A Boy Called Audrey (Pictures from an Exhumation)

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We lived in a bedsit and there were two American sailors in the basement room. Based at the Holy Loch they were only in Glasgow at weekends. One day, one of them left his bag, a beautiful leather bag, on the doorstep. The star, from Rutherglen, was best known for his part in the long-running musical duo, in which he played Dr Evadne Hinge, and his family confirmed the news on Sunday. Then, one night, I was sitting at Waterloo Street bus station, waiting for my bus home, when these obvious queens arrived, all camp and outrageous. I was petrified but fascinated at the same time. Inevitably they came over and started taking to me... that was when the door opened.

At first, London was a disappointment for the young George. “Life was much simpler but not nearly as much fun. There’s something about being on the edge and slightly under the radar that is more exciting.” George wasn't in drag at the time, but it was around the same time, long before he'd make his name as Dr Evadne Hinge, that he was first tempted to drag up. As I was watching all these acts I realised they were getting eight quid for doing gags I’d heard a hundred times. I thought, ‘I could do that and play the piano at the same time and keep the whole 10 quid to myself. That’s how I got into show business, although I didn’t get the 10 quid. As I was a beginner I got eight for doing both – but eight quid for half an hours work wasn’t bad.” George as Audrey

Logan moved to London in 1965 and while working as a computer programmer he frequented a gay pub in Marylebone. One day the pianist for the drag acts did not turn up and so Logan filled in and was soon a regular fixture, eventually conceiving his own solo drag-and-piano act. A gay pub near where I lived put on drag acts. One day, the pianist didn’t turn up. The landlady said, ‘You play the piano don’t you? I’ll give you two quid to play for the act?’ So I did, and became the regular pianist. “ George recalls those early years in his new book, A Boy Called Audrey, which charts his life growing up as a gay man in the Scotland of the 1960s. It's a charming, funny and thought-provoking read from the entertainer who was born and raised in Rutherglen, a small coal-mining town in South Lanarkshire, and a place where he had always stood out from the crowd. They added, ‘We suggest you make sure your son and this man don’t associate any more.’ We’d been together about six months at the time, we were in love, and and I wasn’t having it and decided that if we couldn’t do it in Glasgow we’d head off and do it somewhere else. Even though I was the younger of two, I was the one who was in charge. I was always very headstrong. That’s been my downfall to this day,” he laughs. We lived in a bedsit and there were two American sailors in the basement room. Based at the Holy Loch they were only in Glasgow at weekends. One day, one of them left his bag, a beautiful leather bag, on the doorstep. Tommy said, 'I fancy that.'

As I was watching all these acts I realised they were getting eight quid for doing gags I’d heard a hundred times. I thought, ‘I could do that and play the piano at the same time and keep the whole 10 quid to myself.’” A gay pub near where I lived put on drag acts. One day, the pianist didn't turn up. The landlady said, 'You play the piano don't you? I'll give you two quid to play for the act?' So I did, and became the regular pianist. Although I'd heard of people in the 1950s who had got into trouble for being in a gay relationship, I never knew of any in my time. That they didn't pursue people in relationships was something that came to my attention when I got into trouble with the law - my father was told by a police officer that the higher-ups had said not to pursue people who had private gay relationships, just to keep an eye out for gatherings."

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Despite his new found freedom, life in Glasgow still held dangers. Gangs hung out on every street corner and it didn't do to be too obvious.

You can picture it, the Bonnie and Clyde of Glasgow and a bloody sailor’s handbag,” he laughs. “When my father bailed us out, the copper said to him, ‘We are a little concerned about the relationship between your son, who is 19, and this man who is 28, because we realised they share a bedsit and they also share a bed.’

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He continues, “They then asked, ‘Have you ever been in a gay bar?’ And I thought, ‘There are such places?’ I was very naive. So they took me to a gay bar and everything changed. All the burdens I’d felt, this great pressure to go out with a girl to fit the mould, had gone. In the past I’d groped around places on the fringes, in that very malodorous public toilets way, and thought, ‘Is this what my life is going to be?’ Suddenly it wasn’t, there were bars where people socialised and they were all gay… and nobody cared. It was like God had given me a huge gift, that there was a way through life for me that I’d never anticipated.”

|Although I knew I was something, the word gay was not one I would have known,” he explains, adding with a mischievous grin, “Oh, I knew I was an alien… I just wasn’t sure what planet I belonged to. Life was much simpler but not nearly as much fun. There's something about being on the edge and slightly under the radar that is more exciting." That came about when Tommy, my boyfriend at the time, and I were charged with theft,” he reveals. “It really is a stupid, stupid, stupid story. My father said, ‘Well that’s the way it is…’ The policeman continued, ‘Not that we pursue people in such a situation, but your son is actually under age…’ Whatever that means, in those days you were illegal at any age. There was just no sense to it all. Moving to a flat in Nottinghill Gate in 1965, George, a trained musician soon landed a job playing piano in a Marylebone pub.How we weren't arrested I'll never know. Until I went to London a couple of years later, that was my first and only cross-dressing experience."