Page Turner: Glitter, eyeliner and dolly ekes to varder

Amazingly, it's been a whole year since Polari, London's peerless gay literary salon, was founded by the writers Paul Burston and Rupert Smith. And lo, the Children of Polari gathered at Trash Palace in Wardour Street to celebrate. DJ/photographer Dom Agius chronicled the year with his camera and exhibited the results on the walls. There we all were, cavorting, with a lot of glitter and eyeliner: Marc Almond and Will Self, Stella Duffy doing the splits, Karen McLeod, modern dandy Sebastian Horsley, Cleo Rocos, the News of the World's Carole Malone, singer David McAlmont and Neil Bartlett. And me! (you can check out Dom's photos at www.myspace.com/polarigaysalon).

A year ago it started small, with a 20-minute reading to half a room of largely bemused punters who'd just popped in for a drink. On birthday night, the theme was Dirty Books and the room was heaving. Gutsy chanteuse Celine entertained us; Jacqueline Applebee read her tale of a black lesbian getting off at a folk gig; and James Lear, aka Rupert Smith, waved around the golden winged penis he won at the Erotic Awards (he was voted Writer of the Year for such, ahem, seminal works as The Back Passage).

Trash Palace was once the infamous Apollo club, and Lear/Smith revealed he was once cruised there by the elderly Francis Bacon. One section of the audience ws sitting in an area once screened off with camouflage netting where, he assured us, all sort of antics used to go on. ("I do hope they've mopped.")

Lear/Smith read from his novel Secret Tunnel (Cleis Press), a filthier Murder on the Orient Express. But with a twist: just for fun, he'd translated it into Polari: "I wanted two schlongs, two mooshs and at least three pairs of martinis for all I had in mind.... I opened my ogles and saw him vardering me. I cupped the back of Bertrand's napper with my martini, rubbing his short brown riah... I remembered how his jaxy lips noshed on Dickinson's lupper ... 'I want to charver you, Bertrand.'"

The next Polari is on 10 December at Freedom Bar (60-66 Wardour Street, W1, 7-11pm, entrance free). The theme is Bloggers' night with London Preppy and Clayton Littlewood, whose blog about his experiences running the Soho shop Dirty White Boy became the book of the same name (also published by Cleis). As Bertrand would say: "It's so bona!"