FIRST PERSON: Drag queen Mary Golds from Newport opens up about industry

After a year I came home and my grandfather had passed away.

So I deferred my studies for a year and started working in Wow bar in Cardiff. To start with I was just working behind the bar and handing out leaflets and so on. I just wanted the least amount of stress possible.

I started watching the drag queens there doing their thing, and I could see how much money they were making. A year in London had left me with a lot of debt, so I thought to myself: 'I need some of that.'

There was a dating night going on at the bar, and the manager said she needed a small drag queen to help out. I’d already done in bit the student union in London because all of my friends were dancers. So I put my hand up and said: ‘I can do that.’

So that’s how I started. I was taking photos and sticking number on people at the bar. People started to realise I was funny, and the manager asked if I would like to put on a show.

After a few shows I was offered my own night, and before I knew it I had an agent.

It just snowballed really now that I look back on it.

~A decade later and I’m still doing it. It’s what I love, but I didn’t wake up one morning and think: ‘I want to be a drag queen.’

I don’t think it works like that for most people. It’s just something I fell in to, and I had a good background in amateur dramatics going back years at the Dolman in Newport.

I started getting booked in different bars across the country.

Eventually I was offered the headline spot in at the Birdcage in Newport when it opened, which made me the face of the venue. I ended up staying there for three or four years, doing cabaret with invited guests.

I left there to work at a different bar in Cardiff, where I DJ’d and did cabaret for almost five years, before leaving for Mary’s and the Golden Cross.

The Golden Cross, where I still am today, has been a really nice project to work on. It had been so neglected before my friend took it over, pulling in four or five punters on a Sunday, for example.

But now it’s grown and grown, going from strength to strength. The first Pride event we held, which is the biggest night of the year, we had three acts, two of which were local. But this year’s Pride saw us going from 2pm to 2am non stop. That’s how much it’s changed in the last three years.

This Saturday we’re celebrating three years from 9.30pm at the Golden Cross, with Lee Gilbert, Vicky Vivacious and myself.

I live there too, so it really has become my home in more ways than one.

Becoming a drag queen was a pretty natural thing for me to do. I’ve never had any problems from family or friends, everyone’s been very supportive. Although it did take a long conversation with my mum to persuade here that it’s just a work uniform, and not a lifestyle choice.

That’s the most important thing to understand about drag queens. It’s just a business, and you have to run it like a business.

It’s not just having a jolly in bars up and down the country, it’s a lot of hard work. People just don’t realise that.

I think shows like RuPaul have done a lot of favours for drag queens, but I also think that they have turned everybody into a critic now.

When I started there were no YouTube tutorials to do drag queen make up, for example.

You learned your craft first, and the look came after that. Now you don’t look the business people just don’t take you seriously from day one.

I think everybody thinks they can be a drag queen now. People go on a night out in drag, but that’s not being a drag queen. You can’t learn it – I think it’s either in you or it isn’t.

Personality is a big element of what we do. Some queens are really horrible, some are your best friends. I’m quite a stand-offish drag Queen and people love that. You wouldn’t go up and take a selfie with Judy Garland or Chere, would you?

The industry has definitely changed. When I started, satnavs were only just becoming a thing, so we had to make sure we had maps to bars and so on.

Now, every bar you perform at has a social media presence, and your only as good as your last video.

So many people can get upset by social media, and that’s a massive thing on the drag queen circuit now. It’s almost as if people are looking for things to get offended by. In my book, offensive can be funny. If you get a laugh, it’s comedy. I’m a true believer in that, and we are here to entertain.

I’m kept very busy at the moment. I’ve recently filmed a commercial with the BBC, and I toured Malta for six weeks a few years ago. It’s not an industry for anyone who doesn’t like hard work.

To celebrate my decade as a drag queen I’m putting on a show called ‘An Audience with Mary Gold: Grindstones and Rhinestones. It’s on at the Lookout Café Bar in Cardiff Bay on October 5."