Lifestyle’s nightlife columinst...
MARTIN
QUIRK
transcendingluvalways
I
n the wake of recent events at Garlands, my column this month is dedicated to one of it and Liverpool’s true clubland legends, the divine Tracy Wilder, aka DJ Silk Tray. A member of the original cast of Brookside in a former life, Tracy’s persona evolved as a way of escaping the unwanted public attention that comes with being in a major soap. DJing throughout the 80s and into the 90s strictly at private parties, ‘DJ Silk Tray’ hit the decks professionally twenty one years ago as a member of the original Garlands crew. Along with Dave & Huey, Marky J and Lady Seanne, Tracy was one of the key people who first put the now fabled venue on Liverpool’s clubland map. She was also a founding DJ at Janice Long’s Crash FM (now Juice FM). Wilder left Garlands in 2002 and moved to the brand new Superstar Boudoir when it first opened to work with her great friend, manager Mike Morgan.
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As well as her DJ work, she still smashes it at Superstar Boudoir every weekend; Tracy is very much in touch with her dramatic roots. She is heavily involved as an actor, writer and director in her own productions, which you can see on the YouTube channel, Wildennis Productions. Her poignant tragi-comic
Lifestyle nightlife creation, ‘Tina Pickles - Miss Liverpool Echo 1985’ has received much praise and a fair amount of critical acclaim. We chatted over coffee during a filming break in her latest project, the irresistibly entitled ‘Housewives Of Benefit Street’. Tracy has always been something of an inspirational figure on the Liverpool club scene and among Liverpool’s creative and gay communities, not least because of her genuine personal warmth, humour and humility. However, since the tragic early death of her beloved friend Mike Morgan in 2013, she has become even more of an inspiration. In little over a year of daily exercise and healthy eating Tracy has shed an incredible eight and a half stone. ‘I was always ‘big’, but losing Mike made me want to start looking after myself a bit more and maybe help me to stay around for a bit longer. My new daily mantra is ‘Doing … doing … doing’. She confides with typical candour and self-deprecating understatement, and I’m certain that Mike could only approve. er lady seanne and tracy wild