Come Here To Me!

Like a lot of people, I am very much looking forward to seeing The Queen of Ireland, Conor Horgan’s new documentary telling the story of Panti Bliss,or Rory O’Neill. It has been a few years in the making now, and little could they have known when they started out that Panti would become something of a household name in Ireland, thanks in no small-part to the recent marriage referendum, and a run-in with the Iona Institute.

Last winter, the Little Museum of Dublin hosted a great exhibition entitled Dublin Unpublished, made up of photos Conor has taken over the years of some remarkable people here in Dublin, including Morrissey, Mary Robinson, Christy Moore and… Panti. That Horgan and Panti have been working together on this for many years, long before recent events, has me particularly keen to check the documentary out.

Before Panti, there were drag acts in Irish society, and none as important to the story as Mr. Pussy, who drew in huge crowds in the 1970s, and who baffled some in the Irish media, who couldn’t quite get their heads around the idea of a drag queen in Dublin. “If this is what female impersonation is about, the sooner it’s buried the better!”, complained one writer in 1970. Others saw things differently. “If anybody has helped to lure Irish audience into a broad-minded era”, the Sunday Independent said a few short years later in 1974, it was Mr. Pussy.

In reality, Mr. Pussy was (and is) Alan Amsby,a Londoner by birth. In one of the earliest feature pieces on Mr. Pussy, Donall Corvin wrote in the June 1970 edition of the New Spotlight that “Pussy’s act is slick. He/she gets full marks for professionalism. But I’m surprised there hasn’t been an outcry from indignant bishops and moderators.” Amsby it was noted, had arrived in Belfast three months earlier, and “he was to do six shows.Now he has done more than 50 appearances and has become the most successful cabaret act ever to visit Ireland.”

Showcase Magazine, 1971 (With thanks to Brand New Retro)

Paul O’Grady, the popular broadcaster and a friend of Amsby’s, recounted in his memoirs that Mr Pussy became “Ireland’s foremost and, at the time, only drag queen. During the sixties he’d been working on the flourishing drag scene in London as part of an established act called Pussy and Bow.” While that act broke up, Amsby came to Ireland, where O’Grady noted “drag queens were rare as hen’s teeth in Holy Ireland. he caused a sensation and never came back.” Of the London days, he remembered in 1987 that “all the other acts were doing the glamour bit, but we were in the miniskirts and the modern look. Everyone came to see us – Judy Garland, Ringo Starr.”

Journalists rushed to interview Amsby, almost all commenting on his male appearance and youth. At the time of Donall Corvin’s feature in New Spotlight, Amsby was a mere 22 years old. Ginnie Kennealy informed Irish Press readers in January 1972 that he was a “slight figure, startlingly young… with shoulder-length fair hair.” To her, he was “neither effeminate nor pointedly masculine. Instead he has very much the unisex look of the seventies.”

A 1971 advertisement for Alan Amsby (Thanks to Brand New Retro http://brandnewretro.ie/)

No doubt, the Ireland of the 1970s was in many ways a socially conservative place. Yet beyond the very occasional condemnation in the press, it seemed drag was very much in fashion in the early 1970s. A glance at the entertainment page of one Irish newspaper from 1973 shows Mr. Pussy bringing in crowds, not only in Dublin but across the island. Looking over the page, it’s surreal to see the name alongside those of Planxty, the Wolfe Tones, the ‘Women’s Lib Carnival Dance’, Gerry Walsh and the Cowboys and more besides.

Being a drag artist in the Dublin of the 1970s could bring you to some interesting places. In her women’s interest section of the Irish Press in February 1971, Mary Kenny recounted sharing the floor with Mr. Pussy during a debate in the Historical Society,or the ‘Hist’. It was a time of great change in Trinity College; in fact the Hist had “only opened its historic portals to the female sex some two years ago.” In attendance for the discussion was “poor Father Heffernan, the Chairman, and incidentally the first Catholic chaplain to be appointed to TCD.” Kenny remembered that “Pussy certainly added a note of gaiety to the whole debate.”

A historic image of The Baggot Inn. (Image Credit: T.Daley, http://www.u2theearlydayz.com/)

In the early days in Dublin,Mr. Pussy primarily performed in the legendary Baggot Inn on Baggot Street, which will forever be remembered for witnessing some great gigs in the 1970s and 80s, as a popular venue across all kinds of genres.When we interviewed Christy Moore on the site, he remembered that “the Baggot hosted all sorts of gigs from Mr Pussy to Paddy Reilly.” Of his time in the venue, the Sunday Independent wrote that “at first, he was playing to just a handful of people”, but that within a short period “he was filling the Inn six nights a week and doing private parties before or after his show.”

Having seen Mr. Pussy there in July 1970, an Irish Press journalist wrote that:

It was absolutely packed. Frightfully hetero audience, as someone had warned me, but still they appreciated Mr. Pussy like mad. Mr. Pussy is a gorgeous looking dame, the spitting image of Sandie Shaw, he sings appallingly and has the bluest line of patter I have ever heard. He is screamingly funny but frankly I couldn’t reproduce a single one of his jokes here.

Sunday Independent, 11 August 1973.

Mr. Pussy quickly made the leap from pub stage to theatre stage, with Little Red Riding- Would at the Eblana Theatre early in 1972, which the Sunday Independent described as “off-beat, way out by traditional panto standards.” In many ways, Mr.Pussy paved the way for similar acts to perform in Dublin, though not all were as carefree about their identities. In January 1972 the Sunday Independent interviewed Freddie Davenport, “the latest arrival on the drag scene, and that’s not his real name.” Davenport joked that if the paper printed his real name, “I’ll lose my job in the morning.” Davenport and Mr. Pussy shared a manager, who insisted that “with the exception of a drag artist in Limerick, there are no other genuine performers of drag in Ireland.”

Sunday Independent, 30 January 1972.

When interviewed in  1994, Amsby stated that “the boy who came to Ireland 25 years ago with his act,Mr. Pussy, for one week’s booking only, is still here because I love it here.” His story continued into subsequent decades,  and part of that story is well told here, in the story of the Cafe de Luxe on Suffolk Street.

In the Dublin of the 1970s, Amsby was a trendsetter, known as Ireland’s “leading misleading lady”, and bringing something totally new to the nightlife of the city. He is still at it today. While Dublin may be home to a significant number of drag queens now, it all began in the Baggot Inn.