CHAPTER FIVE
The TV programme Big Brother was really a social experiment, and Series 2, in May 2001, was actually momentous. It was the first time, on popular television, we saw a real-life gay man, who wasn’t a presenter, comedian or entertainer. Brian Dowling was just a normal flight attendant, going about his business. He was funny, clever, dramatic, occasionally difficult and troubled, but he was kind and sensitive. He won the hearts of the nation. All of us watched Big Brother at university, and even though I was out by my third year, and my friends were comfortable with it, none of us, including me, were familiar with gay life, gay people, gay sensibilities or gay romance. Brian provided this for all of us and allowed me and my friends to evolve through his visibility, his appearance on, and ultimate winning of, Big Brother. It was significant in educating all of us.
Suddenly, I didn’t feel so alone. People were talking about this man, but, importantly, not merely about his sexuality. Mostly, they were simply talking about him as a whole person. His being gay was not always the main topic of conversation. This allowed me to see that a gay man could be accepted as a person; not some kind of monster, or someone who was hugely different and unusual. He was still perhaps viewed as somewhat exotic, and it interested me that in the Big Brother house, he became friends with an Asian woman – someone else who was possibly used to life on the perimeter of society. Still, Brian winning Big Brother and being accepted gave me real hope. It propelled me forward as I prepared to leave university and meet other gay men, and it encouraged me to think about what it meant for me to be a gay man, and where I fitted in with the world. Brian Dowling helped me find my place.
Then, just a few months after Brian’s win on Big Brother, I found myself on TV every Saturday night in front of millions of people, on the TV talent competition, Pop Idol.
In week 12 of the series, the remaining five contestants had to endure a press conference, which was their challenge for that week. At this point, I was aware that people in the media knew I was gay – I’d come out at university, so it wouldn’t have been hard to find out anyway. I also knew that no one was going to ask me outright if I was gay. So, when asked who I would like to have a date with, I cryptically and rather masterfully replied, ‘I’d like to have tea with the queen!’
I deliberately took the idea of sexual attraction out of the equation. There was nothing anyone could do to criticise my choice or read anything into it. I remember Nicki Chapman, who was one of the judges and a professor of PR, saying to me, ‘You couldn’t have picked a more perfect answer.’ The fact that ‘queen’ had another connotation made me chuckle internally, and I think the gay journalists who supported me probably chuckled too.
This strategy was something I’d learnt from a very early age. To remain safe, I would give the right answers, while allowing space within my heart to know that I was also being true to myself.
A perfect example would be someone asking me, ‘Will, do you think that girl is fit?’
I would say something like, ‘Yeah, she always looks fit in a swimming costume.’
My thoughts that a girl looked fit in a swimming costume would be genuine, yet I never went as far as saying I would like to screw her. This allowed me to maintain some self-acceptance. I became known as the boy who was old-fashioned in values, not wildly open about sexual desires, but was also a catch!
I remember one quite laddish friend saying to me: ‘You know what, Will, we were all talking, and we reckon you’re going to end up with the fittest girlfriend, because you’re quiet, you’re handsome, you dress well, and you’re a bit mysterious.’
I thought, God, if only that were true, it would make life a hell of a lot easier.
Quite why I chose to enter a TV talent show watched by millions is something for my therapist to analyse, but it wasn’t the easiest of rides, and my gay shame was, once again, fully in play. Once I’d got over the fear of being ‘found out’, I began to invalidate my talent, my singing, my style, and the kind of music I enjoyed. Of course I liked listening to soulful women, because I am a poofter! Naturally I would enjoy fashion, because I am gay! I would feel such shame from things that I deeply enjoyed. I hated the fact that I was categorised by the things I liked, and at the same time, I hated myself for liking those things in the first place because they might give people ammunition against me; such was my conditioning from the age of four. The very things that formed my identity became the very things that, I felt, were weapons of war for others to use against me. Not only that; I also used them against myself. Imagine using your very own being and sense of who you are to destroy yourself. That is what I was doing; much of it because I’d grown up in a heteronormative society, which seeks to quash gay identity.
Shame comes from the outside; then percolates, inhabits and spreads from the inside like a disease. Pia Mellody says of disease that it’s ‘a sense of feeling dis-ease in oneself’. This is what shame does. It creates a constant sense of unease with one’s very being.
This chapter is difficult for me to write, for several reasons. The first is an overwhelming sense of shame. For I was shamed, ridiculed, and I felt persecuted. It is a strong word, persecuted. I use it because in the case I’m about to mention, I have proof that there was a sustained attack on my character, linked to the fact that I loved men instead of women. I am fortunate that I have evidence of it, but, even now, I sometimes still underplay the gravity of it, falling back on the notion that it might just have been me being sensitive or, perhaps, bitter. The first I definitely am. I was and still am sensitive to the attack that happened. In terms of being bitter, I have done a full inventory of my inner world, and that is not the case. Still, I have been avoiding this chapter because it means facing, head on, an overwhelming force of homophobia laced with cruel humour, passive aggression, and, as far as the print press goes, mixed messages, ridicule and false claims. All this followed by proclamations of the journalist in question and, indeed, the wider press, about apparently having ‘no problem’ with my sexuality.
It’s not just me whose sexuality was being used as a weapon against them, so I have also chosen some examples pertaining to others. I’m loath to print them in this book, as part of me feels I am soiling the pages by including such bile and toxicity. Yet, I am purposefully surrounding it with a message of love and acceptance, in the knowledge that, ultimately, love and acceptance conquers vindictive and purposeful disdain and prejudice.
The first interesting case happened in October 2009, when Stephen Gately of the hugely successful band, Boyzone, died in his sleep at his holiday home in Mallorca. The article, written by a journalist whose name I can’t even mention because it fills me with such anger, disgust and fear, appeared in the Daily Mail and is the textbook example of how oily and obsequious prejudice and gay shaming can be. Never quite going full-out in its ridicule of gay men, but where the overall feeling, post reading it, is one of dirtiness. One feels dirty reading it. The journalist is dirty and their output is dirty. What’s so interesting is that the Stephen Gately article I speak of, and the one on myself, were both written by women, which somehow makes it worse. For me, bigotry from a male is more cut and dried. When a man is unable to deal with his own sexual nature or his fears, he projects his self-loathing and shame outwards onto a minority. It’s seen time and time again. Women are not generally as threatened by gay men as their straight male counterparts, so I find it harder to understand. The female journalists who wrote this article remind me of the character in Harry Potter, Dolores Umbridge, played in the films by Imelda Staunton. Cleverly, she is portrayed as the archetypal Daily Mail journalist; the perfect face of ‘home counties’ prejudice and cruelty. There was also a teacher at Wellington College who had the same air. I was in her form when I was 13, and was terrified of her. We called her The Chainsaw. The Chainsaw had set, permed hair, and always wore a jacket with matching skirt and sensible shoes. As far as I was concerned, she was bordering on evil: her face didn’t betray an ounce of kindness. The Chainsaw went against any sense I had of women being maternal or nurturing, but I guess that was my prejudice. I mean, why was I so narrow-minded as to think that women could only be kind and sensitive? Being only 13 at the time, I guess I can forgive myself for that assumption, but even in my twenties, I seemed to be surrounded by women who were kind, had control of their emotional world, and were certainly less threatened by gay men.
I don’t wish to dissect the Mail article about Stephen Gately, because I would never in a million years choose to engage in a dialogue with the type of journalist who would write it. They attack their prey like snakes, always seeming to come out on top, while making the injured parties look like oversensitive, over-protective citizens who should just grow a backbone and not be so reactive. This is a great example of a journalist using the development of gay rights as a weapon against them. There were something like 30,000 complaints made to the PCC (Press Complaints Commission) due to this article, which I believe was some sort of record at the time, but I don’t recall there being a retraction or apology printed in the paper. If there were any, it would have probably been tiny and lost on page 32.
The headline of the article was, ‘A strange, lonely and troubling death’. In it, the hack reports that the causes of death were reported as natural – an undetected heart defect, as it turned out. Her suspected version of events is somewhat darker; she says that the circumstances around Stephen’s death were ‘more than a little sleazy’, implying that it was his hedonistic, gay lifestyle that was the undoing of him. She points out that Stephen and his partner had gone home with a young Bulgarian guy, post-clubbing, suggesting that ‘a game of canasta with 25-year-old Georgi Dochev was not what was on the cards’. This leads her to the conclusion that the circumstances around Gately’s death ‘strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships’. She then berates gay activists who call for tolerance and understanding about same-sex marriage.
When reading this article, which is far more sinister than just the few bits I’ve recounted, I’m reminded that it comes from a newspaper that represents the worst of middle England. Year after year, decade after decade, this paper has been responsible for headline after headline that has spread prejudicial dogma in a terrifyingly subtle yet cruel way. Dolores in Harry Potter would inflict the punishment of giving lines to her students, but rather than writing them out on paper, they would have to carve the words into their skin. Dolores did all this with a smile on her face, which draws a terrifyingly accurate parallel with the kind of journalism that I, and so many people, have witnessed over the years at the hands of these merciless journalists, supposedly writing truth for their readers. Writer Charlie Brooker wrote a brilliant dissection of this homophobic diatribe, labelling it a gratuitous piece of gay-bashing.
The attitude that LGBTQ+ people are oversensitive about this kind of thing is still seen in certain TV commentators. We love to hate them, and heads of networks are more than happy to have them on their channels for this very reason. These are the people who use terms like ‘snowflake generation’ to dismiss anyone who disagrees, feels offended, or takes a stand against them, and to bolster the validity of their comments and views. It’s often said that ‘you can’t say anything nowadays without offending someone’. Well, here are my thoughts on that argument: if I am ever concerned about offending someone, I simply ask beforehand. If I have potentially offended someone, I will say that I am sorry for their feelings of offence. This does not mean that I have to apologise for what I have said; I am merely apologising for the fact that they are feeling a certain way. I respect the right of anyone to have their opinions and their views; however, I do not have to respect the manner in which those views are sometimes put across.
The other thing is, anyone who enters a debate or certain topic without curiosity is being closed-minded. If I am unsure about something, I try to remind myself to be curious about it rather than afraid. I made a decision a while ago never to enter a debate or confrontation with someone who immediately comes at me, or others, from a ridiculing and judgemental standpoint. It’s a waste of my time, and I simply do not feel safe around this kind of person. They scare me because they are not interested in any level of truly empathetic intellectual debate. In fact, to engage with them simply puts more wind in their sails. A person who throws a punch and doesn’t make contact with anything uses up all their energy, often falling flat on their face. So let them! There are, however, times when people should stand up for themselves and their community and the article on Stephen Gately’s death was one of them.
After winning Pop Idol, I was yet to tell people in the press, and therefore wider society, that I was a gay man. In those days, there was no social media. I couldn’t pre-empt any salacious press articles by simply sending a quick tweet or posting a video. Social media has given control back to many celebrities, in that they can set and control the narrative rather than the mainstream press and media.
At the beginning of my career, the narrative and stories were guided, as much as possible, by my PR team. The relationship between certain elements of the press and the PR team often became fractured and resentful. Sometimes, negative stories were written about me, purely because there was wider beef with the press team and a particular tabloid. On one occasion, my PR team decided that I should not do a particular article in a particular newspaper, so the editor ‘punished’ me by printing a piece filled with character assassination. I actually can’t really remember everything it said, but there were some very choice bits, including one that said I had demanded pink towels on a tour. Incidentally, on the tour in question, I was incredibly depressed and uncontained, which spilled over into me behaving like a twat and rather unpleasantly. I did not, however, ask for pink towels, and I think we can all do the maths as to why that particular colour was chosen. It’s actually a great example of homophobia being used, but in a very underhand and subliminal manner. How could simply saying I demanded pink towels be homophobic? Well, since the whole thing is made up anyway, why not choose the colour blue? No. The newspaper wanted this story to portray ‘the queen’: a dramatic and bitchy pop star. A drama queen who is demanding and entirely unpleasant. Actually, I was being fairly unpleasant; not because I was gay, but because I was being a dick and couldn’t contain my emotional turmoil at the time.
About two months after winning the show, a horrible and upsetting piece was written about me in the Mail on Sunday. In the build-up to this piece, I had gone through my own journey in terms of being a gay contestant within the growing fame and pressure of being on a Saturday-night TV talent competition, which had exploded in terms of popularity and therefore attention; to give an example, the show started with an audience of around 900,000 and ended with an audience of 14 million watching the final. That is around one fifth of the entire British population watching the show.
I knew that just by going on the show, if I was to progress and ultimately become a pop star, my sexuality would become ‘a thing’ within all that. When the competition got down to just ten remaining contestants, we were told at a meeting, by the PR team, to be aware that things might come up in the press that weren’t always positive news items, and that the tabloids would be looking for ‘dirt’ on all of us, especially as the competition reached its climax. The team also said that it was a good idea to tell family and friends to not speak to the press. It was at this meeting that I said that I was gay, but it certainly wasn’t a big deal with the PR team or the other contestants. Post that, as we got nearer to the final, I was sitting in the auditorium of the TV studio, talking to a couple of new people in the press team, who, at one point, asked me to not speak about my sexuality publicly. It was put to me that, as we were so close to the end of the series, it would be a shame to let that be the overriding news story rather than a more positive one.
I saw the truth in this, but at the same time told them both, quite forthrightly, that I had not gone through all of the difficulties of coming out to now deny who I was. I had spent years pretending to be someone else, and I was now proud of myself for having come out, and having taken on that fight, as it were. It appalled me that people were even suggesting that I should not be true to myself.
Such was the climate at this time that no one would talk about their sexuality within the pop world. It was an unspoken rule. We saw it with George Michael, until he was effectively outed by the LAPD. People in the industry and the press knew that Jon from S Club 7 was gay, as well as Stephen Gately, and Mark from Westlife. No one would print it or ask the question, though, and certainly no promotional poster would announce it. It wasn’t until later that it was deemed OK for pop stars to come out. For me, there was no question as to whether I’d be open about my sexuality or not. I would be. The agreement the PR team and I eventually came to, and the way I was approaching the issue anyhow, was that if someone asked me the question, I would not sit there and lie. This, I imagine, led to a massive panic behind the scenes, with PR representatives trying to vet who would and who wouldn’t ask the question, because the tabloids all knew already anyway! It wasn’t long before the PR team found out which publication was indeed going to ask the question, and it was panic stations a go-go!
It was the last week of the show, and there were two contestants left: Gareth Gates and me. At the beginning of the week, it was decided that we should each go aboard our own individual tour buses and ‘campaign’ up and down the country. It was a genius idea, and as a politics student I could see the intelligence behind it. Pop Idol even ended up being debated in the House of Commons, because of the phenomenal success of the show, and consequently, all sections of the media wanted to interview us: from tabloids to evening chat shows to political editors. We were in hot demand. The PR strategy had been incredible and the team behind it was inventive, authentic and, most importantly, made it fun. I had the best time during that week. There were some things I’m sure that I’ve forgotten about, but my overriding memory is that it was seriously busy but there was a lot of joy and laughter.
We used the top deck of the buses for interviews; there was a small sitting room at the front of the bus, where each journalist got 15 minutes of one-on-one time with me. The interviews were mostly tabloid press, and the one we all thought was going to prove troublesome was the Daily Mirror. They had a celebrity page, written by three women called the ‘3am Girls’. Initially, I’d thought this meant that it was hosted by three prostitutes, which I thought brilliant, so I was a bit disappointed to discover that the ‘3am’ bit meant that the girls stayed out late at all the celebrity parties to get all the best gossip. It’s hysterical writing about this now, because it all seems so petty and ridiculous; so far removed from anything of any importance in life. Which was more important: 9/11 or the 3am Girls; Syria or the 3am girls: the ever-decreasing tiger numbers, hurtling towards extinction … or the 3am Girls? At the time, however, they did become an important thing in my life. I was constantly being told what the fucking 3am Girls were writing about me on any given day! God knows why people felt the need to tell me, but I had to be told. Not only that, my PR team expected me to have an answer to every story that came out anywhere, and would continually call me for comment.
On one occasion, a go-go dancer from a bar in Soho told the press I had slept with him. He said the we had spent the night together and that I wore camouflage boxer shorts. I didn’t, but for some reason, even to this day, I am most offended by the suggestion I wore camouflage boxer shorts. It was a strange life, because not only did I have no privacy from the press, but also none from my PR team. I always wondered who made up the rule that said that the press could ask my PR team anything, and they would, in turn, have to ask me. It gives an idea of the level of power that the press held back then. This was pre-mainstream internet, so the tabloids wielded their power and dug deep for salacious stories. Of course, we all know where this ended up, which was the phone hacking scandal.
Anyway, there I was on my bus, awaiting the arrival of the 3am Girls, or at least one of them. I’d been told three times that this would be the woman who would ask if I was gay, and three times I’d said I would reply truthfully. It was suggested that my PR person might, as soon as she heard the words leave the journalist’s lips, whip me away in an instant. However, the interview progressed, and, as we got to the end, the journalist actually looked rather apologetic. She told me that she had to ask the next question because she had been forced to by her editor. Quick as a flash, I was removed from the room. It was as if there had been an attempted assassination and my bodyguard was rushing me out of the danger zone: ‘GET HIM OUT! NOW!! GO, GO, GO!!!’
I jest, but I was grateful to the person, Kat, who oversaw my final week there. She knew the whole thing was bollocks and felt bad for even having to give a shit. As with any form of bribery or shaming, if we turn around to these people and say ‘I don’t feel ashamed and I don’t care what people think’ it takes the wind out of their sails. They have nothing to barter with, and no power. It was interesting that with my sexuality at that time, it was seen as something that the press had ‘found out’.
The narrative at the time was still that being gay was secretive, and therefore, by association, shameful and wrong. As mentioned previously, even when people would speak honestly about their sexuality, the headlines would be: ‘so-and-so admits they are gay’, the emphasis being on the notion that it’s some sort of confession; the outing of a dirty secret. Tell the truth and stop trying to fool the public.
Some people would have it that I was fooling the public. And what about all the young girls who followed me? Wasn’t I giving them false hope or wronging them in some way? This notion was prevalent in pop, especially in boy bands. If a boy band member was gay, the press line was that they were keeping it from their fans in order to manipulate and use them. Of course, this was bollocks, but also in line with the attitude of record labels.
Their line was mostly that a gay person should not come out and talk about their sexuality. Avoid the questions about personal matters, so as not to risk alienating your fan base, and, ultimately losing income for the record company, management etc. Within the music industry, it came down to finances. People thought that what they were doing was best for business, and best for their clients. They didn’t ever consider what the consequences might be for a person, being persuaded to repress a basic and central part of their very being.
After Pop Idol, I did come out publicly. It was carefully planned. I met with a litigation lawyer named Gerrard Tyrrell, who worked with a firm called Harbottle & Lewis. He was, and is, a calm, intelligent and measured man; well-spoken, always well-dressed, and you just know that he is a good dad. We got on from the get-go, possibly in part because I was middle-class and had been to public school, as had had Gerrard. He worked with the royals, and my brother was going out with Rose Windsor at the time, so we had some connection and, I guess, a lot in common. What is crucial, though, is that Gerrard was not stuffy and not a snob. I felt safe with him because he was gentle, honest and protective toward me. Fleet Street feared him, and well they should. Years later, it was Gerrard who aided many well-known people in the phone hacking scandal, including myself.
Together, Gerrard, the team from Henry’s House PR company and I hatched a plan that we felt was right and authentic and true to me. We decided to do an interview for an article in a broadsheet, deliberately setting out the agenda on a more intellectual level than that of a tabloid newspaper. Before it was due to happen, which was within a month or so of me winning the show, I stayed in close contact with Gerrard because so many stories about me were cropping up. I was convinced that Gerrard was in the Territorial Army, because every time I spoke to him at the weekend, he was up a mountain. I also bumped into him at Buckingham Palace after the queen’s golden jubilee – the man got everywhere.
‘You’re either a spy or in the SAS,’ I said.
He laughed and then moved on, no doubt to chat to one of his many clients in the room. I note that to this day he has not denied he’s in the SAS.
About a week before our article, speculative stories started surfacing in the tabloids. I think I’m correct in saying that it was actually libellous to ‘out’ someone in the media, so, instead, various factions of the press were dancing rather unpleasantly around the issue. They had probably got wind of what Gerrard and I were planning, so turned the heat up accordingly.
There were several more phone calls between me, in my friend’s Notting Hill flat, and Gerrard – probably climbing through some cargo net in the hills of Cumbria – and, before I knew it, it was the Sunday before my planned public coming out. That day, the Mail on Sunday ran the aforementioned article, which was read to me, word for word, by one of my press officers. I can remember exactly where I was standing to this day: in the doorway of the sitting room, half in and half out of the hallway, in my friend Claire’s house in Battersea. Claire was a girl from university, who I’d lived with in my final year, and we were true, true friends. The night before, her partner Hugh and I had taken turns driving a tuk-tuk back from Soho to Battersea. We’d put the driver in the back with Claire, and then asked him in for a party. Anyway, Michelle from Henry’s House told me on the phone that, legally, she had to read it to me. I’m not sure why that was the case, but I acquiesced, and as I stood there at Claire’s, planted between the sitting room and the hallway, I listened to quite the nastiest and vilest thing that someone, in all my 22 years, had ever directed toward me. It literally took my breath away. Despite trying to tell myself that it didn’t matter and that it was tomorrow’s chip paper etc, it hit me hard. So hard, in fact, that I have only read this article once since that day, after I emailed Gerrard and asked him if he happened to have a copy on file. He did, but went further, sourcing other pieces from the past that serve to highlight the homophobic climate of the time, and how an out gay man, who happened to be in the public eye, was treated.
When Gerrard sent me the article, I found it incredibly hard to read, because it is so triggering of the shame and self-hate drummed up by this kind of bile. The heading was, ‘So Will he last? Wealthy, a degree in politics and whispers about his sexuality … Will Young is the unlikeliest of pop stars. As he heads for No.1, will his grin be enough to win him long-term stardom? Catherine Ostler, who wrote the article – aside from being insulting about my physical appearance, upbringing and talent – suggested that I’d no doubt soon be ‘whooping it up in The Ivy at one of Elton John and his lover’s David Furnish’s intimate little all-star soirees’. She added a quote, supposedly from one of my colleagues at Exeter, who says I pranced around, dressed like one of the characters from Fame, making everything larger than life. She talked of a ‘colourful rumour (is) now doing the rounds’, in which a group of my friends at Wellington College were involved in the bullying and homosexual intimidation of younger boys. And that’s just a small part of it.
After Michelle had read out the piece to me over the phone that morning, I asked her whether we should sue the paper. I remember the conclusion was that to do that so early in my career was a huge risk, as I would not only alienate one paper, but it would get the backs of other tabloids up, setting them on attack mode towards me as well. I could just imagine it: ‘Who does Will think he is?’; or, ‘Look how quickly he has turned against the press who have always been so supportive.’
The truth was, I wanted a career and I believed in my ability. I wasn’t arrogant – far from it – yet I was fiercely protective of my talent, and I would have been hugely disappointed if my career had ended before it had begun. I had a deep drive to succeed, but I also wanted to prove everyone wrong. Pop Idol was not seen as credible by much of the music industry or, indeed, other pop artists, so I was not necessarily a popular or revered artist coming into the music arena.
I was handed instant fame and instant success, and I had the fastest-selling single of all time for a debut male artist. My success didn’t happen normally. I hadn’t paid my dues, as far as people like Paul McCartney, the Gallagher brothers, George Michael and Boy George, to name but a few, thought. It broke my heart that some of these people were so anti the show, and therefore, by default, anti-me. In my head, I had five years to carve out a career, so I had to very carefully weigh up whether I wanted to jeopardise all that potential because of an article written by a bigot for a bigoted paper. In the end, I chose my career over the chance of being massacred, and, rather than look for remuneration and compensation for such slander, I bowed out, saying nothing.
To this day, it’s one of my biggest regrets. I feel cowardly and disappointed that I chose to ignore it, and yet I also recognise that I probably didn’t have a choice at the time. My thinking was that, if I took on the paper and my career folded because of it, then the journalist, and the newspaper, would have won.
It wasn’t just the power of the media that stopped me suing the paper; it was also the fact that homophobia was not even seen as a big deal. It really wasn’t. Back then, it would have been seen as petty and overly sensitive to take on any paper over homophobic content. There was little around, either legally or in society at large, to support gay people. No legal rights, no marriage, nothing occurring within schools, and hardly any ‘out’ public figures. I hadn’t even publicly come out yet, so I had no platform of support to stand on.
I had no idea what the reaction would be when I came out, but to come out and immediately be suing papers left, right and centre would allow the press to carve out an image of me as a militant, and a radical; undesirable and disruptive. It would, without a doubt, have destroyed my career.
After that horrific article, the Mail on Sunday stayed true to form, saying they were going to ‘out me’ in their next edition. So, after more phone calls to Gerrard – who was probably on a rock face on Ben Nevis – we decided to abort the broadsheet plan and get the News of the World on side. We would do a story with them that ran on the Saturday, therefore scuppering the Mail on Sunday’s plans to get the scoop, and the glory. It worked – those fuckers must have been furious!
That Sunday, I was booked to do a writing session with the pop writer, Cathy Dennis. She had just penned ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’ for Kylie Minogue, and went on to write ‘Toxic’ for Britney Spears, ‘I Kissed a Girl’ for Katy Perry, and many others. It was the last thing I wanted to do, but my management had decided the best thing was to keep me busy.
A driver rang my doorbell and said he was ready for me, and that there were a few photographers at the front door. I got myself ready and decided to empty the bins on the way outside, as it was rubbish day the following morning. I walked down from the fourth to the ground floor, opening the door to the Georgian block of flats I lived in, and there in front of me, at the end of the big front steps, were about 40 photographers. How do they always manage to find out where famous people live? It was like the scene from Notting Hill, where Julia Roberts is caught in Hugh Grant’s house after nude pictures of her are leaked. Some photographers outside my building had bought their own mini-stepladders, so they were able to see over the scrum. It was crazy and terrifying. My favourite thing about the whole ordeal was that I was taking the rubbish out. The headline the next day was: ‘Will Young Comes Out … With the Rubbish!’
Maybe subconsciously I brought the rubbish out with me to try to normalise the situation and show that I was less concerned with being gay than I was with emptying the bins. I remember shopping in Tesco on Brompton Road – one of my favourite places to be – that evening, after a day of unsuccessful writing with Cathy, and feeling a sudden shiver of a panic attack. I suddenly felt as though everyone knew my business and all about my sexuality. I no longer felt sheltered, knowing everyone now knew I was attracted to men. I felt naked and vulnerable. My physical safety was now compromised and I was completely exposed. As I scanned my chickpeas and mayonnaise (such a nutritious meal), I realised that things would never be the same again.
Despite being terrified on occasions, I was also stuck between a rock and a hard place. I wanted to be true to myself, yet I also wanted to have a long and successful career, and finding that balance was very difficult. When I re-read my coming out statement from my News of the World piece, I’m sad that I felt I had to downplay the idea that I was a campaigner or an activist. It’s true – I wasn’t at that time because I wasn’t yet truly comfortable in my sexuality or ready to look outwards to wider society – but back then I knew I had to come across as acceptable, friendly, and absolutely no challenge to anyone: ‘Don’t worry, I won’t offend you. I sleep with men, but I will never talk about blow jobs, so your own sexuality and sense of self doesn’t have to be threatened.’
I did have a point to make, which was that being gay wasn’t a big deal, and in some way, I suppose that was my form of activism back then. The more I downplayed being gay, the more other people might see that it was OK and that gay people aren’t a threat. Perhaps that might move the conversation along. The problem was that I was stunting my own growth as a gay man, and this was encouraged by those around me. I was advised to always avoid any questions involving me being gay, so the issue wouldn’t take over a whole interview, whether it be on radio, TV or in print.
I understood that what I offered, as a 22-year-old openly gay male pop star, was a new and unique viewpoint for journalists. Not only did they want to know what it was like to be a talent show winner, but also what my thoughts and feelings were on being gay. To be honest, unlike now, I didn’t actually have masses of thoughts on it. Still, I think I did myself a disservice in some ways, and certainly feel that I would have benefited from having someone to guide me as a young gay man within the industry. I found myself in such a paradox. I was openly gay, yet advised to not push my sexuality. At the time, I saw the value in this line of thinking, and therefore diminished part of myself for profit, and to ensure that I held onto my career. I don’t think I could have done anything differently. What saddens me, and I have since found peace with it, is that I often did myself an injustice. I remember doing a TV show on Channel 4 called T4. It was a morning programme that ran across Sunday morning from around 9am to midday. The presenter was the lovely Vernon Kay, who had been a model and was very funny. I was doing a number of clips and songs for their Christmas special, and at one point I sat on Vernon’s knee, while he was dressed as Father Christmas. He asked me who I wanted to kiss under the mistletoe and I clammed up instantly, knowing that I shouldn’t mention anyone male.
‘I would like to kiss Beverley Knight,’ I said.
Beverley Knight was a soul pop singer who I, indeed, greatly admired, but certainly did not want to kiss! It was slightly soul-destroying having to lie in those moments, despite believing that it was for the ‘greater good’ of my career.
When starting my podcast, Homo Sapiens, with my friend Chris, I freely recounted tales from my pop days, and as I began to reflect on those times, a growing sense of anger occurred. This encouraged me to meet up with Michelle from my old PR team, to express how I felt. It was eating me up, and I needed to get it out. Talking to her, I felt instantly better; she was extremely respectful about my feelings back then, and of my feelings throughout my career. We were all trying to do the best we could, and we had to operate within the restrictive circles that existed back then – the power of the media, where wider society was at with gay people in the UK, and even what the legal system gave us recourse to do and not do.
It was a very different time, but amidst all the times when I would feel berated and attacked, things happened that made my heart sing with the acceptance and love I felt from complete strangers.