Beginning in the 1990s, Bourne took on more traditional acting assignments in both male and female roles, sometimes in fringe theatres and campy new dramas, but also in classics by Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, and Noel Coward.

[6] Bourne made his stage debut at the age of four with Madame Behenna and her Dancing Children[7] performing at Stoke Newington Town Hall where he sang "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree".

[6][8] In the 1960s he appeared, credited as Peter Bourne, in several episodes of TV series, including Dixon of Dock Green, The Avengers, and The Prisoner.

"[14] In 1976, Bourne joined the New York-based gay cabaret troupe Hot Peaches on a European tour that culminated in a show at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London.

In addition to Bourne, who took the leading role, original members were Lavinia Co-op, Precious Pearl, Diva Dan, and Gretel Feather.

The actors made their own costumes on a limited budget "out of plastic laundry baskets, broken lampshades, and tat from second-hand shops, sometimes using mops as wigs", Co-op recalled.

[5] The shows featured adaptations of such well-known numbers as "We're in the Money" and original songs like "I'm Mad about Leisure", "I Want to Be Bad", and "I'd Love to Dance the Tango but my Suit Says No".

[citation needed] Bloolips performed in New York in 1980, opening off-off Broadway at the New City Theater, moving to the off-Broadway Orpheum Theatre, and closing in June 1981.

They tap-dance with clattering precision, harmonize on old sounding tunes and never forget the parodistic nature of their endeavour, imitating everyone from dim-witted ingenues to flamboyant femmes fatales.

"[18] In 1993 one reviewer wrote: "If Busby Berkeley had concocted a musical about Ancient Rome and cast it with English music-hall comics who love to dress up like chorines, it might look like Get Hur.

[23] In the New York Times, a reviewer dismissed the show's claim to be a "musical sendup" of Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire and wrote that it was a cabaret act that referenced that play "only as a point of departure" and "there is little to connect the two works, even as a takeoff".

[24] In 1991, Bourne appeared as the 250-year-old La Zambinella in Neil Bartlett and Nick Bloomfield's production of Sarrasine at New York's Dance Theater Workshop.

Stephen Holden called it a "bravura performance" and described Bourne as "a phantasmal apotheosis of a renegade erotic spirit, at once a ruined (though regal) grand dame and a sad clown".

[28] That same year Bourne won a Manchester Evening News award for his performance as Lady Bracknell in the English Touring Theatre production of Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest.

[37] Bourne played the role of Pauncefort Quentin in the Donmar Warehouse production of Noël Coward's The Vortex in 2002,[38] for which he won the Clarence Derwent Award.

[citation needed] In 2005, he appeared in Ray Dobbins' Read My Hips at London's Drill Hall, playing the gay 20th-century Greek poet Cavafy.

[39] Bourne worked with Bartlett again at the Lyric Hammersmith in 2003, as the narrator in a production of Shakespeare's Pericles, Prince of Tyre starring Will Keen.

[43] That same year Bourne worked with the playwright Mark Ravenhill on a short play, Ripper, staged at the Union Theatre in London.

[9][45] In 2013, Bourne and Shaw gave a special retrospective performance titled A Right Pair, charting their journey together over 40 years with monologues and turns from selected productions.

[citation needed] In 2014, Bourne featured in a documentary film about his life and work, It Goes with the Shoes, written and directed by Mark Ravenhill.