I saw Liza Minnelli’s performance on the Muppet Show – and she was inspired to become a drag star Pull

Bshiny, with wingtips and immersed in Le Male, I put pink GHDs in my hair until they popped out and sang. After emerging from a cloud of cheap hairspray, I was ready for the dancefloor. I was 18 years old and grew up in Blackpool, a place synonymous with hedonism and fun. I left high school at the age of 14 and from 16 I studied theater at my local college. When I was young, I was smuggled into clubs and in my spare time I would watch shows in our many beautiful theaters. The bright lights of the lights, showgirls, feathers, sequins and rhinestones were intoxicating. Blackpool was – and still is – amazing.

When the place is closed, a new journey begins. One night, as the sun rose (and so did I), the drag queen took me back to her place. I didn’t know the meaning of what I expected, but I had to study subjects that I could not get to university.

Drag Queen was Liza Minnelli’s honor roll. He knows every beat of Liza’s movie, every concert, every choreography move. She sang as Liza in all the bars around town. Now I was anointed by being welcomed into his home.

Was I ready to be trained? Very much. They took me to the living room to watch a VHS of what I was told was one of Liza’s best shows. I was expecting a cabaret, winner of eight Academy Awards, but not on this occasion. They sat me down on the sofa and played Episode 414 of The Muppet Show from 1979, with special guest Liza Minnelli.

The plot works so well for the same reasons that The Muppet Christmas Carol is so beloved. In the film, Michael Caine shows the events of his life in a crowded movie theater, and in his guest appearances Liza compares him to selflessness. Take a musical number Copacabana they do: the curtain goes up and Liza is smoking. He is the narrator, the storyteller, in a Face-esque black polo neck that lends the gravitas to Barry Manilow’s voice. A little while later, it’s Lola, dancing with people’s petticoats. Or in one scene Liza is holding Kermit while they sing A Quiet Thing together. Their connection is pure and soft, something simple and gentle.

When I think about it almost 20 years later, I am now 10 years old and although life can be tough, my childhood is already there. But I think back to this time, which would be the plot of the movie with Blackpool as a beautiful cinematic backdrop to my coming out/coming years of Technicolor fantasy. I didn’t know it at the time, but what happened helped me to start my career.

Four years later, in 2011, I started doing cabaret shows in south London at the famous Royal Vauxhall Tavern at night as Duckie, where my versions were full of wigs and jockstraps, fake blood and mascot costumes. In 2015, I joined the international stage where I was part of a large number of touring and circus acts, performing in the US, Australia, New Zealand and London’s glittering West End. I once did a 107-hour gig in Glastonbury and on the outskirts of Adelaide, as a teenage girl who wouldn’t leave her bedroom.

Ever since that fateful night in Blackpool in the 2000s, Liza has been my hero. I saw her live in concert at the Royal Festival Hall in London in 2013. I have a Liza tattoo on my right thigh. Back in 2019, I performed for eight hours in an old church in Brighton, dressed as Liza Minnelli, singing her song Consequences in full, based on Liza’s beautiful dedication to excellence. Pet Shop Boys, who created The Liza Effect Album, although I heard what I was doing and I said my work sounded good.

And if you have seen one of my shows, please understand that the artistic basis of my theater is not drama school education or Stanislavski; and Liza on The Muppets. Honestly, I don’t know where the drag queen is in this story. I hope he is fine, but if I saw him I would say: “Thank you for changing my life.”

The Harry Clayton-Wright Show Mr Blackpool at the Grand Theatre, Blackpool, 20 May.