One of the sad side effects of the success of Ru Paul’s Drag Race is that the emphasis on excessively made-up, glittery queens has somewhat replaced the scrappy, cheaply dressed queens who succeeded on their somewhat vicious, quick wit and potty mouth/ They were/are the real drag icons/queens we love. For example, probably Queerguru’s favorite one right now is the insatiable Myra DuBois the creation of Northern England working-class stand-up comedian Gareth Joiner  who was a semi-finalist on Britain’s Got Talent when the obnoxious tabloid journalist Piers Morgan described his performance as “diabolical”.  He mistakenly had no idea what a compliment that was.

As Queerguru’s Brit Editor keeps reminding us, there is nothing as wonderful and downright weird as English humour, and when it comes out of the mouths of their homegrown drag queens, it’s in a world of their own. Like the TV series ‘Smoggie Queens‘ produced by the once very august home of the Establishment, BBC, which has been such a smash hit, they have just announced they are commissioning a second series 

Smoggie Queens is set in Middlesbrough (in working-class Midland) and focuses on the chosen family and lives of a group of LGBTQ friends, and is created by its star Phil Dunning.  Smoggie, incidentally, is a demonym for people from Middlesbrough.  What makes it work is that Smoggie Queens does a great job of capturing British camp sensibility: the cheerfully shonky glam, the deadpan humour, the cosy obscenity, the hearty embrace of all things tacky, unpretentious and mainstream.  Smoggie Queens is very sweet, and the world it builds will delight many.  It hasn’t been written/perfomed to break barriers or collect awards, but is a piece of impressive camp flamboyance that gives us a reason to laugh right mow in the midst of an uncertain political climate.

Being politically correct means different things to different sides of the Atlantic, as we are still somewhat mystified, and angry, that in the US, Netflix’s excellent LGBTQ series BOOTS was unceremoniously dumped even after it had been a critical and commercial success