Gay writers 'still new', says Russell T Davies

Russell T Davies has said transparently gay journalists are "still new" to society, which means carrying gay issues to the screen is "rich open domain".

Addressing BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Disks, The Queer as Folk and Years and Years essayist kidded "we've generally been there", adding it's a great opportunity to "commend" that reality in TV and writing.

When tested by have Lauren Laverne on why he was glad to be portrayed as "a gay author", the Welshman answered: "Well it's unexplored domain, and it is still.


"Any feeling of strangeness, any feeling of otherness is still incredibly new as a general public.

"We've generally been there, in the background, settling on the reasonable choices for thousand of years. Simply saying: 'In the event that you constructed that on the left it would all be so much better'... [or] 'Hadrian simply move that divider a smidgen' - there was without a doubt a gay man there saying: 'Simply don't go the whole distance'."

"In any case, presently as an out society we are under 50 years of age truly, and that is nothing," he went on. "That is small little children and there are things that we've felt, things that we've stated, feelings in our souls that have not been put on screen yet or on the page or into fiction."

'We are actually the equivalent'

The 56-year-old recommended it was as significant for current journalists to appear there are things that gay individuals feel, say or do "that are indistinguishable from other individuals".

"That requirements saying also, that we are the very same," he proclaimed.


"It's everything there to celebrated. It's superb, it's rich open domain."