The RVT became a space of gay socialising after the war and was central to London’s 60s drag boom. And rather than Soho’s shiny new bars, Duckie found its spiritual home in a run-down boozer south of the river: the RVT.Īround 1860, the pub was the first building to go up when Vauxhall’s notorious pleasure gardens, home to early cocktails, pop songs and classless cruising, closed. The acts were short and scandalous – radical praxis meets music hall. The Readers Wifes’ eclectic playlist ranged from X-Ray Spex to Abba. Less consumerist-aspirational gay, more sarky art-school queer, the crowd was thoughtful, bolshie and (mostly) kind. Rather than gym culture, dance music, strippers and pills, Duckie melded the boozy bonhomie of gay indie-pop night Popstarz with the live-art vibe of the ICA, creating what it called “homosexual honky-tonk”. And, like many other misfits, weirdos and queers, I felt right at home.Īll this went against the grain of the 90s gay scene. On stage, “anti-drag” act the Divine David castigated liberal complacency. On the speakers were David Bowie, Kate Bush and the Smiths. It was liberating and intoxicating but, as a speccy, self-conscious type more into my parents’ 1960s LPs than house or techno, I didn’t really feel at home.
As a gay teenage Londoner in the mid-90s, the first club I went to was Heaven, which felt somehow compulsory.
