I’m a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here’s Tom Read Wilson has revealed that Martin Kemp can speak Polari – a secret language that was primarily used by the gay community before homosexuality was decriminalised.
Polari is a code-like language which borrows terms from Yiddish, Italian and Cockney Rhyming Slang and was used within gay culture from the 19th Century onwards to speak covertly when homosexuality was illegal. By the 1970s, when homosexual acts were partly decriminalised, Polari fell into disuse – although words like “butch”, “naff” and “zhuzh” have made their way into mainstream slang.
Speaking on Paul C Brunson’s We Need To Talk podcast, Tom Read Wilson revealed that he discovered Spandau Ballet’s Kemp – who is married to singer Shirlie Kemp – could speak the language while in the jungle with him.
“Oh my God, Martin is fascinating,” he said. “He can speak Polari and Polari was a secret gay language pre-decriminalisation of homosexuality.”
“He said to me one day, ‘Bona lallies, Tom,’ which means ‘great legs’ in Polari,” Read Wilson continued.
When quizzed on how he knew the language, Martin told the reality star that he grew up listening to BBC Radio’s Round the Horne. The sketch show starred Kenneth Horne and Kenneth Williams, whose camp characters Julian and Sandy would regularly speak in Polari.
“He said, ‘We’d listen every Sunday,’” he said, adding that Kemp also introduced a character in one of his thriller novels who only spoke in Polari.
Read Wilson, who is openly gay and proved in the jungle that he is deeply knowledgable about the English language, also spoke about how Kemp would reflect on the New Romantics period in the late Seventies – around the time that Spandau Ballet took off.
“He said, ‘We were all congregating at a club called Blitz where there was no gender, there was no orientation and we called ourselves the New Romantics because we loved [Lord] Byron and we loved [Oscar] Wilde and we loved those androgynous poets who occupied myriad spaces and identities.’
“I thought, ‘What a special man.’ We had so many conversations about his life and those revelations in this life as they happened and how they always were happening at the same time as the arts.”
The pair’s discussion about famous club Blitz aired on the ITV show, with Kemp telling his fellow campmates last November: “It was a wonderful place to grow up because it was not just being free with what you wore and your clothes, it was being free sexually as well.
“Your sexuality - you could be who you wanted to be. In that club there were boys kissing boys and girls kissing girls, and no one blinked an eyelid.”
He added: “That is something that I took with me, and I have handed down to my kids to say you accept people for who they are. And that, that is one of the loveliest things I think about being involved in that whole pop culture when I was a kid.”
Kemp married Pepsi & Shirlie star Shirlie Holliman in 1988, with the pair now parents to singer Harley Moon and TV presenter Roman Kemp.
Ahead of Pride Month, The Independent released its annual Pride List for 2026, featuring the likes of The Celebrity Traitors’ Alan Carr, comedian Rosie Jones, rugby player Meg Jones, Drag Race UK star Bimini and Green Party leader Zack Polanski among others.
