Panti Bliss: ‘The gays will never forgive me for that’
What’s the best piece of advice you have ever received?
There’s a saying that I first heard said by RuPaul: what other people think of you is none of your business. That is something that has helped me loads over the years. I get a lot of shit from the far right and I think it could have bothered me a lot more at times if I didn’t remind myself of that saying. And I like it because it’s not saying “ignore what other people say”; it’s almost giving you a telling off – it’s just none of your business. I think it makes it much easier to move through the world and not give a shit what other people think.
Do you have a nemesis?
There is a rightwing Christian organisation called the Iona Institute that has been at the forefront of every regressive campaign in Ireland – [including] against abortion and against gay marriage. Famously, they made defamation threats over some stuff I said about them 11 years ago on RTÉ, our national broadcaster, and RTÉ apologised and made a big damages payout – it became quite the scandal. I wouldn’t like to big them up by saying that they’re my nemesis but I guess I won’t let an opportunity pass to let people know what dicks I think they are.
What is your favourite place in the world to visit?
Related: Panti Bliss review – forceful account of a remarkable life
Tokyo. I went to Tokyo after college, when I was in my 20s. At that time, the mid-90s, Ireland was a pretty grim place to be queer. Homosexuality was still a crime. So I was like, “I want to get out of this backwards shithole!” I went to the library and got out an encyclopedia and looked up the largest cities and they were Mexico City and Tokyo. I’d heard you could teach English in Tokyo. I had also read a book by Paul Theroux about train journeys in China, so I thought, “I’m going on my life’s big adventure, I’m going to go to Tokyo by train and then take the Trans-Siberian express.” So off I went to Tokyo and I lived there for four and a half years. I loved everything about it. I still love it – I don’t get to visit as often as I would like. Tokyo holds so many special memories – exploring the world and doing wild things, taking drugs and being stupid, becoming a professional drag queen for the first time.
You own two bars in Dublin; what’s your tipple of choice?
You know, for somebody who owns two bars and has spent most of my life working in establishments that sold alcohol, I’m actually a very boring drinker. I like an ordinary pilsner or lager that’s bland and not too tasty. If I’m in drag I don’t like drinking pints – it makes my hands look smaller but it’s not very [glamorous] – so I drink gin and tonics. My glamorous American aunt used to always drink gin and tonics.
What’s been your most cringeworthy run-in with a celebrity?
I’m not that fussed about celebrities, generally. The only celebrity who makes me lose my mind is Dolly Parton. She’s my everything. But I once ended up with Madonna in an empty restaurant for two hours. We’d been to a funeral in the Dublin mountains and the only people who skipped the cemetery part – after the church service – were me and my two friends and her and her two friends, so we all arrived at the restaurant in a very fancy hotel two hours before everybody else. She knows my brother, so she walked up to me and said, “Should I know you?” She was fun but her default setting is kind of “jokey cunt”.
The slightly cringy part is that my friend Sergio needed a lift back to Dublin, and I sort of turned into my mother, and I’m like: “Madonna, you could give Sergio a lift back into town, couldn’t you? Plenty of room in that car!” Madonna went, “Oh, well, we came from Dublin international airport.” And I said, “Oh, it’s on the way, you could drop him on the way – perfect.” And in fairness to Madonna, she did give Sergio a lift back to town.
What’s your No 1 petty gripe?
This is one for Australians: shut the fuck up about coffee. Like, the whole thing has become so annoying. Everyone has all their rules and it has to be this way or that way. You can watch these 20-minute videos on YouTube of someone showing you how to make a fucking filter coffee. It’s gone way too far. I’ve used a Moka pot [stovetop espresso] every morning for the last 20-something years, and it’s absolutely perfect – but it doesn’t matter a fuck whether I put boiling water into it or water at room temperature, it’s not gonna burn the coffee. Anyway, nobody can even taste the fucking coffee once you put in milk or a bit of sugar. Everybody needs to calm the fuck down. It’s just a drink that half of the world drinks, get over yourselves.
What book, album or film do you always return to, and why?
The 1969 film The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Maggie Smith won the Oscar for it, and everything about that movie is perfect – especially Maggie, obviously, but her clothes, her costumes, the throwaway lines that she says. It’s so quotable. I have four different versions of the poster in my living room. The book by Muriel Spark is amazing, too. Whenever Panti is working with somebody new on a big project, I always make sure that they go and watch that movie first, because if they haven’t seen it, they’re not really going to get half of my references. So much about Panti comes from Maggie Smith in that movie – the clothes, the way she holds herself, her attitude.
What’s your most controversial pop-culture opinion?
Beyoncé is not a very good singer. She’s an incredible performer – one of the best live performers ever. And yes, she hits every note. But there’s no crack in her voice to let the light in. It’s all so perfect; it has this hard gloss that I can’t fall in love with. So I’ll watch every live performance of hers – she’s incredible – but do I think that other people could sing the songs better? Yeah, I do. The gays will never forgive me for that but that’s just how I feel.
If you had to fight a famous person, who would it be, how would you fight them and who would win?
Bindi Irwin, jelly wrestling, and I would win. Clearly she’s a fit young woman, she’s used to wrestling koalas and crocodiles. I know how the Irwins are thought of in Australia but I figure I might as well make a splash if I’m going to do it, and I think Australia would be glued to that match. And I think we should jelly wrestle, because about 15 years ago I went to a gay nightclub in Brisbane on a Tuesday night and there were literally seven people in there, and they were having a jelly wrestling night. I had to wrestle a young lesbian and I won. It’s a fond memory.
What song do you want played at your funeral?
Little Sparrow by Dolly Parton. It’s from one of her bluegrass albums. It’s achingly beautiful. And people would be bawling their eyes out behind their dramatic black veils, which they better be fucking wearing.
Rory O’Neill is touring his one-woman show Panti Bliss: If These Wigs Could Talk to Arts Centre Melbourne, 4-9 February; Brunswick Picture House in Brunswick Heads, 11-12 February; and the Factory Theatre in Sydney, 25-26 February
