Quentin Crisp

British character, the gay author of "The Naked Civil Servant." He "came out" in 1931 in the streets of London as an effeminate, mincing, limp-wristed queen with blue hair and vermilion lips, make-up and jewelry. Noted for years as being a local character, he was harassed, ridiculed and beaten up.

A fourth child with two older brothers and one sister, he grew up greedy for continual attention. He spent most of his life in London, living in the same room for 33 years and working at a variety of jobs, mostly in art layout. When he published his autobiography in 1968, he became a celebrity, a cult personality from the '20s to the '70s.

By the late '90s, insisting on flagrancy, he glided through the streets of his adopted New York as his own private stage. Witty and flamboyant, he described himself as the "mother superior of homosexuality."

At 90, he returned to England for a visit and died of a heart attack the first night on his native soil, on 21 November 1999, Manchester, England.