Rory O'Neill AKA Panti

And I don't know, jumping around to the Pointer Sisters or something.

And I was just like... I've arrived.

Well, yeah, it was like...

This had been revealed to me, this whole other world that had existed, you know, below the pavement.

And all these people... And they were not ashamed and hiding and... Or certainly not at 2am on a Saturday night or whatever it was.

I may not have been ashamed, but it's impossible to not take on some of it.

I would definitely have been a little mildly embarrassed in situations.

I might now be very comfortable telling every taxi driver, you know, about me, whatever me fella's done to annoy me.

But back then, I absolutely wouldn't have, no.

But also, it wasn't necessarily always safe to be fully open.

It was a moment then.

Like some of the stuff, you know, you're thinking like, for example, my thinking about the Pope, like at that moment, was I very aware of all that?

No, no, I wasn't.

I was just a kid getting through.

But then, no, I had been searching for this and I didn't even know it was going to be this wonderful, this big, this noisy, this loud.

And that night I went straight home with the first fellow who showed me any attention.

a hairdresser with frosted tips back to where like a bed sit and wrap minds like it was one of those he got lucky because you know you know wouldn't it be like but he was punching above us yeah but for years afterwards you know i'd be in some gay bar somewhere and i'd see him across the thing and he'd look at me with that you know oh you fancy me and i was like no you were the first person to ever show me any attention and i just grabbed onto it you know

Absolutely.

No.

So I had started doing a bit of sort of very art school drag when I was in Dublin, doing sort of really arty, weird stuff in Sides, the nightclub on Dane Street and that kind of thing.