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Quentin Crisp Dead�Pioneering Individualist was 90

'Stately Homo of England' Expired on Tour in the UK

'No Long Faces �Just Drop Me in a Black Plastic Bag'

By Jack Nichols

Quentin Crisp

Manchester, England�Quentin Crisp, the well-known British-born fashion-plate eccentric and pioneering individualist has died here on tour. Crisp had often said that he was glad to have escaped England, a suffocating land, he'd told The Times, that had been for him "a merciless place."

Crisp had chosen a tiny East Village apartment in New York City as his long-time adopted home where he was known to refer to himself as "The Stately Homo of England."

Earlier, the 90-year-old actor, writer, and 20th century symbol of frail flamboyancy's surprising strengths had said, reflecting on his inevitable demise:

"No flowers. No candles. No long faces standing around in the rain, staring down into a hole in the ground while someone drones on about how wonderful I was.

"I'd rather be shuffled off. Just drop me into one of those black plastic bags and leave me by the trash can."

Quentin Crisp had lived in recent years in the grand tradition of the Lone Theatrical Trouper. He was scheduled to appear at the Green Room Theatre tonight. Following that, a tour had been arranged for the famed wit throughout his native land.

An unabashed effeminate, Crisp's unapologetic public recitals of his own cranky and unorthodox opinions helped turn him into a popular figure whose public personae grew after the 1968 publication of The Naked Civil Servant and the later release of the film.

In both the film and the book, Crisp relates the story of his own confrontation-- as an effeminate gay youth--with the homophobic, simplistically macho culture of 1930s England.

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There were no suspicious circumstances surrounding Crisp's passing, according to local police. Crisp's longtime press agent and friend, Patrick Newley, said that the trans-Atlantic tour had no doubt proved too much for the elderly man.

"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," said Newley.

"At his age it was too much. I rather think he might still be alive if he had not come across here".

Crisp was found at a house owned by a "friend of the theatre" and pronounced dead at the Manchester Royal Infirmary.

Crisp's admirers notice, it appears, that he's died on the road, in the tradition of the theatrical trouper. The unembarrassed individualist would have been 91 on Christmas Day.