Nick McCluskey

NICK McCluskey “came out” aged 15 while at Acland Burghley Secondary School. Now aged 22, he is fashioning a career as a bright, funny and enthusiastic radio presenter.

But this week he spoke about problems in the education system and shared his experiences to help other young people following in his footsteps.

Mr McCluskey, who grew up in Archway, said: “There was one really popular phrase when I was at school: ‘that’s so gay’. It was always used in a negative connotation; if something was annoying, people would say ‘ah that is so gay’.

“I was even guilty of using it myself, I was one of the people using these kind of negative connotations.”

Mr McCluskey was about to turn 16 when he decided to tell his family.

“I had actually had a girlfriend before. I’d been going out with her for two months but I had started to realise,” he recalled.

“I told one of my brother’s friends, and she offered to tell my family for me. I would have loved to do it myself, but I caved in and told her to see what they say.”

He said he had found support from online YouTubers, in particular Tyler Oakley.

He said: “I was looking at the 2021 census and Islington as a local authority has the fifth highest density of LGBTQ people in the country, Camden has the tenth. But was it a good place to come out?

“Just the other day I was walking down a street in Archway, all dressed up in my super bright green jacket outfit, make-up on – on my way to Soho for a night out. A man rolled the window down and called me a faggot. Even in one of the biggest queer-populated cities in the UK that happened.”

Mr McCluskey said it was the man in the car who must be having the tough life, and these days smiled and thought ‘well that’s the look I’m going for’.”

His family are originally from Somers Town and he lived in Holloway and Archway as a boy.

Mr McCluskey left his full-time job to go into radio full time and now has his own show on Express Radio and Riverside Radio, while also working as a TV extra. He is also going to DJ session classes at the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm.

He said: “When you start to realise you are gay, it is of course an identity crisis. You wonder ‘what’s going to happen? Am I going to be punished?’ “You get scared – as it’s not something you can control. It’s not like you get lined up at school with a kind of ‘Sorting Hat’ from Harry Potter that says you’re gay.”

He said coming out had “allowed me to be who I am and allowed me to live comfortably”, adding: “You get a feeling of belonging.”

He said schools could be doing a lot more to help young people who might be realising they are not “straight” and having trained staff and an open space to ask questions should be “compulsory”.

Mr McCluskey said: “I had to sit through straight sex education that wasn’t relevant to me at all. When I was 16 and I lost my virginity I just had  no idea about it because sex education for queer men wasn’t taught in school.

“We are all scared of things we don’t understand. But there are over 100 species on the planet that are not straight. It needs to be taught that is biological, it’s normal.”