I love David Bowie and Cher and Diana Ross. I wanted to follow in their footsteps. So I set out to do that in a rock-'n'-roll band in Atlanta, Georgia. That led me to nightclubs and to the sort of Andy Warhol experience of creating a personality.

We are all illusionists and that's why we are attracted to drag queens. This whole world is an illusion. It's not real.

Some people are beyond help, just accept that.

To this day it cracks me up to think that my debut on national British television as a reporter ends with me turning a trick.

You are not your body. You are actually an extension of the power that created the whole universe.

Look at me - a big old black man under all of this makeup, and if I can look beautiful, so can you.

Don't take life too seriously.