Giles Woodforde meets a burlesque star who insists it’s all about glamour, variety and fun

‘You can’t miss me!” emails Missy Malone as we arrange to meet in a coffee bar. Indeed, but it’s the very cheerful smile I notice first, rather than the distinctive streak of white hair she’s maintained since she was a teenager.

Listing her occupation as “burlesque performer, actress, model”, Missy happily admits to reaching her 30th birthday this year: “I’m not old enough to adopt a ‘stage age’ yet,” she laughs.

Missy is bringing her show The Missy Malone & Friends Burlesque Revue to Didcot’s Cornerstone Arts Centre at a time when Oxford’s Lodge club, which formerly featured lap-dancing, is controversially planning to return to its Pennyfarthing Place premises as a burlesque bar. So what, I ask Missy, does the word “burlesque” mean to her?

“The word’s got a bit lost in translation, you might say, because it’s a combination of things: music, parody, jokes, showgirls, and not many clothes. The striptease element is how many people think of burlesque, and of course it is included.”

With another laugh — she has a very vibrant sense of humour — Missy adds: “My shows try to show a whole variety of different kinds of perform-ance, but skimpy clothes and feathers do catch attention! As for strippers, I defend everybody’s right to do what they want to do — it’s a modern world. But my show goes around theatres, not clubs. It’s usually over by 9.30pm, and there is no full frontal nudity.”

Missy grew up in 1980s Livingston, between Edinburgh and Glasgow. Had Livingston been in America, the local theatre might well have featured burlesque shows in years gone by. But, I suspect, surely not in Scotland?

“Absolutely not!” Missy confirms. “Livingston is a very small town, it didn’t even have a cinema when I was growing up. There wasn’t a lot to do at all. I was quite a creative only child, so I was always making plays at home, and my mum was really encouraging.

“At 16 I enrolled at Edinburgh College of Art to study costume design as a degree. I discovered burlesque there, because I was also part of a circus group, and learnt trapeze and stilt walking. One of my circus tutors encouraged me to take up burlesque.

“By the time I was 18, I was going round to various venue owners saying, ‘I think I should do this burlesque performance in your club.’ I was in the right place at the right time. There was nobody doing burlesque in Edinburgh. Now there’s a whole section of the Fringe Festival devoted to it.”

But as Missy’s act developed, and she began to take off more clothes, did her mum start to disapprove?

“Never. I grew up in a household that was very open. My mum doesn’t think there’s anything to be ashamed of in displaying the body. I don’t do anything rude, it’s all a bit of fun.

“I do 13 different solo performances, and I’ve made all the costumes. I’ve got a particular interest in the classic pin-up beauties whose pictures used to be painted on to the noses of American military planes during World War II. As a teenager they looked like real women to me — that’s what I aspired to look like.”

Missy Malone’s show arrives in Didcot on Valentine’s Night. What will be on offer?

“It’ll be a little bit sexy and cheeky, but we’ll have lots of fun. We’ll have a singing compère, and dancers working in different styles. We have a boy who does comedy sketches and works with puppets. I like variety!

“But,” Missy adds, “People who come along expecting to see a strip show will be very disappointed. I’m harking back to more innocent times.”

The Missy Malone & Friends Burlesque Revue
Cornerstone Arts Centre, Didcot
Saturday, February 14
Tickets: 01235 515144