Drag Race UK 5’s northern queens on what it means to represent ‘up north’ on TV
‘I’m the fashionable northern chip shop woman’
For season five of Drag Race UK, the northern queens have shown UP. The show has had some critique over the last few seasons that a lot of the queens were based in London. Even the northern queens the show had cast were not always repping their hometown drag scene and were based in the capital. This year, the north dominates. Six out of 10 queens in the cast of Drag Race UK season five are northern – so I caught up with them all to find out what it means to them to rep us northerners in a country feeling increasingly London centric.
Banksie
“You know, it’s actually lovely having Michael, Tomara, Ginger, Naomi and Kate from the north and up and down the country. I think that our drag is usually inspired by northern women, and northern women are brassy – the funniest people you’ll ever meet. All you have to do is go to a northern chip shop and you’ve had a laugh for the day. That’s where our drag is inspired from, especially my own. I’m the fashionable northern chip woman!
“It’s so nice having the other girls there who can understand the humour, who can relate to different points of view. It was nice not having to fall into a London accent the moment you walked in.”
Ginger Johnson
“Michael [Marouli], Tomara [Thomas] and I are all from actually really quite close to each other up in the north east. We didn’t know each other at all before we came here, but certainly for me just hearing the accent in the room was so comforting because you’re away from everything, your support system. All the people you love, your friends, your cats, the things that make you feel like a human.
“Just having those voices in the room is really important to me. There are a few really special moments between the three of us in the series that happened because of that northern bond.”