Games bring cheer to drag queens

“The torch is coming by one of the hotels where I work next week but it is at 8.30 in the morning. That is a crushing time for a man in make-up,” confessed Mitzi (Graham).

“I may make the effort. The best reason to do it would be publicity,” he said.

But he will probably be too busy putting the final touches in rehearsals to his troupe’s latest extravaganza. “We’ve got a bit in the show on drugs in sport and then a big flame number with me as the torch,” he said.

Mitzi, like the rest of Sydney’s homosexual community, is cock-a-hoop over the decision by the Olympic organisers to include drag queens in the closing ceremony festivities — despite the fury of church and right-wing leaders.

For Sydney ranks alongside San Francisco and Amsterdam as one of the gay capitals of the world. Its annual Mardi Gras parade attracts up to 700,000 spectators.

Putting his make-up on for the four-times a night show at the Imperial hotel, he said: “It would be difficult to ignore one of the most colourful aspects of Sydney night-life.”

Then he added coyly: “If I were to be included in the parade, I would be tickled pink.”

However, Mitzi is delighted that Australia is showing much more tolerance nowadays than in his tortured youth: “Drag reflects society’s acceptance of alternative lifestyles. We are just blokes in frocks.

“My father was a born again christian minister and I used to teach scripture in Sunday school. Then I got thrown out of the church when they found out I was gay. I was the pink sheep of the family.

“Later on, I discovered that my father was gay. He was always a very flamboyant man. I should have known. He kept telling me he understood what I was going through.”