‘I was UK’s youngest drag queen – now I’m a homeless sex worker’

Lew-Delilah was on the way to becoming British drag royalty after her story went viral. But after leaving her family home and becoming homeless, her life changed.

It was 8am on a school day when 16-year-old Lew-Delilah left her family home in Telford, England, for the last time. “I packed a Nike duffel bag. I had a Moschino…” she pauses, laughs, clarifies. “A fake Moschino handbag with all my makeup, and then my backpack for school,” filled with clothes. “I just walked all the way to my closest train station.”

This was 2020, and the teen had spent the previous two years riding a strange and improbable wave of public attention. Aged 14, living then as a gay boy (she came out as trans in 2022), she’d made headlines after attempting to stage a performance as her drag persona, Athena Heart, at her school.

The school was aware it was happening – “I was going in school with like, 10 inch heels and dancing in the music room” – but the day before the scheduled performance, the school pulled the plug claiming, she says, it was “illegal” for her to perform to her classmates in drag. 

Her family contacted the media and “within a few hours I had ITV, BBC, Sky News all arguing over who would have me on their show first,” she recalls. She appeared on This Morning twice, leaving co-host Rylan dewy-eyed as he dubbed her “amazing”. The drag community reacted in kind, and she was invited to perform with RuPaul’s Drag Race queens on tour, in bars, and at Brighton Pride.

Red carpet appearances followed, as did endless PR packages bursting with cosmetics and wigs. I watched her perform as Athena at Drag World in London in 2018. The attention culminated in BBC documentary Not Just A Boy In A Dress, which charted the teen’s dogged attempts to stage a community drag show, backed by local officials and, at the time, her family.

“I had no money. I had no job”

Behind the scenes, she says, her relationship with her family was souring, and their support was mercurial. Conflict came to a head in 2020 after Lew-Delilah posted a TikTok bashing her home town, which went viral. “I woke up to thunder,” she remembers.

She was also accused of stealing from a relative and of taking drugs at home, which she says did not happen. “I had no money. I had no job. Where would I be getting money for drugs?” she rebuts. “I never left the house. I was severely depressed.”

She left home, and despite her family re-opening the door to her a few days later, she decided to leave permanently. It’s been five years since then, when she says she joined the hidden homeless. She’s moved 26 times, stayed with “nearly 100 people” including friends, family and with strangers in shared accommodation.

“I’ve let myself stay in this position… because this position is so much better for me even if it is obviously a bit rough. I’m actually myself now,” she says today. “If I was still at home I don’t think I’d be half the person [I am].”

The 21-year-old woman I chat with today is fierce, funny, a little mouthy and above all sanguine: over 90 minutes, she mentions 14 times how “grateful” she is to be “still alive and still kicking” despite her testing situation. She’s also disarmingly frank about how her life took a dizzying turn after she first made headlines, and again after leaving home, and the missteps she’s made along the way.

“It opened a lot of doors for me to end up in bad situations”

“It definitely opened a lot of doors for me to do a lot of things,” she says of her initial viral fame, “but I think it also opened a lot of doors for me to end up in bad situations.”

Still just 14 at the time, she says was given alcohol before some performances, and would receive sexual messages from men in their fifties. After leaving home, while flitting between sofas, she stumbled into a group of friends who would often take drugs. “My main problem [was] originally MDMA, then I got off that ‘cos I hated it and I thought ‘Ew, horrible,’” she says with a flippant grimace.

Then came weed, cocaine, ketamine. She’s brutally honest about how potent the latter’s impact became. “One of my jobs, I used to actually turn up on ket and they just had no clue,” she says. “I’d be going to the toilet, doing an extra little bump. Now I look back and I’m like… wow. How I even have a nose is crazy to me.” She’s been sober now for a year. 

For the past few years, Lew-Delilah has gotten by with money raised from online sex work, as she says she can’t survive on the £300 or so paid to her as Universal Credit. My stomach churns as she shares how some of the men she’s chatted with as part of this line of work had “waited” for her to be of legal age.

In the UK, trans people work disproportionately in the sex industry compared to cisgender people – four per cent of sex workers are trans – which Lew-Delilah suggests is down to “discrimination within workplaces”.

“I feel like I’ve learned a lot about the world”

She feels she’s had to resort to sex work, and wishes she didn’t have to. “It’s so sad because my story was I wasn’t oversexualising myself,” she says of her teen self. “I was a young person just trying to do drag and do dance and live my life, and now I’m a homeless sex worker.” She laughs, a little self-effacingly. “I’m very grateful, like I said earlier, [for] all the experiences I’ve had, good or bad. I feel like a wise owl. I feel like I’ve learned a lot about the world differently to a lot of other people.”

When we speak, she’s packing up her things, preparing to move on for the 27th time after a period of staying with a friend. Every time, she has to shed her belongings, depending on the size of where she’ll be staying. “I have thrown away probably thousands of worth of stuff I’ve accumulated over the years,” she says, headstrong still, without a hint of self pity.

Part of the reason she wants to share her story is to shine a light on dysfunctions of the homeless youth system, which she describes rather colourfully as “sh*t. Caca. Like, pure caca-poo-poo”. In one shared, supported accommodation, several crack cocaine addicts moved in while she was trying to maintain sobriety. In another, she was told that if she found a full-time job, she would lose her benefits, and then she’d have to move out. “It’s like a double-edged sword where if you come off your Universal Credit ‘cos you’ve got a job, you’ll then immediately [be] kicked out even though you’ve got no money saved.”

“Stonewall Housing is the national charity dedicated to supporting LGBTQ+ people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. We know that trans and non-binary people face particular barriers to safe housing and we provide specialist advice, advocacy and safe accommodation to support.

“If you are trans, non-binary, or LGBTQ+ and experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity, you can contact Stonewall Housing for free and confidential support via stonewallhousing.org or by calling our housing advice line on 0800 601 530.”

Stonewall Housing

It’s a particularly sorry state of affairs for trans people in the UK considering a quarter have experienced homelessness at some point in their lives. “I’m a 21-year-old trans woman. I want to get my life together. I’ve been homeless since I was 16. Like, I want a space that’s actually safe – somewhere I can actually grow in and save money to actually live.” She pictures buying a van, doing it up and living inside it.

For work, she’d love to go into politics. As well as reforming welfare for the homeless, she fancies being a voice for young trans people. Despite what right-wing headlines would have you believe, she is yet to have her first conversation with a gender-affirming healthcare specialist, three years on from being diagnosed with gender dysphoria. “Once again, the system there is also cracked,” she says, with a clack of her fingernails. “I am gobby. I will keep going to the end of days and I will say what I need to say.”

Lew-Delilah was fiercely bullied as a young gay child, which birthed stoicism, tenacity and bite. Even after weathering the past five years, mentally, she says she’s doing OK. I believe her. “The more I spend my time wallowing in self pity, the more time I am losing out on trying to better myself.  I’ve been a lot happier since I transitioned. I feel like I’m a lot more myself. You know… it’s a very peaceful but chaotic life,” she smiles.

She’s just glad to still be here, waiting for her luck to turn. “I’m just grateful I’m still alive. I’m still kicking,” she says, again.