'Too old to be gay'?

TRANSCRIPT

Then I thought: what can I do? I don't wanna be gay. It looks really, really uncomfortable and, and messy and... So I got married! [At] 24, got married to Harriet, who is still one of my friends and that lasted for a long weekend of about two or three years. OK.

I ended up in a... We sold our house in Headingley and I bought a flat in Hyde Park - very nice - and I decided that I was gonna come out. And I had a gay friend - which is always handy - and he took me to some of the bars and clubs. It was when the, the New Penny was called the Hope and Anchor - The Grope and Wanker as everybody seemed to call it - and there was a club called Charlie's, which was pretty well where, you know, Oslo used to be - under the bridge opposite the, opposite the Showbar or whatever it's called [the Viaduct], just down the road from Fibre. And there was another club which we used to go to which was above a bank somewhere but I can't quite remember where.

And I had a few adventures and it all seemed to be going swimmingly. And I advertised for a lodger from the Playhouse because I had a big flat and I, I was teaching at the time. I was a Head of Department, a Head of Year in a Catholic, Catholic high school. And I advertised at the Playhouse and I eventually got - a nice young woman arrived called Emma, who was working in the wardrobe. And James runs away again. I got married to Emma six months later and we stayed married for twelve years.

She was - she stopped being a wardrobe mistress and she became a divorce lawyer, which was very convenient because when we had our divorce, it was like a guillotine it was so efficient. So one day I was married and the next day I was living here. Because I, when I was married, lived in the whole house next-door. We owned this flat - it was very different - we owned this flat and rented it out to students, so I was efficiently dispatched to live here in 1991.

And I decided that I would - I had no choice - I was 42… I thought I was too old to be gay. I thought that I was not going to be able to operate in the world of, sort of, gay glamour because I was too old and too plain or too something. And in fact I just decided that this is where I wanted to be and I needed to do it for my own sanity and peace of mind.

So I, I started - my friend Roland, still my friend, the original gay friend - took me to places and I met people and I made - I think for me the strongest (I was talking to Kevin about this just yesterday - one of my best, best friends) the strongest and most supportive thing that happened around that time was not me shagging lots of men, which I did, but making really strong gay male friends and those were the best support! They were often younger than me - but they were the best support. We had so much fun! We shared our little mini dramas and tragedies. We were on the phone all the time. I was still working as a teacher - I was the Deputy Head of a high school, which was quite a big job - and somehow I managed to wobble out clubbing three nights a week and still be on the assembly stage the next morning doing an assembly about the perils of alcohol!