| Julian Clary |
| Words: Curio | |
| Monday, 20 August 2007 | |
|
Main Theatre Book Festival  Julian Clary walked in to the packed theatre at the Book Festival, looking a million dollars. He’s nearly 50 now but looks better than ever. For a man who’s had a turbulent career and a regular ‘fisting’ from the tabloids, he looks happy, tanned (albeit a little faux), and dressed in the height of fashion. There’s still that menacing twinkle in his eye that suggests the rubber shorts and whips remain somewhere in the wardrobe, but he has new hobbies now. One of these is promoting his first novel, ‘Murder Most Fab’. It’s Julian’s first foray into fiction. A romantic comedy thriller set in Lewisham about one young gay lad’s meteoric rise from drama-school to mass-murder. At this point, let me put you back in the capable (or should that be culpable) hands of the author: “Well, (archetypal Clary pause). I’m thrilled.” says Clary - master of the aside - greeting his audience. Now bear in mind that the audience in front of him is a mass of purple-rinses, pearl necklaces, and pastel shades. Without saying the word “decrepit”, you get the picture. They roar with laughter. The former altar boy stands in his pulpit, his book in hand and proceeds to read. Clary gives his literary sermon with the snide glint of a school-boy armed with a catapult as his elders watch on with caution. He takes his congregation into a hellish world of rent boys “hung like horses” and prima donna actress wannabes. This is Clary at his scathing, most brilliant best. His audience lap it up. Clary, under questioning, denies the main character Johnny Debonair is based on him. Yet there are passages (archetypal Clary pause again) that read like they are straight out of his autobiography: ‘I’ve had it all, lost it all, and now I don’t want it back.’ But why look for such psycho-analytical depth? ‘Murder Most Fab’ is funny fiction and Clary is simply court-jester; a man who has always had an uneasy tension of the nasty and the neurotic that he has never been able to hide from the public’s glare. The Clary that stands before us now, in a career that has spanned nearly 30 years, is doing what he wants to do like never before. He seems at one with himself that’s got to be a good omen for a career that shows no signs of stopping. Two word verdict: carefree Clary Julian Clary RBS Main Theatre 19 Aug |