Al Pillay

Al Pillay
Born Alan Pillay
(1959-08-22) 22 August 1959
Grimsby, England
Other names Alan Pillay, Alana Pellay, Lana Pellay, Lanah Pellay
Occupation Actor and singer
Years active 1983 - present

Alan "Al" Pillay also known as "Al Pillay" (born 22 August 1959), the star of Eat the Rich is a person of many names and two genders, starring in The Comic Strip Presents as Alan Pellay playing Himself in Gino (Episode 10) as Alana Pellay playing Herself in "The Bullshitters" (Episode 13) and, finally, as Lana Pellay playing Mary in the feature movie, The Supergrass.

Early life

Pillay was born near the docks of Grimsby where he was the youngest of six children, his mother a cleaning lady of Irish and Trinidadian descent, his father an engineer on the fishing trawlers originally from South Africa of Sri lankan and Spanish descent.

Career

Working men's clubs

Pillay left school at fifteen and went to Manchester where she befriended the prominent Northern drag performers Bunny Lewis and Frank "Foo Foo" Lammar. She was noted for her impersonations of Shirley Bassey, Eartha Kitt, Lena Horne, Cleo Laine and Dorothy Squires in full drag and no microphone and was booked into the Working men's clubs throughout the North of England as well as the cabaret club circuit.

Disco diva

During a lull in her drag career, while managing the Black Market Café in Levenshulme and renting a room from Coronation Street actor Alan Rothwell, Pillay was introduced to Kay Carroll and Mark E Smith of The Fall. She formed her own band the 'I Scream Pleasures,' which would appear as guest support at many Fall gigs, with an original repertoire of songs including "Parasitic Machines", "Surrender Your Gender", "Closet Queen", "Do You Like Labels", "Spirit Souls" and "You Aint Nothing But A Phoney F-cking Hetero Queen".

She metamorphosed into a disco diva as the hormone-popping transsexual Lana Pellay, dressed in costumes by her close friend Leigh Bowery[1] and with a top 40 single in Australia and New Zealand with "Pistol In My Pocket".[2][3] She also accompanied Gary Clail on his 1991 hit "Human Nature", singing the couplet "Let the carnival begin... Every pleasure, every sin!"

TV and movie star

While squatting in Notting Hill she met Keith Allen who invited her to appear in the newly born Channel 4’s first ever program aimed at a youth audience. There she met her champion, Peter Richardson, actor, comedian, writer and director of The Comic Strip Presents who wrote parts for her in the episodes Susie, Gino, The Bullshitters and The Supergrass. He also wrote the lead part for her in the feature film Eat the Rich.[4]

Theatre and cabaret

As Al Pillay she performed in a one-person play Glitter & Twisted based on her life, written by Tim Fountain, which had its premiere at the Beckett Theater[5] on 42nd Street as part of the first Manhattan Musical Theatre Festival. She also appeared in her own cabaret A Life in Song at the Pizza on the Park and the Café De Paris. Her cabaret performance has been released as a double CD.[6] More recently, she has performed the title role of the celebrated Welsh singer Dorothy Squires in Mrs. Roger Moore.[7]

Discography (as Lana Pellay)

Singles

References

  1. ↑ Positive Nation Interview with Pillay "Leigh Bowery and I were enormously close. I still have all the big Liberace coats and shirts he made me”.
  2. 1 2 Kent, David (1993). Australian Chart Book 1970–1992 (Illustrated ed.). St. Ives, N.S.W.: Australian Chart Book. p. 231. ISBN 0-646-11917-6. N.B. the Kent Report chart was licensed by ARIA between mid 1983 and 19 June 1988.
  3. 1 2 "charts.org.nz > Lana Pellay – Pistol in My Pocket (song)". Hung Medien. Retrieved 2016-04-13.
  4. ↑ Time Out Movie Review “In this second feature from the Comic Strip team, genderless black waiter Pellay takes to the road to lead a People's Revolution… True to Comic Strip form, the film lampoons the lunacy of every social group it touches and Pellay's transformation of a swank London restaurant into an eatery on the lines of a pie shop is not to be missed”.
  5. ↑ Playbill.com 2 August 2004 “A two-act British import about two sides of Old England: Black against White, Poor against Posh, Crude against Smooth, Town against Gown. Starring Alan Pillay as the black vulgar Northern English drag queen reminiscing on her shabby life in a new musical play Glitter & Twisted, specially written for the occasion by award winning author Tim Fountain." The Beckett Theatre in Theater Row”
  6. ↑ The Sunday Times 12 August 2007 “A Life in Song is a double CD of Pillay’s cabaret act, in which showbiz standards, including a genuinely affecting Both Sides Now, are peppered with camp northern stories, equal parts Alan Bennett and Larry Grayson”
  7. ↑ "Dorothy Squires: Mrs Roger Moore - One4ReviewOne4Review". One4review.co.uk. 2015-09-30. Retrieved 2016-04-16.
  8. ↑ "Official Charts > Lana Pellay". The Official UK Charts Company. Retrieved 2016-04-13.

External links

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