As ultra-conservative attitudes to sex and gender re-emerge, performer Jen Byrne’s Weimar act is increasingly radical – even convincing one woman to leave her husband

Fast-forward on a tape and whole worlds open up. For Jen Byrne, the creator of legendary Weimar cabaret singer Bernie Dieter, it came at the end of her own christening video: filmed in Germany where she was initially raised. Fast-forwarding past the usual scenes – moments in the church, family celebrating afterwards, drinking champagne and eating cake – she suddenly came across the remnants of a German prison porno, circa 1970. “Lots of men with moustaches and all these very large bushes,” Byrne says, laughing.

The discovery echoed an experience she had as an eight-year-old watching The Rocky Horror Picture Show with her parents, who “would stop it just before the orgy scene in the pool – one night I was on my own and I just kept watching. I was like: ‘Oh my God, there’s a whole new ending!’”