Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is a What Next podcast. Hello and welcome to Being Human. It's a truly universal experience is being human. It's what we all have in common and yet the human experience is different for all of us. We all have individual ways of behaving, of coping, of thinking, of existing in the world. In this series, we're trying to understand what it is to be human with the help of our guests.
In this episode, we talk to Rory O'Neill. Many of you will know Rory as Panty, his drag queen alter ego. Rory is an activist and an advocate for the LGBTQ plus community. Panty's walk through the capital to Dublin Castle on the day of the same-sex marriage referendum result was historic, and her noble call at the Abbey got global attention.
In our chat, Rory speaks passionately about his queer life and how the world was built for a straight Rory. He describes beautifully how he cared for his dying father and also about confronting his own mortality in his 20s. There's also chat about the therapeutic power of drag. It's an uplifting conversation in which Rory's good humour shines through. Being human.
Yeah, that's what we're going to be talking about, Rory. Put on your safety belt. Do you think at all about being human? Whichever, label any of your thoughts like that. As sort of big existential things.
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...
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Chapter 2: Who is Rory O'Neill and why is he significant?
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.
It's odd because I did think of you as a person who would have had to think, for the very reason you've outlined there,
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.
And you did like a good time. Oh my God.
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Chapter 3: What was the impact of Panti's Noble Call during the Same-Sex Marriage Referendum?
So we will come to, you know, facing up to your mortality at an early age and morality as well. But you do say you're a type of person. And from the age of 11, you sort of knew your own mind. It was 1979. The Pope came to Ireland.
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. They seemed kind of...
interesting sort of almost cool you know there was one called mrs bloss lynch and she would like drive into the town and park on the high street and didn't give a that she was blocking the whole traffic and i just sort of thought that was fierce you know so and did you live with her for a while or for some no no but mrs blossom she lived in the big house and she was like you know her husband had been colonel bloss lynch
Chapter 4: How did Rory confront his own mortality in his 20s?
Moo, she used to call him. And he passed on. And she lived in this big ramshackle old, you know, the Land of Gentry house on the edge of the lake, Loch Cara. Well, there's three lakes around there. And it had like a little boathouse and it had a lawn tennis court. Well, you know, nobody had played on it in 30 years, but it was some sort of moss stuff.
Chapter 5: What role does drag play in Rory's life and the LGBTQ+ community?
So, you know, you could still bounce a ball on it. And I just found that all fascinating. And she lived with a companion. And anyway, one summer, some cousin or niece of Blas Lynch's, who was like American teenager, came and stayed with them for the summer. And I had no help in them picking strawberries or something.
But Mrs. Blas Lynch, you know, she lived in this kind of isolated, big landed gentry house, you know, outside Ballinrobe and outside the part of the next village. And So quite isolated. And as that sort of generation of the Protestant landed gentry families were, she hadn't really engaged with the town much or whatever. So they really didn't know anybody.
So one of the only people she didn't know was my dad, who was the vet who looked after their few animals. And she knew that he had kids. So it was arranged that we would go out that summer and spend a lot of time out there hanging out with this teenage girl from America. And she became the first girl that my straight brother ever kissed. And we spent loads of time at that time.
And I absolutely loved every minute of it. It seemed like so exotic. Was she glamorous? like tweed skirts, flat shoes, you know, the dog, you know, everywhere in the house. So there was dog hair everywhere. And like a lot of, you know, those women from her generation, you know, things were getting pretty dilapidated.
So the house was kind of falling down and the rugs were threadbare and the sofas had the big stains from the dog sitting on it and all of that stuff. But to me, it was so glamorous. Like there was an elephant's foot in the hallway, you know, where she put the...
the umbrellas in you know this kind of stuff and you know I was 12 or whatever I was this all just seemed so glamorous oh and they made us cucumber sandwiches which I'd only ever heard about on the telly or in a book or you know fucking Miss Marple or something like I was just fascinated by the whole thing and you had an auntie QE yeah was she glamorous yeah Super glamorous. Yeah.
Her name is Clumba. And I don't know where we all called her Q. Her name was just known as Q or QE. My grandmother was this fiercely independent woman. And my grandfather, my mother's father, had died leaving her with four kids. And in England during the war, because he had moved them over there. So she waited out the war in England and then moved them back to Dublin.
And she was fiercely independent. She worked at Guinness's and... She made my mother, who was the smart woman, you know, leave school early and get a job, too, so that she could send one off to be a priest, one of the boys to be a priest. The other boy was going to go to university, you know, and so she needed my mother to be working as well to help pay for that.
And then Cuey was the youngest, the glamorous, the gorgeous one with a husky, sexy voice. And she was going to be, you know, an actress, you know, do the whole acting on radio thing. Aer Lingus, whatever, all the glamorous stuff at the time. And she ended up marrying an ex-American Navy guy lawyer who was like 25 years older than her, which is already glamorous, right?
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Chapter 6: How did Rory's upbringing shape his identity?
No, it's not in the book. Oh, did I? Oh, I must have.
So eight miles.
Well, I haven't read my own book in many, many, many years. But anyway, and then getting there, and I do have this, and I'm sure this must be in the book. I have a very clear visual memory of seeing my mother's hands on the wheel driving home. You know, kind of lit up by the light from the dashboard or whatever.
And just sort of being just very aware that they were just like, you know, to me at the time, I'm sure, She was a young woman. But to me, an old lady's hands, that actually does, you know, my mother isn't some sort of magical creature that nothing bothers her. She's upset and angry and pissed off right now. And I could tell. That she was disappointed.
Yeah. So you went off to boarding school. This is, again, sort of signs of who you would become, I think, as a human being in that you didn't get homesick.
My mother, I think she's always resented that.
But oddly, you see, this is the odd thing, because that's a compliment to her that you felt so secure. in your family unit and at home, you knew that was always there for you. It's oddly the people who come from slightly dysfunctional families who are more likely to feel, you know, homesick.
Well, it's like you often hear this discussion, don't you, about whether boarding school is a cruel thing that nobody should ever may do or whether it's good for you, blah, blah, blah. And the truth is there's no answer to that because A, it depends on the school and B, it depends on the personality of the kid. And there were kids in my class who should never,
have been there their lives were miserable they were just every part of them was the wrong personality type to be there and they were picked on they were bullied they were miserable and I'm sure it left them with awful scars all through their life And then there are other ones who shouldn't have been there for other reasons because they were too, you know, and they're sort of becoming assholes.
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Chapter 7: What challenges did Rory face when coming out to his family?
Nearly with a sense of self-formed or... Yeah, I think so.
Like, not to get dark on you for a second, but there was a notorious paedophile in the school that we all knew about at the time. Everybody knew. All the boys knew. The idea that... The powers in this group didn't know. It's just absolute nonsense. And that priest interfered, however you want to phrase it. Abused, I suppose. Yes.
Interfered is sort of... I can hear myself saying, this sounds weird. But anyway... He abused, to different levels, loads of people that I knew and my friends and everything. And he never touched me or came near me because I think he recognised in me and other kids, and I wasn't the only one, as being mouthy and unafraid to say something. And I think he was right.
I was a mouthy, annoying kid in that way. And I would have said something to my mother or one of the other priests or whatever. They groom, you see, they groom, don't they? And so, yeah, I do think I was precociously aware of myself as a standalone person and that I... had the ability to make a lot of decisions myself.
Isn't that brilliant? Because people go through life to their grave and don't arrive at that position. Yeah.
Well, you know, I agree.
I'm glad I'm like that.
I know it can be annoying sometimes and over the years, you know, because I'm very certain about some things and that drives people mad. And so I think I probably mellowed a bit over, you know, you get older and you understand, whatever. But it certainly helped me when I was younger. Yes. Do you like yourself? Yeah.
Yeah, I do. Yeah. No, because, you know, again, like we hear a lot about, you know, self-compassion and you can't love anybody else unless you love yourself, which is really difficult for an Irish man to cope with. Yeah. I think I'm aware of my faults.
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Chapter 8: How has Rory's experience with HIV influenced his perspective on life?
Yes, yeah. He was an anthropologist. And so he wrote this book, The Naked Ape. And it was a huge bestseller. And it was like a dry, crusty, you know, thing with like... No pictures. Yeah, no photographs. Yeah. a few, you know, hand-drawn illustrations. Later, he did bring out Man Watching. Man Watching, which was like a coffee table book with colour pictures and pictures of apes and all that.
And it was a huge international bestseller. And that was the kind of thing everybody bought for their dad, you know, in 1985 for Christmas or something. But anyway, we had The Naked Ape, which is like this dusty tome. And so it went through everything about humans as if they were just describing animals.
All your various systems and your health and where we came from and how we evolved and, you know, how our gut works and whatever. But it also had a chapter on human sexuality. And within that chapter, it had a little bit about homosexuality. And Desmond Morris described what a homosexual was in like the... driest, crustiest anthropology language.
Describe what a homosexual was and what they did to each other, to an extent. And it was the most exciting thing I'd ever read in my life.
Was that like porn to you at the time? Yes, it was.
It was like pornography. It was written with electricity, you know. And I kept going back and reading this dry, crusty old prose about it. Because for the first time ever, it was actually...
actual proof that homosexuality was real and homosexuality existed because I don't know what age I was I was probably 10 or something I don't know what age I was because up until then I didn't even know if gay people were real you know I thought maybe they were just something that people made up to make jokes about like I had no idea that Mr Humphreys was a real thing so this was proof that it was real but
Also, it was the first time I'd ever seen, heard, or read anything about queer people that wasn't judgmental. Like, he was just a scientist, so he just described us. Up until then, everything I'd ever heard about Gabriel was a bit of a joke or a snide comment or whatever. And I kept that book for years, hidden under the bed like a porn magazine, you know. But here's a nice little epilogue.
So during the pandemic, my old friend, Corinne, he works for one of the book publishers and he sort of does kind of artsy books and stuff. And he lives in Glasgow these days, but Ireland is part of his thing. And so one day he says, oh, I'm going to be in Dublin. You know, he's often here during his work. He says, oh, I just noticed that Desmond Morris is launching a book. And I was like, is he?
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