Is RuPaul’s Drag Race mainstream? I had always assumed it was, because I like it, and I am an Incredibly Mainstream Man (I know most of Hamilton from memory and I won’t eat a brand of crisps I haven’t seen advertised on TV).

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But last week, as I was trying to explain the most recent episode of the Drag Race All Stars spin-off – specifically the part where BenDeLaCreme performed as Maria from the Sound of Music to the RuPaul track Call Me Mother – to a group of people who had never seen the show before, it occurred to me that I might be wrong. I got about halfway through the line “Body like wow, pussy ’bout to end this drought” in my best Julie Andrews voice, before reading the vibe of the room. As the waiter subtly cut me off from receiving any more coffee, I was left thinking it was everyone else’s loss: now in its 10th season, RuPaul’s Drag Race is the best thing on TV.

I’m a straight cis man, and RuPaul’s Drag Race offers an insight into a world I know very little about – for me, the show is part entertainment and part education about an artform previously intended almost exclusively for the queer community. Watching Drag Race is a bit like watching Alpine skiing at the Winter Olympics – at the start I don’t know how any of it works, but by the end I feel qualified to make (completely uninformed) criticisms: “She has to stop relying on that body. Michelle has already told her she’s resting on pretty – cut it out with the corset silhouette!”

Drag Race occupies a weird place in the zeitgeist – ostensibly countercultural, yet fast becoming one of the most celebrity-laden TV shows on the planet. This year’s All Stars show has already featured High School Musical superstar Vanessa Hudgens (at one point performing in a lip sync battle against a pork chop), while last season’s premiere starred Lady Gaga. It’s a paradox reflected in the show itself, which is simultaneously the epitome of competitive reality TV and a pitch-perfect parody of it – RuPaul effectively does a Tyra Banks send-up every episode, with the over-the-top dramatic judgments and brilliantly terrible puns (“Impersonating Beyoncé is not your destiny, child”). The result is strangely addictive. I have binge-watched almost every episode (save for the mythical “lost” first season), and it’s oddly disarming how you can find yourself invested in the stupidest challenges, be it attempting a Hello Kitty runway look to faking an orgasm in a Spanish telenovela.

The show’s success is spilling out into the rest of the world: RuPaul is finally gaining recognition from his peers, with two Emmy wins, multiple appearances on Stephen Colbert’s Late Show and cameos in Bojack Horseman and Broad City. Last year, Saturday Night Live referenced the show in a sketch, meaning that Americans now have a better sense of the lingo of RuPaul’s Drag Race than they do of how any British person talks (if Kate McKinnon’s impression of Theresa May is anything to go by).

The show is making waves closer to home as well: just last week, Celebrity Big Brother UK, contested by former MP Ann Widdecombe among others, was won by Drag Race alumnus Courtney Act. (The proof that drag queens get more votes than Tories may be something for Jeremy Corbyn to bear in mind ahead of the next election.) RuPaulisms pop up everywhere – my personal favourite was last year, when an anti-Trump protester carried a placard imploring the president to “sashay away”. With his silky turn of phrase and quick wit, RuPaul would be the Mark Twain of our generation – if Mark Twain could work a runway and beat his face for filth.

If anything, the show has become a victim of its own success. Arguably it is the only “mainstream” LGBTQ+ show currently on television, and yet represents a very small subsection. The trans community, in particular, has felt let down by the show: the transphobic 2014 challenge “female or she-male” was a low point. While steps have been made to rectify this – last season’s show featured an out trans queen for the first time – it is hard to escape the idea that RuPaul is just one man, who, like all of us, has his own prejudices, and is a product of his time. He cannot possibly voice every concern of the young LGBTQ+ community – and yet simply because there are no other shows that explore these themes, it seems that’s what we expect him to do.

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RuPaul himself has said that drag will never enter the mainstream, because it’s “completely opposed to fitting in”. And that, in a nutshell, is the genius of Drag Race: so frequently in mainstream culture, LGBTQ+ is portrayed as “the other”, a deviation from the assumed norm of straight, cis men. But Drag Race makes no attempt to fit in, and it’s all the better for it. The outside world, with its judgment and prejudice, is shut out, and only those who want to celebrate drag are welcomed in. I can see why RuPaul doesn’t want to be mainstream, because mainstream implies accommodating those who are prejudiced against you.

But maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe drag should change the mainstream. Maybe we’re getting closer to a world where I can impersonate BenDeLaCreme in public and my friends don’t pretend they don’t know me. And in the end, that’s all I want.

• Jack Bernhardt is a comedy writer and occasional performer