If any fibre of your being has a love of reality TV, there’s one show you really, really need to be watching: RuPaul’s Drag Race.

Pitching a group of drag queens in a competition to display their charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent (I’ll let you work that acronym out for yourself), the contestants have to prove their mettle in a series of tasks testing their sewing ability, quick wit, and lip-syncing prowess.

Think the wonderful cattiness of America’s Next Top Model, imbued with the madcap tasks of The Apprentice, but with a warmth and joy that’s rarely seen in the cut-throat reality TV world.

It’s addictive too – meaning that UK viewers who have found the show through Netflix have likely ripped their way through the entire series.

Fans clamouring to see Season 7, currently not available anywhere in the UK, will be pleased to know that Drag Race has finally found a home on TruTV UK. Beginning with Season 4 last summer, they will be airing the latest series from January 25.

But for now, they've reached the end of the show's sixth season – possibly its finest run – with the unstoppable Bianca Del Rio (spoiler alert) being crowned America’s Next Drag Superstar.

Bitingly funny, with a talent for a whip-smart put-down and a devastatingly-timed eye roll, Bianca balanced out her unveiled disdain for bad drag with an insight into the humanity beneath her larger-than-life persona, proving, in her own words, that she “wasn’t such a bad bitch after all”.

"People are fascinated by drag for different reasons - people have their different preconceived ideas of what it is" Bianca Del Rio

Speaking to the Evening Standard, Bianca, aka Roy Haylock, gave a thumbs-up to the prospect of a UK version of Drag Race.

“I think there should be [Drag Race UK]. It’s a huge process and a huge undertaking for them to film the show as it is, it’s such a long process,” she said. “But if it’s going to be done, I hope it’s done with the right people.”

That means not only the right people behind camera, but the right people in front of it too. Bianca raises British queens Baga Chipz, Myra DuBois, and Meth as worthy competitors if Drag Race UK were to happen.

“Those are the few that I’ve gotten to know each time that I’ve come in, but each time that I come in I find two or three more. They’re a hoot,” she says. “The show, I think, would do well here – the fact that the show is airing now on TruTV and there’s such an interest is pretty amazing.”

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With the crossover appeal of shows like Drag Race, the prominence of the queens who win it, and the West End success of Kinky Boots, it’s undeniable that drag culture is becoming increasingly mainstream. RuPaul’s TV series play a significant part in that – making an aspect of pop culture that has previously been seen as fringe entirely accessible.

“There’s a thirst for [drag], obviously people are fascinated by it for different reasons, but I also think people have their different preconceived ideas of what drag is,” Del Rio says.

Indeed, one of the triumphs of Drag Race is the way it showcases a variety of drag queens – from comedy queens like Bianca, to pageant queens, club queens, high fashion queens, spooky queens. It’s a show that promotes unity, while celebrating differences.

“Drag Race shows this humanity to it, they get to see us as people and realise we’re not all crazy clowns,” Bianca says, adding with perfect comic timing: “Some are.”

Best of all, Drag Race opens up a conversation, shedding a light on the performative nature of gender, and preaching openness, honesty, and acceptance. As RuPaul herself says: “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell are you gonna love somebody else?”

“It opens up lines of communication,” Bianca explains. “I’ve had many emails and letters or people that have come to see me at DragCon, where tons of kids who are not old enough to come to a bar or to a club to see us, are coming there with their parents, saying, ‘I’m 13 and my mom and dad and I watch the show and we love it’. Which is amazing, because when I was 13 that didn’t exist.”

TruTV UK, Mondays, 10pm