Rory O'Neill AKA Panti

Now, WhatsApp has kind of ruined this, but people used to think, oh, you have to face to face and you know, all that and all that.

But if you sit down in front of your mother and you say, I'm gay, and she's shocked, or your dad, and you say it over the Christmas dinner...

they get a fright then they have to respond right then in that moment you know most gay people take 10 years to work out their you know come to terms and some of them never get comfortable in their own sexuality but that gay is sitting there over Christmas dinner expecting their dad to have the perfect response in that moment you know immediately when you put it like that

yeah the gay is up on his high horse waiting for their dad to say you know to be a Hollywood dad and say exactly the right thing and of course the dad doesn't because he's shocked and you know and he needs time to work it out and so he says the wrong thing big row and then you know that goes on forever Christmas is ruined yeah and forever after then Christmas is remembered as whatever the gay incident but if you write a letter they don't have to respond straight away they can sit and think about it and then they can compose the perfect response

So my brother was writing the world's greatest coming out letter.

And then he had this whole bunch of like, oh, he left his laptop on a plane.

And it was just kept on dragging out.

But then eventually I'm going, I have a hepatitis, I'm going home.

And I'm now in Ballinrobe County, Mayo, spending a couple of weeks kind of,

swanning around the house you know like a Victorian woman but I'm having to now have conversations with my parents all day every day and now I'm lying to them by omission because I can't tell them loads of things because they still don't know and eventually I just couldn't keep it up and I blurted it out to my mother but she was driving me to the hospital in Galway we laugh about that because I misinterpreted something she said to me I thought what she was saying is for God's sakes we know you're gay just

let's have the conversation.

And you thought that... And I thought that was her saying, spit it out so we can just have the conversation.

And so I went, well, I don't have AIDS.

Well, at the time, I thought...

I got me to come up and say it.

But I was like, well, I don't have AIDS, but I am gay.

And she nearly drove off the road because that was not what she was trying to say at all.

I don't remember the exact context of the conversation, but I think she was saying like, you know, it could be worse.

You could have been gay.

And I'm like...