As Time Out drinks editor, I visit a fair few pubs – and if all the joints I went to were like this, my job would be the best in the world. ‘The Queen’s Head’ is a pop-up ‘boozer’ on the lower ground floor of Selfridges (suitably close to its premium spirits collection), the festive home for polysexual party people Sink the Pink and their Christmas panto throughout December.
It’s their second year in the department store’s theatre space, and this time it’s been spruced up to look like a pub straight out of the old East End, with flock wallpaper, red carpets and rickety banquettes, the ceiling festooned with glitzy tinsel. The audience’s seats are clusters of wooden chairs around beer-matt-topped tables and the performance falls to the pub floor. This is way more than two pints of lager and a packet of crisps – a side-splitting romp that’s as camp as, you know, Christmas.
Our story centres around Bet Lynch-type landlady, Ginger Johnson, whose pub’s display of Christmas lights is so outrageous that Channel 12 News – and its Chanel-wearing, vodka-chugging, scene-stealing news anchor Wendy Minger – are coming down to record the live switch-on.
Minger is a panto villain to cherish, and her pouting, power-thrusting performance is the Christmas gift that keeps on giving. What ensues is a chaotic soap-style cabaret complete with Elvis suits, a pop-up snowman, punk rock, pearly kings and queens, a song or two round the old Joanna and, of course, towering stilettos.
The trad pub setting clashes so well with gender-upending antics, and the energy, innuendo and flamboyant routines create an infectious atmosphere that harks back to the good old days of the big night out down the local. A great, irreverent festive outing for anyone who thinks Christmas is a drag.