Forming part of Duckie’s retelling of Lady Malcom’s Servants Ball this spring and summer, join Duckie for Lady Malcolm’s Servants Ball over Gay Shame Weekend.

Back in the 1920s and ‘30s, Lady Malcolm’s Servants’ Ball was a notorious party on London’s queer scene.

Despite the organisers warning against ‘sex perverts and degenerates’, working class queans and dykes flocked to the event, held annually at the Royal Albert Hall.

Their surviving stories reveal the secret lives of queer folk and the interplay between gender, class, modernity and authority between the wars. Performance group Duckie will be taking over Bishopsgate Institute for two nights to recreate this legendary event, on both Friday 24th and Saturday 25th June.

Rammed full of fortune-tellers, sideshows, dancers, Gentleman’s Club, 1930s honky-tonks, the line-up will even ‘Lady Malcolm’ herself as host. Starring Le Gateaux Chocolat, Readers Wifes, Neil Bartlett, Christopher Green, The Bees Knees, Amy Lamé, Leslie Smith, Lasana Shabazz, George Chakravarthi, Lucille Power, Sue Frumin, Florence Peake, Wrench & Franks and The Pink Dancers. After ‘Gross Indecency’ in 2010 and ‘Gateways’ in 2013, this is the latest of Duckie’s Vintage Clubbing Series - an homage to the London queers who came before us.

"We want to go deeper into undiscovered queer history, and with its brilliant archive and programme Bishopsgate Institute is the best place to do that, and we aim to have a lot of fun here this summer.” Duckie hostess Amy Lamé