world and with Hollywood actors leading the way, London's underground drag scene has burst out of the closet with blazing colours.

Ebon-Knee, Ruby Venezuela and Regina Fong are just some of the cabaret performers entertaining straight and gay audiences at clubs such as Madame JoJo's and the Way Out Bar.

They say drag has lost its seedy image and now draws a wider public, helped by the success of films like "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert'' and "To Wong Foo, thanks for everything, Julie Newmar,'' in which action heroes Wesley Snipes and Patrick Swayze don high heels and wigs to play drag queens.

"I would say that 80 percent of our customers are straight,'' says Steve Bell, manager of Madame JoJo's.

"A lot of straight people want to find out about the drag scene, not because they want to get involved in it, but they want to be able to see it,'' he says. "It's like looking into a goldfish bowl.'' "Drag has been going on for ages, but it's only now that it's getting such a high profile,'' says Alex, assistant manager and waitress at the club where he is known as `Barbie'.

Alex is slim, with never-ending legs and impossibly narrow hips -- only a hint of stubble betrays his androgynous beauty as male. In full make-up, he is so glamourous that many customers refuse to believe they are watching a man.

At the other end of the spectrum, Regina Fong, aka Reginald Bundy, attracts a rowdy crowd of mostly gay men to his ultra-camp variety shows at the "Black Cap'' pub in north London.

Bundy has performed in drag for nearly 20 years and says audiences are more mixed now because drag acts are becoming politically correct.

"It was really very unpleasant for women to watch drag,'' says Bundy. "You used to have drag acts and they'd always do a pregnant scene, and they'd bring out cucumbers, and it was really putting down women.'' "I think that's stopped,'' he adds. "Now people bring their girlfriends and they don't feel as threatened by it anymore.'' But if drag is all the rage, transvestism still has a sordid image and many men hide the habit from family and friends.

At "Adam as Eve,'' a small salon with tinted windows in a busy high street, men pay to receive make-overs and wear themed outfits ranging from demure brides to black lace and garters.

Josie Cahill, a blue-eyed Irish woman with a gentle, comforting voice, says she has received 800 phone calls since she opened the salon in September and 18 people have already used the facilities.

"This seems to be a fantasy for the men who come in but it's not a sexual fantasy,'' Cahill says. "They're happy enough to get dressed and walk around, read magazines, watch TV and have a drink and they don't pester you for anything else.

"I would say about 70 to 75 percent of them are what we call closet (secret) dressers,'' she says.

"I see a lot of personalities change as well as clothes,'' Cahill says.

They're trying to keep up this macho image all the time and the clothes just let them escape from that. It's becoming more acceptable, but I don't think it's happening fast enough.'' Some drag artists think there is a risk that audiences will become saturated and turn to new thrills. Others are angry that the makers of "Priscilla'' and "To Wong Foo'' are putting straight actors like Patrick Swayze in the principal roles.

"Having three heterosexuals playing the characters annoyed me immensely,'' says Bundy, referring to "Priscilla,'' the widely-acclaimed Australian film about a group of drag queens who cross the outback in a silver bus.

DRAG QUEEN -- Bermuda's own Sybil Barrington (aka Mark Anderson), won a role in the movie To Wong Foo.