Rory O'Neill AKA Panti

Well, sometimes you're forced to, aren't you?

Maybe I'm slightly opposite.

I'd say most people probably tend to have more of those kind of thoughts as they get older.

And maybe in another few years I will.

But I think I used to have more because I think as a queer person in the...

in sort of darker, well actually it's pretty dark at the moment, but in the 80s and that, you're always forced to have these big thoughts and questions and conversations with yourself and with other people because the world did feel like it was against you.

And I think in the last 20 years, 15 years, I've probably been a bit more comfortable.

Well, I probably had a number of you because they also, you know, had my HIV diagnosis at a bad time.

So I think I was probably relatively young when these kind of big questions were thrown at me in one way or another.

But I do think that, you know, my queerness at a time when it was pretty weird to be, you know, queer in this country anyway, sort of almost throws you into relief against the background.

And then there are big questions that go along with it.

And that might also be to do with the person I am and there are, you know, my influences because I definitely know some other queer people who never thought on the point or, you know.

As you may know, there are some gay people who just really like a good time.

I don't know what you're talking about, but the Pope thing, yes.

That's absolutely true.

But I think there was even stirrings of it.

The age is difficult to remember exactly.

I very clearly, separately to that, we'll talk about the Pope if you want in a second, but I remember once deciding not to go to Sunday Mass and knowing that my mother would be absolutely enraged.

But not only did I decide not to go, which I'm sure was very common, I went to the Protestant church instead because I was just curious about,

And I was interested, and there is no Protestant church in Ballinrobe anymore, which is another common theme, but I was sort of interested in these sort of older Protestant ladies.