Uncover the 4-billion-year story behind iconic animals.

By Maxine Sharples

‘Animals have become diverse, weird and beautiful.’ Chris Packham

‘If birdwatchers are twitchers, I’m not entirely sure what this made us.’ Maxine from Coronation Street.

It was one of those hot July days, the sort where old people are advised to stay indoors and poodles look to the kitchen floor in existential crisis. I’d only been back from China for what felt like five minutes and already had an overwhelming desire to break a law, nothing particularly serious, just enough to remind myself I was home. Fortunately, my sister had flown to Spain, leaving behind the keys to her delightfully nippy BMW, and I saw no reason whatsoever why the car should spend the day feeling lonely.

My criminal enterprise began with a pleasure cruise through Liverpool and under the Mersey to visit my aunt over the water, stopping only to pick up an M&S quiche, which I paid for because I would never steal from Lorraine. By the time I crossed back through the tunnel, windows down in a futile attempt to cool myself, I was contemplating whether to call it a day when my phone buzzed.

‘Hey! I just grabbed my ticket for Sexquisite tonight at District. You should come if you’re free xx.’

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever received a text message at exactly the right moment, but this was one of them. I’d spent the best part of nine months in China where fun arrived with stabilisers. A text inviting me to something called Sexquisite felt like exactly the sort of poor decision I’d been missing. So I pointed the BMW towards the Baltic Triangle.

By the time I joined the queue outside District I had absolutely no idea what Sexquisite actually was. In front of me stood an elderly gentleman who leaned over to his partner and asked, ‘Is this the queue for the cabaret?’ I remember smiling to myself thinking cabaret in Liverpool is an umbrella term for, don’t invite dad.

By the time the show eventually began, around an hour later than advertised, I’d reached the sort of temperature where my smile had started evaporating. The compère, whose default setting appeared to be righteous indignation with the occasional inexplicable American accent, reminded us several times she’d met people at drama school before launching into a monologue about who was and wasn’t entitled to call themselves a sex worker.

We’d all bought tickets to celebrate a community, only to be told that some people weren’t quite sex worker enough to belong to it. My temperature induced hallucination has me reading, we cant be arsed.

Then Wanda Vull wandered onto the stage with the confidence of somebody entirely unburdened by other people’s opinions. A gloriously cheeky striptease followed, culminating in the removal of a glove using nothing but two bum cheeks as white as the Cliffs of Dover. My eyebrows briefly relocated somewhere near the back of my head and I fastened my seat belt.

Followed swiftly by Liberty May. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone ignite and extinguish flames within the same breath. She danced with fire as she kicked her clothes off, sequins scattering light like embers.

She set light to her own knickers, and a naked Samakonasana ended the performance. Nine months of living in China had clearly done a number on me because I averted my eyes out of inherited prudishness. I found myself wanting to protect this complete stranger from absolutely nothing at all.

It struck me that I had never seen a woman do that before, not with that smile and confidence just sat there, entirely comfortable in her own skin, making unflinching eye contact as though daring anyone to mistake confidence for shame.

The audience erupted. I decided I needed a G&T.

I’d just watched my first live full-frontal nudity and then, in perhaps the most brilliantly British interruption imaginable, the house lights came up for the interval and we were encouraged to buy raffle tickets.

Naturally, I bought five. I never quite caught what the prizes were, but gripped the tickets tightly, the raffle somehow became my alibi. ‘I’m not here for the sex stuff officer… I’m here for the raffle.’ Then I remembered I wasn’t in China anymore. Sex work is legal here. Expensive, perhaps. But legal.

During the interval the event photographer wandered over.

‘I’ve got some great pictures of you.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ I replied. Cameras and I have enjoyed a lifelong disagreement.

‘When you were mourning.’

He recognised me from another Liverpool event where I’d convinced him my eighty-year-old husband had popped his clogs. I’d completely forgotten.

A few days later he sent me the photograph and admitted he’d been completely taken in by my widow persona. He said he genuinely couldn’t tell whether I was putting on an act or whether I was actually grieving. I decided to take that as one of the finest compliments I’d ever received.

I stepped outside for some air and, within minutes, was laughing with complete strangers as though we’d known each other for years. A delegation of lesbians had travelled from as far as Manchester, although I’m still not sure what the correct collective noun is. A puddle? A Volvo of lesbians? Whatever the answer, I was swept into conversation within seconds about Coronation Street, quoting, ‘Give us a fag, Maxine, I’m gasping,’ then Björk, Iceland (the frozen food shop) and back again. None of it mattered. It was all completely benign, but after nine months away it felt like drinking my first proper cup of tea. I had become conversationally lesbian myself, happily lapping up my mother tongue.

The remarkable thing about the show wasn’t what I was seeing. It was how quickly I stopped being shocked by it. The first full-frontal reveal felt seismic. Twenty minutes later it had been trumped by another vulva suspended upside down in mid-air and my only real thought was, well, this is escalating nicely.

Looking through Gary’s, the evening photographers photos, what strikes me wasn’t the performers. It was the women watching them. I realised he wasn’t simply photographing performers, he was photographing the room. The audience became as important as the acts themselves.

I imagine trying to capture both performer and audience in a single frame is a bit like trying to squeeze the universe into a stiletto you’d convinced yourself fitted because it was in the sale. Nowhere did he manage it better than with the raffle winner. That photograph explains the evening better than I ever could.

I’d just watched a room full of women cheering another woman through what could have been the most awkward moment of her life. Her face seemed to travel through every emotion available to a human being in the space of thirty seconds. Shock. Embarrassment. Laughter. Excitement.

It wasn’t anti-men. It just wasn’t for them. For once, the performance wasn’t choreographed around what straight men might find sexy. It was women delighting in other women’s confidence. The applause wasn’t possessive or transactional.

It felt celebratory and I found that surprisingly moving.

Gary has quietly documented something else I’d barely noticed on the night, that hardly anyone had a phone in the air. Not like in China. Here nobody seemed interested in proving they’d been there.

We were all too busy being there.