Rory O'Neill AKA Panti

His trajectory is more bizarre than mine.

He's kind of a genius type.

And when he was 15, he won a scholarship to go to this international school on an island off Canada, where they take two extraordinary students from every country in the world every two years.

And...

And so off he goes.

Like, he didn't even tell my parents that he'd even applied for this thing.

We don't even... Whatever.

And he basically never lived in Ireland again.

And so his relationship, you know, to the whole thing is even more distant than mine, sort of.

Anyway, I came out to my brothers and sisters and then my oldest sister called the oldest child...

And she goes, oh, Rory's gay.

And he goes, well, so am I. Which didn't really come as a huge shock to any of us.

It had definitely been discussed in the family that he might be.

But that took all the suspicion off me, which is such a weird thing because clearly I'm pretty flaming.

And I was doing drag, not hiding that from anybody.

But I know it's amazing what people in Mayo can tell themselves.

You know, my parents just thought I was artsy.

But of course, he was off gallivanting around the world.

And so it was very easy for him to just keep dragging this thing out because he wasn't at home chatting to my mother.

Oh, he'd done some research and he'd write about this, that the best way to come out is in a letter.