Gorden Kaye

It was round about the time of your success at Huddersfield Hospital Radio, when you were in your early twenties, that you first fell in love. Can you describe what happened?

I had got an interest in in tape recording. I'd got a tape recorder and I bought tape recording magazines. And at the back of one of the magazines, or several of the magazines, there were sort of a taping version of a pen friend. If you sent a tape off, they would send a tape back, and you could get to know each other that way. And there was um I I sent off letters, first of all, that's what you did, to find out the address and'cause it was a box number. and somebody wrote back to me who was actually on board a ship. They were in the Merchant Navy. with oddly enough the New Zealand shipping line. Eventually he came home on leave. and I went down and and we met. And um But I fell in love. Anyway.

You went through a crisis in 1989 when a Sunday paper decided to write a sleazy account of your sex life, and to steal their thunder you talked openly to another paper about being gay. How big a decision was that for you?

Well, I suppose in retrospect it it was quite a big one, but because there was a v w what the first person or the first newspaper, who shall be named, had done, they came to me on a Thursday evening and said that another paper on Sunday morning were going to do this, and would I like to talk to him and do what they call a spoiler? And I said, No, it's very kind of you to come. And he gave me his card and said, Well, if you ever need anything, please ring me. I was then able to ring the producer, who knew where I stood. I mean the whole cast know where I stand. I've never pretended to be anything other than what I am. I spoke to the producer, and he wanted me to talk with Oskar Buselink. who was then a very good, and still is to some extent, a very the top Showbiz lawyer. Come Friday morning Oscar Bueserlinck was in touch with me and told me that I had a choice. He he first of all asked me if there was any truth in what these newspapers were about to put, and I said yes there was. And he said, Right, well then in that case I can't get an injunction. So there's two choices. You either sit it out and make no comment, and then you'll get barraged from Monday onwards, or indeed from Sunday onwards, or there is time to do a spoiler of your own. If you are prepared to tell your side of the story, I can get you, I think, a sympathetic journalist from a particular newspaper. That would put the story in your own words and that will that will be Saturday morning that will come out. and might just let the winds out of the wind out of their sails a bit. So that was what happened. I said, well, if the choice is that, then that's the choice I make. I will I will meet her at minute.

What were you worried about in coming out? What were your fears?

I suppose the main fear was that In the nature of the if there was an image at all that I built up on on television and and in the theatre,'cause we were in the theatre then. It was so very different from the real me. It's always been very odd that Rennie is a sort of Remy so-and-so and And we'll seem to Have a cuddle with any of the ladies, you know, delightful ladies that that's a real woman. But he's a real woman, I said. Yes, is a real womaniser, and therefore I wasn't very pleased when, and I shall name names, when Geoffrey Dicken. The MP said How can this man play this part? I mean he should be banned and stopped straightaway. But the result for you must have been, and and perhaps it goes on being, the most enormous relief. Oh, not half. What a what a weight off your chest. Yeah, what a burden.