Books This article is more than 24 years oldQuentin Crisp, 90, dies on eve of sell-out British tour
This article is more than 24 years old Quentin Crisp: ObituaryQuentin Crisp, performer, raconteur and self-styled high priest of camp, collapsed and died yesterday, aged 90, on the eve of a sell-out British tour of his one-man show.
Crisp is believed to have suffered a heart attack while staying at a friend's house in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, south Manchester, yesterday morning. Police said there were no suspicious circumstances.
He was taken by ambulance to Manchester Royal Infirmary and later certified dead, although the official cause of death was still to be formally registered yesterday.
The gay icon to generations, born on Christmas Day 1908, achieved international fame through his autobiography The Naked Civil Servant and the hugely successful TV film adaptation starring John Hurt.
Though quintessentially English, Crisp moved to the US in 1972, swapping his house in Kings Road, London, for a bedsit in Manhattan's East Village where he maintained an eccentric lifestyle, notoriously refusing ever to clean his flat.
His enduring popularity as a wit and intellectual allowed him to continue staging one- man shows in Britain and the US and his latest national tour, An Evening with Quentin Crisp, was to start tonight.
Patrick Newley, Crisp's friend and press agent in the 1980s, said yesterday he believed the stresses of a national tour had been too much for the increasingly frail 90-year-old, adding: "I am very sorry indeed to hear of his death and sadly shocked because when I spoke to Quentin roughly two or three weeks ago in New York he was clearly not happy about coming over for the tour. At his age it was too much. I rather think he might still be alive if he had not come across here."
The dramatist and friend Bernard Cops said it was tragic that Crisp, who loved the US and had applied for citizenship, had died in a Manchester suburb. "Quentin made people revise their prejudices and preconceptions in a way that was marvellous. He was a pioneer, the John Logie Baird of camp," he said.
But tour publicist Ryan Levitt said Crisp had been genuinely keen to go ahead with the tour. "It was Quentin's choice to visit Britain one last time. We gave him the opportunity to cancel four weeks ago and we felt strongly that he would, but he said he wanted to tour England one last time."
Crisp distanced himself from the organised gay and lesbian movement but Peter Tatchell, founder of pressure group Outrage, paid tribute to Crisp's refusal to be cowed into hiding his sexuality. He said: "I have admiration at his coming out and demanding acceptance as a homosexual man which was trailblazing and courageous, but my regret is that he never felt able to use his public influence to support the campaign for gay and lesbian equality.
"He was very much an old school stereotypical camp homosexual but there is no doubt about his courage in coming out and his bravery in flaunting his effeminacy. Prior to decriminalisation it was a very difficult and dangerous thing to do."
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