Issue one: Contents

Peaches Christ
Buck Angel
How to be a successful stalker
Hayley Cropper
Lauren Harries
Five documentaries you should own
Strut your tranny stuff in London
How to look like Pete Burns

About the author

You don't have to be a drag queen to be camp as tits. Guest writer TOBY RAY talks about his favourite mad old birds ...

For most people Jackie Onassis is a huge fashion icon - stylish, elegant and feminine. But for those of us inthe- know, her Aunt Edith and cousin Edie, the stars of this film, will always win our hearts.

The film documents the extraordinary life of Mrs. Edith Bouvier Beale, or “Big” Edie, and her daughter “little” Edie. The two have lived together for over twenty years in near isolation. They use just a few rooms of their decrepit 28-room mansion, surrounded by cats, racoons and falling plaster.

Little Edie is a stunning sight. Aged in her mid-fifties, we first see this handsome woman as she works her way through an overgrown garden to meet the film makers. Wearing trousers wrapped around her waist and pinned together to create a short shirt, she sports a woollen jumper wrapped around her head, it's arms secured around her face with a gold brooch. She announces: "I think this really is the best costume for today. Mother wanted me to wear a kimono. We had a terrible fight about it." Self-obsessed and childlike she often talks of returning to New York, "I can't get my figure back until I get to New York".

Meanwhile, back in the house, we observe the aristocratic Big Edie mixing cocktails in a jam jar, cooking corn on a camp stove, and exercising her podgy arms - all from the comfort of her ratty single bed. She spends her days complimenting Little Edie one moment, and then shooting her down the next.

We never really learn if these women love each other, or hate each other. Are they co-dependant? Which one is the carer is never quite clear, they both seem to need each other. Perhaps, together for so long, they learned to get along, to create their own world, and create a way to enjoy it. Little Edie speaking of her Mother sums it up best, "I hope she don't die soon, she's a lot of fun".

The endearing mix of squalor and faded glamour, added to the theatrical performances from both women, leaves me with the feeling that the show will have continued long after the filmmakers leave. In fact, I think they probably captured just one small scene from a very long and fabulous show.