F EATURE
Just a small town boy
I wish there had been positi v e role models around so I could ha v e felt confident about ‘coming out’.
Tony Burns is 45 years old and is a director of four business. His offices are in Liverpool City Centre and he lives in Aigburth with his long-term partner Jon. Seen Magazine asks him how he came to realise he was gay, and if it’s had an impact on his business life.
and wind up alienated by all my friends
his had accidently walked into in Liverpool
think I’ve always known I was
and family. I had no positive gay role
called The Lord Raglan.
gay, even when I didn’t know what the
models and when I thought of a gay
word meant. I remember watching
person I thought of somebody out of a
A couple of days later I set out on a
Mr Ben (a children’s programme involving
comedy sketch similar to Are You Being
covert mission on the train to find that
a
Served or Danny La Rue who dressed in
pub. My heart was beating so fast and I
women’s clothes.
felt physically sick on the journey.
strange when he stripped down to his
The easiest way out of this, I thought, was
When I arrived, I walked around the city
boxer shorts and braces - I also quite liked
to take on another persona. I started to
for what must have been hours looking for
the outrageous costumes he emerged in.
become a ‘player’ and worked my way
the pub that I hoped would give me the
through tons of one night stands with girls
answers I needed; was I a freak, and was
I can’t say it was easy growing up in
who could never know that I could not
I destined to lead a lie for the rest of my
Widnes,
really ever fall in love with them.
life?
cartoon
character
going
into
a
changing room and come out in different costumes each week), and feeling very
a
small
working
class
town
in Cheshire, and being different. As I
22
became a teenager I started to realise
I got a reputation as a heartbreaker - little
more and more that it wasn’t a phase I
did they know it was my heart that was
was going through, which was something
broken as I was carrying around what I
I’d heard could happen to young boys as
perceived to be a dirty little secret that
they were growing up.
could never rear its ugly head in public.
I remember feeling a sense of dread that
When I was 19 I overheard a guy in a pub
I would be found out as being ‘abnormal’
talking about a ‘queers pub’ a friend of
seenmag.co.uk
Ov er the next f e w months visitin g t h e ga y bars and cl u b s in the city beca m e a drug to me.