George is a sweet, single man with a broken
tooth, a mess of silver hair and a particularly
Australian way of understatement. Though
his thick Aussie twang presents no small
number of hurdles for the Fab Five – like when
Van Ness presses him to name his favourite-
ever holiday. “Ayres Rock, I guess,” says
George. “Ooh!” comes the reply. “You’ve
been to Israel?!”
George was wildly out of his comfort zone
from the moment the Five arrived. To be
straight: it’s clear that neither he nor Levi knew
exactly who these ive queer men were, or why
the six-foot-two one with a lowing shoulder-
length mane was so insistent on hugs and hair-
tousling. The men played it to their favour.
“My favourite is always the moment where
Jonathan starts playing with their hair in the
irst ive minutes,” says Bobby Berk (Design),
who happens to be the most exceptionally
underrated member of the team – completely
transforming a home or business, with
nothing but a tiny crew of helpers.
“To watch them have anybody that they
don’t know be that intimate... most of them
probably don’t do that with people they’ve
known their whole life,” he says. “But in turn,
by the end of the week, they have absolutely
no problem just sitting there, nuzzled up with
Jonathan, because they’ve realised, it’s OK.
Yeah, it’s OK! Being open emotionally andIN
an out-of-the-way hairdresser,
George, a sun-battered, big-
hearted 54-year-old Australian
farmer is sitting dewy-faced
before a mirror, attempting the
smallest of breakthroughs.
“My...skin...looks...nice,” he stammers.
“OK, one more time,” says Jonathan Van
Ness, summoning what seems like his last
ounce of sass.
“My... skin... looks... ni-...” he tries again.
“Now, take away that murderous tone.”
“My skin looks nice!”
And at last, it’s happened: George has
complimented himself. It’s taken the better
part of the day – and literally an hour of
non-stop performance art from Van Ness,
who’s responsible for dispensing the Fab
Five’s grooming expertise. But by George,
he’s done it.
George is just the latest ‘hero’ to be made-
over by the Fab Five Mark II: the stars of
Netlix’s Queer Eye reboot. They’ve come all
the way to a tiny town in rural NSW simply to
ilm a one-off webisode of the show.
Now, let’s say you’re a cynic. Let’s say you
haven’t yet queued the new Queer Eye on your
to-watch list and have little desire to ever do
so. Let’s say you have vague memories of
Carson Kressley and co. showing straight
dudes basic life skills including how to be nice
to one’s girlfriend, how to apply hair product,
and how to shave one’s face without looking
like a victim of Jack the Ripper. With their
particular areas of expertise – food and wine;
fashion; culture; design; and grooming – they
would, to paraphrase Kressley, not change
these straight guys, but make them better
versions of themselves. But it’s also been 15
years since the show irst hit screens. Why on
earth is this still needed in 2018?
That would be a fair thought. And it would
also be totally missing the point. Because
this Queer Eye bears only a distant
resemblance to the early-’00s series – that
which was variously praised and criticised for
its mainstream depiction of gay culture
(OUT magazine dubbed the original Fab Five
one of the “greatest gay success stories” of
2003; the Washington Post described the show
as “stereotypes on parade”). Queer Eye for the
Straight Guy, important and meaningful in
its own right, was still a mostly by-the-
numbers makeover show. Queer Eye is
something wholly different – a home-run
swing that miraculously came off.
“The orig inal show was so impact f u l. There
was a lot of pressure to make sure that it was
going to live up to that reputation,” says Tan
France, the Fab Five’s style expert.Netlix’s secret sauce? The addition of
precisely what was lacking in the original series- and what many believe is missing from 2018
in general: a critical, constructive relection on
modern masculinity. The fact that it manages
to do so with wit, fun, joy and – always – an
abundance of tears has won the show a captive
international audience, and an unimpeachable
95 per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
And so, with the second season ready to roll
out, the new Fab Five travelled to Australia to
stretch the ‘Yas Queen!’ meme almost to
breaking point, by visiting a rural NSW town
named Yass to transform one of its 6506
residents – a farmer named George – and an
iconic, if ageing, local pub.
Sufice to say, this was the biggest circus Yass
has ever seen. As the ive men stood shivering
in front of the town’s humble “welcome” sign, a
photographer from the Ya s s Tr ib u ne nervously
walked up, and click-click-clicked the shakiest
front page photos ever taken. Scoop scored.
They are shufled back to George’s expansive
farmland on the outskirts of the town. Here, the
process begins. We’re rapidly taken through the
narrative of George’s life: meeting his
dreadlocked son, Levi, and hearing about the
memories of his youth, of riding bulls, of how it
was all washed away in the effort to take care
of his farm, his children, his mother and –
too rarely – himself.