I also spoke to the women performing at HMS Pin-up before and after their acts, in an effort to find out a little bit more about their individual experiences on and off stage.
How did you come up with your stage name, and can you perhaps choose one word to describe your on stage persona?
Tallulah Mockingbird: Funnily enough, my stage name was actually one of the first ones that I thought of myself (it’s a play on the whole ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ thing). I did sit down with some very good friends of mine over a couple of glasses of wine and have a complete brainstorm about all the burlesque names that they could think of (and one friend was actually really great at it), but in the end it still came back to the one that I’d first thought of.
And my stage persona in one word? That’s a bit tricky…Cheeky is not quite the right word, but it has a sort of cheeky pin-up kind of feel. That’s what I like to go for in my act anyway.
Violet Va Voom: I got my stage name through my teacher who I spent last summer working with, along with some other girls. She asked us to come up with some words that we felt represented our personalities, what we liked about life, what we liked about burlesque, and then because she is deeply involved in the burlesque scene herself, she knew what names were already in use by other performers. She then tried to come up with something creative and new for each of her tutees, and that’s how I became Violet Va Voom!
“The Scarlet Sta” Miss Ruby Red: I’ve always been called ‘Red’; I’m ex-army and whilst I was in the army I had bright red hair, so I was called that then. Ruby was my grandma’s name and I think ‘Ruby’ and ‘Red’ naturally go together, whereas the ‘Scarlet Sta’ bit is so that when you Google the name, I come out near the top of the results!
And I would say my stage act is very ‘cheesecake’- very fun, flirty and girly.
Miss Golden De Licious: I came up with my stage name on a boat on the way back from Bestival (on the Isle of Wight) last year. I’d been waitressing in a burlesque tent and got to see all these great performers; it was absolutely brilliant and I thought ‘I really, really, really want to do this now’. So, on the way back on the ferry, we were coming up with stage names to give me some inspiration for my first routine, and I decided that I wanted my first act to have a temptation/garden of Eden theme.
We went through all the usual types of suggestions, with ‘Fifi’, ‘Cherry’, ‘Trixie’, ‘Sparkle’ and everything else, and nothing fitted, so I decided that the best thing to do was use the name of an apple [to link with the theme of my proposed act]. We tried ‘Miss Appley- (Whatever)’ and ‘Pink Lady’, and it didn’t really work, but then ‘Golden’ came up (and my hair’s ginger, so that worked) along with ‘De Licious’ (which is quite an apt name), and so ‘Golden De Licious’ it was!
And my on-stage persona? After tonight’s show, I think it’ll have to be ‘crazy’ (in the best possible way!) ‘Unique’ possibly…I’m going to say ‘unique’.
