Tom Read Wilson, star of I’m a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!, has revealed that Martin Kemp, the Spandau Ballet singer, is fluent in Polari – a secret language historically used by the gay community before homosexuality was decriminalised.
What is Polari?
Polari is a code-like language that borrows terms from Yiddish, Italian, and Cockney Rhyming Slang. It was employed within gay culture from the 19th century onwards to communicate covertly when homosexual acts were illegal. By the 1970s, after partial decriminalisation, Polari fell into disuse, although words such as “butch”, “naff”, and “zhuzh” have entered mainstream slang.
Discovery in the Jungle
Speaking on Paul C Brunson’s podcast We Need To Talk, Read Wilson explained that he discovered Kemp’s linguistic talent while they were together in the jungle. “Oh my God, Martin is fascinating,” he said. “He can speak Polari and Polari was a secret gay language pre-decriminalisation of homosexuality.”
Read Wilson recounted a specific moment: “He said to me one day, ‘Bona lallies, Tom,’ which means ‘great legs’ in Polari.” When asked how he learned the language, Kemp revealed that he grew up listening to BBC Radio’s Round the Horne, a sketch show starring Kenneth Horne and Kenneth Williams, whose camp characters Julian and Sandy frequently spoke in Polari. “He said, ‘We’d listen every Sunday,’” Read Wilson added, noting that Kemp also introduced a character in one of his thriller novels who only spoke in Polari.
Reflections on the New Romantics Era
Read Wilson, who is openly gay and known for his deep knowledge of the English language, also shared how Kemp reflected on the New Romantics period in the late 1970s, around the time Spandau Ballet rose to fame. “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.’”
Read Wilson added, “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.”
Blitz Club and Acceptance
The pair’s discussion about the famous Blitz club aired on ITV, 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, and the couple are 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 Alan Carr, comedian Rosie Jones, rugby player Meg Jones, Drag Race UK star Bimini, and Green Party leader Zack Polanski among others.
