'Very feminine, loud and super campy': Life as a drag queen from Lincoln

• Published date: 01 March 2021

Tell me all about yourself.

I was born and raised in Lincoln. I'm quite a creative person, like a big kid at heart. As well as doing the whole drag thing, I work full-time and I run the largest bouncy castle hire company in Christchurch. I think it was maybe 2007 when I came across Priscilla Queen of the Desert, went to the musical up in Auckland, with friends, and we loved it so much we flew to Sydney to see it again the next year. I started drag in 2014 when I bought my first pair of heels. I've always been able to walk in a pair of heels without any kind of practice, just like an absolute natural. I sort of started off from there, collecting a few things, trying it out and everything, and then professionally doing it from about three years ago. I started really getting out there and putting the money into it, because it costs so much money. It's like a transformation for me in the art form, it's something that I look at now and I regret not doing drama and stuff like that when I was at school, like it could have helped me a lot now. When you put on the wig and the eyelashes and stuff like that, it's like you become just a completely different person. When you are so far through your makeup, something all of a sudden just clicks, for me it is the art form and the performance, you are just making people happy.

Like on a Friday or Saturday night I can not walk anywhere near the Strip, you know Oxford Tce, or anything like that, unless I have a spare like hour . . . just the amount of people that come running up to you, somebody gets a photo then somebody else wants a photo. It just takes up so much time.

What do you spend the money on?

A decent wig will cost you anywhere between $300 to $900, and that's cheap. Otherwise you can go right up to like $2500. Just a simple pair of shoes and everything like that, because I buy my shoes locally, and I buy a special brand of shoes called Pleaser. They are a lot stronger, they are performing shoes. I buy those locally from a lady in West Melton. She brings them in, they can be anything from $100 to $300 a pair. Basically by the time I'm completely ready, when I've got everything on, I could be wearing an outfit that's $1000-plus dollars.

Is there lots of sequins and feathers involved?

Definitely lots of sequins and feathers. Ninety per cent of what I wear is made by myself or my mother, because I am a little bit bigger it is easier to make it, than it is to buy it.

Is it solely a performance identity, or are you...