No Wire Hangers

Faking it through your children. Gaby and Sarah discuss how fame and fortune has affected three different families in the showbiz and reality arenas. 

What is the impact of early childhood fame, and what if your father refuses to let you go to school? Dream come true, or recipe for a nightmare?

Diversions include the restoration of hairdressers and beauticians as the UK lockdown eases!!

Gaby and Sarah resume their exploration of faking it in popular culture and the media. How camp does that make you - if you have to maintain a facade from childhood onwards for the sake of other people's bank balances - and at the cost of your own sanity, sometimes?

With diversions into rose-gold Rolls Royces, as well as which Gaby plugs her appearance on Channel 5's 'In Jane Austen's Footsteps' (Viacom UK) and also forgets what a vocal fry is for the whole episode and then salvages it at the end. 

What makes a person from a privileged, well-off, white family turn their identity into that of a different nationality or ethnic group - and one that might have traditionally been more disadvantaged? Is it just the attention? The money? And what about the pressure to keep the pretence going??

Gaby and Sarah look at some recent high-profile cases from Rachel Dolezal to influencer Hilary "Hilaria" Baldwin. Diversions along the way involve just how desperate we are for pedicures!

Happy 2021 - and join Gaby and Sarah for the first episode of Season 2 in which they go deep with the secret life of Hollywood heart-throb Rock Hudson. They pay tribute to his gorgeousness and bravery and the hard choices he had to make in order to maintain a career and a private life, and then go public with his health status in 1985.

Along the way, they drop in on lock-down issues and of course give the legend that is Liz Taylor her due!

White Diamonds are Forever!

In our season 1 finale, Gaby and Sarah contemplate the heyday of Judy Garland's career and officially dub her a Queen of Camp!

We also consider our future for 2021 - with merch, more shows, and a search for patrons. So, if you are interested in assisting the creation of TOP QUALITY podcasting on all your favourite most sexy topics, then we will let you have our Patreon details very soon. And Gaby also rates Sarah's parties on the Wiltshire/Beverley Hills scale - proper scientific.

Happy 2021 y'all!!

For this episode we're in tears in tiers. Tier 2 restrictions mean that Gaby and Sarah are socially distanced (that's why the sound quality is what it is) - but that doesn't stop us getting emotionally involved in the early life and times of Judy Garland. From the 'Baby' Gumm sister she travels Over The Rainbow thanks to the pushiest mother of all pushy show-biz Moms - Ethel Gumm.

Join us for Judy, the first of a two-parter.

In which Gaby and Sarah twist and turn between the triumphant and the tragic. For the very epitome of Camp, we celebrate the good news about the new influences in politics in the USA - a female VP and a first lady who is a college professor and doctor of education, and then hark back to the 'bonkbuster' world of the writings of Jacqueline Susann. She was the novelist of 'Pucci decadence and a big mouth' who broke down barriers with her depictions of taboo subjects in the late 1960s bestseller 'The Valley of the Dolls'. Even camper still came the movie, the casting controversies, the cat fights, and then came the re-makes, and most of all the reality of the female stars. Their lives were reflected in the roles they played, and their fates were even more strange, bizarre, and tragic. How do we process the decline of Judy Garland (reflected in the character of Neely O'Hara in 'Dolls') as she auditioned for the movie only months before her death at 44? How do we fathom the depravity that took Sharon Tate (Jennifer in 'Dolls') from this world at only 26 and eight and a half months pregnant - slaughtered by the Manson family? We use Camp. We use the system of Camp to try and understand the mixture of madness, talent, beauty, and cruelty on show. And also gin - we use gin. In a martini like Jacqui Susann, or simply with tonic. ('I like a cocktail onion in mine, so I'm more of a gimlet girl' - Gaby). 

Gaby and Sarah consider the legacy of 'Big' Kathy Fenton, matriarch of the Richards/Hilton women. Her grand-daughter whom she called 'Star', Paris Hilton, has now released a documentary (free on Youtube) chronicling what she claims was the abuse she suffered in a residential school in Utah. Paris is now looking to shed her 'wild child' 'reality queen' image and heal. But the ghost of Big Kathy looms large over the family. What does it mean to have a narcissistic parent - and grand-parent? Should we live through our children, or for them? Did the school save Paris, as her mother Kathy Hilton claims? Gaby and Sarah talk through this difficult issue that surrounds this dynasty of actors and reality stars, with digressions into making mistakes in your early twenties, not treating your daughters like princesses, and a timely warning about the original narcissistic mother - our patron saint of NWH - Joan Crawford!

Gaby and Sarah delve into the legacy of 'Big Kathy' - the matriarch of the Hilton/Richards/Avenzino clan of women who populate the socialite world of upper-class America and have dominated the past two decades of reality television. We consider how Big Kathy (an Irish-American go-getter from Omaha) made it to the top and how 'Little' Kim Richards was the money-maker for the family throughout the 1970s and 80s. Tragedy, triumph, family feuds, and Big Kathy's philosophy all come under the microscope. The campest of 'Momagers' and the OG - Big Kathy Fenton!!

A look at mother/daughter relationships in showbiz again, and how Carrie Fisher tried to navigate the nonsense of her life. A tribute to her, in which Gaby and Sarah reveal as much about themselves as anyone else - yet again. Gaby's schoolgirl crush on Harrison Ford is blown apart once and for all, and Sarah offers advice on whether to go with the Princess Leia look for Halloween (hint: 'Don't bother!')