What's a Girl Like You? (1969)

• 70%
• 1969
• Documentary
• Charlie Squires
• Bow
• Al Nichols
• Terry Durham

The 'Palladium of Drag' - south London's Royal Vauxhall Tavern. The first half of this scintillating London Weekend Television documentary celebrates the late-60s drag renaissance at one of Britain's oldest surviving gay venues - then home to a happily diverse throng of working-class regulars. Dynamic camerawork swoops along the bar-cum-stage as pints are nonchalantly pulled under the thrashing heels of anarchic queens Bow, The Polka Dots and Mr Cleo Rose. Despite the clunking insistence that "the one thing you don't have to be for drag is homosexual" this is a refreshingly non-judgemental and joyous insight into queer nightlife half a century ago.