Sue Tilley
Sue Tilley was born in South London in 1957. Although she worked full time in various jobcentre’s including 12years in Soho’s Denmark Street, she became a stalwart of the eighties club circuit, where she met Leigh Bowery. He employed her as cashier at his nightclub Taboo and introduced her to artist Lucian Freud and his portraits of her, among them Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, broke records at auction for paintings by living artists at the time. In 1997 she published her biography of Leigh Bowery. Tilley carried on working at the jobcentre until 2015 when she retired and moved to St Leonards-on-Sea. She now paints, writes, DJs, gives talks, runs quizzes and art classes and collaborated with Fendi on their menswear SS18 collection.