I’m in distant climes with only week-old copies of the London Telegraph to keep me in touch, but, in case Derb hasn’t yet got to it, I thought the opening of this obit was sufficiently arresting to be worth sharing:

Sammy Duddy, who died on October 17 aged 62, had a rather unusual curriculum vitae for a member of the Loyalist paramilitary Ulster Defence Association in having been a drag artiste who went by the stage name of Samantha. During the 1970s the self-styled “Dolly Parton of Belfast” became well known on Belfast’s cabaret circuit, presenting a risqué act in Loyalist pubs and clubs, dressed in fishnet tights, wig and heavy make-up.

He was a familiar face on the Ulster terrorist scene, and not just because of the mascara. But, from my memory of my days in the province, he never seemed the savviest paramilitary operative. He was a founding member of what he named “the Window Cleaners”, the North Belfast UDA unit with a distressing tendency to whack the wrong guys: The old joke around town was that, if you were targeted by the Window Cleaners, your neighbor’s life was in grave danger. Still, at a time when the two halves of Northern Ireland’s divided community were riven by as deep a chasm as Dolly Parton’s cleavage, it’s sobering to relect that even cross-dressing cabaret acts were strictly sectarian.

Anyone know of any Sunni insurgents with a transvestite Jessica Simpson routine on the side?