Here’s a Buzzfeed list waiting to happen: 10 Royals Who Would be a SCREAM on a Night Out!
The Queen Mother and her gaggle of gay footmen would be pretty high up on the list; Margo would have a couple of gifs of her with a fag and a gin clutched in either hand; and of course, there would be Princess Diana. She wasn’t as outwardly debauched as many of the others, but you could just tell from that coquettish smile that when she let that bouffant hair down (if it was capable of going in any other direction than outwards), you were in store for good night.
And a musical about Diana’s escapades is coming to the Royal Vauxhall Tavern this autumn. It’s based around the now infamous anecdote from Cleo Rocos’ autobiography, in which Rocos herself, Kenny Everett and Freddie Mercury decked the People’s Princess up in elaborate man-drag, so she could go to The Royal Vauxhall Tavern for a swift drink.
It may be true. It may not. But it’s one of those pieces of urban folklore, like the post-9/11 road trip that Michael Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando supposedly embarked on, which is just so kitsch, that it’s actual veracity is really rather secondary.
Royal Vauxhall is the musical in question; and after a successful run at the Edinburgh fringe, it returns to its home at The Tavern. The pub’s inner environ is so involved in the musical that it’s almost a fourth member of the cast. It uses the titillating story to explore the AIDS crisis and stigma gay men faced in the 1980s, though it retains an irrepressibly camp feeling throughout which, given the cocksure personalities of the main characters, is rather inescapable.
The jokes are sharp, the songs are joyful, and the whole set-up is given an added poignancy given the three protagonists’ early demises. It plays for several dates over the autumn and if you go, who knows, that pretty boy sitting next to you might actually be Kate Middleton in a dodgy wig and trousers ensemble.
• Royal Vauxhall is at The Royal Vauxhall Tavern, 372 Kennington Lane, SE11 5HY and is on at 8pm on September 22nd, October 26th, and November 16th, 23rd & 24th, tickets £12-15
