Suddenly in demand, he made his stage debut in 1978, and his one-man show became a sleeper West End hit. People are never with me, they are always in my presence. I am never involved in conversation, I am always being interviewed. Beneath the wry adages and bon vivant postures, Crisp brooded on the melancholy and difficulty of living as a homosexual in a heterosexual world. This is not only an instance of the known law that all outsiders are polite to insiders because at best they secretly revere them or at worst fear that they may one day need them.
Homosexuals are sincerely interested.
Every detail of the lives of real people, however mundane it may be, seems romantic to them. If by some chance an hour of pointless gossip makes fleeting reference to some foible, some odd superstition, some illogical preference that they find they share with the speaker, homosexuals are as amazed and delighted as an Earthman would be on learning that Martians cook by gas. The largesse that made Crisp a confidant of chars and train conductors was his defining quality. Nobody escapes my love. He was often compared to Oscar Wilde, with whom he shared foppish brio and a way with words.