Quentin Crisp was the "stately homo" who became a celebrity long before the cult of the celebrity was invented, and who knew exactly what was demanded of him and delivered it. The last 30 years of his life were spent happily in one filthy room in New York where a stream of visitors and telephone callers were treated to his mediations on life and culture in return for a free meal or a cheque. It is only regrettable that Hello! never wanted a photographic spread of Crisp showing off his delightful bijou residence, knee-deep in dust and grease.
As a young man in the 1920s and 30s, Crisp sold his body around Piccadilly. In later life, he sold his waspish wit. He had a brilliant turn of phrase. Joan Crawford was "radioactive with belief in herself". In TV, only one law prevailed: "the survival of the glibbest". And other people are "a mistake".
Depending on which way you look at it, he had an honesty or a brutality and lack of tact that made him the despair of his agent. He did not say things to be liked but because he meant them.
Mrs Thatcher was "a star" and Princess Diana was "trash and got what she deserved". The latter, uttered on primetime US TV in the wake of her death, caused America to take a sharp intake of breath. Like a latter-day Oscar Wilde without the playwrighting talent, Crisp was proof that you could be famous just for being famous and still maintain your integrity and your brain.
He could even trash Wilde himself: "I know people who have been in prison twice as long and they never wrote any bad verse."
Tim Fountain's elegantly structured one-man play, performed by Bette Bourne, draws on Crisp's diaries, and what it lacks in drama it makes up for in wit and entertainment value. It would, however, amount to very little without Bourne, who gets every nuance of humour out of the witticisms, but gives depth and humanity to the character, offering a glimpse of fragility that hints of a life that was a triumph of style over sadness. Asked to what he attributed his longevity, the 90-year-old Crisp replied: "Bad luck." It's funny - but I don't think he was joking.
· Until January 12 (box office: 020-7307 5060) then tours Britain until March 31.
