London Irish LGBT – Page 12 – London Irish LGBT Network

Postponed: In Conversation with Conleth Kane

Update: 23rd July 2021

Unfortunately, due to scheduling conflicts and there not being enough hours in the day, we’re going to have to postpone our chat with Conleth on Monday. We’re hoping to re-arrange the date as soon as possible. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.

~~Join London Irish LGBT Network for our monthly virtual meet-up on Monday July 26th at 8pm. This month we’re joined by Northern Irish singer-songwriter, Conleth Kane.~~

Conleth has just released his new single ‘Proud’, which has been remixed by remixers to the stars, 7th Heaven.

Described by OK Magazine! as ‘the breath of fresh air we all need right now’ and QX Magazine as “an infectiously energetic, refreshingly cheerful Singer/Songwriter”, Conleth Kane recorded his debut album ‘Proud – Live in London’ at a sold out show at The Crazy Coqs in London’s West End in Oct 2018 seeing him shoot to Number 2 on the iTunes Singer/Songwriter Charts in Feb 2019.

Originally hailing from Northern Ireland, Kane trained at the prestigious Arts Educational Schools in London and went on to perform roles on screen as well as in Musicals in the West End and all over the UK/Ireland before becoming a Singer/Songwriter.

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Our Life Stories

Conleth’s Story: Proud

For Pride month, we asked our members if they would like to share their stories about their lives and what Pride means to them. The response has been amazing and we may continue these after Pride month has ended. If you would like to contribute your story, please send your story to londonirishlgbtnetwork@gmail.com

Thanks to Conleth’s for sharing his story.

Proud

By Conleth Kane

I will never forget my first non-uniform day at my secondary school – St Paul’s Junior High School in Lurgan back in 1997. It was an all-boys Catholic School in a working-class town in Lurgan in N. Ireland. I emerged from my bedroom wearing a Spice Girls T Shirt and my parents looked at me with fear all over their faces. They were always terrified on my behalf but I honestly didn’t give a s**t. I adored the Spice Girls. The band was the only display of diversity I had seen and they made it very clear that it was perfectly acceptable to be in a group scenario but be individual. I suppose that’s why I saw 60,000 other gay people at their 2019 reunion shows at Wembley Stadium. I guess they also identified with the very loud and clear message the girls generated.

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Our Life Stories

Bernárd’s Story: From Ennis to New York To London Pride 2021

For Pride month, we asked some of our members if they would like to tell their story and why they are proud. If you would like to contribute, please email londonirishlgbtnetwork@gmail.com

Here’s another story for you but first, grab yourself a cuppa!

From Ennis to New York To London Pride 2021

By Bernárd Lynch

After over forty years of activism in the LGBTQI+ community I look back and see that as a gay man the trouble with a secret life is that it is very frequently a secret from the person who lives it and not at all a secret for the people he encounters. He encounters because he must encounter the people who see his secrecy before anything else. They drag his secrets out of him with often dire consequences. The aim of the dreamer, after all, is to go on dreaming and not to be molested by the world. But the aims of life are antithetical to those of the dreamer, and the teeth of the world are sharp.

At school in Ennis C.B.S. the boy I was best pals with I fell in love with. He may have loved me as his pal, but I was in love with him. And although I didn’t know it at the time, I felt it with every bone in the soul of my body. This was the prevenient and perineal truth of my tortured adolescence.

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