The latest inductee into Drag Race UK’s circle of champions reflects on the acclaimed finale, whether she’ll appear on the next winners’ season and her upcoming line of shoplifting coats – available soon on the Dark Web.
WORDS BY SAM DAMSHENAS HEADER BY YOSEF PHELAN SPECIAL THANKS TO JASMINE ALOMA AT THE BBC With her signature “silly sausage woman” brand, Ginger Johnson steamrolled the fifth season of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK.
After winning the disaster class with her fellow Northerners (and finalists) Tomara Thomas and Michael Marouli, the County Durham comedian conquered the series’ first-ever panto challenge and the coveted Snatch Game as the ‘Queen of Romance’ novels Barbara Cartland. (Her track record will go down in history.) In the season five finale, the three aforementioned queens wrote and recorded lyrics to a remix of RuPaul’s runway banger ‘Spotlight’, before starring in the British spin-off’s first-ever music video.
Although her “inner saboteur” (as a RuPaul has said once or twice, maybe more – not sure) made a special guest appearance in the finale, Ginger defeated Michael in the lip-sync smackdown to Erasure’s classic ‘A Little Respect’, usurping Danny Beard as the ‘UK’s Next Drag Superstar’ in the process. “It was one of those moments in life where time stops,” Ginger tells GAY TIMES the morning after the finale party. “I turned to give Michael a hug and one of the giant gold spikes on his shoulders went straight up my nostril.