Mother Vera: Malta’s Drag Sensation Redefining Local Culture One Lip-Sync at a Time

**Mother Vera: one to watch out for**

Valletta’s Strait Street has seen it all—sailors on 48-hour shore leave, jazz trios sweating through August nights, and, more recently, drag brunches that spill onto Facebook feeds faster than you can say “Pastizzi and Prosecco.” But even this hardened artery of Maltese nightlife wasn’t ready for Mother Vera.

The first time she stepped onto the makeshift stage at Monaliza Lounge, wig the colour of ħobż biż-żejt tomatoes and earrings that could double as fishing lures, the crowd froze. Then she opened her mouth—part sermon, part stand-up, part political manifesto—and the room exhaled into laughter, applause and the occasional “Ammèna!” Within three minutes she had christened a hen-party bride “the new Ċensa of Naxxar” and convinced a tipsy Welsh stag to apologise for Brexit in Maltese. By the end of the night half the audience had her Instagram handle scribbled on their forearms like a secret prayer.

Who exactly is Mother Vera? Off-stage she answers to Warren Camilleri, 29, born in Birkirkara, raised on rosary beads and Rita Ora singles. A former MC with the carnival troupe “Dolls of Misrule,” he created Vera during the 2021 lockdown, streaming from a bedroom lit only by the glow of a cheap ring-light. The character was meant to be a one-off joke: a Maltese housewife who’d survived an unhappy marriage to a Gozitan fisherman and now dispensed advice “stronger than Kinnie and more bitter than ħelwa tat-Tork.” But Malta’s TikTok algorithms had other plans. Clips of Vera comparing Prime Minister Robert Abela to “a pastizz that’s all puff and no ricotta” racked up 200k views in a country that only has 500k residents. In a nation where political satire usually arrives via the Sunday sermon or a whisper in the bar, Vera’s unfiltered sass felt like cold sea spray on a July afternoon.

What makes her resonate isn’t just the punch-lines—it’s the hyper-local seasoning. She name-checks village feasts (“I’ve seen more fireworks at Santa Venera than in your bedroom, honey”), ridicules the new €6 bridge toll (“even the Azure Window didn’t charge us to walk over it”) and slips into dialect so thick that tourists think it’s Italian with a hangover. In doing so she’s become a mirror for a country negotiating its identity between EU modernity and parish-whatsapp-group conservatism.

The drag scene here has traditionally been imported entertainment on Pride week or hen-party cruise ships. Vera, however, is home-grown and year-round. Last month she hosted a fundraiser for Malta’s only LGBTQ+ shelter after a 17-year-old was thrown out of his Żejtun home. The event, held in a deconstructed wine bar in Sliema, raised €14,000—enough to keep the refuge open through winter. “We’re not just pretty faces and padded hips,” Vera told the crowd, passing around a bucket that once held chicken take-away now stuffed with pink €50 notes. “We’re family, and family takes care of its own—even if Granny still calls us ‘those confused boys’.”

Not everyone is amused. The conservative lobby “Pro Malta Christiana” has launched an online petition to ban “family-unfriendly” performances in public venues. Vera responded by live-streaming herself reading the petition comments aloud, interjecting “Għidli ’l Missier tiegħek!” every time someone typed “shame.” The clip trended at #1, naturally.

Meanwhile, the Malta Tourism Authority is paying attention. Sources inside the MTA say officials are weighing a “Rainbow Heritage Trail” that would include Vera’s regular Friday slot alongside the Knights’ armoury and the Hypogeum. If it happens, she would become the first living drag queen on a national cultural itinerary in the EU.

Back in Valletta, the Strait Street cobblestones still echo with Vera’s catchphrase: “Tieħu ħsieb, qalbi—Mother’s watching.” Whether you’re a Labour-leaning dockworker, a Dutch digital nomad, or an 80-year-old Karmenu who just popped out for rabbit stew, you leave her show feeling slightly less alone, slightly more Maltese, and a lot more awake. In a country that sometimes mistakes silence for peace, Mother Vera is the loud, loving alarm bell we didn’t know we needed.

Keep your eyes peeled, Malta. The habit is only getting higher.