Oh, what a drag

As every two-bit gag-merchant in town has hot-footed it to the Edinburgh Festival, so it falls to the talents of globe-trotting drag queen Miss Coco Peru to put bums on seats at the Soho Theatre. With a 14-year drag pedigree under her hairpiece, Coco certainly knows her business - clocking up lengthy residencies in her native New York and Los Angeles.

The show she brings to the Soho Theatre for the next fortnight is an amalgam of her last three US shows, and promises a mix of the heartfelt and flippant, with a few ditties thrown in.

Peru is the alter ego of Clinton Leupp and named in honour of a drag queen called Coco whom Leupp saw performing on a trip to Peru in the early 1990s.

'Peru's quite a macho Catholic country, yet he was respected because he had the courage to do what he wanted,' says Leupp. 'It inspired me to go back to New York and write a show which addressed my life, but through drag.'

Growing up a 'very effeminate boy' in a 'very working-class neighbourhood' in the Bronx left Leupp with his share of mental scars - he's been working his way through them in the form of comic drag monologues ever since.

While the daily threat of being persecuted for his swishy ways may have honed his wit - 'the only way to stay one step ahead was to be funny' - it came at a price. 'Drag is a way to reclaim part of myself I thought was damaged back then,' he says.

'People love to hear your most embarrassing stories or most horrific childhood memories, as long as they're presented in a way that's funny.' Which is where the dress comes in.

'If I was saying what I say dressed as a guy, I don't think the mainstream audience would buy into it as much. Without the fantasy element of the drag, what I'm saying could seem too bleak or schmaltzy,' he says.

Unlike drag acts who earn a crust wearing a manky wig and collecting cloakroom tickets, Peru earns a living as a 'monologist' and nipped off for a couple of days' carousing with pal Liza Minnelli before coming to Britain.

Leupp has even done a turn as Bree Van De Kamp in a comedy skit for a sketch show written by Desperate Housewives creator Marc Cherry. It doesn't get much classier than that.