She’s a living legend of the London gay scene. She was hosting gay nights when homosexuality was still illegal. Her Tea Dances and Time Warp Discos are among the most fondly remembered gay events of the past 50 years.
But please don’t call her a DJ. David McGillivray was allowed an extremely rare, exclusive interview with the shy and retiring, the fierce and feisty, the one and only Jo Purvis…
There’s a cantankerous old biddy, who hates her work, does nothing but complain, and won’t talk to the press. There’s also a delightful old bloke who’s enjoyed a wonderful life, charms everyone he meets, and has just given a long and hilarious interview to QX. No prizes for guessing that both these people are Jo Purvis.
I suppose that when you get to Jo’s age (whatever that may be; we’ll return to this subject constantly over the next two weeks) you’ve earned the right to be as contradictory and mercurial and downright difficult as you damn well please.
I wasn’t looking for gay people, I was a bloke, wasn’t I?
We thought it was worth persevering for weeks to get her to talk to us because there’s simply, literally no one like her. She’s seen the London gay scene pass before her eyes for…well, evidence suggests it’s something like 70 years.
She went to her first gay bar during World War II and she’s still working as what she calls a “music presenter” (use the term DJ at your peril). She’s one of our community’s most senior stateswomen/statesmen (we’ll come to this later as well) and I’m terrified of misrepresenting her because, forget her aches and pains and her claim that she’s only working to make enough money for the fare to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland, if I upset her, she’s going to be down on me like a ton of bricks.
She is one dreadnought of a dyke. Oh, no. I’d better correct that. “I’m a retired transvestite”, she declares. And then sniggers. No wonder everyone loves her.
We meet at her favourite watering hole, the Joiner’s Arms in Hackney, because it’s run by her mate, the lovely David (“You ought to be interviewing him, not me.”) As soon as I switch my machine on, she tells me, “My back’s killin’ me. You can record that.”
I wonder if, as a kid, she ever thought about a career in music. “I don’t have a career in music”, she snaps. “It’s a sideline.” All right then. Did she ever think about a sideline in music? “Yeah, that’s possible.” Was that something she wanted? “Not particularly, no.”
Several questions are answered with variations on, “Nobody’s interested in that.” Yes, they are, I say. You’re a public figure. “Now I sound like Eros”, she replies. She contradicts herself constantly, mostly, I reckon, for effect.
“I’m very, very, very much into what the audience want”, she tells me, then adds, “I hate it and I hate people but, if this is what I’m paid to do, I do it.” Why does she do it if she doesn’t enjoy it? “Because it keeps me occupied. It keeps an old lady happy, a sick old lady who would only be in a home otherwise. No, I do like it actually. I’m very Rosie Bothways in everything, if you know the expression.”
Has she had a good life? “Mediocre”, she grumbles. But in the Channel 4 programme After Dark in 1989 she said, “I’ve always enjoyed my life…because I’ve been accepted for what I am rather than what I do in bed.” You are awful, I chide her. “I know”, she grins. “What can you do? I need puttin’ down.”
Jo says that acceptance came from being born in Stepney. “I was lucky enough to come from the East End”, she says. “It was very cosmopolitan, very theatrical. Joe Loss’ mother lived round one corner, Bud Flanagan’s grandmother lived round the other.”
Like those two entertainers, her mother was Jewish, but never kept to the dietary laws. When Jo’s strictly kosher grandmother was due to visit, mum hid the bacon in the wardrobe. (“Rosie Bothways” still throws a bit of Yiddish into her conversation. But whenever she mentions someone who’s passed on, she crosses herself!)
Dad had shares in the London Music Hall in Shoreditch. While mum and dad had drinks in the theatre bar, Jo was plonked in the stalls, sometimes next to another little girl called Gracie. Jo remembers that, even in those days, she sort of fancied Gracie.
Jo’s father died when she was six. Her mother remarried. “I wanted to be a doctor”, Jo reveals. “But my stepfather, who was very, very good to me and my mum, said, ‘I am not wasting money sending you to college because you’ll get married and all my money’ll go down the drain.’ And I said, ‘No, daddy, it won’t because I don’t want to get married. I’m not the marrying sort.’ I was about 11 years old I suppose.”
At school another girl said to Jo, “I know about people like you. I’ve read all about it in this book The Well of Loneliness.” But Jo and another butch girlfriend decided they definitely weren’t lesbians. Instead they wanted to be boys.
Jo’s dad couldn’t get his head round this at all. “I’d go out sometimes, you know really booted and suited, me ‘air all Brylcreemed, with a pipe, and he’d say, ‘You’re all dressed up tonight. Are you gonna meet a nice boy?’ He just couldn’t conceive. He was very Victorian.”
One day a very old lady (about 20-something) came to Jo’s flat to borrow a can opener. She wore a suit and a shirt with a detachable collar. Her real name was Lily, but she called herself Billy. She said, “I’ll take you to the West End and either you’ll take to it like a fish to water or you’ll run away screaming.”
The gay bar they went to was the Barry in Soho. “It was an old queen who had it. It was a lovely little place.” As soon as she walked into the bar, Jo recognised a prefect from her school. “We had red and blue inkwells. He used to get the red one and paint his nails with it.” (He called himself Jungle after the movie Jungle Princess with Dorothy Lamour. Later he became a drag act in Tangier).
Jo admits that this happened during the War. If she was, as she also admits, 14½ when she left school, this gives us a rough idea of her age. So she’s not, as she joked the previous week, 100. “Well, it depends what day it is. Today I’m about 190. Don’t take me picture in this sunshine. Wait till it rains and I shall look 21.”
Jo started dating. “It’s private”, she declares. “We never talk about our sex lives in public.” But later she reveals a few bits and pieces. “I wasn’t looking for gay people, I was a bloke, wasn’t I? I wanted a straight woman and I’ve always been with straight birds.”
She got her first male haircut at 16 so she could kiss girls in public without passers-by calling the cops. The girls Jo dated thought she was a bloke. “Oh yeah, because don’t forget in those days you didn’t go all that far with sex on the first date. I never went on a second date because that’s when you got a bit fruity and I didn’t want to get that far.”
Meanwhile Jo had already started putting on shows. Next week we’ll look at this “sideline” of hers.
Jo Purvis is at Summer Rites in Shoreditch Park, N1, on Sunday 10th July.
