Cheerio, Duckie: regulars look back at the LGBTQ+ club that broke the mould
In November 1995, six twentysomething mates in London were sick of never finding anywhere to go out that fitted their idea of fun, so they put on a night of their own at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern (RVT) and called it Duckie. They were host Amy Lamé, DJs the London Readers Wifes (Mark Wood and Mark Johnston), producer-promoter Simon Strange (AKA Simon Casson) and “door whores” Jay Cloth and Father Cloth. It was the start of one of the world’s longest-running LGBTQ+ club nights and the ignition of a powerhouse performance collective that runs dozens of projects with hundreds of collaborators to this day.
Duckie as an organisation is going nowhere – it has plenty of touring shows, community projects and one-off parties in the works. But in four weeks, after 27 years, its Saturday nights at the RVT will end. The crowds still come but, venue management says, “revenue at the bar” is too low. It’s truly the end of an era.
As a gay teenage Londoner in the mid-90s, the first club I went to was Heaven, which felt somehow compulsory. It was liberating and intoxicating but, as a speccy, self-conscious type more into my parents’ 1960s LPs than house or techno, I didn’t really feel at home. The second club I went to was Duckie. On the speakers were David Bowie, Kate Bush and the Smiths. On stage, “anti-drag” act the Divine David castigated liberal complacency. And, like many other misfits, weirdos and queers, I felt right at home.
All this went against the grain of the 90s gay scene. Rather than gym culture, dance music, strippers and pills, Duckie melded the boozy bonhomie of gay indie-pop night Popstarz with the live-art vibe of the ICA, creating what it called “homosexual honky-tonk”. Less consumerist-aspirational gay, more sarky art-school queer, the crowd was thoughtful, bolshie and (mostly) kind. The Readers Wifes’ eclectic playlist ranged from X-Ray Spex to Abba. The acts were short and scandalous – radical praxis meets music hall. And rather than Soho’s shiny new bars, Duckie found its spiritual home in a run-down boozer south of the river: the RVT.
Around 1860, the pub was the first building to go up when Vauxhall’s notorious pleasure gardens, home to early cocktails, pop songs and classless cruising, closed. The RVT
