Virgin Drag Queen competition to be held at Wakefield's New Union bar

The event, created by makeup artist and vlogger, Drew-Ashlyn Cunningham, will see six new drag queens from across the north compete to be the winner of the competition.

Drag queens are people, usually men but can be anybody of any gender, who use costuming and makeup to imitate and often exaggerate female characteristics, for entertainment purposes.

The competition was first held in 2018 where newbie Crystal won the crown, with Diva Diamond taking home the trophy the following year.

The competition could not take place in 2020 or 2021 because of the pandemic.

The competition will see Mrs Whodya Nickabollock Off, That’s Her!, Glamore, GenErika, Miz Fortune and Dominoe take to the stage to battle it out for the crown.

The winner of the competition will receive a makeup kit as well as a slot to perform at Wakefield Pride in August.

The organiser of the event and member of the Longboat committee, Drew-Ashlyn Cunningham, said: “This competition will be our third one, so it is still quite new but I hope it will grow year on year.

“It will feature queens who have not performed much or are very new to it. Some of the queens have done a couple of gigs but have not done it professionally.

“We have six contestants who are all completely different. We have queens who are a bit more edgy, queens who are more campy, and some that are all about glamour.

“We usually feature drag queens and kings but unfortunately, we do not have any kings this year.”

The competitors will have to lip sync to songs and will be judged against four categories including crowd reaction, appearance, lip sync ability and overall performance.

The top two queens will then go head-to-head in a lip sync battle to Vogue by Madonna.

They will be judged by established drag queens, JJ Monroe, Miss Crystal and Arial-51.

The event will be hosted by long-standing drag queen, Madame Nicoal, with special performances by Ariel-51 and the organiser herself, Drew-Ashlyn, who will take to the stage to perform Christina Aguilera’s Dirty.

Diva Diamond, who won the second competition, will be returning to hand over the crown to the next lucky winner.

Drew-Ashyln added: “The event is still growing, our backdrop isn’t anything special but we’re looking forward to it and the more that we host these events, the more budget we can get and put on a bigger show.”

The event is free to enter and begins from 8pm on Saturday, July 2.