Coming out isn’t a single event, but a lifelong process.

Every person you tell, every person who discovers your difference in sexuality or gender expression, carries with them a risk of rejection – or worse. They can go from liking you to disliking, or even hating you, in an instant.

Every time you decide to reveal your authentic self, you put yourself at risk.

Yet, the rewards are immense. And people’s reactions can surprise and astound you.

However, the hardest person to come out to is the first one: yourself.

My upbringing was religious in the Anglican church. When I was very young, I went to Sunday School, later I was an altar boy (it was “High Anglican”: you might say it had Catholic pretensions). This was the start of my internalised homophobia.

I was at school during Section 28. This nasty little bit of legislation didn’t just have the effect of terrifying teachers and those supposed to support children by threatening their jobs if they so much as whispered any kind of acceptance of difference, it emboldened those who would persecute children who were different.

At times the bullying was horrific. I didn’t even know what half the names they called me meant (to be honest, I don’t think they bullies knew either – but any stone can hurt if thrown in the right way) – I may not have known what the words meant, but I knew they were thrown with hate.

This strengthened my internal homophobia.

Growing up, there were some wonderfully strange people on television: Kenneth Williams (“Carry On” films and “Willow the Whisp” on TV), Larry Graceson (“The Generation Game”), and John Inman (“Are You Being Served”). There were also a few drag acts that gradually made it onto telly – Danny LaRue first in my awareness, then Dame Edna and Lily Savage came later. There was also Kenny Everett, with his whacky sense of humour.

Many of these people I feared – I think I recognised their campness as a “tell” on something about them that I related to: was I like that? Did people just know that I was different?

I also hated that these people were funny – they put themselves and their difference out there to be laughed at. Did I want to just be the joke?

The comedian Marty Feldman – not gay himself, but a fierce believer in gay liberation – once said…

Even if we do arouse hostility, it is much more important to familiarise the public with the outlandish and uninhibited. Otherwise, it is like a ghost in a dark room, and because it is mysterious, people are afraid. We’ll turn the light on and see what’s in the room. Once they’ve laughed at the spectre, they’ll no longer be afraid.

Marty Feldman

I didn’t realise how important these early trailblazers were for gay liberation. At one time, they were mocked for making a joke of homosexuality by the very community that they had championed. Now they are more likely to be recognised as heroes.