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7 September 2017

RuPaul crowns her UK Drag Race ambassador

By Nick Bond

21 queens from across the country assembled at Cafe de Paris in Soho last night as RuPaul put them through their paces in order to hand-pick her UK Drag Race ambassador.

Ru’s fellow judges were in fine form, with Jonathan Ross screaming ‘YAAS KWEEN’ more enthusiastically than is probably appropriate for a heterosexual man and Katie Price at one point interrupting proceedings to demand someone bring her a Porn Star Martini (yes, her wish was granted).

Over three gruelling rounds, the audience watched queens lip-synch for the lives, sissy their walks and execute some seriously dangerous death drops:

Finally, there were only two queens left on stage: London’s own La Voix and Liverpool glamour girl The Vivienne. After much deliberation, Ru awarded the inaugural title of UK Drag Race Ambassador to… THE VIVIENNE!

We grabbed a few minutes with the winner directly after she’d been handed her crown and sceptre by Ru. In true drag style, just minutes after that once in a lifetime moment, we found her in a stairwell backstage, sat on a bin with a ciggie in her hand. The GLAMOUR. Here’s what she had to say:

Congrats Vivienne! So firsstly, what’s your background – what led you here tonight?

I moved to Liverpool when I was 16, started doing drag right away. I travelled the world for about a year and a half with a show, then when I came back to Liverpool I had a new goal: I wanted to go mainstream. I wanted to do drag in the UK and just take it by the TUCK. And I think I’ve achieved that tonight!

You mention wanting to go mainstream, and there’s really one name you associate with mainstream drag. What was it like meeting Ru?

“We didn’t see Ru before the show, so the first time we saw him was when we did our first runway. I came out and just looked him straight in the eye, I did not take my eye off him, and just POUNDED that runway. I kept my composue but once I got back stage I just screamed, because it was a dream come true. It feels like seven years of hard work came into that one moment.

Now, be honest: 21 queens all vying for the same title. Was it like bloody Showgirls behind the scenes? 

I was nervous coming here because if you put 21 drag queens in a room, things can get tense. But everyone’s been so lovely – we were all already friends on social media so we’re like a little drag family, we’ve all been wanting to see each other do well. It didn’t feel like a competition, really.

The-Vivienne-005

So, you’re officially the RuPaul’s Drag Race UK Ambassador. What now? 

I’ve always been an unofficial ambassador for RuPaul’s Drag Race anyway, so this has given me the platform to really get the message out there. I want people to know it’s an actual artform and we can do anything – sing, dance, lip-synch, stand-up-comedy, and paint ourselves into beautiful women, club kids and freaks.

If you want to see more of the Vivienne, follow her on Twitter or on Facebook, where she’s listed under her male name: “My drag name just got kicked off – THANKS FACEBOOK POLICE! Don’t worry, I’ll get Ru to send them a message and sort it out.” You tell ’em, gurl.

Check out The Vivienne’s audition video below:

RuPaul’s Drag Race will air every Monday and Tuesday at 10pm from 1st June on truTV, Freeview channel 68, Sky channel 198 and FreeSat channel 154. It’s followed by RuPaul’s Drag Race: Untucked, featuring never-seen-before behind the scenes content.

Here is a bonus picture of Katie Price from the event last night because, here at Attitude HQ, we can’t really stop looking at it this morning:

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