Ginger Johnson is in her element. She has just been shopping and is now holding reams of aqua, mermaid-coloured sequined cloth, and silver faux-crocodile skin up to the Zoom camera. ‘There’s this amazing lady in Shepherd’s Bush,’ she says, brandishing something that looks like a cross between crystal shards and space feathers. ‘She keeps me stuff when it comes in that she thinks I’ll like. The cupboard was full today and I just bought all of it.’

But wait, what’s that silky tabby-print boa draped insouciantly across Ginger’s left shoulder? Oh, that’s her cat, Wendy Carlos, a petite oriental shorthair with a pensive, slightly wild face and a bit of a ‘don’t fuck with me’ expression. ‘She doesn’t like to be ignored,’ Johnson says. ‘So if you hear screaming coming from the corner of the room at any point, that will be her.’

Johnson, who last year snatched the crown as winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK, admits her own temperament is not too far off Wendy’s when it comes to seeking attention and clambering for adoration. It’s been a busy and rewarding time for the drag queen, but despite the enormous achievement of that win, she has barely paused to draw breath before plunging into her next challenge. This has come in the form of her brand new one-woman show, Ginger Johnson Blows Off!, which premieres at the Fringe and, Johnson says, ‘is basically about how far I will go for a round of applause’.

Creative people don’t often own up to the mixed feelings that come from achieving their dreams, but Johnson says her Drag Race win, as well as being a massive high, also brought with it a sense of emptiness that the thing she had spent so much time longing for had finally happened. ‘Drag Race was a huge dream of mine for years. I never imagined I would win it, not in a million years, not a million years,’ she emphasises. ‘But to have that experience and be put through that challenge... weirdly, I’ve ticked that off the list. It’s not a dream anymore. It’s a fact. And that left a little space inside me for a new dream to come out.’

This new show will put her through new trials, which range from performing 80s power ballads to ‘death-defying illusions’ and ‘cunning stunts’. It’s something of an attempt at breaking away from the Ginger she presented on Drag Race, pushing that character out of her comfort zone. ‘The character people know me as from Drag Race is sort of soft and warm and a bit motherly, maybe a bit matronly. I wanted to throw all that out the window. Let’s see what it’s like if Ginger is The Great Gonzo or Evel Knievel or Dangerous Brian.’ 

The challenge, she says, is to take risks when you have expectations to live up to. ‘There is a huge expectation on me having won the show. You know, what am I capable of? What can I do? After you feel like you’ve unexpectedly hit this big high, where do you go? I’m lucky to have the opportunity to do that on a big stage in front of lots of people.’

Johnson is keen, however, to point out that despite the existential questions underpinning the show, Blows Off! is also rooted in a desire to entertain and make people happy. ‘I think at this moment in time... maybe the world just needs a big silly bit of fluff,’ she says. 

This embracing of entertainment for its own sake is a far cry from her last venture at the Edinburgh Fringe. In 2019 she brought us Ginger Johnson’s Happy Place, which explored her struggles with anxiety, depression and trauma. It was a piece very much of its era (‘a classic Edinburgh debut’ as Johnson says), at a time when blending comedy and cabaret with confessional narrative was almost expected of stand-up comics and performance artists (Richard Gadd’s Baby Reindeer debuted that same year while Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette had dominated Edinburgh in 2017). The show did well, garnering both critical acclaim and bums on seats. But in a cruel irony, revisiting all of that trauma onstage took its toll on Johnson’s mental health. ‘It was tough. It was really, really tough, because that meant sort of reprocessing all of that baggage every day in the show.’

By contrast, taking a ‘different tack’ has brought a love of drag back full circle to the thing that initially drew her to the form. Johnson grew up at a time when British drag was rich and vibrant, bold, mainstream and everywhere, whether we acknowledged it as such or not. ‘There was a time when drag was actually on TV quite a lot, which people seem to forget about. We had loads of Lily Savage on primetime TV, not only on her own shows but on Blankety Blank, and lying on the bed on The Big Breakfast.’

As a teenager, Johnson had always wanted to be a pantomime dame. ‘They had the best outfits. They had the best jokes, the biggest round of applause at the end of the show. Their picture was the biggest on the poster; that all sounded great to me.’ In some ways she believes we have gone backwards now, particularly when it comes to mainstream drag on family-orientated TV. ‘That stuff would be controversial now. Ridiculous.’ 

Instead, drag has found its own renaissance, led by the success of Drag Race which, while still high profile, celebrates the art within the queer culture in which it was born. One of the cornerstones of that show has been its focus on the backstage ‘Werk Room’, where it explores not only the various disciplines and crafts drag queens need to master, but the stories of the contestants themselves. 

‘There are very, very few high-profile TV programmes that let a group of queer people sit around together and talk about their experiences living as a queer person. And if I’d had access to that kind of thing when I was younger, when the shame was building inside me about the person that I was . . . ’ (she pauses before letting out a cackle) ‘god help the world because I would have been far too powerful!’

It’s clear that winning Drag Race has meant the world to Johnson. After receiving her crown, she purchased a revolving turntable on which to display it; she also confesses to having carried the sceptre around for three months: ‘I was using it to open automatic doors.’
Despite, or perhaps because of the pressure it has brought, there are still aspects of Johnson’s drag that she feels insecure about. ‘I find it hard to connect to a sort of sexy energy; in drag and in life, if I’m being totally honest. I’d love to be able to do that. And I don’t know what that is for Ginger. I can’t imagine how that manifests.’ In the spirit of embracing challenges, is that perhaps one to look forward to in future shows? She smiles. ‘Maybe next year at Edinburgh will answer that question.’
Ginger Johnson Blows Off!, Pleasance Courtyard, 31 July–24 August, 6.30pm.