When Madame Jojo’s shut its doors on Brewer Street in 2014, something cracked in the soul of Soho. For decades, that legendary venue had been the beating heart of London’s cabaret and drag scene, a place where feathers, sequins, and unapologetic glamour ruled the night. Its closure felt like a funeral for an entire era … Read more
Walk down Old Compton Street on a Saturday night and you will hear it before you see it. The thump of show tunes spilling onto the pavement, the flash of sequins under streetlights, a queen in six-inch heels working a crowd outside the Admiral Duncan. This is Soho after dark, and it has been the … Read more
Walk down Brewer Street in Soho today and you will find wine bars, ramen shops, and vape stores where sequins once caught the light. But beneath the pavement, if you know where to look, the ghosts of a thousand lip-sync numbers still linger. The lost glamour of Soho’s drag and cabaret golden age is one … Read more
On a Saturday afternoon in April 2015, more than 200 people gathered outside a corner pub in Camden, North London. Drag performers in towering wigs and sequined gowns stood beside activists with megaphones. They were there because The Black Cap, a gay bar that had served the LGBTQ+ community for over 50 years, had been … Read more
Long before the neon lights of Soho drew partygoers into basement clubs, the stages of London’s West End were blazing with a very different kind of spectacle. The secret history of burlesque in London’s West End is a story of satire, seduction, censorship, and survival. It stretches from the literary parlours of the 16th century … Read more
Las Vegas has always been a city of contrasts. You can stand on the Strip and watch a Cirque du Soleil acrobat soar above a 1,500-seat theater, then drive ten minutes north and find yourself in a 150-seat room where a performer is singing a torch song five feet from your cocktail. That second experience … Read more
For over a century, Soho’s neon-lit streets pulsed with something you could not find anywhere else in Britain. Feather boas, jazz pianos, sequined corsets, and razor-sharp satire spilled out of basement clubs and converted warehouses. The London cabaret scene was not just entertainment. It was a living, breathing culture that shaped the city’s identity, championed … Read more
Soho became the beating heart of London drag because it offered a rare convergence of underground theatre culture, affordable rents, relative anonymity, and a pre-existing reputation as a district outside conventional morality. For over two centuries, this dense grid of narrow streets in the West End allowed drag performers to develop their art in an … Read more
When you think of British drag, RuPaul’s Drag Race UK might be the first thing that comes to mind. But the truth is, Soho shaped British drag long before television cameras ever showed up. For over three centuries, this small square mile in central London served as the beating heart of drag performance, queer community, … Read more
Trannyshack was a legendary drag club night founded in San Francisco in 1996 by the performer Heklina, running weekly at The Stud bar before spawning a licensed London offshoot at Madame JoJo’s in Soho. The History of Trannyshack and London’s Underground Drag Nights spans two continents, decades of queer nightlife, and a generation of drag … Read more