Biography

After turning 90 in 2023, Raven was honoured with a birthday gala event at the Brighton Dome, featuring music from across Maisie Trollette's five decades of drag stardom.

Known by his drag name Maisie Trollette, performed for more than five decades, becoming a fixture at Brighton Pride during the city's first-ever event in 1973.

In the 1960s, Raven met his life partner, banker Don Coull, and it was Coull who suggested that he glam up a bit. Raven initially rejected the suggestion, and Coull then said that he and Court looked like a pair of trolls. David thus fashioned the surname Trollette by combining troll with the diminutive suffix -ette. From then on, his act with Court became known as "Maisie and Jimmy Trollette".

In 2018, to celebrate Maisie's 85th Birthday, Darcelle XV, then the world's oldest working drag queen, flew from the US to meet Maisie in Brighton at Legend's Bar. The meeting appears in Maisie, a documentary on Maisie's life.

He trained as a grocer and then as a publican and waiter and at Gorleston Super Holiday Camp in Great Yarmouth, where he bumped into show-business personalities like Lonnie Donegan and Matt Monro.