Have a wee with Pia Zadora

By Corinna 5,6,7,8 Tomrley

If someone told me that they didn’t understand the delicious irony of camp, I would probably show them a Pia Zadora clip. Pia is good and Pia is bad. Pia is a star and yet Pia is also ‘ordinary’. Pia was huge… for five minutes… but Pia endures because she still does goddamn dinner theatre all the time. And although the kind of camp performance that Pia is most magnificently loved for was actually prolific in its time (all the ‘cool’ kids were equally as unhip now and then. Cher, Marc Bolan, David Bowie, I’m looking at you…). It somehow suits someone like Pia more; we expect it of her because she is so hilariously wonderful.

This clip, sent to me by the wonderful Lobotomy Room honey, Graham Russell, sums it up just lovely.

The singing (though pre-recorded) is just adequate, the setting is bizarre. But the dancing, though giggle-inducing is actually – according to our wonderful terpsichorean expert Pal – spot on.

‘I can’t fault Pia. She knows her Stag jumps and her Flick Ball Changes’ – Pal Griffiths

But in a public loo?

Well, yes. Why the flipping heck not? Who HASN’T danced with their knickers around their ankles in a public toilet? And then had everyone else spontaneously joined in once they’ve wiped, zipped and flushed?

Let’s consider a few glorious highlights.

As Graham noted, the pants-at-the ankles bit is ‘in shockingly bad taste. One of them is unwisely wearing patterned panties that makes it look like they have skidmarks!’ One of them hasn’t bothered to pull her clothes down. One is naughtily not wearing any knickers, the tramp. The detail of bits of crumpled loo roll on the floor… wonderousness.

Pia pushing one of the dancers forcefully into a corner (we’ve all done that, come on).

The hair: if anyone is looking to actually style actual 80s styles hair for once, look at this. Long perms big and frizzy and vertical, crispy, back-combed within an inch of their lives fringes all the way, baby.

Likewise, the fashion. Unflattering jumpers? Hot as fuck, darling.

The graffiti: Mustangs Rule. OK? But what the fuck is that thing?

Who doesn’t have a whizz in a cubicle that has a poster of a dreamboat taped to the door? The same one on EVERY door? I know it helps me to wee more to look at a hot, leather-jacketed, bare-chested, feather-haired honey.

The kaleidoscopic video effects… and on and on.

This thing is so great you can almost forgive Pia for leveling Pickfair because she thought it was haunted.