Full Of It #196 - Divine

I actually am on the bus, going home from work. God I hate my supervisor, she’s just a complete bitch. So happy to be listening to your velvet voice this afternoon, Olympia. 🧘‍♀️

I first learned of Cher when I heard Believe and I loved how futuristic and robotic the song was. Very ahead of it's time as it were. I love watching clips of Divine in Hairspray; he was SUCH a talent and I wish he was still around. If I ever met him.... well really, if I ever get the chance to meet you and Nova, I will promptly shit myself. I think the person for me that I wish I could've met was my great grandmother; she passed away the year before I was born in 1994, and I came along in 1995. My grandmother always used to tell me that if I found a penny on the ground, it was a sign from my great grandmother. I just get so sad and sometimes even angry that I was born at the wrong time. I'm very into 80s aesthetic and 80s music, but never got to experience any of it when it first came out. I also feeI that way about other things.... like roller coasters that got demolished and that I would never get the chance to ride them.

Kyle Ross

You mentioned about Kathy Bates being in a weird app game advertisement and I’m ashamed to say that at the beginning of the panny I was addicted to Merge Mansion. I had to delete it when I got insomnia because all I could think about laying in bed was merging shit. 🥴 It was just so mindless and repetitive, turns your brain to mush. Anyway, you mentioned about remembering where you were when you first saw certain celebrities. For me that’s Victoria Wood. I remember coming in our living room when I was 8 and my parents were watching Dinnerladies on the telly. I won’t have understood 90% of the jokes at the time but that’s the fun of growing older and learning new things that cause another puzzle piece of a punchline to fall into place. She left us far too soon, always wonder what she’d have given us if she was still around. I’ve listened to a lot of your lovely pods and heard you mention French & Saunders a fair few times but not Wood & Walters. Are you a fan of Victoria Wood or Julie Walters at all (outside of her Graham Norton Show appearance, LEAVE ME ALONE!), wonder if they’d make for an inspo birds pod 😊

Mark Hall

Awesome ep. I love anything to do with Divine. I still own a few of her records and CDs.

Great ep, doll! I too had a best friend named Katy with whom I’d go to late horror movie showings and shared a special twisted connection. And very touching to hear about what Divine symbolized to you @41:15. Not trying to slob you off, but I hope you know that’s what many of your followers love you for. Having someone that you love to watch be much so themselves and so confident/charismatic while you’re still developing as a young queer person can hugely improve your quality of life, even if there’s no way that you’ll have a significant connection with them. Aside from the being dead bit, you are probably somebody’s Divine ♥️

Maxi B

Olympia I’ve heard you talk about afterlife with Lesley sharp, as a 10 year old watching it the scene with the rat man is engrained in my mind 😭 I’d love you to do a full pod on it x

Regular listener, sporadic commenter and runner up of the Great Novympia Pub Quiz 2022 here. 🤣 But yes I understand that sad feeling of missing out on something after the fact or getting really into something after the famous people in said thing have died. It was golden girls for me. Watching it now is still amazing but knowing that now they have all passed is so sad. That and Victoria Wood. I know that Victoria died fairly recently in retrospect and was alive in my time, I grew up with her comedy. Just knowing that she isn't around anymore and that she can't grace the world with her humor and love anymore makes watching her comedy now quite bittersweet. Also not about the pod ATAALL, get te fook, but please tell Nerva that wotsits crunchy are the actual best things to have ever been created. They are like niknaks but better. I live for them.

As you can see from my profile pic, this pod was right up my alley! I'm a fairly new patrone and haven't commented on anything yet but wanted to say how much I enjoyed this! When I was about 18 a friend at the time showed me and my brother the singing arsehole scene from Pink Flamingos when we were all having coffee and cake round my Mum and Dad's house - they weren't in the room but when my Mum found out she wasn't best pleased as my brother was only 11 at the time. I sort of forgot about it after that for a couple of years, as one tends to do about singing arseholes, and then came round to Divine again on my own after watching Hairspray. Polyester is actually my favourite! I love it when she's on the phone to the headteacher about Dexter and he says, 'It is the opinion of the entire staff that Dexter is criminally insane.' And the fact that they had scratch and sniff cards when they showed it in cinemas. The most memorable and joyous Divine moment for me though has to be when she dances down the street to Nervous Norvus' 'Dig' in Female Trouble. Divine inspires me because she makes the most shit things in life, even literal shit, into fabulousness, which is really reassuring. Like once during a fairly dark time in my life someone put poo in my letterbox and I said out loud 'This is a direct attack on my divinity', and there was no one around to hear, but it still made everything better in my mind.

Loved listening to your history with Divine, and people you got into after they had died.. mine would be Victoria Wood. As a teenager getting into her stand ups only a few years after she died and how influential she was to other people like French and Saunders. Yeah. Fascinating! Don’t think you’ve ever done a pod about her? But there are so bloody many to check it probably slipped through my net 😅

Myles

Sorry, I tend to write my comments as I listen to the pod, so they seem random. I tend topick out the most obscure things to respond to. Whoopsie! OMG, the intro for Stars in Their Eyes is hilarious and spot-on!! I used to bloody love that show. Didn't you nearly get onto the teen version of the show... ---- Finding something new to be into is always exciting. I am always late to the party with new stuff - and I then get my claws in and hold on tight, and have to know EVERYTHING. Being a [hardcore] fan, fangirl/fanboy of someone is both a blessing and a curse lol. I am not ashamed to say I'm a fangirl for Darren Hayes, and have been for 20+ years. I remember when I finally met him after his last concert in the UK. I felt like the last fan alive (in the Fanclub at least) to have met him, and was determined to finally do it. So I pushed through the crowd so that I could get my chance to say hello and get something signed. I always said if I ever met him I would be lost for words and not know what the fuck to say or would end up saying something super cringe out of, not quite embarrassment, but at finally having met this person I had upon a pedestal. I ended up asking him if he had seen the photo I tweeted of the manicure I had done for the concert, and he said "wait, yes I did!" and proceeded to describe them. And FFS did I cringe to myself, but it made my bloody day! ---- Top of The Pops - I'm sure it was on a Thursday night. When the way we consume music changed, that was when it had outlived its purpose. ---- As an ally, and not a member of LGBTQIA+, a lot of queer culture wasn't part of my growing up. That said I was somewhat aware of Divine, and I know that she was who Disney based Ursula the Sea Witch (The Little Mermaid) on. I first really learned about Divine from DragRace Season 7, and of course, now, from your pod. Sorry it's a long one, but that's it now, okloveyoubyeeeee

I adore Divine. She was such a great character and I feel helped all of us become more comfortable in who we are. Although I have to ask who you think has the better “look at me”, Divine or Geri Halliwell. Would you consider doing a pod about the Netflix documentary “the puppet master” because my father used to work with one of the people in it. I won’t reveal more in case you do end up covering it. Thanks for another fantastic pod.

Squid2210

Jesus, Olympia, way to make me feel ancient having to explain MySpace for the benefit of your younger patrons. I feel like that clip from the remake of Freaky Friday "I'm Old!!" My person that I discovered too late was Joe Strummer of The Clash. He died in 2002, about 2 years before I got into punk rock music, I'd give my arm to travel back in time to have seen The Clash.