Emily O'Reilly

And I do remember I'd been teaching in France after I finished my degree and I went home and it was Christmas and I went to Christmas Eve Mass with Mum and with Brian and he must have just told her, told them.

And I remember I was sitting between the pair of them and Brian quietly weeping on my left shoulder and Mum quietly weeping on my right shoulder and

But that was all the drama that I recall.

And it was, you know, I wonder, you know, why Brian came out so young, given that a lot of people even nowadays delay that revelation for quite a while.

And I think it was either that he was confident enough in our parents' love for him to know that he wouldn't be rejected again.

Or else because he knew he was heading off to the US and he was going to be out of the frame for a while.

But I like to think it was the former.

And it was true because our parents, I mean, I think they were upset.

They were maybe angry.

They had all the typical reactions of people of that generation.

But they loved Brian deeply and they never rejected him.

In fact, at one point they went out to see him when he was living in New York.

It was the first time my mother ever flew.

That was a big deal for her.

So I think that showed the depth of their love for him.

He went to New York around 1981.

Yeah, absolutely.

That was his, you know, he wanted to have the life that everybody else to express his sexuality, to be free.

And we remember at the time, gay male sex was still illegal and would be for another 12 or 13 years.

Oh, absolutely.