SHOUT IT FROM

THE ROOFTOPS, POSSUMS
Independent on Sunday, 23 September 2001

By Mark Simpson

I have a confession to make. I've been having an affair. For some time now I've been sneaking away to a Victorian drag pub in South London every Sunday afternoon to see a performer called 'The Dame Edna Experience'. Every Sunday I've experienced, well, this is very embarrassing - Love.

What does the Dame Edna Experience, aka Jonathan Hellyer, do? Well, he tells a few dirty jokes, and then he sings some cheesy love songs. In a black Basque, stockings horn-rimmed glasses and a blue-rinse wig. But somehow, he takes you from the base to the sublime to the ridiculous and back again leaving you bewitched, bothered and bewildered and wondering what Barry Humphries did to deserve the accolade. Hellyer’s enthusiasm is such that everyone in the place is transfixed; even the shirtless gay clubbers coming down from their weekend’s raving stop chewing their gum and stare, slack-jawed.

To say he's merely 'funny' or 'has a great voice' would be a libellous misrepresentation. He has a talent that seems to encompass the entire range of human emotion - and gender. He's Ziggy Stardust meets Dionysus, who happens to be in bed with Jim Carrey at the time. He doesn't just sing songs such as 'Angels' and 'Think Twice' note perfect, and in a voice uncannily like Celine Dion or Robbie Williams, he breathes something into these ponderous popular ditties that transforms them from something cheap into something dangerously potent in a way that Baz Luhrmann would envy. His generosity distils Robbie-ness and Dion-ness into something that the artists themselves could never quite be bothered to do - into something intoxicating that makes you realise, with horror, how fond of them you are.

So when he performs the irksome charity version of ‘Perfect Day’, rendering everyone from Lou Reed to Tammy Wynette, Bono to Ronan, Elton to Heather Small so intensely the originals seem counterfeit, you find yourself absurdly moved and amused – as much by the power of your own response as anything else. And when he finally pulls off that blue wig and those glasses and lets us look into his eyes you notice that this divine trickster is young and attractive too, those legs rather shapely in those stockings. Such a perfect Sunday. I’m so glad I spent it with you. You made me forget myself - I thought I was someone else. Someone good.

[The Dame Edna Experience performs at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern every Sunday at 6pm. Tickets cost £5.]

Copyright Mark Simpson 2001