The Blindboy Podcast - The Art of Drag with Rory O Neil/Panti Bliss

Episode Date: April 30, 2024

Rory O Neil is a legendary drag performer, as Panti Bliss. We speak about drag as an art form Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tossle with the midnight thistle, you chinless, innocent Bridgetts. Welcome to the Blind By podcast. Are you enjoying the sunshine? The balmy, grapefruit-scented armpit of early May. Will you swing from its beads of sweat? Will you perambulate an evening boarine and marvel at the hum of chlorophyll from a teenage leaf? Will you deliberately sting yourself with a baby nettle just to feel alive?

Welcome to summertime, you bastards. Again, I'm recording this from last week, so you're listening to a previous version of me, pretending that I'm in the future. Presently, I am in a Glasgow hotel wearing jarts. I'm only wearing them inside the hotel, not outside the hotel. And alas, the acoustics of my hotel room are awful. There's lots of reflective surfaces

and there's a very loud air conditioning system that I can't turn off. It's centrally controlled. So I'm recording this from underneath two doves. I'm underneath two duvets. It's pitch dark. It's very warm. But the sound quality is immaculate and intimate. And I'd rather that than something tinny and shouty and air-conditioning. Now I'm in Cardiff. Two days have passed since that sentence you just heard, for I was underneath a duvet in Glasgow and now I am in Cardiff.

Unfortunately, while I was under that duvet in Glasgow trying to record, cleaners came into the hotel room next door and started using a Hoover and I had to stop recording and then I had to move on to my next gig in Nottingham. So now I'm in Cardiff, I'm speaking to you now from a hotel in Cardiff, also under a duvet because hotels in the mornings they're very noisy places, they're difficult to record podcasts in. My voice sounds slightly different than it did a number of seconds ago when I was in Glasgow because last night I smoked a cigarette with Charlotte Church, who was my wonderful podcast guest in Cardiff and we had tremendous crack, but I smoked a single cigarette and now my voice is slightly different.

Recording a podcast on tour is incredibly difficult. I have a window of about an hour in the mornings and at night time after my gig and then 90% of my days is spent traveling and going to venues trying to create a uniform studio quality sound in different locations. With a small time frame is quite difficult. I'm now in Brighton. I'm in Brighton right now. Why didn't I record more in Cardiff? Why did I just get a couple of sentences out in Cardiff? Because by the time that I got my microphone and all my equipment set up and found the right sound, by the time that happened, I only had 10 minutes left and I had to go to Brighton.

So now I'm in Brighton. How could he be in Brighton? A few seconds ago he was in Cardiff and then before that he was in Glasgow. That's the marvel of editing. That's the marvel of editing, understanding your microphone and creating an environment of acoustic uniformity, which is the most difficult bit. And under a duvet, usually works.

Oh, here we go. Little fire alarm there in the hotel in Brighton. Thank fuck. Thank fuck. That didn't continue. Currently, I'm in a hotel on Brighton Beach, and I'm looking out at the ocean. The ocean is right in front of me. There's a beach made out of small little stones. The waves are rolling over the stones

and you can tell it isn't sand. There's a resistance to the water. When waves roll over sand there's a gentle retreating lull that's a bit like breathing. But the waves here in Brighton, because they're rolling over tiny pebbles, they don't get that gentle retreating lull. It's like the ocean is having an asthma attack. The waves are quicker. They gasp. So that's what I'm looking at right now. A couple of cheerful seagulls who look very acquainted with human beings. The grayness of the water. It's getting dark ice and then a deep blue. And if I fucking keep looking ahead there's nothing.

I've got a straight line to Antarctica. I'm on the south coast of England. The sound in this hotel room here in Brighton is quite good so I don't need to be underneath a Dove. There's a little bit of an echo, most man. Small bit of an echo. Right now I'm marvelling at the ocean and staying in the exact hotel where the IRA tried to assassinate Margaret Thatcher and the entire conservative government in 1984. It was one of those IRA bombings that left everyone thinking, would the police not have

been able to stop that? How the fuck? How did they get a bomb into a hotel when the conservative party publicly announced that they were going to have their conference in a hotel? How did they get a bomb into a hotel when the Conservative Party publicly announced that they were going to have their conference in a hotel? How did that happen? Well, in 1984, VHS technology was quite recent, and especially video recorders, where you could record like a television program two or three months in advance, you could set a timer. So what the IRA had done was,

they checked into the hotel like two months before the Conservative Party Conference, and they went to a bathtub in a hotel room and they put a big bomb into the bathtub with a VHS recorder set to record in two months months time. Then they assembled the bathtub back together. So when the police and the military did a sweep of the place, they're like, this place is clear, but they didn't check under the bathtub. Because Paddy might be under the bed or in the wardrobe, but he's not under the bathtub. And the police and the security forces and the military hadn't considered that as a possibility. They hadn't considered that level of technological sophistication because

these VHS recorders that had timers, it was very recent technology, it was only on the market a couple of months. Five people were killed, multiple people were injured. The IRA were unsuccessful in assassinating Margaret Thatcher. They released a press statement that said, we were unlucky once, you have to be lucky all the time. And again, I'm not condoning IRA bombings, need to make that clear. That's an act of terrorism. What's also an act of terrorism was the Force Research Unit set up in 1982 by Margaret Thatcher, where British military intelligence worked secretly alongside loyalist death squads to target and kill civilians, to murder civil rights leaders, solicitors, to facilitate the illegal smuggling of bombs

and weapons into the north of Ireland from South Africa so that covert British military intelligence units could use these weapons to deliberately kill civilians in the north of Ireland, to create an environment of chaos, to stoke ongoing sectarian conflict, to stoke the flames, to destabilise, to create an environment of violence so irrational that it justified British military presence in the North of Ireland, to unravel and prevent any possibility of a peaceful resolution through democratic means, to maintain British occupation and British power and British hegemony. Because Margaret Thatcher was a terrorist. She was a terrorist. She engaged in terrorism and she used taxpayer, the taxpayer's money, English taxpayer money to engage in acts of

terrorism on behalf of the people of Britain, and she didn't tell you. I have to offer that context. If I'm here in Brighton, sitting in the hotel that the IRA bombed, it's respectful for me to acknowledge that as an act of terrorism. It's a main street here. There's children outside, there's people walking their dogs, there's innocent people outside. I'm sure it was the exact same in 1984. But I must also acknowledge British state terrorism and call Margaret Thatcher a terrorist for the terrorism that she did. It's not controversial to say that the IRA bomb here in this hotel in 1984 was an act

of terrorism. There's no one disputing that. But the families of people in the north of Ireland who were murdered under Margaret Thatcher's terrorism by the force reaction unit, by collusion, these families are still looking for justice. They're still looking for answers from the British government and they're getting fucking nothing. It's still ongoing. Look up the case of Pat Finucane.

He was a solicitor, a human rights liar, who was murdered in Belfast in 1989. His family is still looking for answers from the British government. I told my mother last night that I was staying in this hotel and she says, my God, 40 years on, I can't believe that English people are turning up to Brighton to listen to an Irishman in a Baroclava speak.

But yes, I'm speaking to you from Brighton right now. Even though a couple of minutes ago I was speaking to you from Cardiff, and before that I was speaking to you from Glasgow. Multiple days have passed in the previous ten minutes of this podcast that you've been listening to. Even though it sounds like I'm seamlessly having one conversation, and that's what I adore about podcasting, that's actually quite new technology. For the average person to have access to that sophistication of recording and editing, that's quite new. Don't think I could have done this in 2010. Not on a laptop, not on equipment that you can comfortably travel with affordably.

And this is also too why I maintain that my podcast, like the entire project is actually a gigantic novel, I can record and edit my voice seamlessly the way that I can edit words in a word processor. If you weren't listening to this and instead you were reading this on a page, you wouldn't know if the start of a sentence was typed in Glasgow and the end of that sentence was typed a few days later in Brighton, you wouldn't know, you wouldn't be aware of it. But that's how writing and word processors work. Well now, in maybe the past eight years, nine years, you can do that with audio and the computer won't shit itself.

If I tried to make this podcast in 2011, 2012, my computer would shit itself. Too many audio files, too many tiny little edits, the software would have crashed. But from about 2015 onwards, this started to become possible and affordable,

so I can write with my mouth. And this is why too, when I do a good hot take podcast, a monologue episode, and it takes me like three or four days to make, even though you hear one hour, it's because of that process. I can edit all of those words, all of those sentences, the way that I could edit words in a word processor if you were reading it. So that's why I consider this podcast to be writing, to be a novel, rather than it

just being me rambling into a microphone. Although on the rare occasion I will go for a ramble, but I refer to those episodes as telephone calls when I just talk into the mic and it feels like I'm ringing you on the phone. But traditionally with recorded spoken word mediums, traditionally the person would write it out first on a word processor and then read out what they have written. And that tradition comes from before digital recording. When recording something meant putting it down on tape, and if you had to edit tape, you had to take out a razor blade and literally cut it and splice it.

Huge amount of effort. And to be honest, you can tell, you can tell when a person is reading speech that's already written down. It doesn't feel natural. It doesn't feel like conversational speech. It's written to be read with doesn't feel like conversational speech. It's written to be read with your eyes, in your internal monologue.

It's not written for an audio medium. But now, where digital recording and editing is, I can write with my mouth. I don't need to write words out first on a page. I write with my mouth. For instance, right now, I'm in Cambridge. I'm in the city of Cambridge right now. A few minutes ago, I was in Brighton. Five days have passed since the beginning of this podcast. And the only reason that you're aware of this is because I'm telling

you. The reason I had to stop recording in Brighton was because I had a one hour window and that alarm kept going off. and the anxiety of whether the alarm was going to go off or not, that took me out of creative flow. That made it not enjoyable because I couldn't speak into the mic because I'm like, is that fucking cunt of an alarm going to go off? So now I'm in Cambridge under a different duvet, it smells like lavender. And if you're thinking, Jesus blind boy, that's a lot of effort. Why are you creating that much effort for yourself,

which not just sit down with a mic and just talk. The fact is, if I did that, you wouldn't be listening to this podcast. You'd have never heard of it. The person who suggested this podcast to you that made you a listener, that would never have happened. The podcast probably wouldn't exist eight years down the road. I would have stopped sometime in 2018 because people weren't listening to it. My process and the way that I go about making this podcast is the reason that maybe someone suggested this podcast to you and the reason that you you listen every week. I adore making this podcast. I really, really do. I love it. I wake up every morning so grateful that I get to make something

creative where I have so much freedom and fun and space for play. So that's the specific reason. That's the reason why I do this. Gratitude. I want to give it my all. So recording a podcast on the road like this is, it's tricky business and requires a huge amount of time. Time that I don't have because I'm on tour. So I'll be giving you a live podcast this week. a wonderful, wonderful conversation I had a couple of months ago in Vicar Street in Dublin with an Irish national treasure, Rory O'Neill, who performs as the drag persona Panty Bliss. I've known and worked with Rory and Panty for fucking years at various events and gigs where our paths would cross.

And we always had cracking backstage conversations. What I adored about those conversations was the passion, the sheer passion and intent and respect and curiosity that Rory has for the art of drag. the art of drag as Panty. And I've seen many interviews with Rory and with Panty and they tend not to focus around the art of drag. So that's the conversation that we had because I wanted to know about it. I don't know a lot about drag. So in Ireland Rory O'Neill, Panty Bliss, very, very famous, like I said, a national treasure, sometimes called the Queen of Ireland. So with this conversation, I tried to focus on, I tried to ask the questions that Panty or Rory doesn't usually get asked.

And we had a lovely, cracking conversation about the art of drag and also the history of gay culture in Ireland. Give Panty a follow on Instagram at Panty Bliss, P-A-N-T-I-B-L-I-S-S because she's always doing live shows here and there and And it's just a wonderful person to follow. This chat was recorded in Vicar Street in Dublin, my favorite venue to do a live podcast. What a magnificent, wonderful Tuesday night audience. Actually just a heads up before we go into this chat.

This chat contains some words that are considered to be homophobic slurs, but they're used by Rory with the context and intent of reclaiming those words as a gay person. So just a heads up, because even though the context and intent is sound, I don't want to assume that every person listening to this podcast is comfortable with suddenly hearing certain words regardless of the context and intent. I don't want to bring that to your ears without letting you know first. So you can choose not to listen if you don't want to.

This person is a national treasure. You know them mainly as the Queen of Ireland, Panty Bliss. Tonight, they're here as Rory O'Neill. Rory, come on out and have a bit of crack. The character I'm playing also smokes of ape and drinks Carlsberg. But that's technically that's true though because if we're up in the abbey you know you can say that like the character in the play smokes of ape. So who's to say that we're not doing some type of experimental theatre work.

But we are in a way. In the abbey they would check that it was nicotine free vape juice though. So if anybody asks, it's nicotine free. Nicotine free? This is just the same as turning on a kettle. It's just water vapour. But smoke machines... You don't have to convince me, it's them you have to convince. It's not them, it's the security. Although I don't think security gives a fuck either. I don't know where to start. I mean, what usually what I like,

because you get interviewed a lot right, so what I like to do is to ask the questions that don't usually get asked. And for me what I'm really really fucking fascinated about, because I don't know much about it, is drag as an art form. You know what I mean? You've been doing this a long time since 89 isn't it? Yeah about that. You started the character of Panty Bliss, drag performance, in your final year of NCAD. Kind of.

Were you, you were studying design? Yeah, well first of all I'd say you should get it really easily because look at you I know this is performance as well. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's the same thing. You're you're Dragon it is it is it absolutely is and especially modern drag can be anything, you know, so Yeah, you you should get it like on a really emotional level here, you know, but what? What if someone said what I'm doing is is what I'm doing not drag because I'm not playing with gender? Arguably yes, probably yes. I mean there's a reason why virtually all drag queens are gay men and some straight women. It's because they're the ones who are, now I don't want to get too, but they're the ones who are oppressed

by the gender system that we have. And so they're the ones who want to fuck it up. People often when they're talking to me- And is that what we call queering? Yeah, queering it or just, people often sort of when they want to talk to me, and even you I have to say, you said, I said,

Blind Boys asked me to do this podcast a few times, but I wasn't thinking it was going to honor me in life, and I had to say no quite a few times, and I started to feel a bit, it sounds like I'm avoiding him, you know, and eventually you got me this time, and I was like, no, I can do it, but I was also thinking, fuck, you know, it's me night off and all, do I want to get into drag for three hours? You know, it takes a long time. So if there was a machine where I could, you could, like Homer Simpson's one, where I could just step in and zap me and I'd be in drag,

I would do everything in drag. But I'm 55, it takes three hours to get ready. Once I am ready, it's very fucking uncomfortable. So I've gotten more lazy, and so I was glad you said that you wanted Rory to turn. I was like, great, I can just rock up and leave. That's the end and go to the pub. You know, it's all just much easier.

But, you know, I mean, drag is important to me. But the reason I'm into it is because I don't give a fuck about, you know, gender and all that. And you sort of said to me, I think I'd rather talk to Rory, and because people often think that they can't ask the same questions of Panty and Rory, and you absolutely can, and Panty can give you a serious answer. Now, it might be a bit more colorful,

but in general, she can. In the same way that you can ask you, in or out of the bag, the same questions, you'll get roughly the same answers. They might be slightly more colorful, whatever. It's changed over the years, like before, Blind Boy for me used to be more of a character,

and then when I started the podcast, it just became who I am in real life. And something I've been thinking about as well recently, and it's probably unconsciously informed by drag is, as you mentioned there, you know, drag tends to be people who are gay, who are rebelling a little bit about social rules about what gender should be. Yeah.

How I've started to think about my bag recently is, I got diagnosed with autism recently, you know, and I'm open with people at this point, why the fuck are you wearing the bag? Why don't you just take it off? For me, I don't hate saying I'm fucking famous but like I'm well known enough for 2,000 people to show up. You know what I mean? I would have great difficulty as an autistic person just walking

down the street and having a stranger, even if they're being nice, doing small talk with me. That's quite stressful. And I've started to view my plastic bag as a type of autistic protest. It's me actually going, no I don't want to play by these stupid fucking neurotypical rules of in order to be an artist you must sacrifice your private life. I'm not able for that so fuck off. So in that way there's a little bit of drag rebellion there. Society has a set of rules and these rules don't fucking work for me and it's outside of my control. So I want to play with it and have a bit of crack.

That is one of the lovely things about drag, and for years I clung to it, that you can go out, you can do a show, there can be all these people cheering and whatever, it's all going well, cheering and clapping and laughing and whatever. And then 45 minutes later, you go back out into the bar, out of drag and nobody has a fucking clue. That's what I do all the time. Yeah, that's what's really fun about it or whatever. Do you find, because what I like about my job and it's a unique thing is I can walk into a room as blind boy, right?

And everyone knows blind boy as blind boy on the telly or whatever the fuck. And people's faces change and I'm the center of attention. And then I get to walk right back into that room as me without the bag and I'm fucking no one. But I prefer the no one because what I like there is I have to put in the effort then for someone to like me. Yeah. I don't like... I'm the same.

I prefer... Panty is famous, so people know Panty and do you... Do you know the way when if someone already knows who you are and you've never met them, it's like you don't have to put in that effort of normal human interaction because they have their minds made up already. Also if people know you beforehand, they become very sensitive to how you react to them. And so, you know, you might be just distracted for a second, and then the next thing you'll hear, oh, she was a cunt, you know, she didn't smile and, you know, hug me, you know?

And you don't even remember the interaction at all because you were distracted. So people, they amplify everything when they know you beforehand. They amplify it in a way that they wouldn't if they didn't know you. They would just consider it a normal interaction. And your bar, Panty Bar, right? So you're in there on Saturday nights as Panty, right? Would you get like young, young gay people from down in the country who are recently out 19, 20 and they're up in Dublin and they're like, oh my fucking God, there she is, my God. But you're just trying to pull a pint.

Well, I don't pull pints anymore. You don't pull pints? I used to. Nowadays, I just stand in the corner on a Saturday night and I play records. Oh, you DJ. But then, you know, because tourists want you to be there and that. And by tourists, I include people up from Limerick and all. And so they want, so if they go into the bar on a Tuesday or something, and I might be

there, out or drag whatever, maybe, but the staff can say to them, oh, well, she's here on a Saturday night and you can get your picture then and they can come over and get a picture or whatever. But it's very low key. You know, I used to do all the shows in the bar and all of that, late nights, doing numbers, all that stuff. But you know, part of the reason I got into the bar was to somehow find a way out of that as I got older, because I don't want to be throwing myself around the stage

at 16. So to find a way to slowly pull away from that or whatever. But sorry, I wanted to say something earlier to your question, first question. People often get worried about how to refer to me. They want to know what my pronouns are and all of that. And I get it because for other people those things are very important. But part of the absolute joy of drag and one of the reasons that I got into it in the first place is to not give a shit about any of that. The whole point of drag is to like laugh at

the way we're all forced to behave in certain ways or dress in particular ways or react in particular ways. And so I don't give a shit if you call me Panty or Rory no matter what I look like. There's one exception. You can call me he, she, half me friends call me she and Panty all the time. The only exception to that is if I have spent three hours

getting fucking ready, I put a huge effort into it, I look spectacular. And then you go, ho, you're Rory, across the bar. I'm like, fuck you. Like, don't burst my bubble. On the subject of, we'll say tourism, and tourism within a gay bar. Yeah.

How do you feel about that? Because effectively within a gay bar. Yeah, how do you feel about that? Because effectively a gay bar is it's a safe space for gay people Yeah, now most of the tourists would be queer and I just mean straight people coming in. What's what's the crack here? It's a big conversation. Yeah It's a big conversation in the queer community all the time and you know in some cities like Manchester They tear themselves apart arguing over because you because the Canal Street and all of that, in some ways doesn't even feel gay anymore in some ways. So it is definitely a thing.

And I would love if we all lived in a world where nobody gave a single shit what anybody's sexuality was and nobody was going to get upset if you hit on them and you were the wrong guy or any of that stuff. That would be great, but that is not the world we live in. And most queer people do want a space that feels safe and queer and of themselves. And so we would never stop somebody coming into Pantybar

or whatever, you know, because they're straight. You know, how would you even know anyway, really? But if, you know, a big group. Earring in the right ear. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Do you remember that? We have a list of questions we ask them. Finish this Shania Twain quote. And, no, but you know, so, but if a big group,

like say Hen parties, I understand why hen parties like going to queer space, gay bars and all that. Because also it's women saying we feel safe or here. Yes, they want to come because they feel safe, they can also do the nutty kind of hen party sexy stuff and not feel that they're going to be under any threat and so I get it. But if you allow too much of that then the space is changed and the very reason the hen party wanted to go there is now extinguished.

You know, so the space has to remain feeling queer. It's not about numbers or people, it's just like, when you walk in, is the atmosphere, you know, faggy or not? And if there are too many straight people, it doesn't feel faggy anymore. It feels like, you know like the globe or what? Is the globe still there?

Oh my God, I'm so, so bad. Is there, is there, like, just on the subject of drag, let's say a hen party, right? Yeah. They're performing, they're wearing, they're not behaving like they do in the office. They have big pink willies.

Yeah, they're doing drag. Is there an the office. They have big pink willies. Yeah, they're doing drag. Is there an element of drag to that? There absolutely is. I mean, you know, drag is just... OK, the reason that queer, you know, gay men have been drawn to it over the centuries is because you felt oppressed by all of this when you were younger, whatever. Like, you know, I can remember being afraid to cross me legs and I'd get slagged in school for having a limp wrist.

And you know, if you giggled in the wrong way, you fag it or whatever. And drag allows you to sort of say, fuck all of that. I'm actually, all that stuff that you tried to slag out of me, you know, all the stuff that you hassled me about before, I'm actually going to take all of that stuff and I'm actually going to celebrate it and turn it into something that's bigger and more colourful and more

outrageous and more unignorable to say, I am so faggy that it has become a superpower. You know, I'm going to take all of this stuff that you're throwing at me and I'm actually going to throw it back at you with glitter and eyelashes on it. Twice the strength. You know, like I really remember the first time I ever saw drag queen and was in a... But where? It was in London. Because you're from Mayo. I am, yeah. I have an older brother who's also gay and I went to spend a summer with him in

London, you know, just after I finished secondary school. Is this the 80s? Oh, is this 1945? No, yeah, in the 80s, yeah. And I went to a gay bar one night and there was a drag queen in the corner. And, you know, typical English, you know, slightly trashy drag queen with a cheap dress from whichever the 1985 version of Topshop was and all that. And there was just something, she wasn't afraid that her wrist was going to betray her, you know? She didn't give a shit about any of the stuff that I had spent years worrying about. She was standing in the corner on the shitty stage under a fucking spotlight with sequins all over her,

you know, like reflecting all of this faggotry at you. under a fucking spotlight with sequins all over her, you know, like reflecting all of this faggotry at you. And it just felt so, like, freeing. Like, she doesn't give a fucking shit about all of the rules about stuff. She is just celebrating being a big faggy queen. And it felt so, so like freeing. And I was like, I want to have her courage

because what that is actually is courage to not give a shit anymore. And it's just, there's something very powerful and freeing about that. And there's also a beauty in it, which is why, you know, in drag queens, they were generally attracted to the gaudy and all that because it's a stage art.

But there's a beauty in that gaudiness. Because that gaudiness is saying, you can see my faggotry from space. And that is a good thing. You know. So, I've been thinking about gay people a lot since I got diagnosed with autism right now, but I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why. When I got a diagnosis, I have difficulty calling myself autistic because I don't feel autistic enough. There are people who are autistic and it's like, wow, you're pretty autistic,

but for me, it's not like that. But I find, I identify my experience more with people who are gay and what I mean by this is, like I'm straight, right, and every single fucking straight lad, especially when you get to college, like I'm straight, right? And every single fucking straight lad, especially when you get to college, like there were no gay people in school. No, there was, but there wasn't because like, I went to an all boys school, which meant it was fucking homophobia every single day.

Everything was gay. So there was no lads who were out. And I would have met my first gay person in college and every straight lad always says to the gay person, what's it like being gay? You know, it's always just curiosity. And the gay person always says, I don't know, I don't really think about it much.

And then you press them, and what they say is, well, I was bullied loads. I had to watch how I spoke, I had to watch the way I moved. And then it's like, oh, you're not describing being gay, you're describing homophobia. That's what you're describing. And for me, being autistic, I have to watch that. I, to be honest, I wanna be fucking doing this

all the time when I'm talking. Like, I'm real comfortable doing that. I fucking don't, because you'll get called mad. I don't want to look people in the eye. I want to be looking all around the room. But I've learned eye contact over the years. And I've had to suppress in me ways of behaving because of rules in society. Because of rules in society. And like when I got diagnosed it was diagnosed and think of the diagnostics and statistics manual like being gay was in that in the 1970s

and then it got taken out of it and I just find that's the kind of parallel that I find like you're speaking there about like when you were in school did you have to mind how your hands move did you have to mind how your hands move? Did you have to mind how you speak? Like was there a lot of effort in like campness? Is that the correct? Yeah. But I don't think it's just gay men who worry about it. I think straight men worry about that a lot too.

Yeah. I think straight men, like they naturally go and cross their legs and then they uncross them because they remember, you know. So it's not just something that falls on queers, but it falls on queers more. And now I was lucky, I went to school, I didn't ever, you know, I was kind of the mousy, you know, smartish, baddish boy. You know, I got on with the bullies and with the bullied.

OK. You know, I was happy enough smoking behind the bike shed or playing Dungeons and Dragons. So I was comedy as as part of. I absolutely used performance and nuttary and everything to get through all of that. But I definitely felt constantly that I was aware of how I was behaving in the world to live up to all those expectations. But it's funny what you say about the autism thing, because one thing that I often know is sometimes people will meet like gays who are flaming, you know, and I can see people

sneering at them a little bit. But I think, you know, often the experience is you spend all of your teenage years or school years, whatever it is, being so coiled tight, constantly checking yourself to make sure that you don't have a limp wrist and all that stuff and trying to fix these things or cover these things. And then eventually you get to the point where you snap and you realize you're a fag, you come out, you tell your parents and your family, whatever. And for a short while, you are the gayest thing on the planet.

And that's because you're just so like, oh, you know. And we all, a lot of gays did it. I remember I did it. I was putting sequins on everything within 30 meters of me. I was putting sequin cuffs on my denim jackets and painting drag ladies in acrylic paints on the back. I mean, jacket, you know, whatever. Just being so fucking gay.

Because I was just so relieved. And for a while, it was just this massive, pumping part of me. And for a while, I was thinking about relieved and for a while it was this massive, you know, pumping part of me. And for a while I was thinking about it all the time because I was just so fucking relieved. And in a way, sometimes, you know, I have other friends who have been diagnosed with autism later in life. And for a while it becomes their big thing for a while too because they're just so like, oh, my God, this is the thing. And then after a while you calm down about it and it just becomes the background of your life.

I've started being a bit more comfortable with fucking flicking my fingers if I want. But just being going, fucking deal with it. I'm not harming anyone. Do you know what I mean? You should have been lesbian. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha At what point did you get out of Mayo and go to Dublin? Was it just for college or was there at the time a sense that I can go up there and be a bit gay? Kind of but very disappointingly. I was good at art in school and everything and you had

one teacher that encouraged it. But I went to like a really boys boys school where like there was no art classes. So I did the Leaving Cert art on my own. Fair play to you. And I took the exam on my own, the only person, whatever, because they considered art to be gay, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So then I was saying, well, what do I want to do?

And I was, you know, I'm a bad student, but you know, I'm book smart and I retain information well. So, I did okay. And they all would wanted me to, you know, the school would have wanted me to go on and, you know, do something that needed loads of points, but I just had no interest in studying. So, I didn't, I thought I'll go to art college. Now, partly because I didn't really know what I wanted to be, but I knew I liked art and I would draw and do to art college. Now partly because I didn't really know what I wanted to be but I knew I liked art and I would draw and doodle and do stuff but a large part of the reason I went to art college was that in 1986 I thought I'll meet another queer there. Like that's where I find a gay. Because like before the internet and you know it was still a crime in this country. Yes. That's an important thing. That was 26 or 27, I think, before it stopped being illegal.

And were you really, like, I know it's illegal, but was it enforced? Were you frightened? It wasn't enforced in the sense that the cops weren't sort of trailing through hairdressers arresting colorists. But it had that kind of a, you know, it had this kind of oppressive quality. So before 1993, nobody knew where a gay bar was in Dublin, for example, because they were all hidden.

And all the places that I went to when I was a college student and all that were kind of knock on the door kind of shit, and even the George, which was there then, was like that. And so after 1993, what happened, the difference was, it allowed them to become open. And so nowadays, everyone's granny can tell you where the George is, but that was not the case before 1993, they were hidden, and just finding out where the gays were hanging out.

You know, you need to be fucking Angela Lansbury to find that out. And before the internet, whatever, like how would you even go about finding another queer person? I'll tell you how I did it. So I went to art college in Dunleary and I thought, oh, I'm gonna meet a gay there, right? Art college, you know?

There was one other out gay in that college the whole time I was there. He's still one of my oldest and besties. And after being there for like six months or something, I was like, fuck, you know, really glad I met you, Niall, but one's not enough, you know? And like, you know, if I took away all your phones now and, you know, and said you couldn't go to the George and Panty ride ones you might know already and say, find some gays.

What would you do? And in 1985 or six, when all the gays were hiding themselves, that was even more hard. So what I did was, there was a rumour, do you know the cafe on George Street called Simon's Place? Oh, it just closed recently. Well, Simon's retired but Simon's Place. Oh, it just closed recently. Well, Simon's retired, but it's... Okay, yeah. Well, Simon's Place, before it was Simon's Place,

he used to have one called Mark's Brothers, which is down where Acapulco, the Mexican restaurant, is a bit further down in George Street. And at the time, there was these rumors that the gays would be in there, in Mark's Brothers, along with cycle couriers and punks and whatever at the time. And it's true that if you went into Simon's face, sometimes there'd be like a gay zine or something.

So I went there a couple of times, couldn't clearly identify a gay, except maybe Simon, but he was working. But there was Hot Press Magazine, and in the back of Hot Press Magazine- Was that gay? No, but Hot Press Magazine at the back had small ads. Okay, yeah, yeah.

And it had all the small ads and then there was always this like little gay section. And it would usually say, farmer looking for farmer, Mullingar area, whatever, nothing. But it always had this one particular one that was called, I think called Icebreakers, which was a meeting on like the first Tuesday of every month or something in a room in the Clarence Hotel. And this is before YouTube was, when it was the kind of every month or something in a room in the Clarence Hotel. And this is before U2 bought it, when it was the kind of hotel where a local parish priest up to see the bishop might stay. Wow, yeah, yeah.

And so I went along and the first Tuesday of the month, terrified, and there's a little sign in the lobby, ice breakers, this room, and you go in. And there's a bunch of nervous gays in like a chair circle and you know a table with some biscuits and some tea and two proper gays like leading the meeting. Wow! Holy fuck! And then it goes around and you have to sort of say I'm Rory and I'm a gay and you know and I'm probably in the room next door they're doing the same for alcoholics you know and and it was really uncomfortable and I hated every second of it but at the end of the meeting the two gays said well

we're going to go to a you know gay bar gay club now if anybody wants to come and I was like that's what I'm here and they brought us to a place that was called who ray Henry's and what whoay Henry's. Called what? Hooray Henry's. Okay, yeah. And it was in the Powerscore Townhouse Center. It's where Farrir and Draper is now. And we went in the door there and there was,

in my memory there was 10,000 faggots. There was probably 100, I don't know. 100 faggots, like proper out faggots dancing to Tina Marie or whatever, you know, was the song at the time. And I was just like, my people, you know, and I had passed the powers of time thousands of times and had no idea that that's where the gays were. And of course the very first fella came up to me, I went home with him and had sex with him, and he was this monster, like this real monster with frosted tips back to this like bed, you know, bed-sitting rat mines. And it was just like, and for years afterwards every now and then I would see him across the bar somewhere and he'd look

at me like, that guy fancies me. I was like, no, you were just the first one. And that's all I knew. I just needed to find the other gays and then I found the other underground places. But you know, it was just so isolating and lonely. And eventually when you get over it all and you eventually tell all your friends and your family and all that, it's just such a relief and you're not lonely about it anymore. And instead of being ashamed about it, for a little while you become not lonely about it anymore. And instead of being ashamed about it, for a little while you become too proud of it, it becomes your whole personality, and then eventually you're settling into.

And at what point at that where you actually still go on though, it's actually illegal, should I, I can't say it around the guard. Oh, never, never. Like it sounds like, it sounds a bit like now, like I'm all right with smoking a joint walking down the street, but I won't do it if I walk past the guard.

Yeah, that'd be the same. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. But like it's true, like I walk, I smoke a fucking joint in the middle of the street. No, I wasn't sucking dick in the middle of a graft in the street, no. It's similar, but even now I still feel that way, like you know, but I wouldn't hold me fella's hand in every street, just every hour. I would think about it a bit. But at that time, yeah.

Do you think we'll get to the point where like, because that's shit. Like it's your husband, and you love him, and he had his fucking hand. Yeah, it is a bit shit, but also it is what it is. Do I think we'll ever, maybe, I don't know. There are certain parts of the city I would do it, in the daylight, whatever. But actually it's very, I actually find it incredibly thrilling still to this day sometimes. I'm walking down Henry Street, 3pm, and I see these like two 19 year old students walking along holding hands, and I'm just like, oh, I want to run up and hug them.

You know, like, you know, I still find that, you know, like, wow, the world is so different. And then I get so annoyed because there's a lot of slipping back at the moment. But, you know, things have changed and. I try not to give a shit anymore. Do you know, I hate to quote a drag king because it feels so trite and obvious, but RuPaul did say something once that I just cling to. That I love. He said, what other people think about you

is none of your business. Oh, that's lovely. And it's such a good, yeah. And as I get older, I feel that more, like fuck it. Is that your little quote that you hate the fact that it comes from RuPaul? I do, you older, I feel that more. Like, fuck it. Is that your little quote that you hate the fact that it comes from RuPaul? I do, you know, I really hate it. Because you know, I'm like that with fucking,

do you know what my number one quote that stands to me every single fucking time? Life is a rollercoaster by Ronan Keating. Unfortunately, I want to be getting, oh, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits said something, Leonard Cohen, Sorry lads I'm driving mad as you but also maybe she was quoting somebody else Life is a fucking roller coaster. I mean it's true because the thing is right and this is the thing with life, right?

It's gonna be frightening and terrifying right but you'd be grand like that's what a roller coaster is Jesus Christ This is terrifying Life what a roller coaster is. Jesus Christ, this is terrifying. But I'm gonna be grand. Life is a roller coaster. Ronan. I know, I know. I adore music in queer culture. I fucking love, like I did three podcasts before about why disco is the real punk rock, you know?

I fucking adore it. Was that side of things being translated into Dublin too? Like, were you hearing house music before other people? Yes, it was. Yeah, at the time you go to places like Sides on Dane Street and all that. And did you have cargo house music? Straight hipsters coming in to hear Frankie Knuckles? A little. But in 19, in the the late 80s you want to be fairly secure

in yourself to go to sides on a Sunday night, you know? Okay. Oh, did that not happen back then? It did, it did to an extent, yeah. But there were mostly people who were kind of freaks in their own way, queer in their own way. We had that discussion earlier. The other thing I always think

the people don't understand, younger people don't understand, before 1995 I think, you couldn't go to a nightclub in Ireland and get a pint. Yeah, and they used to serve chicken. Yeah, and everybody's operating on a restaurant license, so you could only get wines. So we would go, I used to go to this club that later became a club called Shaft, some of them I remember, on Eli Place, just up back as a kid, but I would go, I used to go to this club that later became a club called Shaft,

some of them I remember, on Eli Place, but I would go in there and it was called Minsky's and it was like super gay and super dark and in the basement it was pitch dark and people would always take the lights out of the toilets to have sex and the smell of poppers on the dance floor and everything. But when you went in upstairs it was like a Georgian room, like it was in an old Georgian house. And you'd go in and I always think you'd be Anne Doyle and a couple of Leather Queens at the bar. Not actual Anne Doyle.

You know, actual Anne Doyle. She has always been down with the faggots. Always. And she loves it. You know, part, you know, she lives on Leeson Street. And so you go in and there'd be Anne Doy a couple of other queens and chaps like, but everyone is drinking, you know, a Chardonnay or a Campari. And if you went to sides on Dane Street where the coolest kids in the city went to, everyone was drinking Campari and wine. That's all you were allowed to sell. So people were doing heroin and taking Chardonnay. And you didn't have to do the compulsory chicken and curry chips?

Oh, no, they did that too, yeah. Well, not always. What the fuck? You run a club. What the fuck was that about? Did you know that about Ireland? They asked Fatboy Slim, they said to Fatboy Slim what his memory of a gig in Ireland was, and he's like, to be honest, I don't remember. All I remember is the smell of fucking chicken. Yeah! I miss it sometimes. They used to stop everything.

The lights would come up and there's non-consensual chicken that no one... But no one wanted it. Especially when rave happened. People were on yolks. The fuck do you want fried chicken at 11 o'clock after a load of yolks? I used to be getting ready, you know, in the back kitchen of all these nights. Because every nightclub had a back kitchen. And I'd be getting like into drag beside, you know, this guy who's making curry chicken or whatever.

The George used to just bring out baskets of chips and cocktail sausages at midnight. That's wedding food. That was perfect. I loved that. That the best part of a wedding is the 11 o'clock cocktail sausages and chips. That's better than everything else about a wedding. Even the marriage part. But gay music used to be cooler. And so like, it was all house music and disco. Now I actually, God, what happened to the gay's taste in music? And I have no problem with the, you know, the Gaga's and the Beyonce's and all of that. Great, good for them.

But it's not, you know, it has become very mainstream, the sort of younger days taste of music. Well, game music was four or five years ahead of mainstream. That's what it was, and all the interesting, I mean, like Pet Shop Boys, they were listening to what was happening in Chicago. I mean, I felt I got into recently, do you ever hear of Patrick Coley? Oh, I do, yeah.

Oh, fucking amazing. Like Patrick Coley, he was making electronic music in the 70s, and they're only discovering Patrick Cowley now. And what's so rock and roll about Patrick Cowley, right? They're trying to get his music now and put it on the vinyl. They can only find it on really old gay porn. So they have to go through, like, old, on reel-to-reel gay porn to extract his fucking music.

Like that is rock and fucking roll. You know what I mean? But like, so that's not happening anymore. You're not having that. You know, you know what? Trans people is where it's happening now. Yeah, I think so. Trans artists.

One of the most exciting artists of the past 10 years was Sophie was her name. Sophie was fucking like. And Anthony and. Yeah, yeah. And. Those of them. Oh that's Anthony now isn't it? Yes, Anony.

Anony, yeah. Anony, yeah. But yeah, trans artists. Kim Petras is fairly cool. Yeah. But that's quite poppy, but fucking Sophie. She died there a couple of years ago, but she was, it was like AFX Twin but nearly more creative than AFX Twin.

So it does, I'm seeing trans artists doing what it was the gay artists doing in the 70s. I think they're still outside of everything. Like I wouldn't go back and change anything whatever but part of me does miss the kind of underground nuttory that being queer used to be. Because like in a way, one of the great joys of being queer back then was you were suddenly absolved of every expectation that your straight brother had. Like my straight brother, he was supposed to find a nurse, settle down you know, Toyota, you know, a chocolate labrador, you know, and a decent job in whatever. And, you know, the miniature were queer. Like when I first

came out as queer, you literally could not be openly queer and work in the bank. You know, and you couldn't be queer and be a teacher. You couldn't be straight. You couldn't be queer and be on the telly. You couldn't be queer and play football. You have to have an interesting job. You have to be an artist. You have to be creative. You have to be weird. You were absolved of all of the fucking train tracks.

That is fucking interesting. And so I think they made more interesting music. And the people in those nightclubs then were sort of radicals by necessity. Because in order to get to the point where you were going to go to that club with Ann Doyle, you needed to just say, well, fuck all of that. Because just getting to the point where you were going to find that place, go there late at night and step in there, when everything about that was such a taboo, you really need

to be pushed to a point where you're thinking, actually, every fucking thing you've ever told me is questionable and probably wrong. Whereas nowadays, it's much more comfortable. I'm not saying that for each individual gay, it's still a big deal to come out and all that. But they come out and their ma's are like, oh, well, you'll have to bring a fellow home for Christmas.

And they're going to bingo on Sunday in the George with their auntie. And it's just, it's not such a big step outside of the sort of normal, unqueer universe. Like when I was, when we were saying there about how shit it is that you still have to worry about holding hands, right? Like the eventual point where it gets to where that's not a thing that someone has to worry about,

it means to make being gay really fucking boring. Yeah. And it is one thing that's real nice, right? And I've noticed this since the marriage referendum. Around when the marriage referendum happened, if I heard the two men or two women were getting married, I'd be like, holy fuck, oh my god, that's amazing, wow. Now it's kind of getting to the point where I don't give a fuck. In the same way that if two straight

people are getting married, it's like, I don't care, I don't want to go, there's too many people, too much small talk. I'm getting like that with gay people, I think that's kind of good, it's boring. It's good. Marriage, someone else's marriage is boring. I don't give a fuck. Yeah, I feel the exact same because like I said, I wouldn't want to go back. I'm glad we've both changed. But do I miss the excitement of going into this

like absolutely forbidden, dangerous nonsense? Yeah, I do miss that. Also what we're speaking about here too is the Pride is like the Pride parade is just a big corporate thing now a bit, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, that makes it's, there's nothing dangerous or cool about Pride when it's being sponsored by like an arms company. Yeah.

Well, I'll tell you a secret. As I look at it, how many of you know it has? You're not allowed to tell anybody outside of this room. You know, I remember me first, probably every gay does. It's so like life affirming. You felt alone and the weird kid in school. And then one day you go along to, you know, the gardener remembrance to beginning the parade. And there's thousands of faggots just like you. And for that afternoon it feels like you've all taken over the city and that the city is queer. And, you know, it's really amazing. And I'm sure too, you know, young gays now it's still the same and I wouldn't want to

take that away from anybody. But, you know, I'm 55. I'm a drag queen. I have been to more fucking pride parades than you can imagine, you know, in all over Ireland and around the world. I've been on floats on every continent. And after a while, Christ almighty, like I'm 55, and you know, you're in a corset,

it's the middle of the day, it's in June, it's sweaty, it's uncomfortable, every gay looks the same, and they don't care about you because you're in your 50s. And like it just becomes like a thing and so about oh god I this doesn't leave this room so about five years ago and as the parade in Dublin starts getting bigger

and bigger just more sort of corporate and more you know you know all of the atmosphere of the old one, which is a bit defiant and all of that has kind of gone from it. So about five years ago, I was like, fuck it. So I get up on Pride morning at a perfectly reasonable hour. I cross O'Connell Street before they close it. I go down to my dressing room in Pantybar or Penny Lane.

I take me goddamn time getting ready and about four, half four, when everybody starts arriving to the bars from the end of the parade, I just slip out into the crowd and then I say to people, oh my God, I didn't even see you on the parade. It was so big this year.

Oh my God, I didn't even see you because people would be really annoyed and disappointed if I didn't go to the parade, but I'm 55 and uncomfortable. So I just pretend, for the last five years, I have pretended that I've been on the parade, but I actually haven't been on the parade. And I take lots of pictures on Capel Street with people,

and then they go onto their social medias, and everyone thinks I did it all still, and I haven't done it in like five years nobody will believe you tell them that anyway so I don't give a shit we're gonna take a little break so you can have a pint and a piss all right we'll be back out in 15 minutes let's have a little Ocarina pause right now. I'm really, really enjoying that chat there with fucking Rory. I forgot how much crack we had that night. I'm actually in, I'm in Bristol right now. Right now I'm in Bristol and I'm recording the ocarina pause in Bristol. I was given a most beautiful gift when I was in Brighton the other night. Someone made me a handmade ocarina in the shape of

Yachty O'Hern the otter. It's a beautiful ceramic handmade otter ocarina and I adore it and I'm gonna play this lovely otter ocarina now in Bristol and we're gonna hear an advert for something okay From fleet management to flexible truck rentals to technology solutions, at Enterprise Mobility we help businesses find the right mobility solutions so they can find new opportunities. Because if your business is on the road, we want to make sure it's on the road to success. Enterprise Mobility, moving you moves the world. FX's The Veil explores the surprising and fraught relationship between two women who

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Beautiful, beautiful otter, ceramic otter ocarina, and what I adore about this ocarina, and what I adore about this ocarina, it's quite low. There's the lower octaves there. I don't think that's gonna piss off any dogs. It's quite a low-pitched ceramic otter ocarina and I think the dogs that are listening, they're gonna be okay with that. It's not gonna fuck their heads up. So this podcast is supported by you the listener via the Patreon page. Patreon.com forward slash the blind

buy podcast. This podcast is my full time job. It's how I earn a living. It's how I pay my bills. It's how I pay the rent for my office. It's how I pay for the equipment that I can take with me on the road to record this podcast. This is a listener-funded podcast. And the listener funding also allows me the time, the time and space for me to give you the best possible podcast each week. I don't take weeks off or I don't give you filler. I want to come back each week with something that I would like to listen to if I wasn't me. So thank you so much to every single one of my patrons for making that possible. Patreon.com

forward slash the blind by podcast. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee. Once a month, that's it. But if you can't afford that, for whatever reason, you might have lost your job. The rent is too high. Whatever the fuck, if you can't afford that, don't worry about it. You listen for free. You can listen for free. Because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free you can listen for free because the person who is paying is

Paying for you to listen for free so everybody gets a podcast. I get to earn a living It's a wonderful model and make sure if you are signing up to patreon Sign up as a paid member. There's a there's a function now where you can become a free member Don't bother your ass becoming a free member that doesn't bother your arse becoming a free member. That doesn't pay any of my bills or doesn't support the podcast. It's just a way for Patreon to get your data. So if you are coming along to Patreon,

sign up as a paid member. The only way for me to get rid of the paid member thing is if I have paid tiers. And I'd rather not do that because I prefer, I prefer the suggested donation model. I prefer people to come along and give me what they can rather than me having a tear of pay this pay this and pay that and currently that's the only way for me to remove the free member option. So upcoming gigs I'm coming off my massive UK tour at the moment. I haven't gigged London yet.

The UK tour was fucking amazing. I spoke to so many fantastic guests. I have wonderful podcasts to show you. But I'm taking it kind of quiet over the summer. My next gig is in on the 31st of May, right? I'm in Dunleary. That's a small little gig, almost sold out. On the 18th of June, I'm going gonna do a live podcast in Vicar Street.

Okay, because I adore Vicar Street. This podcast that you're listening to tonight was recorded in Vicar Street. It's where I record my best podcasts. Wonderful, beautiful Dublin audience. If you want to have a wonderful, relaxing Tuesday evening in June, the height of summer, come along to my live podcast in Vicar Street on the 18th of June. And then my next gig after that, it's not until the 18th and 19th of July, I'm in the Set Theatre in Kilkenny. Fuck all tickets

left for that. I'm talking less than 30 tickets. But that Vicar Street gig, that's setting out quickly and if you're enjoying this podcast with Rory Panty tonight that's the type of crack that I have in Vicar Street so come along to that if you're near Dublin in June. Okay, back to the live podcast. So we were we were chatting backstage about the history of drag which is something I want to know more about but there's something... Turn off me phone quickly yes go on... Something I'd love to tell you. And this would have been real relevant around Mayo.

No, but this is fucking fantastic because I ended up getting in a fight with a bunch of pricks online about Irish indigenous gender fluidity, right? So it's particularly around the west of Ireland, the Aran Islands, right? I'm talking going as far back as the 1500s, right up until 1950s probably. Puccine makers in particular, right?

So when men were making Puccine, like they didn't know what they were doing. Like what they're doing is chemistry, but they didn't really understand. They're like, I'm getting barley and wheat and potatoes and I'm distilling it and then eventually I end up with this mad strong thing and they believed that this was such a mad process to do that they were stealing it from the world of the fairies. But they thought that infant mortality was very, very high in Ireland, right? It was just huge. Puccine makers believed that the fairies would come and kill their kids because they were stealing puccine from the other world. So if they had a boy, they would dress that boy as a girl until it was 12. Vice versa, if it was a girl, they'd dress it as a boy.

And if you look up at Ducastore, which is the Irish folklore collection, you have all these photographs in black and white of young lads on beaches, six, seven years of age, wearing full dresses with curls in their hairs. And this was totally normal. This is what poutine makers did. And what you have there is,

I don't know what you call it, I don't know what you call it, I mean, I don't know what you call it drag because it's informed by an anxiety. Their parents genuinely believe my child will be killed by a fairy in the nighttime and replaced with a changeling if I don't confuse the fairies, you know what I mean? Well, I didn't know that, but... But isn't it fascinating? Well, come on, like, isn't that unreal? No, no, no, I'm on your level here. I'm waiting for a drag performer to hear that.

I'm waiting. Has there been anything like famine drag? I want someone to do famine drag. There has. Surely. No, like, I didn't know that, but it doesn't surprise me in the sense that, you know, obviously over the years I've dug into it, especially when people think it's all like this modern thing. If you go, like drag exists in some form in every culture on the planet and throughout history. And if you go to find the most like sort

of primitive tribes, what you'll very often find is that the local medicine man is what we would call a flaming faggot. Really? Because in a lot of primitive cultures. They can't hear quote tweets on the podcast. So Rory is quote tweeting when he says primitive. He's not Viscount Rory from 1890. I'm not fully on board with the description primitive. But if you go back to a lot of these cultures,

the men of the man is often that because they often believe, and for example, you know, Indigenous Americans, you know, have the two-spirit thing. And that comes from the same thing, that they often believe that somebody who embodies both the feminine and the masculine is something of the divine. So rather than saying, fuck that faggot,

and you ostracize and kick him out, they were like, wow, this guy has power, this guy is connected into the divine, whatever. So in many, many, I'm doing the quote, primitive cultures, and the medicine man is revered as someone who embodies on the divine, because the divine is of course of neither or both or every gender. And so it doesn't surprise me at all, I didn't know this about Puccini makers in the Iron Islands, but it doesn't surprise

me because you find something like that replicated throughout the world in every culture. Do you know anything about the Irish indigenous tradition of male on male nipple sucking? I didn't, but I'm dying to know more. It's spoke me. So I was up in the National Museum today, right? And I'm looking at a fucking... I'm actually shocked that you were diagnosed as autistic. I'm up in the National Museum today

and I'm looking at a bog body and the bog body is 2300 years old. Now, this bog body was ritualistically murdered terribly right but his nipples were cut off. Nipples were cut off. And St. Patrick describes this as well in the year 500 in his confessions. In Ireland, like the way that like businessmen now would shake hands, in ancient Ireland they used to suck each other's tits. That's what it was. The male breast was seen as very important. Now the reason was, a king in, I'm talking 2,000 years ago, a king in Ireland, when they became a king they got married to the land because the land was the goddess,

that was the female. And let's just say a king, a king is being a king in a petty kingdom in Ireland and there's a bit of a famine or a lot of sheep die then what would happen is they'd go you failed to fuck the land you didn't get the land pregnant so they'd kill the king and they'd take the king to the unfertilised land to the bog and chop his nipples off because then he couldn't be a king in this world or the other world because the nipples were something about him tit-feeding the land or something like that but men used to so It'd be like... What I love is, because I was thinking,

if he'd still survive today, you'd have Ende Kenney, right? Ende Kenney... He'd be gone around in a suit. He'd have a suit on, a normal suit, but there'd be flaps. And Lee of Radcourt would have to go up and suck his tits. If we held on to it, I think we should hold on to that. Like you're turning up at every funeral in Bohol, our County Mail. Yeah, absolutely.

But wait a second, is this like on a level thing? Like you suck his nipples and then you suck his nipples? No, it was seniority. Surf to king type. The only reason we know that it had to do with status is, so St. Patrick, which would be about the year 500, he actually wrote his confessions in Latin so we can read it. And Patrick wrote, we know Patrick came to Ireland, he was taken as a slave from Wales, then he was brought to Ireland, then he escaped and went back.

And when Patrick escaped back over to Wales, he met these Irish fishermen and the Irish fishermen were like, you're not coming onto this boat unless you suck our tits. And Patrick was like, I don't do that. I don't know what the fuck you're doing. And then the lads were going, no, no, no, it's grand, but like we're more, we're older, we're more senior. Like we're helping you Patrick, you're a slave. We're bringing you back home, but suck my tits. So Patrick refused to suck their tits and eventually

converted them to Christ. Books ticket to Hollyhead. You spent some time in Japan. Where did you, like, I want to take it back to 1989, right? You're in fucking NCAD. No, Dunleary. Dunleary, sorry. Which was an art school then and nowadays is a... What I would love to know is, and the reason I'm asking this is,

when I went to art college as well, right, so when I was in art college, I was also doing rubber banded stuff. And my tutors were always, like like I was hiding it from my college. Yeah, I was like, oh, I'm going up to Dublin at the weekend and I'm doing this gig. And my tutors were always saying to me, why are you ashamed of this? What you're doing is art. You're making songs. Bring it into your work.

Bring it into your work. Do your project on the fucking rubber bandit. And I'm like, I know it's not art. it's not art. They're like, it is fucking art. Just do some big words about it and then it becomes art. Did you have that? Or were you like, no, no, this isn't art, it's just separate? I went to Dunleary because at the time it was seen as this kind of weird, small, outsider school. There was only like 200 students in the whole place time it was seen as this kind of weird, small, outsider school. There was only like 200 students in the whole place, and it was called the De Nalire School

of Art and Design. Like nowadays it's a big technological place with millions of things. And so I went there and I didn't really know what I wanted to be doing, I just knew I wanted to be in art college or in a place where it was kind of free, vibe-y, man. And I studied design is what I was doing. But by the time I got to me third year, so just one year left to go afterwards, I started to realize, you know,

most of my friends were doing graphic design and all that. And I kind of already realized, God, I'd rather stick needles in my eyes than be designing cornflakes boxes or whatever, you know. So I didn't know what I wanted to do. And then that summer, I went and stayed with my gay brother in London. And I went to, the first night I arrived,

he had a party in his flat. And me brother knows a lot of very cool people. And in the kitchen that night was this guy called Lee Bowery, who I mentioned to you before. So he's this Australian performance artist who became this very influential in the sort of club scene. And did he consider himself a performance artist in the Art Befarty way? He did, yeah.

Well, he did in the beginning. He thought of himself as just going out and getting drunk and wearing crazy outfits in clubs, but he became part of this kind of art establishment and would do performance art in nightclubs, in galleries and all. But he still made his bread and butter by working in nightclubs, and he had a punk band, and he would give birth to his wife. He did marry a woman, even though he's fully gay. He would give birth to his wife,

and the costumes were these incredible things. And he was a big six-foot-four fat guy, and the costumes would push his body into these incredible weird shapes. And it was this sort of mind-blowing stuff that we'd never seen before. And when I went to London's semi-brother, the first night he had a party, and in the kitchen was this guy. And he was wearing a wild, insane outfit.

And for the rest of the summer, I would be working in this fish restaurant in Covent Garden in the day and evening. And then as soon as I clocked off, I'd run to the nearest big giant gay club, you know, and Lee Bowery was often working on the door or performing there or whatever, and he always kind of looked after me

as his friend's little brother. And so that summer, just seeing him with these incredible costumes, they weren't drag, they were just club kid nuttery, but like incredible, go home and Google L-E-I-G-H Lee Bowery, B-O-W-E-R-Y, and you'll recognise loads of the outfits because the influence has been incredible. He died of AIDS in the 90s. But that summer made me kind of think, fuck, I don't want to be designing corporate boxes. I want to be pulling things out of me ass, you know,

in a nightclub and wearing big crazy, and being whatever I want to be, because he was this sort of fat guy from a tiny arsehole town in the middle of Australia. Like, he came from nothing cool, and he had turned himself, by the time I met him, into the most achingly cool, brilliant, exciting person on the planet, as far as I was concerned. And it made me really think,

God, I could just be anything I fucking want to be. You know, I don't have to always be defined by being the vet son from Ballin Rove County Mayo. I could be anything I fucking want to be. So I went back to college. I had one year to go. My parents wanted me to get the piece of paper. So I went to the, you know, the boss in the archaeology and said, you know, in archaeology, you have to do in your final year, you have to do the big project the archive and said, you know in the archive you have to do your final year,

you have to do the big project. The big project, yeah. And I said, I want my big project to be a drag show. And they were like, what? You fucking did that, fair play. I did, and they were like, what? And I said, well you know. In a design module?

Yes, and I said. Wow. I could do like costumes and posters and sets. I could find ways to get there. And fair play to them, they said, fuck it, right, okay, do. And I designed a drag, I'd never done drag, but I designed a drag show, everything from the ground up, the costumes, I made the costumes out of rubber gloves,

I built sets, I did illustrations to be projected onto the stage, I wrote a really rotten, awful script, you know, did it all on paper, and then it came to the final year exhibition thing they have to do in our college. And they were like, you've done all this, so why don't you just do it for once? You know, for the students. And so I did this really terrible drag show,

but it had a lot in it. And then I thought, fuck, this is what I want to be doing, making a fool of myself in public. And so that's how I started doing drag. But for the first couple of years- What was the next step after that? What was- Well, for the first couple of years,

it was this arty nonsense. I made dresses out of surgical gloves. I sprayed them in different colors, and then the paint reacted with the rubber, and they never really dried, and I would stick to everything. I had speakers in the tits, and making me own wigs out of nonsense. I had speakers in the tits and, you know,

making me own wigs out of nonsense. I couldn't, you know, before the internet, I couldn't get shoes in my size, so I made my own shoes out of building up cork tiles into the shape of a platform and then putting straps on. Like, just nonsense. And then about two years later, I ended up going to Japan, and when I got there I thought,

I still want to do this nonsense. But I had done it for a while and I had a more clearer idea of what actually my drag actually should be. And so it was in Japan that I started doing what we now think of as a proto-Panty Bliss character. That's unreal. character. That's unreal. How were you received in Japan then? What type of clubs are you playing there? Are you playing clubs for Japanese people? Are you playing clubs for people? A bit of both, but mostly the money was in the Japanese ones. I met by accident one of

my very first nights out in the sort of the gay area of Tokyo, an American queen from Atlanta, Georgia, who had also gone there to work, not thinking they were going to be doing drag there, though, just going to, you know, whatever. And Atlanta is one of the kind of spiritual homes of drag. Is that ball culture? Yes, it would have come from that. Now, she wasn't necessarily a ball queen, but... Is ball like a...it's African-American expression of drag?

Yeah. Yeah. And, but Atlanta is the home of a lot of famous American drag queens. Even people like RuPaul came through that scene. And Atlanta is one of the spiritual homes of pageantry and all that kind of drag. Oh yeah, the carnival and all that. So I met this queen by accident and we just hit it off. I'm like, oh my God, I didn't...

And so we sort of fell into it together and we did a double act for the next five years. And our USP, our unique selling point, was that we were foreign drag queens. And that's how I got my stupid name because her name was Lurleen Wallace, Lurleen, which is a joke to if you're from Atlanta, Georgia, you get the joke. She was the wife of a governor way back. And my name was Letitia after a pet sheep that I had in Mayo. That's not a lie. That's the absolute truth.

But Lurleen and Letitia are the worst names you could possibly pick if you want to work in Japan. Because Japanese doesn't have the L and the R sound. So they can't pronounce them and they don't hear the difference and they can't remember them. So no one could ever remember our names. So after a few gigs you're like, fuck, we need to pick a group name, like Abba. But we thought we would still be Lurline and Letitia or Abba. So we tried to think of a name, you know, like Abba. But we thought we would still be Luraline and

Letitia are, you know, Abba. So we tried to think of a name, we thought it should be, so it sounds cutesy, because you know they like the kawaii aesthetic. So it sounds cutesy, it should sound foreign or English, because that's our thing. And it should be words that maybe they are familiar with, or certainly are very easy to pronounce. And so the name we chose, the group name was Candy Panty. Okay. And immediately they just started calling us Candy and Panty.

And I used to wear very short little dresses at the time, I was young and thin. And you know, me knickers had flashed during numbers and so I was Panty. And so it was a stupid nickname I got. But you know when you get a nickname and then you just can't get over it. And when I came back to Ireland, and it sounds so stupid here, everyone thinks it's a sex act or I'm a stripper or... Panty, yeah. Yeah.

And I used to then, I would lie and I would say, Pandora Panty Bliss. Trying to make people believe that it was a nickname of Pandora, which it isn't. But that's how I sort of sold it. I had a feeling you got that name abroad because if you were in Ireland, you'd be called Nickers Brilliant. Yeah.

Well, the bliss part was just after about a couple of years and working in this club, we used to do a lot. One day they changed the kind of tax system or the, you know know whatever in Japan and similar to they did here roughly around the same time as well. We suddenly you had to sign for everything you couldn't just get paid in cash and so the club was like you have to sign for your payment now and it had a space for a family name and I'd never even thought of I was just panty so I was like and I

just wrote down the first thing I thought of which is bliss and that's how I got my name. Fucking fantastic. Jesus Christ. Most drag queens pick their names and they're 18 and drunk and they pick something like vagina ginorma or whatever yeah and then if you know and if their career lasts any length of time at all then they're going oh my my God, why the fuck are they? I'm the same, I fucking hate being called blind by a ball club. Ah Jesus, like someone asked me last night at the gig, why are you called blind by a ball club?

I was like fucking 17, I loved blues music and all the good blues musicians were blind by this, blind by that. And then I was walking past the ball club. I didn't think I'd be fucking doing it at this age still. I'd have called myself a good name. I'd be called Vincent Fist. Do you know what I mean? I have a theory, I'm gonna say this now

because I've never met anyone I can say this theory to, but you know voguing? Yes. Like voguing, that's a shit vogue, but it's a big thing. I was watching that documentary, Paris is Burning. Oh my God. I love it.

Seminole. Have you seen Paris is Burning? Changed my life, changed the life of queer people. Get a look at that. Fucking amazing. What I adored about Paris is Burning is like, I was relating a lot of hip hop culture to it because it's the same demographic. It was poor kids who were African American or Latino and they're doing

drag stuff but there was one particular performer called Willie Ninja and Willie Ninja pretty much invented it. He did yeah. I have a theory about where that came from right? So Chinese martial arts films are a massive massive influence on hip hop music for one reason. In New York, specifically in the 70s, African American kids, their local cinema, it wasn't showing like blockbusters that were on TV. There was a company called Shaw Brothers and Shaw Brothers set up theatres in every kind of African American neighbourhood where they would only show Kung

Fu films from Hong Kong and then the kids who didn't have a lot of money would go to this cinema and they're not seeing like what everyone else in America is watching they're looking at kung fu films but kung fu moves then influenced a lot of breakdancing I think Willy Ninja was watching Chinese martial arts and looking at the way they fight, that's where he got voguing from. I do not know that that's not true. But I've never met anyone that I could have

that conversation with. I don't know. I don't know the answer. I'm walking around Dublin going, I hope I meet a gay person who knows what the fuck voguing is, so I can tell them that theory that I've had to hold onto for four years. I'm sure somebody knows where Willy Ninja took his name from. That must be find outable, whatever.

I mean, maybe just walking by a boat club that was called the Ninja Boat Club. There's that as well. There's probably some some yank with a mad theory about why I'm called blind by a boat club. Like I was walking past the boat club, lads. It's in Limerick. And like that documentary is phenomenal. When did you first? I first saw it actually in Tokyo. I went to see it's in Limerick. That documentary is phenomenal. Mind-blowing. I first saw it actually in Tokyo. I went to see it in the cinema in Tokyo. Why year is it? It's like mid-80s, isn't it?

No, it's later. Because if you know in the movie it goes dark at one second in the middle because she ran out of money while she was making and then had to do the then equivalent of crowdfunding or whatever. So it's actually spread over quite a few years. I, okay, now you're asking me, putting that spot here, somebody can Google it, but I think it was the early 90s. It was really, I definitely saw it in Japan at a film festival, and I was there through the early, and from 90 to 95, so I feel it's in that period.

Did that, like, is that like a rite of passage for us? from 90 to 95, so I feel it's in that period. Did that, like, is that like a rite of passage for anyone doing drag to see that film? If you are trying to, if you are doing drag and you haven't seen that movie, is there somebody in here who's doing drag and you haven't seen that movie, shut your fucking mouth, don't tell anybody,

go home, find it, watch it. You have to, Loads of drag culture and sort of the language we use and everything originally comes from ball culture but that movie is what popularized it. What language comes from ball culture? Shade? Shade. A million. I could give you a hundred. Everything from, you know, all that stuff that has seeped into, you know, general. Like RuPaul's Drag Race, you can trace its roots to what was happening there in the Paris

is Burning. Absolutely, Karen. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, she was filming that whole scene that Ru would have been, you know, peripherally involved in. Was she in the film? Was Ru in the film?

I don't think Ru appears in that movie, but she's definitely around at that same period and all, but no, she's not in the, no, she doesn't appear in that movie. But throwing shade, no, they even explain it. Dorian, oh my God, here's a story for you. So do you know in that movie, there's the older queen who kind of explains things to you. And she explains what shade is and all of that. So her name is Dorian Corey and she's, you know, mostly the queens in that are very young

and they're running around, they're living on the streets and all that. And she's the kind of grand sort of figure who comes in every now and then, she's in her dressing room and she explains stuff to you. Dory and Corey became famous through that movie, you know, we were the big characters in that hugely successful documentary.

Then later she died many years later. And then in her apartment they found in a big chest in her like storage space, attic in her apartment somewhere in Manhattan, a mummified dead body. Oh, I heard about that. And a sign, a little post-it note on it that she had written that said it was somebody who had broken into her apartment and she had killed him in a struggle. And that rather than get into the whole like, he said, she said deal, she wrapped him up and put him in this trunk. And it wasn't undiscovered until after she was dead.

And like her friends are going, I wanna get her earrings, I wanna get her whatever. Oh, I wanna take the mummified body. It gets an incredible story. And there's like in a sort of famous New Yorker article, I think it's from the New Yorker, if you Google it, Dory and Cory mummified body, you'll find the whole deal.

It's an incredible story. Because you know, in the movie, she's like the mother figure who looks after you all and explains this new world that you're like wandered into. And the whole time she's in her apartment. That she has mummified beautifully. You would love that story. I'd love to ask you about the club kids in New York, that scene. Was that drag? And one of the club kids too, someone I'd love to fucking interview,

a fella called Kenny Kenny from Wexford. Yes. What the fuck is that about? Like a lot of queer Irish people who ran out of this country in the 80s. I don't know Kenny Kenny personally very well or anything, but when I was first going to New York as a 20-year-old and all that, Kenny Kenny was the legendary figure already.

He worked the doors of the coolest club kid clubs. He had these incredible looks. The fact, and I just thought, Kenny Kenny, and then when I found out he was Irish. You could hear his accent still when he spoke and everything. It's a bogger accent. Yeah, and it was sort of mind blowing to me again a bit like meeting Lee Barry like actually you know these people that I look at and think you know like I'd be reading the Faith magazine. I'm like this seems so

you know far away from me and impossible for me, and then you find out that one of them is this bloke from Westford. And like I don't want to speak for him because I don't know him personally, but my feeling over the years is that he very much ran out of this country and turned his back on it. Maybe he was just a few years earlier than me. I was at the stage where I ran out of this country, never wanted to come back here, thought I could never make it home here, hated every fucking one of you. You know, didn't want to even talk about it. You know, when I lived in Japan, and

for a long time we worked in this big giant nightclub in this industrial part of the city, like, achingly cool, like super cool. Seven floors, the VIP area on the seventh floor was a full- on reproduction of a suburban house on a suburban Japanese street. And with like a family who worked it, so you could, you know, Mammy would go and get you drinks and serve it in front of the television. The kids were playing, you know, video games in their bedroom and it was all just part

of the VIP bar, you know, whatever. So cool you wouldn't leave it. And me and this other American queen were just paid to run around and be ridiculous, big-nosed foreigners, you know, and be nutty and do ABA numbers and whatever. And then one night I turned up to work and it's March and the manager is like all excited and says to me, Panty-chan, there's a group of people from Iceland coming in tonight. Because in Japan, whenever you say to me, Panty-chan, there's a group of people from Iceland coming in tonight. Because in Japan, whenever you say to people who I'm from Ireland, they have no idea. None. And they always think you mean Iceland.

And they, you know, they, oh, you must be very good at skiing. And when you first go there, you think, no, no, actually, it's not Iceland, Ireland. It's kind of next door to you. But then after a while you think, fuck it. Yep, Iceland, Reykjavik for Sam. And anyway, I turned up this one night and he's like, oh, there's a group of people from Iceland coming. And I was just like, do not tell the people from Iceland

that I'm also from Iceland. Because I just had no interest in meeting Irish people. I hated Ireland at the time, because I felt like Ireland had just driven me out. I just wanted to get so far away from it, I didn't want to think about it. I didn't miss it. And I thought of even meeting another Irish person and have to pretend to be waxing lyrical about Tato or all of that. I just couldn't bear it.

I have to pretend that I missed it. Yeah, yeah. It's like do not tell the people from Iceland that I'm from Iceland. And I ran around the whole club before we opened just telling everyone do not tell the people from Iceland. Yeah because it was St. Patrick's Day. Oh fuck okay and they were actually Irish weren't they?

Yes they were and they were like you know I don't know whatever there was a very small Irish community there then but clearly they had found each other and were doing a thing for St. Patrick's Day and some of them had ended up at this very cool club and you know like the manager's like they're coming to celebrate King Patrick's birthday. I was just like I'm not from Iceland you know I didn't even want to have to get into it. Obviously, I've changed my mind. But I think I left at a time,

when I sort of ended up coming back almost accidentally to do with family stuff and everything, around the time where things were beginning to change, it was the 95 or something, they were building the Lewis. Foreigners were coming here for the first time ever. You could now buy a pint in a nightclub. There actually were nightclubs now. And, you know, it was like very, it felt exciting

when I came back, the beginning of the boom years or whatever. So I kind of changed. But I think people, and again, don't know personally, so I don't want to, but my feeling always has been that people like Kenny Kenny, they left a a little earlier they found a tribe in New York and maybe they never really reconnected with what Ireland became later and whereas I did luckily I think. When did you open Pantybar like was it weird to do it or did it feel okay? I know it felt totally good. Was that a

Celtic Tiger thing? No, well, we opened six months before the crash happened. Oh, fuck. So we opened November 2007 and then the crash happened in whatever, June 2008. And so we had six good months. And then we had like five years of clinging on by our fingertips because, you know, in the space of a year, half of our customers our customers you know just stopped going out because they were worried or had no jobs and the other half emigrated. Everybody under 30 just

emigrated. It's hard to think back like I remember like horse outside was massive like that was really really big we couldn't sell out the Olympia. Oh you're kidding me. Yeah 2011 and it's because... After horse outside. We couldn't sell out the Olympia. Oh, you're kidding me. Yeah, 2011. And it's because... After Horse Outside. We couldn't sell out the Olympia. Do you know what I mean? Do you know how I knew you were really huge? Was my gay brother who like lives in Italy

and is like the gayest person in the world. Like doesn't, you wouldn't even, you know, you hardly could find Grafton Street on the map nowadays. You know, he's been gone so long and so, and he sent me the video to horse aside. And I was like, wow, these two blokes from Limerick have made it. Ha ha ha ha.

I remember I was a judge on the alternative Miss Ireland competition in 2011. And I was up in the booth. Which I had forgotten until you mentioned it earlier. He says, and he was being sincere. It wasn't a joke. And we have the rubber bandits who finally made limerick coal.

He wasn't joking. Where's the lie? Actually, no, my next question's really dark now after that. I was going to ask you about HIV. Go for it. It's not dark. It's not dark. It's a good news story.

I want to ask you about HIV, and I always take this opportunity when I always speak to someone who's living with HIV, just to educate people about it. Because there's still stigma, still people don't understand. It's not a dark question to ask me, it's a very good news story. This is a good news story. I was diagnosed with HIV in 1995, and as I always say to my know, I didn't get HIV by being unattractive. And at that time it was a dark story. 1995 it was a death sentence.

I go to the clinic, the first visit they tell me, you probably have five years and I left with this giant big carrier bag full of medications and they all had different side effects and it was just miserable and awful and you couldn't tell anybody because people would be afraid to touch you or drink the same bottles you were sure to stick it right with you whatever and but that is long ago in 1995 and for I for I don't even know more than 10 years now I take one pill in the morning and that is It Harrison that's made now is is it's it's like diabetes. It's like living with diabetes

Would you agree with that to an extent except I would say it's much better than having diabetes like fuck you diabetes kids like boo-hoo out to be you. Like if you go to the doctor tomorrow and there's like you know the two red buttons in that meme and one is diabetes and one is HIV, press the HIV button. Because diabetes you have to look after for the rest of your life, you know you have to worry about what you eat, you have to be maybe injecting yourself every day and you might lose a leg eventually, like it's a bit of a nightmare, I know, like I know you're managing it very well, those of you who have diabetes in here.

HIV, you know, you can just take one pill and get the fuck on with your life. Like the pill, and the pill means you can't pass it on to anybody, it makes you non-infectious, it turns you into a normal person. The only reason you have to continue taking it every day is HIV is a really annoying little prick and there's like a few tiny little bits of the virus that they realize, oh my god, we're getting absolutely destroyed here. So tiny, cuddly little, and they'll sort of hibernate like in the deepest parts of your body where the drugs can't reach. And they just lie there and wait till one day you stop taking your pill and then they can start, you know, coming back, whatever.

But so, you take the pill, get on with your life. And what is the name of the pill? You can have sex, you can live as long as anybody else. Oh, well, there's various names now. Is there a difference between PrEP and what you're describing? There is. So basically, they found a drug that was good at killing it, right? But HIV replicates really fast. So eventually, if you just take one drug, eventually it'll keep replicating,

and it'll evolve a way around that drug. So they give you three of them, three different versions. And that means they ain't never going to evolve, and one go around three of them. So that's what we're all doing. We're taking one pill, but it has three different kinds of drugs in it. And they've refined that and made it better. Like in the beginning, you'd find one that, oh, it'd give you side effects or whatever.

And then eventually you find one that works for you and you're totally cool. So I just keep taking that pill every day. It's like brushing my teeth. Did I take my pill? Did I, you know, you kind of forget or whatever. I have the same life expectancy as any of you, probably better in fact, because the straight blokes here do not go to the clinic every six months and get all your bloods tested, which I do in order to get me drugs. So, you know, I will, I'm going to outlive all of you people.

And then, so that's what I'm doing. But PrEP and pep, those two versions, if you go out tonight and you go to Love Tempo, the new bar down the road and you get really drunk and you hook up with some cute guy and you do something you really shouldn't have done, tomorrow morning you can go to the clinic and say, oh my god, I had sex and I forgot to wear a condom, and they'll give you post-exposure prophylactic, and for like a week or, I've never had to take it because I'm on all the regular drugs for a week or something you take the pill and it zaps all the HIV before it could ever do anything if you know if that happened and pep is the other way around you think god I'm going I'm going to Grand

Canaria I'm gonna get really drunk there's a good chance I might do something stupid hey doc can I have a few pills before for the week? I go on they'll give them to you. So, yeah, it's it's um It's a license to be slutty No, where's the condom be careful all that stuff, but you won't die You know, you don't have to die point. So in 95 you get a death sentence, right? What was the year where you just, cause that must have been incredible news. Like there must have been a point where you went for,

oh fuck, to then receiving news of, oh not fuck. No, and that's the interesting question. There never was. What I'm wondering is, is most people don't know about the shit you're talking about there. Everyone knows about HIV, everyone knows about AIDS. No one knows like big stuff happened there. The reason they don't know is connected

to the question you just asked me. There was never a day where somebody said, we have found a pill to fix all of this and that we all open the newspapers and it said, ta-da, what happened was they developed lots of drugs over the years, and they're like, oh, this looks a bit promising, and then it fucking wasn't. And then one day, they're like, this is a bit promising,

and it was a bit promising, actually, and then they refined that, oh, this is, and they kept refining it and making it slightly better until they got to the point where you take a pill and it protects you from all the bad stuff, but it hasn't actually cured you technically. And you're managing it. So they never discovered a cure.

Like asthma, you can't kill asthma. Yes. Yes. You can't. But the difference, people know about asthma because people aren't afraid to say, I have asthma. Okay, but stigma. People take out their inhalers,

you know, oh, my friend's got asthma. But I don't, you know, most people do not feel comfortable taking out their inhalers and you all go, oh, my friend's got asthma. But most people do not feel comfortable taking out their HIV tablets over breakfast, sitting here and saying, you know, whatever. So there's two reasons. One is they never had that ta-da moment to tell the papers because they just kept refining it

and refining it and making it better. So there was this slow thing. And then the other one is, of course, that all of you, sorry, take that back, not only. Most of you here probably think that you don't know anybody living with HIV. Many of you probably think I'm the first person you've ever sat in a room with living with HIV and that is all fucking bullshit. You all know plenty of people who are living with HIV, but they just haven't felt comfortable enough to tell you. That's not because you're a bad person or a cunt or you might be, but

it's because you know every there's or a cunt, or you might be, but it's because there's this kind of fear and stigma around it in its entirety. And so if I'm on a radio show or something and I talk about this stuff, I know that for the next week or two I'm going to get emails. And there are going to be people living in fucking Bally Hawness who are living with HIV. They've never told a single fucking soul in their lives, they've never told a friend, they've never told a coworker, nobody, nothing. And they're on the tablets and they've gone to the clinic

and they know it's all fine, but the stigma about it is still so enormous, they've never told another soul. And that fucking psychological millstone is killing them. And so instead, because they feel they can't just talk to a friend or a sister or somebody down at the meat factory that they work in, they email me, a total stranger, because they heard me talking about it on the radio.

And they're like, I don't know what they're looking for exactly, and I'll be brutally honest, sometimes I feel like I just want to reach through the email and slap them and say you're fine like why you make but I understand that I live in this yes I am celebrating it the point is I understand that I live in this world you know where it doesn't make a huge difference for me to be open about it this sort of gay bubble of that I'm in and be friends and people I know and you're not going to run away from me. It's very different.

It's a much bigger ask to ask some bloke who's living in Mullingar and sings in the local choir and plays in the local football team and working in the local meat factory. It's a much bigger ask to ask him to be open about it. So I understand that. But the reason I feel like people like me absolutely have to talk about it and be open about it is because then it makes a little bit more room behind us. For somebody else who's not in quite the comfortable position

that I am about it to come out and about it and other people. Because the only way we'll end that stigma is the same way that the gays did. Eventually, you've all gotten to know gays over the years, so now you understand that there are not terrible people who eat babies. And it'll be the same with people living with HIV. One day, hopefully, everyone will feel comfortable saying,

oh, actually, I have asthma and I have HIV, and you guys will all understand that you meet 10 people a day who are living with HIV, and it's all absolutely cool and fine. So these days it's actually the stigma that is killing people and destroying people and you know all that. It's not actually HIV. HIV is a very manageable disease. It's the social rules causing horrendous mental health issues. Yep. I'm going to put questions out to the audience now because I want to make sure that you all get your buses home. Are you driving home? I'm driving back to

Limerick yeah. Oh jeez. That'll be grand. Lovely motorway now it's all modern. Thank you for the opportunity to ask some questions. I just want to ask you Rory, I'm just of a generation too of, you know, back in the day, but I just am amazing. A generation of back in the day. I was 60 last week. Fair play to you. Wow, you look good. And I'm from Limerick. Go on.

No, but what I wanted to ask you... She's checking all of our boxes. Like my parents used to watch The Good Old Days and Danny LaRue would go on that. And everyone would say how amazing he looked. Or you imagine the two Ronnies doing, you know, skits where the two of them get out of a bed. How was that so mainstream when nobody would, you know...

I remember when he was... Yeah, but Danny LaRue and Corkman, that's another interesting... What's Danny LaRue? Danny... Oh, my fucking god. Danny Le Roux was like the most famous drag queen in the world. You know, right up until the 80s really.

From where? He was originally from Cork. Wow! I can't remember the actual Terrace House, but I've actually been to the Terrace House and been inside it and spoken to his relatives. One of his family was mayor of Cork at one point. He was the highest paid entertainer on British television throughout the 1970s. He was the BBC entertainer of the year three years in a row,

and that at the time was this sort of massive big deal. He, his father, he was, so Terrace House Cork, and father went to America, headed the family, and then he fucking died, so the family were sort of left, so they went to London instead, just before the war. And they got a little flat in Soho, in London, and surrounded by gangsters, malls and all that sort of stuff. The war happened. Kids were sent out to the country. Their apartment was bombed and all that.

Came back after the war. Found they were putting a council house in Soho. And he went on to work as a drag queen in all the kind of gangsterish clubs of the time. So he opened his own club in the 1960s. He became incredibly famous. Princess Anne and all these people were all turning up. It was called Liza Minnelli, them all turning up in the club. And he still holds the record for selling the most tickets to a single individuals show on the West End in London. He did Sunday Night in the Palladium for many, many, many years. All of our parents would know and remember him.

And this was mainstream. Absolutely mainstream. But I remember sitting down to watch the show that she's talking about, The Good Old Days, and occasionally Daniel Rueber came on and he had this sort of song he always sang. Did he talk to you from Cork? No. So he moved like and he was very young, I think eight years old or something. So he had the darling, you know,

how about your darling kind of thing. But very proud of his kind of Cork connections, went back to Cork quite a number of times. And he made so much money and became so rich and so famous. But even then, I remember like being a kid and he would come on. And then my parents would be like, oh, you know he's got eight kids at home. This is the kind of thing that people said.

This is like veneer for the mainstream. And he would come out and he would say, watcha folks, watcha lads, was his kind of catchphrase to sort of say, this is all a joke. Don't be afraid of the queerness. And then he would go on, but the costumes, the furs. I went and met his costume designer once, this little old lady. It has a sort of sad ending to it. He was so rich and so successful and so fabulous, but he was so conned out of all of his money, a bit like the gay burn thing. Remember when

gay burn? Yeah. These accounting Canadian, you know, whizlers, guys came along and they basically scammed all his money out of him. He bought this huge hotel down the countryside and it all went to shit. So when he was, like in his elderly years, in his seventies and so on, he ended up living in the back bedroom of the suburban house of his costume designer of many years, this woman who was clearly in love with him.

And he had to go back out on the road doing these kind of religious issues. One of his last shows ever was doing pantomime down in Cork. And he eventually died in her back bedroom with her looking after him. I've gone in to meet her. She's not a wealthy woman at all.

She had to sell many of the costumes over the years in order to keep on. But it has a beauty to the whole story, even though it didn't, you know, also is sad. But anyway, and it always fascinates me, you know, what is this Irish connection to drag and the UK? Daniel Roo, the world's most famous,

most successful drag queen, Lily Savage, essentially Irish in her own sort of way. And nowadays on British television, you know, if you take Rupaul, the American, who's the biggest drag queen on American television? I don't know. From Dublin. Is it you?

No, on British television. I don't know. I don't watch the ratings. Smashes the ratings every Christmas. Mrs. Brown. Oh my God. Now, is that drag? You know, we'll have a conversation later about that.

But what is the fucking Irish thing in drag? Oh my God. How does the drag community feel about that. But it's what is the fucking Irish thing in drag? Oh, my God. How does the how does the drag community feel about that? About Mrs. Brown? We don't actually consider him drag. Yeah, no, no, no. That's mad. He's a comedian doing a character that happens to be a woman rather than drag is how I would. I don't think he would disagree with that.

OK. Yeah, kind of. Whatever. any other questions. That was a fantastic question. I believe you don't know Danny. Lou is my god I know I need to find out who twink is of course Yonder down at the front I Heard the twink goes to her local super value and they have to shut it down a little bit before she goes in so she can walk around by herself. Last time I was in here, Twink, I was doing my show here and we thought it would be fun to get Twink to do the kind of the warm up or whatever. So she did and she said, I'm going to do eight minutes.

When she arrived she was crying because she was having a stand up row with a taxi driver outside on the street. Just very dramatic in a way that the gays absolutely love. What is it about Twink that the gays adore? Because she's dramatic and over-the-top and super talented. She's a proper old-school hoover. She can do it all. And she said, you're going to do it, and she came out and she did 25 minutes. And I was standing side-stage there and all me girl sweating and sweating and sweating drinking you know like but she was amazing so we won't have a bad word

said against Twink in this hello tolt. I won't say anything stupid. Did you hear that? He just leaned to his friend and said, I won't say anything stupid. Oh! I'll try not, anyway. Go on. No, a very serious question. The next time you're on News Talk and they bring you on to talk about decriminalization of drugs,

can you compare it to sucking dick on O'Connell Street in the evenings? I'd try. No, no, I actually do have a genuine... A little bit more serious question. I'm deeply in love with this guy. Careful now. I think I'm deeply in love with this guy. No, for now. Take on straight. What was my question? Oh, fuck.

Yeah, like, how do you complete pivot? How do you deal with people that are trying, what's the word, conflate different things to delegitimize an argument? For example, if you're trying to criticise the genocide in Gaza and then you might see people online saying, oh well, they're assuming you're coming from a leftist position, so they're saying, oh, do you realise how, or what Muslim people think of gay people? And it's very, very annoying.

It's very annoying because it... And it can be frustrating to argue back because you're... You're kind of saying that. I would argue that that shit is deliberate as a way to... Oh, definitely is. Like, it's... Often you find with people who are acting in bad faith, they try and muddy the water so that your original...

There's a very clear argument, right? And the clear argument is, I kind of hate seeing children getting bombed. Yeah. I mean, let's be honest, I hate seeing children getting bombed. Yeah. I mean, let's be honest, I hate seeing children getting bombed. That's what all we're asking for. And I don't think that position is anti-Semitic. It's utter bullshit. First of all, it's assuming that all Muslims,

or all Palestinians believe the same thing about... I've had many Muslims in my bed. It's assuming that all Muslims, or all Palestinians, believe the same thing about, like, you know, I've had many Muslims in my bed. I have a fucking hole in there. Many. Some of the best bed experiences I've had have been with Muslim men. Muslims are not some sort of huge block.

And do you know, do you know what they say, oh, but it says in the Quran, do you know where also it says that you should stonegaze to death in the fucking Bible that is read to you every Sunday in Catholic mass? You can't tar them all with the same brush. And even, even if it were true, and it's not, but even if, because there's plenty of queer Palestinians,

by the way, but even if it were true that somehow, you know, in Palestine, you know, Hamas was rounding up all the colors and chopping their heads off, Even if that were true, that is no reason to bomb every fucking queer Palestinian to pieces before they get their heads chopped off. It's utter bullshit. We were talking earlier, our friend Marco Halloran, you know, was once going to write a book called Travels in Homophobia because he was so annoyed that people used to compare him to say he used to look like President Ahmadinejad of Iran. And President Ahmadinejad said there are no gays in Iran.

So Mark thought, fuck that, and he went around to meet them and he met plenty of gays having parties, wearing makeup, having fun. So he decided for a while, I think this project is on the back burner, he's gonna write a book called Travels in Homophobia. And he went to loads of countries that we think of classically homophobic, just to prove there are gays there, doing their thing, having fun and all that,

and they exist everywhere. So this whole nonsense is just bullshit. Either say you want to bomb everybody to death or you don't, but don't bring the queers into it. We're not involved. I'm going to add one thing to the question you asked, right, which is these arguments that you're speaking about, right, most of them, they're happening on social media. Like 90% of it, you're not really having these conversations in the pub. Most of those conversations where you wanna

pull the fucking hair out of your head, it's social media. And here's something to be really, really aware of. So social media, right, and I mean fucking Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, the whole shebang, these are platforms designed by billionaires, right, and I mean fucking Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, the whole shebang, these are platforms designed by billionaires, right, designed by billionaires, where they have made a business model that deliberately forces any discourse, any argument into a binary opposition,

whereby if you get angry or reactive, it makes them money from data. So like always be aware of that. It's kind of just fucking stop having arguments on social media. It's like having an argument right on a tightrope where you're hitting each other into the head. You don't like how much how many times have you ended up in a screaming match with someone on Facebook and in a pub it would barely have turned into an argument. It's designed. If everyone got along on social media,

Elon Musk wouldn't make money, Mark Zuckerberg wouldn't make money. These things are designed for what they call high arousal emotions. High arousal emotions are anger and fear and the algorithm is designed that way. So of course we're going to be angry, fearful, reactive, accusatory because money, money, money. This is our data is worth more than fucking oil and that's all our phones are. It's a way to harvest our data. Our data is just our behavior. So always be aware of that. I just don't get into these arguments online. I just don't fucking do it because there's no point.

There's no point. I'll have that conversation in a pub however, you know what I mean? Unless they come for Twink, in which case, argue back. Because she is high emotional reaction. What time is it? I'll take one last question, right, because I'm conscious of people's buses. Anyone up there have a question up in the top? I hear a lot of grumbling over there, so we'll put the mic over towards the grumble. This can go either direction. This guy is like super excited.

Look at the look there. Like he's up in the heat. Okay, yeah. Most enthusiastic wins. The blue shirt. All right, that's never way. Let's take a question from the look there. Most enthusiastic wins. The blue shirt. All right, that's never way. Let's take a question from the blue shirt. Leo Vradker over there.

Thank you so much. This is for my thesis, by the way. I'm asking a question for a sound bite for my thesis. Yeah, that's a good 1980s radio. Who's talking? Two of them DJ radio voice there. Cheers. Who's talking?

Sound like you're presenting a children's disco. So I study youth and community work and the big struggle we're having at the moment is we're being asked to introduce things around drag and transgender and queer people and queer people into non-queer spaces. But how do we go about that without it being tokenistic? It's been my issue with it where I work for a very religious, backgrounded youth service where they only celebrated Pride

for the first time this year, and they pulled all of their gay youth workers out, took a photo with them, went, oh we're great. Performative. It's very performative. So how would you feel, how would you go about that? How would you develop a programme around that? Would it be introducing drag queens to queer spaces?

Would it be just introducing queer people to non-queer spaces? A lot has been put on our backs but we're nowhere qualified in how to actually do it. I think you're over thinking it. Just introduce queer people to this space. I'll tell you one thing, I understand your worries here, but we actually mentioned Enda Kenney coming to Pantibar earlier. Enda Kenney came to Pantibar a few years back when he was Taoiseach and and that was because my parents are from his constituency and he was there for the Mayo vote not the Pink vote. Yeah so that was essentially the reason I think he thought this will play well in Mayo and he came like with the official entourage and all that

so like they clearly had a discussion in government, this is just before the referendum and all that and they like they clearly had a discussion in government, this is just before the referendum and all that. And they clearly decided, you know, this will probably play well in May if I get like a little picture in Pantybar. And they probably also thought, oh, it'll play well with the gays coming up to this kind of referendum.

I can't remember how long before the referendum, but it was definitely in the air. And at the time, a lot of gays came a bit for me, you know, when I posted the picture or whatever, basically saying, oh he's only after the pink vote. And my attitude was, thank fucking Christ he's after the pink vote. Like a few years back they didn't give a shit what the queers thought. You know, they're, in my lifetime when I was a student they were locking us up. So the fact that we've gotten to a point where

even if it was entirely cynical, and I'm sure it was, that even that they made a cynical decision to go to sort of court the gay vote, I'm like all for that. I don't care what the motivation was. What I care is that politicians now care what the queers think.

It's like 10, 15 years ago, the only companies that would ask you to do something at Pride were like the obvious ones, the Googles or whatever. And then after a few years, suddenly you're getting asked to do Pride events for fucking visa companies and merchant banks and whatever, and you go along to some bit of nonsense and there's like two outlads in suits

and you're thinking, these guys don't give a shit shit about pride but you know that the reason they're doing the pride thing is because they feel they have to because young creative smart people don't want to go and work for a fucking boring merchant bank anymore they want to go and work for Google so the merchant bank feels pressured into like saying we're cool too you know we're cool we're cool with the gays and that is entirely cynical but but thank fucking Christ. I'm glad that the world has got to a place where even cynically they want to embrace the gaze.

And I feel like you're in one of those situations that your religious sponsors or whoever they are, they're doing it kind of for cynically, they feel they have to. You know, would it be better if they fully embrace the whole spirit of it? Yes, it would. But when it comes down to it, does it fucking matter that much? No, it actually doesn't. I want them to embrace it even if they feel forced into it. So, if, you know, I don't

want them to do anything embarrassing and annoying. Just introduce queer people to the young people you work with or whatever. Let them, you know, understand it's perfectly normal. So let it be queer-led. Yes, but don't worry too much about their motivation. I couldn't give shit about their motivation. I just want them to be open to queers. I'm going to call it a night now because it's half-ten. Rory O'Neill, that was fucking fantastic.

Blimey, Bo Club. Thank you very much for having me. Thank you to RLE for a wonderful night. Go in peace, have a bit of crack. Dog bless. Oh, thank you so much, Rory O'Neill. That was an unbelievable chat. I really enjoyed that. Tremendous fun.

Come along to Vicar Street if you want another one of them in June. The sound now is fucking shit. This is terrible. I'm in Bristol. I am in Bristol. I'm backstage at my venue in Bristol, about to go on and do a gig.

And I'm recording the outro to this podcast here. This is an example of what happens when you record somewhere that doesn't have good sound. This is terrible acoustics. You can't get the podcast hug when I record like this. I'll catch you next week. I'll be back in Ireland. I'll be back in my office. It's been a tremendously enjoyable time on tour, but it's been gruelling for my social

battery. I'm fucking exhausted and I need a few days off to do fuck all. I need a few days off to breathe very slowly, to look at the leaves moving on trees, to look at clouds in the sky, To watch insects. To smell rivers. To wink at swans. To walk over worms. To rub cats. That's what I need to do.

But I will be back next week. Hopefully with a hot take. Dog bless. Let's do some big echo-y kisses here. Sounds like a mouse's machine gun. FX's The Veil explores the surprising and fraught relationship between two women who play a deadly game of truth and lies on the road from Istanbul to Paris and London. One woman has a secret, the other a mission to reveal it before thousands of lives are lost. FX's The Veil, starring Elizabeth Moss,

is now streaming on Disney+. Thank you.