Elizabeth Burton

How did you first get into burlesque? I was in New York in 1971 and I auditioned at a club called the Psychedelic Funhouse. It was just a shopfront with a stage and a few rows of chairs. On stage, they introduced me as the immodest Miss Modesty. I wore tons of clothes so that I wasn't bare in the first five minutes. Back then you couldn't finish on stage in the nude, so you had to have pasties on your breasts and wear flesh coloured panties under your g-string.

Is burlesque dancing as glamorous as it looks? Any glamorous-seeming job is not really as glamorous as it looks; there's so much hard work involved. But when you're on stage something happens to you: something magical.

What do you think makes a person sexy? The inner being is what makes someone sexy. That and being clean! Would you want to kiss someone with a dirty mouth? Or a dirty dick? Of course not!

What's the most memorable response you're had to a performance? Around 1979 I was working at the Barrel Theatre on Bayswater Road and after the show a little old lady came to the dressing room and said to me: "You've completely changed my image of striptease. That was the loveliest thing I ever saw!"

You're turning 62 this year. Are you going to keep performing? Nobody's offering me any work! There's an old saying that you don't give the stage up, the stage gives you up. It really is the truth.

Read more about Elizabth Burton here!