Gok Wan: How I came out to my parents

Gok Wan: How I came out to my parents
Gok Wan: How I came out to my parents (Image credit: PA Wire/Press Association Images)

TV presenter Gok Wan has revealed how he told his parents he was gay. In an interview with GQ magazine the How To Look Good Naked star spoke emotionally of his father's acceptance of his sexuality. "I was dating a guy, and I basically used him because I knew I'd have to take someone home eventually and thought I'd try it out with him," he said. "My family is normally Shameless meets The Royle Family. But this night it was so weird. I had left home and no longer had a bedroom, so my dad left the table early, which he never did, and went into the living room and made a bed for the two of us with an open fire. "It was extraordinary, his quiet way of showing his acceptance. The reason I've never told that story is that my dad and I have never discussed it." "I just went into the toilet that night and wept buckets. And then we went to bed and nothing more was said." Wan told Piers Morgan he had slept with '21 and a half' men and lost his virginity while underage with a boy the same age, and said he had also had sex with women in the past. Of pop mogul Simon Cowell, Wan said: "He's so camp he makes me look like a World Wrestling Entertainment character. He is such a prolific figure in our culture now, and his arrogance and success are so attractive."

Patrick McLennan

Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix. 


An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.