How Can We All Be Better Allies? | Tia Kofi | Zack Polanski

0:00It's not time to sashay away, and it's not time to lip sync for your life. Yes, you are attuned to Bold Politics with Zach Polanski. But today, my guest is the amazing, legendary drag queen, Tia Coffey.

0:16Hey, Zach, Chris Packham here. I just want to tell you about something really exciting. EcoTalk. It's a phone company that helps restore nature and it's brilliant. You can find out more about it at ecotalk.co.uk.

0:38I went on Podsaver UK and I talked about this podcast and I said I'm plugging podcasts on podcasts so I promised them I would mention them today but I also want to mention you have a podcast The Final Frontier which I went on recently yeah and that was a gorgeous time we had a good time right I had like such an amazing time I would genuinely I'm about to upset everyone else I spoke to during that campaign which was hundreds of people probably my favourite hour that I had on the campaign where I just felt relaxed and thought I'm talking about things that are important but with a smile on my face and this feels very joyful yeah it's a good time so i'd encourage people to check out the podcast of a conversation we had but not until we've had this conversation otherwise i'm sending people to a historical conversation oh yeah do this one first exactly and but also to check out your podcast more generally that all being said uh i go what should we talk about because we've already done a podcast together but we talked about me so let's talk about you i'm gonna talk about you well i'm always happy to talk about me but um i can't imagine there's many people watching this who don't know who you are but how would you like to introduce yourself and your story?

1:34So I am a drag performer. My name is Tia Coffey. I won UK versus the World Series 2, which everyone globally was delighted about. That's not true. Some people were really annoyed about it and they're very silly. Amongst all the joy, and I want to get back to joy, we're speaking at a time where in the last five years hate crime for LGBT people has risen 125%. You're someone who is very vocally invisibly LGBT and in the public eye. are you worried feels like the wrong question uh but it's the only question i can find right now yeah i think uh everyone is really worried at the moment um anyone from any sort of like marginalized group or minority group is clearly feeling it at this moment in time uh because there has been such a rise in sort of like lgbtq plus hate crimes and like anti-immigration sentiment in the UK and globally.

2:28So yeah, it's quite a fearful time. And if someone was very po-faced and go, this is a political podcast, why are you speaking to a drag queen? How political is drag? I think drag is inherently political. There's sort of not much you can do to get around that. Whether you're the kind of drag performer who's flicking a human hair unit and jumping into a split, just the action of being in drag and performing in that way is a political act. whether or not you believe that, it just is. I guess in many ways it's sort of like the disregard of gender in that way. It's sort of making a statement about how you perceive yourself, how you perceive gender and how you perceive the world, even if you are just lip-syncing a little mix song.

3:14And now you've gone there, I wasn't going to go here, but I'm interested in your response that I sometimes see criticism on some corners of the internet of drag, particularly from gender critical women who say this is you know insulting to women etc etc yeah what what would your response to that be i mean my response to that honestly from my heart i don't represent the entire drag community but my response to that is if you are boiling a woman down to like winged eyeliner and long hair then that's extremely foolish i don't personally think in drag my responsibility is to portray a woman. I just see it as like hyper femininity and sort of expressing that more feminine side of myself through performance.

3:55I literally have a microphone and tell silly jokes and sing songs. Just happen to be in a wig with pretend eyelashes on. I don't think that it is, I mean some people use the term woman face which is wild behaviour but like I I don't perceive it as that. And I don't think a woman should be sort of reduced to just a gorgeous smoky eye. Like, that's not what it is at all. I love that. I hesitated when I asked the question because I thought, do I want to amplify these narratives? But you just gave such a beautiful answer. I'm like, actually, I'm glad I asked the question. How did you get into drag?

4:29I got into drag in a very bizarre way. So I never really thought that I would do it. But I used to take shows up to the end of a fringe. I used to write my own parody shows. parodies of Harry Potter, which has a different context now. We actually wrote one of those that was... J.K. Rowling was the villain, basically. So we used to take those shows up, and then I saw a show called Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens, which had a drag character in it. And instead of waiting for auditions, I just sort of went, oh, I'm going to produce that show myself and cast myself in that role. And then it just started from there.

5:07And I guess that's also political, isn't it, in terms of there's deep inequality in our society and for creatives, it's really, really difficult to get a step up. But this was just you going, I'm going to make it happen. Yeah, massively. And I remember during that time, I had left my sort of full-time job after that to focus on drag completely because I was just so unhappy. And I sort of like realised that I placed a lot more value in my own happiness than in financial security, which is wild because I think the two go hand in hand. but I quit my full-time job to focus on that with no knowledge that Drag Race UK would come over I just thought I was going to be a poor starving artist for the rest of my life but yeah I don't regret that decision whatsoever but being creative is very difficult there's like no money in it for the vast majority of people it's almost like a labor of love to create these shows particularly at the fringe for other people's entertainment for other people's information for various reasons and yeah it's really tough um you said that you've got some things to spring on me i want to spring some things on you first do it well it's not even springing it's just what do you think of this labor government what do i think um what i saw was it was a far better alternative at the time that they were elected what i think now is that everyone has everyone's taken a step to the right not like in the time war i was gonna say it was not an instruction manual um but it does feel like everyone sort of like shifted to the right like i don't really understand what reform is other than now just what people used to call the bnp or like the national front like it just is like racism and homophobic in a suit the Tory party are now sort of where that reform UKIP bracket were and it feels like Labour are now where the Tories were and everyone's taking a shift to the right I don't think when I was at uni I don't think I could have imagined being a paid member of the Green party I'd have been like oh Lib Dems maybe I'm not sure that I sit in that sort of like what I perceived as like an extremely careful now place okay it did seem like it was like a little bit too much for me like I felt I was very socially left-wing, but maybe more in the centre when it came to economics and stuff like that.

7:28But now, it is just the case that the Green Party are the only people who are representing my beliefs and my values. There was a time when various political parties had my best interests at heart, and now it does not feel like that whatsoever. And that's really interesting. So on economics, do you feel like you shifted left as well? Yeah, I do. Was that driven by the kind of social issues? Was that driven by hearing more politicians on the left or have circumstances changed for you? I think it was probably driven by more life experience. Right. Because I think at the time, like the first time I ever voted, I had been through school and into university.

8:07And that was my perception of the world. And it was during the time when I think the Lib Dems were the only people who were saying like, we're not going to raise tuition fees. Don't worry about it. And that was all I really cared about because I was in a little bubble where it was just sort of education. And then I went out to Ocean in Nottingham with my mates. But with more life experience and more understanding and more reflection, I can see parts of my education, my time at school, for example, where I was confronted with racism from teachers without realising that's what it was. and I think it's just more life experience and more understanding makes you think oh well actually there are better ways for everything to be better for everyone rather than just sort of your little bubble in your little bracket.

8:51I love that I think there's like a political speech in there somewhere like a conference speech. Maybe one too. This morning I did an interview with Pink News and they're asking me about the issue of trans inclusion and the Supreme Court ruling and the EHLC and in particular what West Streeting has done to our LGBT community I guess the question is any thoughts about West Streeting or more importantly the issue of trans inclusion I suppose. Any thoughts about West Streeting West Streeting is when I move going to be my MP and I'm very unhappy about it. I think there is a certain I'm going to, a controversial yet brave statement, I think there is a certain flavour of people who sit in a minority group who thinks that it advantages them to betray those people and I say that as someone who is proudly half Nigerian and wouldn't get rid of that detail of my life and someone who's proudly part of the LGBTQ plus family.

9:47I think Wes it gives me pick me vibes to be completely honest with you I feel like he thinks by betraying a letter of our community he's gonna look more pleasing to his party and all the straight white men there might vote for him one day and maybe he'll become the leader like i feel like that's the gameplay when actually i just find it a little bit pathetic and a little bit disingenuous if i'm honest with you um i find nothing more hard i want to pause at this point and say by the way that we've been talking to uh sean faye and various other trans people about coming on the conversation to have a conversation about this because I'm aware neither of us are trans and we're talking about trans people.

10:29I think that's fine because we're doing it in allyship, but also to let viewers know that also we do want to hear from people with lived experience too. Nothing makes me more sad sometimes when I see on the internet a gay man in particular really punch down at trans people. And it reminds me a little bit of when you speak to migrant communities who are punching down at other migrant communities and what they call the drawbridge mentality. Do you think that's what's going on or do you think there's something kind of else at play where when you get gay men kind of just doing everything they can to distance themselves from the trans community?

10:59I think honestly it is there's an inherent misogyny in it I think it's the same energy as like there's a certain flavor of gay man who sort of withdraws himself and only really has like gay male friends doesn't really associate with women doesn't really associate with trans people doesn't really associate with many people of color and all of those people know that they get swift dms from me when i see them posting pictures of their christmas parties on their instagram stories but i do think it's it is just something that's inherent in the lgbtq community with like a small subsection of gay men that they sort of like withdraw in this way to almost hyper masculinize themselves and with that comes like uh an inherent sort of like distancing from like trans people also probably from lesbians also from bi people like there's I don't really understand it to be honest it's very jarring to me and I think it was on your season of Drag Race but it might have been the one before so you'll correct me I'm sure but there's a whole conversation about that there weren't many black role models British black role models yeah was that your season it was yeah yeah um and it just occurs to me that you've won a season of Drag Race since then yeah how important do you see what you represent as your intersectionality and kind of going to the next generation I'm here and I'm present I feel like I've answered the question for you but maybe you can bounce off that.

12:20I think it is so important because you don't get that many people who are intersectional in that way and I feel like I now I'm in a position where I'm sort of like the person that I wanted to see on screen all those years ago. I've always been obsessed with reality TV because I think it just gives you a like window into the world and to see something like outside of your sort of small community wherever you live. I remember the first series showing my age. I remember the first series of Big Brother when it came out and there was a woman on it called mel and she was genuinely at that point me age 10 the only other half black half white person that i had ever seen other than my sister yeah it was a different time back then um and that made me like get so drawn into it and like really become obsessed with like future series of it so now to be that face for someone else potentially is a lot of responsibility but I do take it very seriously.

13:18I had a message from someone in Nigeria who was a young queer person living in Nigeria. And it was so emotional to sort of read that they'd seen an interview where I was talking about my Nigerian heritage and my mother and visiting Nigeria, how important it was for them to see a queer Nigerian person because they had never seen someone expressing that before. And it was really overwhelming. And obviously I replied to them and sort of gave them advice to be true to themselves, but also most importantly to be safe um because i think sometimes you can see people living loudly and proudly um and think that is something that everyone should emulate and i do believe that is something everyone should be able to emulate but sometimes it just is not safe for someone to do that so for me i always take that kind of safety into concern as well you've really got me there like i don't have another question um let's all just have a cry I just, yeah, there's no words for that.

14:17It's just so powerful that you're literally living what you needed when you were younger. And the lightness that you do it too, that it's not overly earnest, it's not covered in the struggle that you must have faced to do some of that. But actually, whenever I see you and I'm obsessed with you, you just always seem to be having fun with it, whilst behind it is a very, very serious kind of intent. Yeah, I mean, I think that is something that, I mean, it overlaps with you in a way that i have a thing about communication because when i was a lot younger i was like junior debating champion of red bridge um and was like at one point like in all these sort of competitions and i thought that the way that you spoke had to be really intellectualized and it's better to communicate sounding like an essay because everyone will think you're smarter and then just as i grew up i was like no one understands what you're saying like if the point of your message is for the most people to understand it then why are you talking like you're writing a dissertation that does not make any sense whatsoever and and that really chilled me out and meant that i could like speak how i wanted know that it's going to be understood and like communicate in my own way which is kind of what you're doing i feel i really love that that's a yeah real resonance there i'm going to ask you some more questions we're going to take a break.

15:39Hello Zach, Chris Packham here. I hear you're being politically bold. Well we at EcoTalk are being equally bold. It's the best service going I've got to say. Best network coverage in the UK. Lots of different deals, lots of packages and if you get any trouble you don't speak to a bot. You speak to a real human. But you know the best thing? The best thing is that the profits are going into nature conservation for beavers and badgers and birds and butterflies and lots of other things which don't begin with bee so zach i'm telling you if you want to talk bold mate you better be doing it on eco talk and you can switch really easily at ecotalk.co.uk

16:24growing up were your friends into politics or were you into politics like when did you start to go oh I'm actually interested in party politics now I didn't realize that I was but it's always been there because I was like very much like the extracurricular type person like I would try and absorb as much as I possibly could so I was doing like model United Nations but I did get my maracas out not a euphemism when I was the ambassador for Argentina and I think my group got in trouble for it because it counted as national drafts and then like I did a lot of student politics um when I was at university and tried to really get involved in that area of things but I didn't realize at the time how significant that was and like what it meant I just had always been brought up to be like you do everything you just try and get involved in as much as you can and you be part of the community and you you know work really hard to put on a theater show that everyone can get involved in or you work really hard to be i was like what was called bme officer at my university and i didn't realize how significant and important that was but now i look back at it and i'm like oh that did teach me a lot like i was learning all that time about politics so i wasn't actively into it but i've accidentally understood more from from just doing stuff that i thought was cool and i'm wondering i don't know if you saw my discussion with ash sarkar which was one of the first episodes of his podcast but she's written a book called minority rules and she's talked about representation politics or identity politics sometimes overtaking class politics and we saw a little bit this with Kamala Harris in America I'm just wondering what what do you feel about that like have we taken identity politics too far sometimes or is class politics does that need to be at the root of everything do you have thoughts I feel like I feel like people are too ready for like infighting I think sometimes there needs to be like a little umbrella that says hey ultimately we're all on the same side nice i understand like when it comes to like identity there is a lot of nuance and a lot of things are very important to people and i'm not saying people don't have the right to sort of correct or call things out or point things out but i think there is a much bigger picture at this moment in time and there is a genuine fear of this like oncoming storm of like fascism that might take over this country and many others so right now I kind of feel like we need to like come together a little bit more and be a little bit stronger as a unit rather than like picking apart the details we're not there yet we were at one point like as you mentioned on my season there was conversations about representation of black people, but it was also the conversation about non-binary identities with Bimini and Ginny Lemon, which was really, really important.

19:17And that was a great way that they had that conversation that was like embracing and like all encompassing. And I think that is a really good example of how we can sort of like come together and listen. At that time, that conversation happened, people weren't saying like, I don't, I don't do pronouns. That's ridiculous. they were like oh that's interesting and i've heard it and now let me look at the fun outfits that's just a better way to approach the world yeah i love that i've been chatting recently there's a name drop now but with paloma faith who i just absolutely love oh clara indeed and then denise goth who's an actor from andor and the thing we've been speaking about is their kind of vocalism about palestine and they've really put their kind of heads above the parapet in a way that they just don't need to um and i will put you in this category too where um as a politician you know I've taken a very strong position on Palestine I've talked about it being a genocide for a long time but almost as a political leader or in a political party you kind of you have to have an opinion so there's nothing kind of brave or correct about that but as an artist you could absolutely just stay out of it but actually you've used your platform to highlight the plight of the Palestinians why is that important for you and did you consider you know this is a risk in terms of being booked or in terms of future career?

20:25Yeah I did and it was tough because I am like I have previously been like heavily involved in BBC Eurovision so like it is very difficult sort of like making that statement but some things are more important. From a very personal place my mother was lived in Nigeria during the Biafran war where there was like two million Igbo people died in a starvation blockade and that's something that I have known about from a young age. I'm I'm not saying my mum was raising me, teaching me about genocide instead of telling me bedtime stories. But that's something that I've understood from a young age. And not really been able to compute that people living in a country would be like, well, that flavour of human is different to this one, so we don't like that one.

21:18Wild behaviour. Makes not a lick of sense. Surely everyone could register that it doesn't make any sense. So it was very important to me. and it's important to a lot of queer people particularly to elevate and raise the voices of the palestinian people i think absolutely beautifully put um you said you've got things to spring on me oh right okay this is where i get nervous no don't it's actually quite a bad thing that i was probably you so do you remember the green party sent out an email about people who wanted to get more involved and there's a lovely weekend that is taking place yes now i haven't finished filling out my form and I need a reference.

22:00And I feel like I'm going to get picked to do that weekend if you are my reference. I will absolutely be your reference. So this for anyone watching is to be a future MP for the party. Tear Coffee MP I think has a nice ring to it. But quite seriously the whole conversation we're having we're particularly interested in hearing from people from underrepresented groups because our four MPs, as brilliant as our four MPs are, are not particularly a diverse group of people and they're all in the south so we want to make sure that we've got more in peace from the north and from wales and indeed from diverse backgrounds so i would more than love to be uh your reference thank you and i won't make you lip sync for your life first oh because i'd lose let's let's not do that no but i definitely i wanted to get um involved in that because particularly this is so exciting no it's really exciting and you can take on west treating wow here's the thing i was like at least let me be like run to be a local councillor so I can slightly ruin his life quietly.

22:55Not ruin his actual life, just make his life a lot harder to make bad decisions. So yeah, I just thought of like when I realised these two things were going hand in hand, I was like, okay, this email's just gone out, I actually really want to do this. I feel like I'm in a place in my life where I could at least go and learn more, whether or not that like necessarily translated to like standing to be a member of parliament. I don't know, but I feel like more people need to do that because I feel like despite the platform and like these opportunities that I've been given from being on Drag Race and then growing a platform and like even more, I still feel helpless.

23:34I still feel like I don't have a voice. I still feel like I don't have a seat at the table to have these conversations. And then that email sort of came out and I was like, do you know what? that's quite a good way to like raise the issues that I want to raise so I think it's incredible and I think there's something in the way you just said standing for parliament which I know you were joking but that's what people think of yeah as opposed to standing for parliament which is literally being someone of the people listening to people listening to their worries and then representing them and raising the concerns that both you and them have which I think you've been doing already in so much of your work so it makes absolute sense almost kicking myself that I didn't in this podcast go have you thought about running for parliament but you you were already there but you too i'm so excited about that i well it's it's actually it's fully come from like you and other people within the green party who have made me think okay actually this is very community focused and it's very important like i think didn't carla like not run for leader because she was like no i've got to be an mp guys sorry yeah i think there was definitely some holding back not just with Carla but more generally of until I'm the perfect politician or until I look like the politicians that I see on TV I'm not ready to run but the thing that people don't talk about is the politicians on TV are largely awful like they're doing a really really bad job and where they are doing a good job it's for themselves because they've in hock with vested interests yeah I'm presuming you don't have huge links with oil and gas companies or arms trades that you know are paying for you to to run to be an MP listen you don't know how I paid for my runways my love they were very expensive no I don't exactly and so someone who is there with no vested interest other than going actually from my community I want to represent the people.

25:09And running as a local councillor is also a really, really exciting part of the job which I think sometimes running for MP gets kind of all the attention and all the kind of glamour. But actually most people's first experience with politics is their local councillor who turns up and goes actually in the council chamber. I want to protect your green space. I want to make sure your community centre's open. I want to make sure that there's a vibe and a community that's actually nurtured. And I think it'd be amazing at that. Yeah, and I think that's really important because that to me is like how you love this country and show patriotism is by looking after your own community it's not like anything to do with like reclaiming your voice and your freedom of speech it's about like how are there lovely allotments for the older people to like use like those are the bits that are important to me and what what i think makes this country great is like this sense of community and inclusivity and people having a sense of community at their doorstep.

26:06I absolutely love that. I think we're at the end of the podcast but is there anything you go on a podcast about politics this is just something I want to say to the nation. I do think there is scope for like joy even though this is a difficult time like there is like the the way that the Green Party have experienced what is commonly referred to as the polanski bound that is so uplifting to see like that is like real positivity for me that there is like hope and there is like a possible future for this country that is inclusive and um helps as many people as humanly possible rather than just a teeny tiny percent of very very wealthy individuals so yeah i thank you thank you for having me thank you for like everything that you're doing at the moment i really appreciate my absolute pleasure and by the way i'm waiting for someone to do a TikTok video of a Polanski bounce.

26:55And now that you're in front of me, I feel like this might be a tear coffee task. Okay. I'm not known as a dancer. Yeah, true. I'll get a pogo stick or something. That could work. Thanks so much for coming on and do check out the final frontier. Thank you.

27:14Hey, Zach, it's Chris Packham again. I'm ringing to ask if you've switched to EcoTalk yet. Come on, come on, come on! The beavers are waiting for you