Noel Cunningham
speaker
224 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Aug 2026
last heard 1 Aug
Noel Cunningham’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.
Appearances
You know, Oscar Wilde talked about the love that dare not speak its name.
Whereas in rural Ireland in the 50s, you were just that queer, that strange individual who was different.
And the name calling and the abuse and the bullying that accompanied that right from the moment you set foot online.
on the school bus, that continued right through until you started taking things into your own hand and perhaps trying to influence where it went from there by running.
And we ran for so many years.
You think if I get out of Donegal, if I get out of Dublin, if I get out of Cork, if I go to London, everything will be better.
Absolutely, absolutely.
And I always tell the story and I don't want ever anybody to think when I speak about alcoholism on any program or any show that it's me trying to pass around the poor me, the pity bowl, not at all.
I want to try and enforce almost like kind of positive discrimination for groups of gay people who grew up in the 50s and 60s and recovering alcoholics to try and get a message across that there is life, that there is sobriety.
And even though we will forever be in that cage, we never escape that cage.
We're not incarcerated.
We're looking at a horizon, a horizon that is hopeful.
In my case, it was pretty brutal because for a number of years I disappeared.
When I say I disappeared, I disappeared from my family's radar.
I kept minimal contact from far away because I was afraid of being found out.
And then, and again, I always speak about it because I attribute that to my journey to sobriety.
My beloved sister and her husband were very tragically killed in a car accident in Donegal.
And what that made sort of very horrific for me was the fact that they were coming from my mum's very special big birthday.
And I had chosen not to travel from London for that birthday.
Why?
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