Penny Arcade came to town with a show called 'New York Values' at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Who? She's a performer who does funny and smart one-woman monologue type things. She's been around for a while, notching up acquaintances with Warhol, Quentin Crisp and just about every other New York queer luminary going. She's a mouthy broad. She once hit on Patti Smith.

What's your show about?
Well the show, while very, very funny and very subversive is about values. The values that I grew up with in New York's bohemian avant-garde, as well as the values that were instilled in me by gay men and drag queens, and the values I developed on my own over the course of becoming an adult.

The show is also about cultural amnesia. About gentrification. There is a gentrification of buildings and neighbourhoods but there is also a gentrification of ideas. The show is an enquiry into the erosion of real life and how it has been replaced with 'lifestyle.' Or, to coin a phrase: "Lifestyles are for people who don't have the wherewithal to develop a life."

We are all so over stimulated with 'information' that many of us are just shutting down in the face of endlessly being marketed to. In the show I say: "Media and advertising is hijacking our attention and renting it back to us!" Now everywhere in the world is becoming more and more the same. What I referred to as "the creeping global Americanisation" in my Edinburgh show in 2000 is now galloping! Nothing in the world is presented in depth to the public anymore. We all know that, but we have so much thrown at us that we mostly don't even see the absurdity of it anymore. This show dissects a lot of it and, even though I cannot change the world, I can certainly create a way of looking at it in which we can at least laugh about it.

The one thing the public says to me about my work whether I am in Britain, Austria, America or Australia is "You talk about my life. You talk about what I think about." I know that I am like many, many people out there who are wildly frustrated by the way the world is. My revenge is to pull it apart, look at it, pin it down and laugh at it. I love having this role with the audience.

I am very excited about performing this show in London or anywhere in Britain for that matter because at least you still live in a culture that can tell the difference between Graham Greene and Hugh Grant.

Who is the most underrated Warhol associate?
Billy Name. Billy Name is the person who created the Factory. It was his idea to paint it silver. He created the visual context for the Factory and for Andy through his photography and lighting. Originally he was a theater lighting designer. He was Andy's boyfriend and had a phenomenal aesthetic. He was at the centre of the amphetamine fuelled years. He scrawled a note one day on the wall and disappeared leaving behind a large trunk which Andy saved until he returned 20 years later. In the trunk was the entire documentation of the early years of the Factory. The photos have been published in book form.

The truth though as I have come to see it over time, is that Andy had phenomenal artistic relationships with many many artists who were in what was then in the 50s and 60s New York, a very small scene. Andy was a genius and his genius was in his aesthetic and in his ability to see the genius of other people's ideas and realities and to apply it.

Do you ever feel overwhelmed by the past?
Until very, very recently I was in a forward trajectory in my life, like everyone who is 'just living their life' whether it is a ho-hum life or an unusual one. I think that the specific quality that youth brings to one's life is a kind of impermeability from the outside world. When we are young, as teens, in our twenties and even into our thirties, the brunt of the world doesn't make much of an impact on our ideas or on our personal reality. We seem to be making it up as we go along. We ignore advice, ignore the examples of others, etc, because somehow we feel that it doesn't apply to us. Our life seems so unique to us. Now that I am firmly in middle age the first thing I began to notice was how that wall between the world and I seems to have worn away. Now I am more sensitive than ever to the world that has passed away as well as more aware of the absurdities and little everyday tragedies.

When I was 20, Patti Smith wrote me a letter whilst I was in Amsterdam and in it she said, "I always loved you because you could always find the laughter loophole in any tragedy and twist it like a knife." And now I can see on my own that is truer than ever.

When Quentin Crisp was close to death he said to me: "I am going and you are staying. I feel sorry for you." And that part of the past has been hard for me. All the people who I loved who have died and gone away, as well as many aspects of life that used to be and are gone. But recently I have thrown off the burden of the past and am living in the moment. I am finding the way to do that every day.

What's your secret of survival?
A kind heart and a wicked sense of humour.

What's your favourite memory of Quentin Crisp?
It was when I complained to Quentin that today artists had to know someone in order to be successful, that success wasn't based on talent but on who knew you Existed, and didn't he think the modern world was unfair. And Quentin replied: "Michaelangelo knew a Pope!" With that he showed me that life has never changed. He always got me back on the right track.

Where does Penny Arcade end and Susana Ventura begin?
Well, now someone has written their doctoral thesis about just that question. They propose that Penny Arcade may invent Susana Ventura the way Susana Ventura invented Penny Arcade. Charles Henri Ford, the great American surrealist poet just died at 94 this past September. I have known him since I was 18. Last year he said to me: "Penny! you have done Penny Arcade! Ithink it is time to be Susana Ventura." Susana Ventura is much shyer than Penny Arcade, she brings the whimsical to Penny Arcade. Susana Ventura is the part of me that insists on talking to each member of the audience that she can and wants to know who they are and what they do.

What's your relationship to New York City? Are you a product of the place?
I am quintessentially a New Yorker. I knew it the moment that I stepped foot here. I always say that I am to downtown New York what Anna Magnani was to Rome or Edith Piaf was to Paris. Not to compare my talent to those great geniuses but because of the very, very local rooting that they had in their city and the authenticity of their personal relationship to their cities that everyone understood around them. Even those great famous ladies were not seen as 'celebrities' in their towns but as locals. I must add that I make friends with cities like other people make friends with people.

As a first generation Italian in America I never felt American and I never felt Italian. A lot of my work, the motivation comes from that displacement. Subsequently I feel at home wherever I go. Consequently I have deep personal relationships with many places, and feel I am 'from' there. South London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Manchester, the Cotswolds, Vienna, Sydney, Melbourne, Dublin, Galway, Cork, Zurich, East Germany, the Amalfi Coast, Rome, Naples, Formentera, Mallorca, Ibiza, the small villages of the south of France, Paris.

Is there anything else you'd like to say?
I am so excited to be performing in London. I feel I am opening a new chapter of my life there with this performance at the Royal Festival Hall. The British press was the first to write knowledgeably and with great understanding of the combination of humour and drama in my work. Sometimes I say to American audiences: "I am like Jimi Hendrix and Chrisse Hynde - I have to go to Britain to get my work understood on it's own terms."

I would like to add that here in New York where we are still so devastated by September 11th. Seeing all the people who turned out to stop war in the peace demonstrations in London in February was so important to us because we were not allowed to congregate and demonstrate here in New York, that fundamental right of being an American was taken away from us. Our New York demonstration for peace was not televised locally but the demonstrations in London, Rome and Berlin were and that gave all of us here in New York a tremendous boost to our morale.