I’m backstage at Shakespeare’s Globe and a man dressed as Mary Queen of Scots is taking exception to my offer of a handshake. “You may curtsy,” says the Queen. The air is thick with glitter and hairspray and, everywhere I look, there are men in tights wrenching at wedgies.
This is not some strange Shakespeare production, though. This is the 13th Alternative Miss World. A riotous, queer celebration of the art of dressing up, the competition sees men and women disguised as telephone boxes, poodles and fried eggs. Anything goes. This year’s theme is neon numbers, and Andrew Logan, the sculptor who started it all in 1972, fully expects it to end up looking like a builders’ convention, such is the amount of hi-vis on the go.
In one dressing room crammed with balloons and garish costumes, Janet Slee – AKA Miss May B Jones – is sipping gin and tonics. This is Logan’s sister, a veteran contestant. Although she has never won, she did once come third. Beside her is her sidekick Ivan Cartwright, AKA Miss Candy Floss. In the corner, Russian performance artist Sasha Frolova (AKA Miss Zero +) is frantically slathering latex-friendly lubricant on her feet, in order to ease on her skintight costume. Frolova, whose outfit is made almost entirely of inflatables, has come from Moscow. “The Russians are particularly supportive,” says Logan. “Whether or not it was 70 years of non-dressing up, I don’t know.”
In the next dressing room, a group of men and women are donning British seaside staples: they’re all wearing jellies, while one man has a bucket for a hat and miniature spades for earrings. Out front, the audience are piling in, many of them dressed up, too. One man is wearing a crucifix with Ronald McDonald nailed to it. He’s singing the Jim’ll Fix It theme tune. Another woman is dressed in a bodysuit made entirely of tights.
The night follows the traditional Miss World format of daywear, swimwear and eveningwear, with cabaret acts in between. Then there’s the judging and crowning. “It’s properly amateurish,” says co-host Grayson Perry, who’s been a part of proceedings for years. “It’s a village-hall-type event.”
Simon Callow once memorably described the experience of attending Alternative Miss World as “like coming across the fertility rituals of a forgotten tribe”, so it’s no surprise to learn that Stuart Hopps (AKA Mary Queen of Scots, who is onstage now with Jenny Runacre’s Elizabeth I) was the man responsible for choreographing 1970s horror classic The Wicker Man. But there’s no time to ponder this folksy line from Britt Ekland to a drag Mary Stuart, because now Logan is descending from the ceiling on a hoop, heralded by the two queens, and the competition has begun.
Daywear sees milliner Piers Atkinson, AKA Miss Three Sheets to the Wind, charge the stage with kids’ bubbleguns for nipples while his guffawing assistant follows him on with a small electric fan and pot of glitter. Some outfits, especially the swimwear, just weren’t built for the Globe’s narrow doorways. I watch as an infinity pool, a giant jellyfish and an inflatable octopus struggle to squeeze through the Jacobean-sized doorways.
Janet comes on for each stage seated on a mocked-up gameshow set on wheels. Her show’s name is Who Gives a Fuck? and Miss Candy Floss asks the audience: “How many people in here actually give a fuck?” It turns out 17 do. Janet is introduced with the words: “She’s from middle England and her outfit is drab.” For the swimwear round, she wears a mask and flippers.
Eveningwear, which is combined with mini interviews, proves spectacular: Miss Three Sheets crowdsurfs, while Miss Nether Regions, AKA Stefan Leenaars, comes on dressed as a fully-laid dinner table, complete with gammon, broccoli and breadsticks. Perry asks Miss Infinity where she’d like to go on her holidays. “Bournemouth.” Miss Melonie Peel’s response: “Horse Meat Disco”. To the same question, Miss Zero + replies: “Somewhere far from Russia.”
A few days before the event, I visited Logan in The Glasshouse, his Bermondsey home and studio. Logan, who is 68 and rarely seen without a bright pink or orange hat, sees the whole contest as “a big sculpture really”.
Molly Parkin, the Welsh painter and writer, has been a judge at every Alternative Miss World, except the year she had a miscarriage. “They had to ask Hockney instead,” she says, cackling. “But I don’t want Hockney to think he was second choice!” Like Logan, she is keen to highlight the creative side of the contest. “It’s an art event of the highest order using clothes and what you put on your body to depict your own originality.”
In his workshop, loomed over by the Shard and filled with mirror-clad sculptures of winged horses and pearl-ruffed men, Logan recalls the event’s early years: “I think babies were born and marriages were made and divorces were done.” He fixes me with a gaze. “Wild.” Parkin is rather more candid. “There were plenty of blowjobs,” she says.
It started out as just another excuse for a party. Logan and his siblings had dressed up – as cowboys and vicars, among other things – since they were little. But it was a visit to Crufts that was the catalyst and, suitably, the event’s contestants were judged – just like Crufts dogs – on poise, personality and originality, rather than on beauty. Nowadays, the Alternative Miss World is just one party among many. But back then, says Logan, “people went to work, would go to the pub, and go home and watch TV. There was no club culture.”
The way Logan tells it, his band of merry men and women – among them Derek Jarman, Angie Bowie, Leigh Bowery, David Bailey – were the London misfits to Andy Warhol’s New York Factory cool kids. “London was rather abandoned at that time. It was nice; it meant you could get on with doing things.” One of the things they got on with was throwing these parties; dressing up and showing off. Would he describe it as counter-culture? “It was … but there wasn’t very much culture, so it wasn’t difficult.”
The biggest year was 1981, when they commandeered the grand hall at Kensington Olympia and installed their own fairground. “We had ‘up-and-down-horses’ and a big wheel. There were 30 or so contestants. It didn’t finish until three in the morning. They’d turned the heating down, they’d turned the sound down, and most people had gone home by the time of the crowning. But it was still fabulous.”
Crucially, the contests have always been open to all. “There are no restrictions, so it’s old, young, male, female. We’ve never had a pet one, but we did have a robot win one year.” Despite what Parkin describes as “cocks flying about the place”, there’s something oddly innocent about the do. It’s more Carry On Camping than Blue Velvet. Take Miss Synthetic, a contestant from the early years who wore a see-through plastic suit, only for condensation to build up on the inside and obscure the view.
In 1972, cross-dressing had been legal in public for seven years, and homosexual acts “in private between two men” for five. Yet a decade later, Logan was still grappling with prejudice. In 1985, the contest was supposed to take place in Chislehurst caves in Kent, but it was cancelled because local residents were afraid of catching Aids. “We were told two days before that it couldn’t happen,” he says, “because people were going to go to the toilet and it was going to go through the pipes into the houses and everyone was going to get Aids. I just thought, ‘How ignorant’ and on we went. I had friends who were dying from Aids.”
Back to this year’s contest. I watch in wonder as the previous winner, Miss Fancy Chance, descends from a trapdoor in the ceiling hanging by her hair to do the crowning. And the winner is … Miss Zero + for her glorious latex-and-inflatables combo. The judges, who include Zandra Rhodes, have been understandably wowed and the victor is carried around the Globe’s pit on a throne made by Logan, to the tune of Nothing Compares 2 U.
I catch Miss Zero + later: she’s holding a shiny pink balloon in the shape of a number one, reeling at her win. There are 10 minutes to pack up: glitter is wiped, balloons are popped, and binbags are handed round for false eyelashes and empty hairspray canisters. “I’m really happy!” says Miss Zero +. “This is an amazing crazy world.”
If you could change one thing about the world what would it be?
We asked the contestants, judges and performers at this year’s Alternative Miss World this classic question from the more traditional beauty pageant. Here’s what they said…
- Grayson Perry, who had three costume changes – “bulk” – for his evening of co-hosting at this year’s event, says:
- Miss Candy Floss would like more acceptance:
- Miss Surf Mama One Million Years BC has a specific one:
- Last time’s winner Miss Fancy Chance considers it carefully:
- Miss Melonie Peel thinks laterally:
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