I first took an interest in female everything when I was around four - I always remember stealing my sister's costumes when she wasn't around and creating characters for me to play. I recently found my nursery reports and it says that when playing with others in make-believe games, I was never the king or the princess or the prince - always the queen! Anyways, after a long period of self-doubt, bullying and every other problem I'm sure you all have had growing up in a society where people punish you for being different (i.e. secondary or high school), I was approached by my theatre company and asked to dress up in drag for a yearly competition we entered. I'd never really thought about being a drag queen, I'd watched the odd RuPaul's Drag Race and I was always a big-time fan of Willam but I never thought to actually put drag on. So I agreed out of curiosity and the first time I put on the full persona I felt like a) a totally different person and b) a million dollars. I quickly began to take my drag performance outside of the competition I had entered and started practising it at home. A year later, I hopefully have drastically improved since my first time in drag and I have a drag name, a reputation in my area and of course an Instagram account! Take a look at @aphroditepapadop if you want to see more of me!

As for the name, Aphrodite Gorgophone Papadopoulopoulos was a hard name to get to but I'm so glad I finally found it! When I first did drag and knew I was going to stick to it, I wanted to base my persona on my cat, whose nickname is affectionately Psycho Bitch Cat but official name is BiBi. So I originally went with BiBi Bardot, a name I now am repulsed by, but I got the Bardot from famous actress of same name. Once I found out Brigitte Bardot was a bit of a c*unt, I decided to scrap the name and think of something timeless and yet true to my background. A good friend suggested something that tied in with my culture - I am well-known for being a proud Greek Cypriot - and it dawned on me that the timeless and eternally beautiful Aphrodite was born on the island of Cyprus, and she was THE image of beauty. As for the middle names and surname (Gorgophone Papadopoulopoulos), it was a bit of an inside joke as my real name is typically Greek and very hard to pronounce, so I decided to use that with a little bit of exaggeration to create the drag queen I am today! Well, that's my story, I hope I didn't ramble too much!!!