Ladies and gentlemen, here's an interview that we truly relished - and we trust you will to. Chances are, you're reading this as you're fans of the cabaret stars and all-time agent provocateurs of the most tantalising and sensationally progressive variety, no other than Mat Fraser (think Sealboy of love, 'Spasticus Autisticus' at the Paralympics Opening Ceremony, and loads of stuff on the telly - not forgetting his countless globe-trotting stage appearances) and Trixie Malicious (think blonde Bombshell of B-movie iconography and international performing minx, of the dolphin loving comedic variety). Or was it the suggestion of Sleaze that's caught your attention? If it was Sleaze you're after dear reader, you got it coming - not just in this interview, but in a night that's dedicated to such FILTH! Yes, dear reader - on Wednesday, 6th March 2013 you can attend SLEAZE at Lockside Bar and Grill in London's most prudish of boroughs, that of Camden - making this a most thrilling adventure! But what to expect? You really want to know? It's a NYC style cabaret night - making it a pretty raunchy, out-spoken affair. Read on as they tease out the juice….

Run-Riot: What's the difference between NYC style and LDN style cabaret?

Trixie: NYC style strikes me as edgier, more informal, and can be ruder and cruder, not just about the "pretty" - although of course there are plenty of pretty and edgy performers in both places. They are both totally wonderful places to perform! Plus, there is so much interchange of performers between the two cities. Mat and I frequently perform in both places. In NYC I'm more likely to do more nudity, and go-go dancing for tips afterwards. London seems more likely to have themed nights where everyone is dressed to perfection. I don't think one city or the other is better for performing - just different. They're both blessed with tonnes of talent and supportive communities.

Mat: Yes, NYC is edgier. The work there often refers to current affairs and what's around us. It's for sure ruder in that they have much more nudity; and the audiences don't have to pretend it's the 60's in their dress code - there is no dress code other than people looking sharp. There's at least one show every night of the week doing burlesque in New York. There is less young bimbonic corset-undoing with glove peels. Although, in NYC it is becoming more codified in that way, but thankfully there are still enough artistes doing dangerous, funny, silly, stupid, political work out there. There is in London too - at Sleaze - and at some, but not many other places.

Run-Riot: You're both well travelled international stars - who better to ask - of all the places you've been to, which is the Sleaziest of them all?

Trixie: Hmmmm... Mirror Mirror on the ceiling, where gives me the sleaziest feeling? Well, Sleaze is a mind-set, not a destination and I've had so much fun all over the world! It's hard to choose! I'm gonna have to say one of my most favourite show places was New Orleans. Where else but Bourbon street can you perform a burlesque show; dance to amazing bands featuring saxophones; drink Swamp Daiquiris and Sazerac; down oysters; see a live sex act; buy a voodoo doll; visit a graveyard; watch a bounce-off; have a psychic reading; and see the glint of an alligator's eye in the blue moonlight - all in a few blocks square radius in one night!

Mat: For me its New York's Coney Island, at Sideshows by the Seashore where they have Burlesque at the Beach. It's a rite of performance passage, where - it is argued, I think convincingly - that neo-burlesque started back in around 1990, by Bambi the Mermaid and Dick Z Zigun. I've seen - and been in - stuff there that you couldn't get away with anywhere else outside of a sex club. It's where I met Julie (my wife Julie Atlas Muz), Bunny Love, Tigger!, Bambi the Mermaid, Lady Ace, and others. The only place that competes would be the old Slipper Room.

Run-Riot: Are you Camden's last-standing risqué night?

Trixie: Well, to be honest I don't know what else is going on in Camden these days! I'm just caught up in my own little world of Sleaze ideas! Being risque is not even something I aim for. I'm just trying to book and do what I personally find mad, entertaining, fun and new - the acts and the games that really tickle us!

Mat: I'm with Trixie on this, I don't go out in Camden that much, and what I have seen can bore me rigid: unthinking adherence to an aesthetic born of compromise and and fear - unbelievably making some cabaret and burlesque a force of conservative cultural values. But, I digress - at Sleaze we do try to get as close to scandalous flagrance of certain apparent lines / the law - that we love to cross and make people happy. Shhh!

Run-Riot: Trixie - we know you're a real movie buff - is there anything coming up that's a must see?

Trixie: Why, yes! As John Waters is a hero of mine and a Sleaze inspiration, I'm totally psyched to see I am Divine at the BFI Lesbian & Gay Film Festival - opening on the 14 March. Divine is a drag muse, comedienne and fashion icon for sure.

Run-Riot: Mat - you were the star at the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games. Could it have been sexed up any more?

Mat: Wow, Trixie gets the fun question but I have to be the political ambassador for disability politics? I like movies too!

Last night I got high and watched Les Miserables on the IMAX in Waterloo - the biggest screen in the U.K. - and cried 11 times. It is the piece of art that has affected me the most, along with Martin Sherman's play Bent, and Ang Lee's film Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. I'm a sucker for social injustice, altruism, and relentless love, and Les Mis by Victor Hugo is one of the best stories for those elements.
 
I thought the opening ceremony for the Paralympics was fucking awesome and radical. My favourite moment was playing Spasticus Autisticus [see clip below] in front of the 65,000 people, the Queen, and the world - knowing that when it came out in 1981 it was banned by the BBC. It was a massive Fuck You to the old ways of disability and heralded in the new (hopefully) - and it got me my slot with Coldplay!



Run-Riot: What role do you have as outsider performers in an oppressive world?

Trixie: We are damn proud to be outsider performers in a mean ole oppressive world! We love being a family who are not defined by physical perfection or propriety. We want to send fun and love into the world - and for those who get the jokes to send it back! We pride ourselves on being inclusive, yet still showing people quality performances.

Mat: To normalise ourselves - that others may realise we are the same. To use our attention grabbing differences to good effect and highlight the ridiculousness of normalcy (I say that rather than normality because as we all know it's a myth and doesn't actually exist, no two things in nature are the same, just on Sheeple TV); to send our Universal fun and love to all; to lampoon the bad bits; to cajole people into understanding it's all a joke; to satirise; and ultimately to enjoy our lives so much that other people want to join our merry throng of fucked up mofo's.

Run-Riot: Trixie - what are your all-time top-3 'Interactive Comedy' moments?

Trixie: This is hard to choose! I do burlesque but have also done lots of interactive comedy which is quite a different animal. It is a fun challenge as aside from the concept it's mainly improvisational. My talented colleague Josh Knowles and I used to do a lot of this - two of my top-3 moments were during performances with him.

Firstly, we used to do an act called Chakralax: Tantric Aerobics for Lovers and a Laxative for your Chakras where we were a new-age healing duo. I'll never forget riding on a plastic dolphin in matching white unitards to Enya at the ICA - high art indeed! I still really want to resurrect Chakralax - they were great characters with crystals in their palms and extremely soothing voices.

The second great moment was at The White Blackbird which was a night held at a country mansion where we were given a hotel suite to turn into an interactive space to receive guests in all evening. We did up the entire suite in very 1960's yellow. We plied our guests with cocktails, and bored them to death with gruelling details of our vacation at an all-inclusive resort in Spain where we awakened our palettes to the exoticism of our first ever helpings of paella. Meanwhile, gradually inching the conversation towards the potentiality of a swingers key party.

For my third - I am currently seriously enjoying inventing the interactive games for Sleaze. I have a game called It Puts the Lotion in the Basket which is dedicated (of course) to that infamous soundbite from Silence of the Lambs. I don't want to give too much of this away, it needs to be seen - but I will say it involves our resident drag queen Miss Cairo and audacious amounts of lotion.



Run-Riot: If the night 'SLEAZE' were to continue over the years, passed from generation to generation, what kind of acts do you think would be on the line-up in the year 2169?

Mat: Wow, Um. Enforced slave sex wrestling in the Obamadome beamed live into your anusbrains. Mutants enjoying our show with stone clacking for applause (a la Inbred). People stripping right down to their bones; our signature cocktail - the Sleaztini - glowing green because it's radioactive and not just 'cos we put the colour in.

Trixie: Hmmm in the year 2169? After the great apocalypse? I'd like to think it would be cockroaches doing their best Cher impersonations in a talent competition judged by Keith Richards. They say those are the only ones who'll survive. Did I mention the cockroaches would be totally killing it?

Run-Riot: The World infamous Miss Exotic World and Miss Coney Island winner, the sensational Julie Atlas Muz [pictured at bottom] will be your headliner for 6 March - we've been primed she'll be presenting some 'scandalous artistic work' - please can you explain?

Tixie: I'm gonna leave this one to Mat as he'll describe her the very best for sure! We've been waiting to have her for sooo long and we are so psyched the day is finally arriving!

Mat: What Julie does is special, and so different to most burlesque. Some misguided people think she is a shock merchant but her work is pure love coming out of her - into satire and nudity when she wants it. Plus blood and morbid humour, political fun, slutty feminism - and of course she holds the stage like few other performers. She has an electric stage presence that commands attention, effortlessly entertaining, normality maiming, powerful woman reclaiming.

Yes, scandalous in many ways, bored by the increasingly narrow paradigm that culture seems to be reducing to - and staunchly reacting against it to bring forth amazingly sexy, salacious, clever, loving, beautiful, ugly, funny, harrowing, confrontational, silly, camp, queer - and often breathtaking work that people love. She constantly comes up with new moves in a genre that often seems to have exhausted itself of innovation, and frankly my dears, she both epitomises Sleaze our club, and is simultaneously and absolutely a one woman performing masterclass in burlesque, sexiness, humour and social satire all-in-one. She's why I went to New York's burlesque scene rather than London's. She's why I wanted make Sleaze with Trixie. She's my wife!!! HA HAAAAAAAA!!!!!! Yes! Back of the womb! Cache-back!

Run-Riot: What else can we look forward to at SLEAZE on Weds 6 March?

Trixie: Julie Atlas Muz showing how she can work it like no other performer. Mat Fraser crooning, hosting and being the ultimate Sealboy. Millie Dollar nude uking. Dave The Bear getting planks hard as a pirate. Our very own Sleaze Drag Queen Miss Cairo surprising us with some precocious Sleaze. Trixie's Sleazerpiece Theatre Reading, plus a Grand Prize Raffle Gift Basket, Birthday Spankings, Fun Tuneage, Drink Specials and Games!

Mat: The games are going to be new, great and memorable - like nightmare orgiastic visions seared indelibly into your brains forever. There'll be birthday spankings to satisfy the gods of anniverserial pervlove. Dramatic readings of intense, Oscar-worthy renditions; male hair hunkiness Dave the bear's man meat mentalness; the AWWWESOME tunes of legendary DJ Hit Man Hearn [pictured near the nice bottom]; and finally Julie and I will be doing our now infamous duet American Trilogy to close the show.

Sleaze
20:30 - midnight, FREE
Wednesday, 6th March 2013
at Lockside Bar and Grill
75-89 Upper Walkway
West Yard
Camden Lock Place
London NW1 8AF

Say Please to Sleaze on Facebook here facebook.com/saypleasetosleaze

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COMPETITION: Win 2x vouchers for a "Sleaztini" and a little kiss from the sleaze team! Yes, it's free entry - but what more could you ask for? Your 'prize' will be presented to you at Sleaze on Wednesday 6 March. To enter the competition, send an email to katie@run-riot.com with the correct answer in the ‘subject’ box. The winner will be randomly selected

Q: Which band sang the song 'Nice'n'Sleazy'? This so happens to be the intro song to the Sleaze night.
A: .1) Roxy Music .2) The Ramones .3) The Clash .4) The Stranglers