Hello?
Hey, can you hear me?
Daisy?
-Hey. -Oh, hello.
It's been a long time, right?
I know.
I literally haven't seen you for ten years.
-One of them, innit. -That's mad.
I remember that era being so special to me.
We were just kids
from a little rinky-dink home town.
I find it so bizarre that we found each other.
I know.
I just think our year was so different to other years.
We were the gayest year ever.
This is weird.
Wow, it still smells the same.
Over by the fishies!
This is so cute.
There he is!
Plié!
Over and out, bitches.
-Oh, well, hello. -Hello.
You are my pot of gold.
Honest to God…
Hey!
I'm sorry, but I wouldn't put this on the wall.
Josh!
What?
Pull yourself together!
Me and my daughter.
Last day of school!
Say something about the snow.
It's snowing!
When was the last time you were here?
It would have been the last year of sixth form.
Kathleen!
Being on school grounds
and walking around now, it's just like… yeah.
It's so… It's… Yeah. It's really weird.
Did you have lessons in here?
I think when I was in Year 7.
I sat over there.
Do you remember doing this self-portrait?
-I hated it. -Same.
I drew Reese Witherspoon.
No one taught us how to do the colour right,
by the way.
-What brown? -Yeah.
-Anyway, here's your seat. -Thank you.
I'll sit behind the camera.
Just gonna move forward.
We're gonna start with an icebreaker,
-which is… -A role play?
Try and name as many queer people
in our year as possible.
Are we including the bi people as well?
-Yes. -Well, you.
-Me. -Kathleen.
-Owen. -Josh.
-Lauren. -Ellie Kelly.
-Kevert. -Callum Davis.
-Louise. -Scott came out, didn't he?
Connor Wanklin.
Hannah Williams?
When I started doing drag, some people were just like…
You'd be surprised.
I'm sure I'm missing a good few people.
Oh, my God, there's, like, all these names.
There's loads and they've all gone out of my head.
You beat Kath. Kath got about six.
You can just name our friend group.
This is what happens when you come to Tewkesbury.
You go gay and you get filmed.
At the time, in school, it didn't seem strange
that there were so many queer people
in our year group.
It just seemed very, very normal.
Gays in the house!
And it's only really looking back, realising,
actually, that was really special because
to have over 30 people in one year group
identifying somewhere on the spectrum
in this tiny town in 2005 to 2012,
not the same in the year above,
not the same in the year below,
I don't know how it happened,
but I'm just so glad that it did.
We call Tewkesbury Twinkleberry,
or Twink for short.
Good old Tewkesbury.
It's a really picturesque town,
like the gorgeous old abbey.
It's like a small town in every sense of the word.
There's always a mutual friend
that will know who you are.
You generally can't walk down the street
without someone being like,
"How's your mum doing?"
or, "How's your grandad doing?"
You're like,
"I just wanna go and get some bread."
It's like… It's one of those.
I would say Tewkesbury is a very white town as well.
Being a mixed-race kid in this town,
I remember that I stood out a lot.
You constantly felt like you were being watched,
so for me, it was just like I had to have a clean break.
I come home just to see family,
and on the odd occasion, to see friends, but…
that is such a small pool
cos I never really felt at home in Tewkesbury.
I feel like there is a dark side.
Yeah.
I'd say it's a thing about any small English town.
There's always undercurrents of people's secrets.
I don't know. I feel like I'm talking ill of it,
but I love Tewkesbury to bits
'cause it's where I'm from and it's where I grew up,
and I had a great time.
Do you feel like a bit conflicted
when speaking about Tewkesbury?
You don't want to bad-mouth it,
but you should be able to say
there's bits about where you grew up that you don't like.
It's just Tewkesbury, isn't it?
I always felt like
if I had a good day in school and stuff, like,
then home would be OK.
I knew at an early age that I was gay,
and for me, I was having to hold that in.
-Hey, kids. -Hey!
My first step was just telling my friends
because if I could open up with them,
then hopefully then in time,
I could do the same with my family.
We'd just had PE,
and I remember telling some friends.
And it was meant to stay between those guys,
but obviously our year group being our year group,
everyone found out really quickly,
and also being in that small, confined space,
everyone just, like, found out,
and I don't know, it was weird
because I'm just expecting hate to have flooded over,
but everyone was like,
"Oh, my God! Do you know she's gay?"
And it was just, like…
Everyone was just kinda happy about it.
And I was just like, "What's going on?"
And then like the next week, someone else had come out,
and then it was just, like, this chain of people then.
I think I was probably 13-14 when I came out.
Look at him!
I remember growing up and, like, buying
the Baby Spice doll and I was like,
"No, I need to have all five girls."
My mum,
she went all the way to Toys "R" Us,
bought me all five girls,
and I think she knew by then.
She was like, "Yeah, he's gay."
I think it was fairly obvious
with the friend group we hung out with
that I was gay.
Hi, Mum!
People stopped asking because any time they did,
they would then get attacked by my friends
or it'd be like, "Oh, what of it?"
And then,
there was this one girl at school
that was basically a known gossip,
and I thought, "I'm happy for everyone to know."
Told her,
it then spread out to the wider world.
I came back in Year 12 and someone asked me once.
"Are you gay? I heard you came out."
I was like, "Yeah." And she was like, "Ah."
And that was that, and then, no one…
no one then said anything about it again.
I didn't come out.
I think I really resented the fact
that other people had to be part of…
this experience of mine.
Girl, you so fine!
I also just like spoke about liking girls
with my friends,
and that was it.
-Hey, beautiful! -Hey.
I think there was
the first two or three people who came out,
and then after that,
I don't think people really came out to the year.
For the large part,
there didn't seem to be a lot of judgment.
Do your thang!
Up until Year 9,
I was this, like, very scared person.
I do remember doing a paper round
and literally thinking in my mind, I was like,
"Please don't be gay. Like, I can't be gay."
In school, I was two years below you guys.
There was only one other gay guy in my year,
but…
I don't know, I just felt more at home with you guys.
Less people would come up and have something to say
'cause you had a group of people
who were open and proud
and would fight the fight with you.
So, I'd spend every moment I could with you guys.
I just have one thing for you to read.
Yep.
This is a letter that we wrote to the MP.
I was 16, so you would have been 14.
-Did we write it together? -Yeah. At Ed's house.
It was me, you, Josh, Kath…
Yeah.
Harv and a couple of others.
Could you please read it out to the room?
Blah-blah… Oh, these are long sentences!
Here I am calling for gay marriage to be legalised.
We find it absolutely disgusting
that even in 2012…
…heterosexual people have privileges
that homosexual and bisexual people do not have.
If you were denied the right to marry a woman,
based on something as irrelevant
as her race or height…
…I'm sure you'll feel discriminated against
and want to alter the law.
Please try and see the world
through another person's eyes.
You're after all trying to lead
the people of our town.
Wow, that's crazy.
2012. It's not even long ago, is it?
-So, that was to the MP. -OK.
And this was from the MP.
Oh! This I have not seen.
Yeah, I don't think I did share it with anyone.
It's probably not worth sharing,
but let's give it a read.
Thank you for your recent email about an article
which appeared in local press
with regards to same-sex marriage.
I will have to disappoint you
by saying that I believe that marriage
is between a man and a woman.
I do not discriminate against people
because of their sexuality.
Indeed, I have friends,
one of which is a very senior MP,
who are homosexuals.
And, as an aside,
I have friends from other continents
such as Africa.
I abhor discrimination
and believe that prejudice is born of ignorance.
I have nothing against couples of the same sex
having relationships…
…or even cohabiting…
…but I do not believe that they can be married.
With best wishes, Laurence Robertson MP.
As a queer person, I think you just
grow up expecting people,
to a certain extent, to be homophobic.
Also you remember just that kind of feeling that
other people were starting to hate on me,
which wasn't a feeling I had before.
So… was it me or was it because I was gay?
I was very reclusive
because I was just always terrified of people.
It was a constant fear that, if I went out,
what could happen to me?
People would push me over, I got spat on.
I got tied to a tree…
and thrown rocks at.
Um, I got pinned down
and someone snotted a bogey in my face.
I used to always put myself down
and, um, just make myself feel like shit…
because I was just so camp and I just felt like
the other boys just didn't get it.
And I just remember feeling really uncomfortable…
with myself, but then, I guess, growing up,
I felt like I wasn't on my own.
It's in the windows!
I just didn't give a shit anymore.
And I still don't, you know?
So, yeah.
I felt that you guys did look after me.
In a way that my parents couldn't.
I think if they knew to the extent,
well, they would have wanted to help more,
but they couldn't.
So, I found a family, within school,
of people that were like me.
As a year group, everyone always
used to look out for each other.
You were like kind of protected in a way
'cause you had these people that were like
that barrier between you and that hate.
You don't need to feel alone in it.
There's a group of people that you can connect with,
somewhere, maybe two years above.
Even in a tiny little town like Twinkleberry.
I feel so lucky to have always had
queer people around me
who were fairly happy to explore their sexuality
at a time and in a place
where that wasn't encouraged.
I don't think I've ever
gotten closer to other people
than the friends we've had here.
The funny thing is
I still have more gay friends from this tiny town
than I do from living in the centre of Birmingham
where there's a massive gay scene.
It's so bizarre.
The funniest part
is that we're literally all walking around
calling this town Twink.
I don't know whether people
don't know the gay meaning of that word.
Twink! Like who…
It's full of twinks!