Ladies, Gentlemen and those who are yet to decide, I present to you the archive for Her Imperial Highness Regina Fong. Now sadly departed, Regina was held in the highest regard be everyone who ever met her.

Born on 26 May 1945, Reginald Bundy originally trained as a dancer. He worked on numerous West End shows as a dresser and eventually in the 1970's becoame a dancer in a variety of stage musicals. He also appeared in a dancing role in Bryan Forbes film The Slipper and the Rose (1976).

In the early 1980's he teamed up with Rosie Lee (Roy Powell) & Gracie Grab it all (Graham) to form the now legendary drag trio The Disappointer Sisters who performed across the London pubs and clubs. David Dale later become one of the trio when Gracie left. He began to develop his character of Regina Fong in 1985, and appeared every Tuesday night at the Black Cap public house in Camden Town. Regina Fong began to develop a cult following! Complete with trademark flame-red wig, blood-red ballgown and “Jungle Red” nail polish, Reg had developed a complicated alter ego for himself as a member of the Romanoff family who escaped the storming of the Winter Palace in St Petersburg in 1917, fled to China with three Faberge eggs hidden about her (most intimate) person and ended up in Berkshire under the protection of the British Royal Family.

And the fantasy was developed into a stage-play entitled The Last of The Romanoffs, which ran at the Traverse in Edinburgh and the Oval House and Bloomsbury Theatres in London in 1990 and 1991.

Reg's Regina Fong act at the Black Cap attracted a fanatical crowd, singing along to an astonishingly diverse collection of ditties and tunes and jingles culled from cult television shows, quirky TV advertisements and whacky novelty songs – ranging from Skippy: The Bush Kangaroo, through The Typewriter Song to advertisements for L’Oreal shampoo. Each item had a sequence which the audience (known collectively as the Fongettes) was expected, nay obliged, to know by heart and sing along with gusto, or risk the wrath of HIH (Her Imperial Highness) The evenings – originally officially billed as the amateur talent night – also featured performances by the massively talented Zsarday (“And I am telling you …”) and massively dreadful, but late lamented Rose Marie (“Bobby’s Girl”). The finale of the evening came when all of the performers (and assembled eager Fongettes) joined HIH on stage for her mimed rendition of Helen Shapiro’s “Tell me what he said”. For this the audience was expected to learn not only the words but a complicated formation dance routine.

The whole thing provoked excitement bordering on fever-pitch and often had to be repeated as many as half-a-dozen times for a crowd who refused to go home.

All in all, Reg/Regina's boundless energy and enthusiasm aside, it was a show which derived its popularity from the fact that it was among the first to leave behind the gay drag scene’s obsession with Hollywood divas of the 1940s and give centre-stage to contemporary TV icons from the 1980s.

The act won fans from all corners of the gay cultural scene and brought Reg to the notice of TV and theatre producers. 'Regina' had a spell as co-host of Club X, a late-night youth TV slot, hoping to challenge the then dominance of The Word. In 1989, he was courted by the gay author and playwright Neil Bartlett to appear in his Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep, a poetic and dreamy retelling of the story of 19th-century gay artist and poet Simeon Solomon. In the production, Regina appeared alongside another very gay drag icon, Bette Bourne of Bloolips. In 1993, Reg appeared at the Criterion Theatre in London alongside Kim Criswell, James Dreyfus, Sean Mathias, and Simon Fanshawe, in Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens, a verse and musical celebration of lives lost to AIDS. In 1995, Reg appeared in Neil Bartlett’s semi-autobiographical homage to the world of West End musicals Night After Night. Night After Night premiered at the Edinburgh Festival, came to London and the was adapted for Radio Four, for which Reg also recorded a number of other radio plays.

Reg's 'Regina Fong' performances at the Black Cap firmly established the venue as one of the most important gay cabaret venues in London. His act, alongside that of other true originals, and close friends, like Lily Savage and Adrella, was instrumental in the rehabilitation of drag as a central part of gay culture, where once it had been banished to the non-PC margins by humourless critics who deemed it as irretrievably misogynist.

Through the 1990s, Reg took his act to more and more pubs on the London gay scene and beyond. He was always one of the keys hosts on the main stage at London’s Lesbian and Gay Pride Festival, and he was always one of the (unpaid) stars of the festival’s cabaret tents. One of his last major appearance was in front of an adoring audience in the performance tent at the Pride Festival in Brighton in August 2002. Reg was never rich, but throughout his career, he devoted endless evenings to hosting charity events to raise money for emerging AIDS charities. And perhaps one of the greatest measures of his ability came when, alongside the like of Ian McKellen, Stephen Fry and other luminaries, he showed he was easily able to hold the attention of the audience in the vast auditorium of the Albert Hall at the annual Equality Show to raise funds for the lesbian and gay campaigning organisation Stonewall.

Reg died of cancer on April 15 2003 aged 56.