Words & Photography Markus Bidaux
Vin Fox was born in Hackney in 1951. As a young man he left teachertraining college because he found it too homophobic and trained to be a dancer only for a knee injury to abruptly end that career. But in 1976 Vin found his true calling during a London performance by the Hot Peaches, a US radical drag group, and created his drag persona Lavinia Co-op. He added Co-op to the name because Lavinia was too posh and he wanted the character to stay rooted to his working-class background. Along with Bette Bourne, he formed the six-person group the Bloolips. From the late 1970s through to the late 1980s they performed musical comedy across the UK, Europe and America. Lavinia appears in How to Catch a Krampus at London’s Pleasance Theatre until 23 December. pleasance.co.uk