I met a French sailor last night. At least I assume he was French; he kissed me on both cheeks. I was bending over tying my shoe laces at the time ……..
Gladys Shufflewick was always being shafted. Now it seems that her favourite haunt, the Black Cap in Camden is being shafted by the Developers.
There has been a Black Cap pub on this spot in Camden since 1751. The current building dates from 1889. It closed down on 12 April this year. Soon it might become a mundane block of high end flats. Earlier in the year Camden Council refused an application for redevelopment. Perhaps the catalyst for the current closure was Camden Council awarding the building Asset of Community Value status the week before. Perhaps the the usual sudden, accidental fire will arrive soon. As the Leader of the Council Sarah Hayward said, the Black Cap still sadly suffers discrimination because it is one of the leading gay venues in Europe.
People who ask why gay pubs matter in the age of LGBT rights and ‘universal’ acceptance are not living in the real world. They remind me of people who ask why books matter in the age of the Kindle… Nobody gave the gay community their pubs and clubs, and nobody gave them the rights they now enjoy. They were things the gay community created for themselves, against very considerable odds, and we take them for granted at our peril. As we now see, those things can easily be taken away again, leaving the gay community with what?
The Black Cap has been a gay pub for at least 150 years, and it embodies something living and vital about the whole history of sexual outsiders in London, and the recent transformation of gay culture into a recognised and mainly accepted modern social phenomenon.
When homosexuality was still illegal in this country the Black Cap became a haven for the gay community in North London. In the sixties, with the likes of Danny La Rue and Hinge & Bracket, it became renowned for its drag acts and adopted the motto: Just Be Fabulous. Over the last fifty years it has developed into one of the leading LGBT venues in Europe. Until its sudden closure it was packing them in for the Meth Lab.
My own introduction to the Black Cap was via my gay friend John. In 1970 I managed to get a job in London. John’s way of celebrating was to take me to a pub he frequented in Camden called The Black Cap. Then, as now, the back room was the venue for drag acts. That Sunday lunchtime the acts happened to be Auntie Flo, Fabulous Freda and Mrs. Gladys Shufflewick. Neither of us had experienced proper drag shows before. There just wasn’t anything like this in Edinburgh. Fabulous Freda had a fantastic costume on, with loads of billowing netting and sequins. When Auntie Flo came on , she took one look and asked: “Did you sew all those sequins on yourself love?” “Yes,” said Freda, presumably expecting a compliment. Auntie Flo just shook her head. “You must be fuckin’ mental!” But it was Gladys Shufflewick who caught my heart and turned me on to the drag culture. Even after John emigrated to California I continued going to the Black Cap to see Mrs. Shufflewick every Sunday. I soon discovered that I wasn’t the only straight person who was doing that. We were never looked down on by the LGBT community, never discriminated against and never patronised, which I more than I can say for a number of the other gay venues that John dragged me off to.
There is a stereotype which we tend to have of what a drag queen should be: An exaggerated femininity, big hair,dramatic make-up, outrageous frocks, more than a hint of camp and an ability to use a microphone to its fullest. And, of course, a glamorous name, like Lady Chablis, Adore Delano, Bianca Del Rio, Lily Savage or Regina Fong – H.R.H. Regina Fong, the last of the Romanoffs.
If we are trying to be politically correct we call them female impersonators. That is a term that many drag artists dislike. RuPaul frequently made the point that “I do not impersonate females! How many women do you know who wear seven-inch heels, four-foot wigs, and skintight dresses? I don’t dress like a woman; I dress like a drag queen!”.
Gladys Shufflewick fitted into none of those stereotypes. The closest she got to glamour was a fetching black hat with a few spring flowers, a sprig of wheat and some floppy leaves in it and a scabby black fur boa. I’m not sure that the strings of cheap beads that she liked count towards glamour. The pink cardy definitely didn’t. The closest she ever came was the floating blue organza creation and red handbag she wore when she sang Falling In Love Again. (You can admire it on YouTube in the only known footage of Gladys to survive.)
Gladys had been around for years before I first saw her. Like Barry Humphries’ Dame Edna or Paul O’Grady’s Lily Savage, she was a character who had evolved over the years. Glady’s other self was Rex Jameson. She started off in the late 40s as Ethel LaPlunge, then became Mrs Brandyshuffle and finally on May 4 1950 Mrs Gladys Shufflewick, released on the world on, of all things, Variety Bandbox on BBC Radio. At that time she was simply a down to earth cockney charlady, but things were to change. Rex’s act caught the attention of Vivian Van Damm who ran the Windmill Theatre. He hired Mrs. Shufflewick and for the next three years she filled in the slots between the nude revues, six shows a day, five days a week.
Inevitably, in such bawdy company, Gladys changed. She still kept her cockney persona, but her murky past gradually began to emerge. It seems that she spent a lot of time in the snug of her local pub, The Cock & Comfort: “A lot of comfort, but not much of anything else.” Here, she drank port and lemon, seated primly in her flowery hat and shabby fur stole. She confessed to bawdy, boozy shenanigans and the various scrapes that she got herself into: “A sailor came up to me and said “What would you like?” I said “A very large port” and he came back ten minutes later with a picture of Southampton Docks.” By the time Rex had finished at the Windmill, Gladys had become a slightly surreal character who delivered absolute filth, but delivered it with the utmost delicacy and a mastery of entendres, doubles, triples et quadruples
In between shows at the Windmill, Rex would frequent the Bear & Staff public house in Charing Cross Road, a famous haunt for theatricals and gay men. He was enthralled by the drag world and its clubs, and befriended a young drag artiste called Danny Carole. Danny did well and even better when he changed his surname to LaRue.
With Danny’s support Mrs Shufflewick took to the London gay circuit, appearing regularly at The Black Cap in Camden, The Vauxhall Tavern and The Skinners Arms in Camberwell. Her shows got more and more outrageous. She was a terrible show-off. There was no holding her when there were sailors around: she had a weakness for the Navy. Rex, on the other hand had a fondness for booze. His alcoholism wasn’t helped by the misguided generosity of fans who sent round bottles of spirits to his dressing room. It meant that he sometimes forgot whole routines.
As Simon Calow has pointed out Rex Jameson was as far from the popular idea of a drag queen as could be imagined. Off stage he lived a very ordinary life with his long term boyfriend, read the Mirror and the Sporting Life, ate meals in greasy spoons, liked betting on horses and watching Carry On films, smoked Woodbines, wore a flat cap and bought his clothes in jumble sales. Part of his genius was precisely basing a drag queen on this rootedness in ordinary life, the world of pubs the upper decks of buses, and low-grade lust.
On Sunday March 5, 1983, after a show at The Black Cap, Mrs Gladys Shufflewick collapsed and died of a heart attack on Camden High Street. More than 500 people gathered for the funeral service. Actors, drag queens, fans and comedians were crammed into the tiny chapel, and a loud sing-a-long of Rex’s signature tune My Old Man Said Follow The Van is said to have been a magical moment. The upstairs bar at The Black Cap was renamed the Shufflewick Bar in her memory.
It is that sort of history, the real history of a community, which will be lost if The Black Cap disappears. The Asset of Community Value status which the Council has put on the pub is important. It means that the building cannot be sold without community groups first being given a chance to bid for it, although with a £12,000,000 price tag this would be a challenge! But it needn’t be insurmountable. As Gladys said about her old fur, it cost £200. She paid for it by insisting that every sailor paid her a quid until she had enough to buy it. If every LGBT person in the UK donated £20, the Black Cap could be saved as a national treasure.
Of course cities change, and London has always thrived through change, at least until now, when it seems that the entire atmosphere of places such as Soho and Camden Town are vulnerable to the ruthless speculative greed of companies utterly indifferent to such issues as heritage or the quality of local lives. In times of rapid change it is all the more important that certain ordinary landmarks remain, which are quite as important as the great historic palaces and churches.
As I hope I have made clearThe Black Cap is one of those landmarks. It plays an important cultural role as a renowned venue for drag and cabaret performances. The pub’s heritage contributes to its continued central role in Camden and London’s gay scene and means that the community value would not be easily recreated elsewhere. I’m sure that the status will be challenged in the courts by the people who want to redevelop. After all, they are only interested in the money, not the heritage. Let’s hope when the day comes that common sense will prevail and the whole idea will be thrown out. Wouldn’t that just be fabulous?
As Gladys said: “If I’m not in bed by eleven, I’m going home.”
Howff Tae Hip Hop 