Duckie
Attitude/December 199?

an interesting little interview re: Duckie, featuring The Divine David, taken from an elderly copy of Attitude magazine

“As far as we’re concerned we don’t really play old records or new records, just good records – three or four minute pop songs, really loud.”
 In less than 12 months, Readers Wifes – aka the two Marks, Johnstone and Wood – have turned a half-empty pub in South London into the biggest house party in town with the delicious Duckie at the Vauxhall Tavern.
 “There just wasn’t anywhere to go that was playing the music we like,” explains wife Wood. “We wanted indie, Country & Western, 80’s pop, 60’s organ instrumentals and northern soul too. We wanted people to realise from the minute they walked in that it was the opposite of what you’d get on a Saturday night in a gay venue – so no house, no Kylie, no Madonna.”
 With queue round the block and the venue crammed to capacity every weekend it looks like plenty agree.
 “We have people who haven’t been to a club for like seven years that come every week – barristers, school teachers, strippers… a real mixture. It’s like a gang for the disenfranchised. Now we’re worried about getting too big. We don’t want to lose that slightly scuzzy us-against-the-world thing we had.”
 Indeed such is the club’s impact that the bewigged wonders (“we’re not trying to be drag queens, we want to look like the scary girls at school that would beat you up”) together with host Amy Lame, Simon Strange and regular ranter The Divine David – have unwittingly become leaders of the ‘anti-gay’ movement. For Readers Wifes it’s just about letting your hair down and having a good time.
 “It’s not about body fascism, it’s not about really obscure remixes of new dance records, it’s about familiarity. People can really put their guard down at Duckie, there’s no attitude. Everyone can fit in. Everyone is welcome.”

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