Kicked out of the comedy club
EVERY GAY PERSON WHO GREW UP before the new millennium knew that coming out of the closet wasn’t a one-off affair. It was an exercise to be repeated in the various spheres of one’s existence — family, friends, work — and there would always be new social situations in which it was prudent to find a way to communicate the information to avoid any embarrassing assumptions.
Few of us had the reach of Tom Daley, who could put out a statement on YouTube and get the job over and done with at one fell swoop. I remember being genuinely shocked when I saw that video, mostly because I couldn’t believe there was anyone out there who had actually thought Tom Daley was straight.
My most recent “outing” was as the writer of Titania McGrath, an intersectional activist who began life on Twitter in order that she might chastise the unwoke for their moral impurity and proclaim her infinite virtue to the cybersphere. For those of you who are not on Twitter — that’s the 80 per cent of the country who actually value their time on earth — you may not be aware that such self-aggrandising behaviour is considered acceptable. On Twitter, it’s the norm. It’s effectively a digital playground in which grown adults toss their half-baked opinions around like pies in that scene from Bugsy Malone.
From Titania’s earliest appearance, I resolved to stay anonymous — not to cause mischief, but more for the fun of it. If people believed she was real, I reasoned, I could enter into dialogue with her detractors. This meant that the satirical impact would
