Newspaper Article

Comment & Analysis: What brings you trolling back, then?: Polari, the gay slang, is being revived. Camp is being rehabilitated. Fantabulosa

Richardson, Colin

2005

Overview

[Polari], the gay slang which faded away with the decriminalisation of male homosexuality and the advent of gay liberation, is making a comeback. Madame Jo Jo's, the Soho cabaret venue which specialises in drag spectaculars, has adopted polari as its lingua franca. A list of words and phrases, chosen by linguistics lecturer and polari expert Dr Paul Baker, has been given to staff for them to use in their conversations with each other and with the punters. In the latter half of the 1960s, polari burst out of the closet. The radio comedy sketch show, Round the Horne, introduced two regular characters, Julian and Sandy, who spoke a version of polari. Millions tuned in each week to hear the show's avuncular host, Kenneth Horne (whose very name was a gift to the double of entendre), visit some new enterprise, which was invari ably called Bona something or another: Bona Guest House, Bona Caterers, Bona Ballet, you get the picture. Round the Horne was both polari's apotheosis and its last hurrah. As the 1970s ground on, gay men became increasingly embarrassed by any association with limp-wristed camp. While Marc Bolan and David Bowie were applying manly mascara, gay men were growing moustaches and dressing like cowboys. The gay clone look sought to banish visions of Julian and [Sandy], Mr Humphries and Larry Grayson. Poor [Kenneth Williams] became an outcast among his own kind, as his diaries bitterly relate.

• Publisher: Guardian News & Media Limited
• Subject: Horne, Kenneth