More Rosebud - Jodie Harsh
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What background and show format does More Rosebud introduce at the start?
Harriet, what's your middle name?
Anne.
So you're Harriet Anne Jane.
Yes.
Can you ask me what my middle name is?
What's your middle name, Giles?
Daubeny. Can you believe it? I'm Giles Daubeny Brandreth. So this proves that sometimes more is too much. You don't need to be Anne in the middle. No. I certainly don't need to be Daubeny in the middle. Sometimes more is excessive, but not on a Tuesday when it comes to Rosebud. The more, the merrier, as far as we're concerned. Welcome to more Rosebud. Are you set? Cue the music.
This is Rosebud. In fact, this is more than Rosebud. It's more Rosebud. We appear twice a week. Every Friday we are here with an interview. It's just me talking to somebody of interest. Well, today it's me talking to somebody of great interest, but I'm not doing it alone because always on a Tuesday, which is the day when this particular more Rosebud drops, I'm joined by my friend and producer, Harriet Jane.
I thought you were saying that I was the person of great interest because you're talking to me.
You are of huge interest to me.
I'm not, actually.
I'll tell you what I want to talk to you about. And it's dressing up in the clothes of the opposite sex. I'm thinking about that because they're doing another reprint of my autobiography. Well, it's a childhood memoir, really, called Odd Boy Out, published by Penguin, while we're plugging things. And they sent me proofs to have a look at, including the... Illustrations, lots of illustrations. And I see that one of the spreads has pictures of me in, well, fishnet tights, dressed as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, dressed as Lady Bracknell, dressed as a pantomime dame. Another page seems to have me dressed as Rosalind in As You Like It. And the picture editor was going through these pictures and he said, oh, is that a theme developing here?
I said, no, these just happen to be pictures in the book. They said, oh, you seem to do quite a lot of that. And it suddenly occurred to me, did you ever want to dress up as a boy? Harriet?
I don't think I have, actually, no.
It was quite a big thing in Victorian times for girls to dress as boys. The origin of the principal boy in pantomime goes back to, well, early Victorian times. There was a famous actress called Madame Vestris. who would often appear en travesti, as it was described, to make it seem respectable, using the French. And she appeared in tights, leggings, looking like a principal boy from a pantomime, because it was an opportunity for people to go to the theatre and see women's legs, which in early Victorian days you couldn't really do. But it became very fashionable, and there were all sorts of women who dressed as principal boys. But then there became a fashion for women entertainers to dress as men white tie top hat tails elegant men famously there was somebody called Vesta Tilly and there was oh I'm trying to remember the lady I saw Hetty King she was quite old by the time I saw her
appearing at a music hall in London called the Players' Theatre underneath the arches at Charing Cross Station. And she was, I suppose, in her 80s by the time I saw her. She looked very stylish. And she came on as a sailor. Oh. Yeah, in a sailor's outfit. And it was rather fun. So there's been a vogue for girls dressing as boys, as there has been over the years for men dressing as women.
Yeah, but it's, I suppose nowadays, you know, in Victorian times, women wore long skirts and crinolines and things, so dressing as a boy was more difficult. Whereas now, you can just wear trousers whenever you like.
Indeed, what are you wearing today?
You are wearing a sort of... Yeah, I mean, I'm not dressed as a man, but I'm wearing trousers. So, I suppose the urgency for women, or the frisson of wearing men's clothes, inverted commas, is slightly gone. I mean, I can imagine what I could wear to look more bloke-ish. So, when you see a woman in a tie, for example, I saw a woman the other day in a tie and a waistcoat and a shirt, and I thought, that looks cool. It was a kind of, yeah, men's outfit. She looked great.
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