I used to come and hear punk bands like the Clash and the Stranglers.
But my first trip to the Roundhouse was way back in 1970 when my parents brought me to a hippy circus event. I’d brought a school friend along, and as far as I remember I was quite enjoying it.…...until a man wearing nothing except for a hairnet over his bits jumped off the stage and started climbing through the audience.
It was one of those born-again moments when you discover religion in a blinding flash.
“Please God, I will believe in you for the rest of my life and join the heavenly chorus when I die, if you will just keep this naked man away from me and Ingrid Darracott.”
Luckily, I got over my fear of semi naked men in the intervening years, if I hadn’t the swimsuit parade of the Alternative Miss World might brought me out in a religious frenzy.….
The event is sometimes billed as a drag ball, but it’s more like a surreal carnival parade. Anyone one can enter, some contestants are men, some are women, and some are sitting on the fence. Andrew usually hosts the show as half man half woman, with a costume split down the chakra line. This year he is one third man, one third woman , one third constructivist sculpture.
Backstage is a sea of sequins, feathers, flowery head-dresses and balloons...props include an inflatable pony thirty foot high, a canon and a twenty foot high silver crinoline. A group of girls in satin bridesmaids dresses are dancing round a maypole while the sound checks go on.
The idea is that Daisy Tea opens the show singing La Vie en Rose with a single spotlight and no accompaniment - to confuse the audience into thinking they’ve come to the wrong place….an Edith Piaf tribute night or something. Then the carnival begins.
She’s wearing a little black dress and gold stillettos, and the confusion starts backstage.
“When are you going to get your costume on?” People keep asking.
“I’m ready.” She smiles calmly. “Oh except, mum, I’ve laddered my tights on my Gibson, and I forgot my false eyelashes.… I don’t suppose you could nip out.”
I’m quite glad for an opportunity to get out, the smell of bodypaint is whisking me off into nostalgic sentimentality like Proust with his Magdaleines, so I head out into Camden lock before I feel obliged to write a 30 volume memoir. But it’s not really as much of a change of scene as I thought. Camden High Street on a Saturday afternoon is a bit like a watered down version of what’s going on inside, blue and pink hair, tatoos and piercings two for the price of one. The false eyelashes are easy, within about thirty seconds I’m standing in front of a wall of them, fluorescent, diamanté, ultra violet and rainbow coloured. But the tights take about an hour - after all, why would you wear plain black tights when you could wear fuschia fishnet stockings?
Yes, I take my job as a stage mom very seriously. I even suffer from stage fright by proxy.
“But didn’t you do this sort of thing all the time when you were a neo-naturist?”Daisy asks me.
Perhaps, but the difference was that we were always trying to do things badly, so if we did fuck up and do it well accidentally, we usually got away with it.
Last time I came to support her I got so drunk she had to put me in a taxi home, so this time I’ve brought my camera to give me something to do with my hands apart from lifting glasses. Unfortunately I’m too distracted by maternal pride to remember to turn the flash on, but I get some nice shots of slow-moving contestants.
I’m allowed in to the press enclosure to take photos.
“What magazine are you from?”The professionals ask.
“None …..actually my daughter’s playing first.” I think something about my sappy demeanor leaves them expecting some kind of Little Miss Sunshine figure to appear from the wings.
But by the time she goes off, they’re all telling me how amazing she is and congratulating me on being “Daisy Tea’s Mother.” And as usual people want to know if she gets her voice from me.
“Oh, I don’t know...” I say modestly. Let’s put it like this, my children tell me not to bother to join in with Happy Birthday if I’m not feeling up to it.
Then the show kicks off. At first I think I may have been on planet surf too long, and I’m suffering from culture shock. But Ruby Wax, Andrew’s co-presenter who hasn’t led a sheltered life, sums it up. “I’ve taken a lot of drugs in my life, but I’ve never seen anything quite as weird as backstage tonight!”
To give you an idea of the ambience.…. Andrew says , “The theme for this costume is Mexico City.”
In most beauty contests it would be a shiny bikini, a sombrero and maybe a mexican flag draped coquettishly over one shoulder. In the Alternative Miss World the contestant is wearing a 30 foot cardboard favela with a cloud of toxic smog made of rubbish sacks suspended above it.
Other contestants come as tea-cups, dead geisha girls and sperm, they do morris dancing, they attack each other, and give birth on stage. They have names like Miss No Sign of Civilization Whatsoever, Miss Trailer Trasher, or Miss I Killed the Marie Celeste. The silver crinoline is Miss Fancy Chance’s winning finale…. she is hoisted out of it by her hair and swirled around in the air like a circus performer, then deposited in front of Ruby Wax for her interview.
“Wow, that was incredible.… I’m speechless. Have you got anything to say?”
“That really hurt,” she says rubbing her hair with her hand as if to check that it’s still attached to her scalp.
“And what would you do if you won?”
“Go and buy some scalp oil I think. Sorry I’m in so much pain I can’t really speak.” But it was worth it - her commitment to suffering for her beauty wins her the crown.