FROM 9 to 5, Jay Howarth is a PA at an internet marketing firm.

But come the weekend, his alter ego Zanadu Minnelli takes over as he leads the cabaret at East Lancashire’s answer to Blackpool’s famous Funny Girls club, Guys As Dolls in Burnley.

He’s been working on the drag scene for 15 years and, despite ‘retiring’ five times, he recently went back ‘home’ to Guys As Dolls under its new management.

“When the old manager was leaving I said I would finish,” he said.

“The new tenant emailed me saying he and the customers wanted me back, so I gave in and it’s like home — it was the first gay bar I ever went to.”

Jay got into drag ‘by accident’, when the landlord at the Garden Bar — the former name of Guys As Dolls — asked him to sing for a party.

“But he said do it as a woman. So there I was, a very young 22-year-old, and I did this party and it spiralled from there.”

Jay, now 38, started going out in Manchester and Blackpool, where he saw that money could be made from drag.

He started to develop a character before getting a paid job at a bar in Manchester.

He then moved to London, doing private parties and corporate gigs, before returning to East Lancashire eight years ago where he DJ’d at Stage Door, in Blackburn, then going back to Guys As Dolls, DJing and doing cabaret.

Jay, who lives in Nelson, is quiet and quite shy — on first impressions. But Zanadu’s make-up, sequins, heels from New Look and Evans, and wigs from Burnley Market — allow a more confident side to show.

Zanadu Minnelli was named as a tribute to Jay’s dad, who died 19 years ago.

He was a fan of Olivia Newton John, star of the film Xanadu, and Jay combined this with one of his icons: Liza Minnelli.

“As a guy, I’m quite shy, but as soon as I put that wig on I’ll talk to anyone,” he explained.

“It’s a confidence boost, and I’ve always been lacking in confidence; worrying that people don’t like me. But I love being on stage. I feel ‘right’ when I’m there.”

Jay’s act harks back to the old-fashioned drag acts, and ‘pantomime dames’ with funny routines — which change each week — rather than stand-up gags.

And he’s working on singing live to replace miming.

“I always said I would never show my body on stage, but I broke that when I did the Turkish belly dancer from Britain’s Got Talent, and Stavros Flatley,” Jay said.

“If I can do something and make it work, I will. I even let people tell me what they’d like to see.”

While Jay didn’t come out until he was 22, relatives say they knew he was gay from a young age, when he would always pick the feather boas from dressing-up boxes.

But he wrestled with his sexuality during his teens, unable to relate to gay personalities of the time, such as John Inman and Larry Grayson.

He went on to marry at the age of 18, and have a daughter two years later.

Soon after, Jay left his wife and came out, leaving him estranged from his daughter, now 18, until a couple of years ago, when she tracked him down.

Now, she regularly comes to Guys As Dolls with friends to see his act.

“It was harder telling my mum about the drag than being gay, but everyone’s fine,” he said.

“My ambition, really, is to have my own place. But I’d love to do drag full-time.”