Alan "Al" Pillay also known as "Al Pillay" , the star of Eat the Rich is a person of many names and two genders, starring in The Comic Strip Presents as Alan Pellay playing Himself in Gino as Alana Pellay playing Herself in The Bullshitters and, finally, as Lana Pellay playing Mary in the feature movie The Supergrass.
Background
Pillay was born near the docks of Grimsby where he was the youngest of six children, his mother a cleaning lady of Irish and Trinidadian descent, his father an engineer on the fishing trawlers originally from South Africa of Sri lankan and Spanish descent.
Career
Working men's clubs
Pillay left school at fifteen and went to Manchester where she befriended the prominent Northern drag performers Bunny Lewis and Frank Foo Foo Lammar. She was noted for her impersonations of Shirley Bassey, Eartha Kitt, Lena Horne, Cleo Laine and Dorothy Squires in full drag and no mike and was booked into the working men’s clubs throughout the North of England as well as the cabaret club circuit. Disco diva
During a lull in her drag career while she was managing the Black Market Café in Levenshulme and renting a room from Coronation Street actor, Alan Rothwell she was introduced to Kay Carroll and Mark E Smith of The Fall.
He formed her own band the I Scream Pleasures which would appear as guest support at many a Fall gig with an original repertoire of songs including Parasitic Machines, Surrender Your Gender, Closet Queen, Do You Like Labels, Spirit Souls and You Aint Nothing But A Phoney F-cking Hetero Queen
Every pleasure, every sin!"
TV and movie star
While squatting in Notting Hill she met Keith Allen who invited her to appear in the newly born Channel 4’s first ever program aimed at a youth audience. He also wrote the lead part for her in the feature film Eat the Rich. Theatre and cabaret
As Al Pillay she performed in a one-person play Glitter & Twisted based on her life, written by Tim Fountain, which had its premiere at the Beckett Theater on 42nd Street as part of the first Manhattan Musical Theatre Festival.
She also appeared in her own cabaret A Life in Song at the Pizza on the Park and the Café De Paris. Her cabaret performance has been released as a double CD. More recently, she has performed the title role of the celebrated Welsh singer Dorothy Squires in "Mrs. Roger Moore".