Quentin Crisp: Encyclopedia II - Quentin Crisp - Fame

Quentin Crisp - Fame

The successful screening of The Naked Civil Servant launched Crisp in another new direction: that of performer and lecturer. He devised a one-man show and began touring the country with it. The first half of the show was an enteraining monologue loosely based on his memoirs, the second half was a question and answer session with Crisp picking the audience's written questions out at random and answering them in an amusing manner. In 1978 he sold out the Duke of York's Theatre in London, then took the show to New York where he decided to move. His first stay there, in the Hotel Chelsea coincided with a fire, a robbery, and the death of Nancy Spungen. He set about making arrangements to move to New York permanently and in 1981 he arrived with few possessions and found a small bedsitting apartment in Manhattan's Lower East Side.

He continued to perform his one-man show, published books on etiquette and supported himself by accepting social invitations and writing movie reviews and columns for U.S and U.K magazines and newspapers. He said provided one could exist on peanuts and champagne one could quite easily live by going to every cocktail party, premiere and first night one was invited to. As he had done in London, he allowed his phone number to be listed in the Manhattan telephone directory and saw it as his duty to converse with anyone who called him. For the first twenty or so years of owning his own telephone he habitually answered calls with the phrase "Yes God?" ("Just in case," he once said.) Later on he changed it to "Oh yes?" in a querulous tone of voice.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Fame", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki