Reg Bundy aka HIH Regina Fong born 26 May 1945 (d. 2003)Reginald Sutherland Bundy was a British dancer, actor and television presenter best-known for his drag as HIH (Her Imperial Highness) Regina Fong.
Reginald Bundy was originally trained as a dancer. He worked on numerous West End shows as a dresser and eventually in the 1970s became a dancer in a variety of stage musicals. He also appeared in a dancing role in Bryan Forbes' film The Slipper and the Rose (1976).
In the early 1980s he teamed up with Rosie Lee (Roy Powell) & Gracie Grab it all (Graham) to form the now legendary drag trio The Disappointer Sisters, who performed across the London pubs and clubs.
Bundy first developed Regina Fong in 1985, and quickly achieved a regular spot at the Black Cap gay pub in Camden Town, London and also the Royal Vauxhall Tavern. The Fong character was a Russian princess who had escaped to Britain following the Russian Revolution, a conceit which formed the basis of Bundy's show The Last of the Romanoffs, which premiered at the Edinburgh Festival and later ran at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London - 'Her Imperial Highness was born to the Imperial Russian family of Saint Petersburg in 1905, but was almost immediately hidden away on the orders of the Czar due to her startling mane of red hair.'
Regina's stage act entailed audience participation, and used a variety of songs, jingles, and sound effects, and was one of the regular hosts of London’s Lesbian and Gay Pride Festival.Bundy appeared in the Edinburgh and London productions of playwright Neil Bartlett's A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep and Night After Night, and also appeared in the BBC Radio Four adaptation of Night After Night.
His act, alongside that of other true originals, and close friends, like Lily Savage and Adrella, was instrumental in the rehabilitation of drag as a significant part of gay culture, where once it had been banished to the non-PC margins by critics who deemed it as irretrievably misogynist.
In 1993, Reg Bundy appeared at the Criterion Theatre in London alongside Kim Criswell, James Dreyfus, Sean Mathias, and Simon Fanshawe, in Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens, a verse and musical celebration of lives lost to AIDS.
Throughout his career, he devoted endless evenings to hosting charity events to raise money for emerging AIDS charities.And perhaps one of the greatest measures of his ability came when, alongside the likes of Ian McKellen, Stephen Fry and other luminaries, he showed he was easily able to hold the attention of the audience in the vast auditorium of the Albert Hall at the annual Equality Show to raise funds for the lesbian and gay campaigning organisation Stonewall.
Reg Bundy - and HIH Regina Fong, the last of the Romanoffs - died of cancer on 15 April 2003, aged 56.