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RADIO REVIEW:IN A WEEK when hurling star Donal Óg Cusack publicly declared that he is gay and one when questions were raised about how the media chose to represent (or not) Stephen Gately’s widower Andrew Cowles, Sunday With Norris(Newstalk 106-108) had a timely interview with Michael Barron, co-founder of the gay youth group BelongTo.

Barron spoke about growing up gay on a farm in Kilkenny and, later, working in his family’s pub in Glenmore. When he told his mother he was gay, she reportedly replied, “I thought you were going to tell me that some girl was pregnant.” He went to Trinity, which wasn’t the social nirvana he had hoped for. There were plenty of gay jokes on the cobblestones in the early 1990s. “That was really soul-destroying for me, I thought this place was going to be a bastion of queerness.” He soon discovered a colourful club culture outside those gates.